“The Secretary of State to the American Ambassador at Berlin:
“Please call on the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and after reading to him this communication, leave with him a copy:
“In view of the recent acts of the German authorities in violation of American rights on the high seas, which culminated in the torpedoing and sinking of the British steamship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, by which over one hundred American citizens lost their lives, it is clearly wise and desirable that the government of the United States and the imperial German government should come to a clear and full understanding as to the grave situation which has resulted.
“The sinking of the British passenger steamship Falaba by a German submarine on March 28, through which Leon C. Thresher, an American citizen, was drowned; the attack on April 28 on the American vessel Cushing by a German aeroplane; the torpedoing on May 1 of the American vessel Gulflight by a German submarine, as a result of which two or more American citizens met their death; and, finally, the torpedoing and sinking of the steamship Lusitania, constitute a series of events which the government of the United States has observed with growing concern, distress and amazement.
“Recalling the humane and enlightened attitude hitherto assumed by the imperial German government in matters of international right, and particularly with regard to the freedom of the seas; having learned to recognize the German views and the German influence in the field of international obligation as always engaged upon the side of justice and humanity; and having understood the instructions of the imperial German government to its naval commanders to be upon the same plane of humane action prescribed by the naval codes of other nations, the government of the United States was loath to believe—it cannot now bring itself to believe—that these acts, so absolutely contrary to the rules, the practices and the spirit of modern warfare, could have the countenance or sanction of that great government. It feels it to be its duty, therefore, to address the imperial German government concerning them with the utmost frankness and in the earnest hope that it is not mistaken in expecting action on the part of the imperial German government which will correct the unfortunate impressions which have been created and vindicate once more the position of that government with regard to the sacred freedom of the seas.
“The government of the United States has been apprised that the imperial German government considered themselves to be obliged by the extraordinary circumstances of the present war and the measures adopted by their adversaries in seeking to cut Germany off from all commerce, to adopt methods of retaliation which go much beyond the ordinary methods of warfare at sea, in the proclamation of a war zone from which they have warned neutral ships to keep away. This government has already taken occasion to inform the imperial German government that it cannot admit the adoption of such measures or such a warning of danger to operate as in any degree an abbreviation of the rights of American shipmasters or of American citizens bound on lawful errands as passengers on merchant ships of belligerent nationality; and that it must hold the imperial German government to a strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, intentional or incidental. It does not understand the imperial German government to question those rights. It assumes, on the contrary, that the imperial German government accept, as of course, the rule that the lives of non-combatants, whether they be of neutral citizenship or citizens of one of the nations at war, cannot lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction of an unarmed merchantman, and recognize, also, as all other nations do, the obligation to take the usual precaution of visit and search to ascertain whether a suspected merchantman is in fact of belligerent nationality or is in fact carrying contraband of war under a neutral flag.
“The government of the United States, therefore, desires to call the attention of the imperial German government with the utmost earnestness to the fact that the objection to their present method of attack against the trade of their enemies lies in the practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice and humanity, which all modern opinion regards as imperative. It is practically impossible for the officers of a submarine to visit a merchantman at sea and examine her papers and cargo. It is practically impossible for them to make a prize of her; and, if they cannot put a prize crew on board of her, they cannot sink her without leaving her crew and all on board of her to the mercy of the sea in her small boats. These facts, it is understood, the imperial German government frankly admit.
“We are informed that in the instances of which we have spoken time enough for even that poor measure of safety was not given, and in at least two of the cases cited not so much as a warning was received. Manifestly, submarines cannot be used against merchantmen, as the last few weeks have shown, without an inevitable violation of many sacred principles of justice and humanity.
“American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their ships and in traveling wherever their legitimate business calls them upon the high seas, and exercise those rights in what should be the well-justified confidence that their lives will not be endangered by acts done in clear violation of universally acknowledged international obligations, and certainly in the confidence that their own government will sustain them in the exercise of their rights.
“There was recently published in the newspapers of the United States, I regret to inform the imperial German government, a formal warning, purporting to come from the imperial German embassy at Washington, addressed to the people of the United States, and stating in effect that any citizen of the United States who exercised his right of free travel upon the seas would do so at his peril if his journey should take him within the zone of waters within which the imperial German navy was using submarines against the commerce of Great Britain and France, notwithstanding the respectful but very earnest protest of this government, the government of the United States. I do not refer to this for the purpose of calling the attention of the imperial German government at this time to the surprising irregularity of a communication from the imperial German embassy at Washington addressed to the people of the United States through the newspapers, but only for the purpose of pointing out that no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed can possibly be accepted as an excuse or palliation for that act, or as an abatement of the responsibility for its commission.
“Long acquainted as this government has been with the character of the imperial German government and with the high principles of equity by which they have in the past been actuated and guided, the government of the United States cannot believe that the commanders of the vessels which committed these acts of lawlessness did so except under a misapprehension of the orders issued by the imperial German naval authorities. It takes it for granted that, at least within the practical possibilities of every such case, the commanders even of submarines were expected to do nothing that would involve the lives of non-combatants or the safety of neutral ships, even at the cost of failing of their object of capture or destruction.
“It confidently expects, therefore, that the imperial German government will disavow the acts of which the government of the United States complains; that they will make reparation so far as reparation is possible for injuries which are without measure, and that they will take immediate steps to prevent the recurrence of anything so obviously subversive of the principles of warfare for which the imperial German government have in the past so wisely and so firmly contended.
“The government and people of the United States look to the imperial German government for just, prompt and enlightened action in this vital matter with the greater confidence because the United States and Germany are bound together not only by special ties of friendship, but also by the explicit stipulations of the treaty of 1828 between the United States and the Kingdom of Prussia.
“Expressions of regret and offers of reparation in case of the destruction of neutral ships sunk by mistake, while they may satisfy international obligations, if no loss of life results, cannot justify or excuse a practice, the natural and necessary effect of which is to subject neutral nations and neutral persons to new and immeasurable risks.
“The imperial German government will not expect the government of the United States to omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment.
“Bryan.”
With anxiety, even if with confidence, the American people waited the publication of this note. Then they read, and the whole country resounded with enthusiastic support. More than at almost any previous period in the history of the United States, more certainly than at the outbreak of any previous foreign war, the nation stood solidly behind the President. According to the New York Tribune he “acted with calm statesmanlike directness, deserved well of his own nation and earned the respect of the world.” The New York Sun, commenting on the note, said: “The President has spoken firmly. The country, supporting him as firmly, awaits without passion the German reply,” and the New York Herald in an editorial declared that President Wilson had “expressed the unanimous voice of the great American republic.” “Everyone trusts the President because he has shown himself worthy of trust,” was the comment of the Philadelphia Public Ledger. “The Government’s position in this case is the country’s position. It is not extreme, yet it covers the ground,” spoke the Springfield Republican, and the Christian Science Monitor went so far as to state that there was “probably no body of opinion in the United States which will be dissatisfied either with the tone or temper of the message.”
Zeppelin Device for Dropping Bombs.
An armored car is suspended by three cables from the Zeppelin airship to a distance of several thousand feet below the monster air-craft, which is concealed in the clouds above. (Sphere copr.)
Falling to Earth Like a Blazing Meteor.
This stirring picture represents a German aeroplane of the type called Aviatik, beaten in a fight high up in the air by the famous French Aviator Garros, plunging to earth in flames, turning and turning like a falling star.
No less enthusiastic was the approval of the press in the South and West. “The citizenry of this country is with Wilson,” stoutly declared the Baltimore Sun, and the Louisville Post maintained: “There are no neutrals in America now. We are all earnest supporters of the President, who by patience and fortitude has established his right to lead a free people.” The note, according to the Atlanta Journal, was “the voice of the American people proclaiming in terms unmistakable their conscience and their will.”
“Whatever the fate of our relations with Germany, the President undoubtedly has voiced the sentiment of the nation upon the use of the submarine and as to the rights of neutrals on the high seas,” was the comment of the Chicago Tribune. The note was described by the Cleveland News as “all that Americans could wish,” and according to the San Francisco Chronicle, it commended itself “to the common sense of people unafflicted with inflammable hatreds.” “It is probable that no document of state ever came nearer reflecting the sentiment of the American people,” commented the Denver Times, and the Indianapolis News proclaimed: “It is not simply the government, but the nation that speaks through the document. There is no one who does not hope for a peaceful adjustment of the difficulty.” The Minneapolis Journal, after analyzing the note and especially the last strong paragraph of protest, declared: “The American people will stand by these words.”
If no president of the United States ever faced so grave a crisis, certainly none ever received more unanimous support. If there were any murmurs of dissatisfaction they were too faint to be heard above the chorus of approval.
BLAMES BRITAIN FOR MISUSE OF FLAG — INVESTIGATING CASES OF CUSHING AND GULFLIGHT — DECLARES SHIP CARRIED MOUNTED CANNON — SAYS IT ACTED IN JUSTIFIED SELF-DEFENSE — FINAL DECISION ON DEMANDS DEFERRED — AMERICAN OPINION OF GERMAN EXCUSES — EVASIVE AND INSINCERE — ATTACKS ON AMERICAN VESSELS MUST CEASE — SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT.
The German defense for the destruction of the Lusitania and for other marine atrocities committed against non-combatant vessels in the famous, or infamous, war zone was contained in a note to the American government, transmitted May 31, in reply to President Wilson’s note of protest. The full text of the German note is as follows:
“The undersigned has the honor to submit to Ambassador Gerard the following answer to the communication of May 13 regarding the injury to American interests through German submarine warfare.
“The Imperial government has subjected the communication of the American government to a thorough investigation. It entertains also a keen wish to co-operate in a frank and friendly way in clearing up a possible misunderstanding which may have arisen in the relations between the two governments through the events mentioned by the American government.
“Regarding, firstly, the cases of the American steamers Cushing and Gulflight. The American embassy has already been informed that the German government has no intention of submitting neutral ships in the war zone, which are guilty of no hostile acts, to attacks by a submarine or submarines or aviators. On the contrary, the German forces have repeatedly been instructed most specifically to avoid attacks on such ships.
“If neutral ships in recent months have suffered through the German submarine warfare, owing to mistakes in identification, it is a question only of quite isolated and exceptional cases, which can be attributed to the British government’s abuse of flags, together with the suspicious or culpable behavior of the masters of the ships.
“The German government, in all cases in which it has been shown by its investigations that a neutral ship, not itself at fault, was damaged by German submarines or aviators, has expressed regret over the unfortunate accident and, if justified by conditions, has offered indemnification.
“The cases of the Cushing and the Gulflight will be treated on the same principles. An investigation of both cases is in progress, the result of which will presently be communicated to the embassy. The investigation can, if necessary, be supplemented by an international call on the international commission of inquiry as provided by Article III of The Hague agreement of October 18, 1907.
“When sinking the British steamer Falaba, the commander of the German submarine had the intention of allowing the passengers and crew a full opportunity for a safe escape. Only when the master did not obey the order to heave-to, but fled and summoned help by rocket signals, did the German commander order the crew and passengers by signals and megaphone to leave the ship within ten minutes. He actually allowed them twenty-three minutes time and fired the torpedo only when suspicious craft were hastening to the assistance of the Falaba.
“Regarding the loss of life by the sinking of the British passenger steamer Lusitania, the German government has already expressed to the neutral governments concerned its keen regret that citizens of their states lost their lives.
“On this occasion, the Imperial government, however, cannot escape the impression that certain important facts having a direct bearing on the sinking of the Lusitania may have escaped the attention of the American government.
“In the interest of a clear and complete understanding, which is the aim of both governments, the Imperial government considers it first necessary to convince itself that the information accessible to both governments about the facts of the case is complete and in accord.
“The government of the United States proceeds on the assumption that the Lusitania could be regarded as an ordinary unarmed merchantman. The Imperial government allows itself in this connection to point out that the Lusitania was one of the largest and fastest British merchant ships, built with government funds as an auxiliary cruiser and carried expressly as such in the ‘navy list’ issued by the British admiralty.
“It is further known to the Imperial government from trustworthy reports from its agents and neutral passengers, that for a considerable time practically all the more valuable British merchantmen have been equipped with cannon and ammunition and other weapons and manned with persons who have been specially trained in serving guns. The Lusitania, too, according to information received here, had cannon aboard, which were mounted and concealed below decks.
“The Imperial government, further, has the honor to direct the particular attention of the American government to the fact that the British admiralty in a confidential instruction issued in February, 1915, recommended its mercantile shipping not only to seek protection under neutral flags and disguising marks, but also, while thus disguised, to attack German submarines by ramming. As a special incitation to merchantmen to destroy submarines, the British government also offered high prizes and has already paid such rewards.
“The Imperial government in view of these facts indubitably known to it, is unable to regard British merchantmen in the zone of naval operations specified by the admiralty staff of the German navy as ‘undefended.’ German commanders consequently are no longer able to observe the customary regulations of the prize law, which they always followed.
“Finally the Imperial government must point out particularly that the Lusitania on its last trip, as on earlier occasions, carried Canadian troops and war material, including no less than 5,400 cases of ammunition intended for the destruction of the brave German soldiers who are fulfilling their duty with self-sacrifice and devotion in the Fatherland’s service.
“The German government believes that it was acting in justified self-defense in seeking with all the means of warfare at its disposition to protect the lives of its soldiers by destroying ammunition intended for the enemy.
“The British shipping company must have been aware of the danger to which the passengers aboard the Lusitania were exposed under these conditions. The company, in embarking them notwithstanding this, attempted deliberately to use the lives of American citizens as protection for the ammunition aboard, and acted against the clear provisions of the American law, which expressly prohibits the forwarding of passengers on ships carrying ammunition, and provides a penalty therefor. The company therefore is wantonly guilty of the death of so many passengers.
“There can be no doubt according to definite report of the submarine’s commander, which is further confirmed by all other information, that the quick sinking of the Lusitania is primarily attributed to the explosion of the ammunition shipment caused by a torpedo. The Lusitania’s passengers would otherwise, in all human probability, have been saved.
“The Imperial government considers the above-mentioned facts important enough to recommend them to the attentive examination of the American government.
“The Imperial government, while withholding its final decision on the demands advanced in connection with the sinking of the Lusitania until receipt of an answer from the American government, feels impelled in conclusion to recall here and now that it took cognizance with satisfaction of the mediatory proposals submitted by the United States government to Berlin and London as a basis for a modus vivendi for conducting the maritime warfare between Germany and Great Britain.
“The Imperial government by its readiness to enter upon a discussion of these proposals, then demonstrated its good intentions in ample fashion. The realization of these proposals was defeated, as is well known, by the declinatory attitude of the British government.
“The undersigned takes occasion, etc.
“Jagow.”
The effect of the German note on American opinion was to create a sense of angry disappointment. The newspapers were a unit in calling it evasive. It “does not meet the issue,” declared the New York World, while the New York Times viewed it as being “not responsive to our demand. It tends rather to becloud understanding.” The Albany Knickerbocker Press denounced it as “an answer which purposely does not answer. Germany evidently is playing for time.” This thought was reiterated by the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, which pointed out that “it is palpable that Germany proposes to consume time by raising points which call for further correspondence, in the meanwhile continuing in the course to which the United States has objected.”
Survivors of the Lusitania Disaster.
Mr. Cowper, a Canadian journalist, holding little Helen Smith, a six-year-old American girl, who lost both father and mother. (C. Int. News Service.)
“The Man Who Cannot Be Drowned.” This stoker was saved from the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland and, lastly, from the Lusitania.
Sapping and Mining the Enemy’s Trenches.
When the hostile trenches are near together an open zig-zag trench is dug to a point very close to the enemy’s line, then a covered gallery is excavated to a point almost under the hostile trench.
Gaining a Foot of Ground Per Hour.
Here a charge of explosive is placed and fired from a distance by an electric wire. At the same instant the men charge over the ground and occupy the ruined trench of the enemy. (Il. L. News copr.)
Larger illustration (317 kB)
Belgian Refugees Find Safety in Holland.
This photograph, made at Putte, a Holland frontier town, shows some of the three hundred thousand refugees who sought safety in Holland. (Copyright by Underwood and Underwood.)
United States’ Note of Protest and
Germany’s Reply Compared
President Wilson Demanded:
Practical cessation of submarine attacks on non-combatant vessels.
Observance of the rule of visit and search in the case of all suspected merchantmen before any such ship shall be subjected to capture or destruction.
Protection of non-combatants who may be on suspected merchantmen.
Disavowal of official German responsibility for injury to Americans in the Cushing, Gulflight and Lusitania cases.
Reparation, so far as reparation is possible, for irreparable damage.
Immediate steps by Germany to prevent the recurrence of incidents “so obviously subversive of the principles of warfare.”
The first three items, as noted above, were stated not as actual demands, but as assumptions of what Germany would agree to in view of previous communications from this country in the matter of what is allowable in maritime warfare according to previously acknowledged international law and the dictates of humanity.
Germany Conceded:
No intention of attacking neutral ships not guilty of hostile acts in “war zone.”
Regrets and indemnity where neutral ship, not itself at fault, is damaged.
Attacks on the American ships Gulflight and Cushing unintentional, the circumstances being rigidly investigated.
Keen regret at loss of lives of neutral citizens on Lusitania.
Germany Evaded:
Issue as to humanitarian aspect and facts in Lusitania case.
Giving of any direct promise to abandon submarine warfare.
Any attempt to justify such warfare, except as “self-defense.”
Germany Countered:
By raising question as to Lusitania being an “auxiliary armed cruiser,” and not of the “undefended merchantmen” class.
By accusing Cunard company of using American citizens to protect the “ammunition” carried by Lusitania, and of being guilty of their death.
The Chicago Herald more specifically pointed out the evasiveness of the German reply, claiming that it “fails wholly to meet the main points at issue, both the specific point of the slaughter of American citizens on the Lusitania and the general point of the impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding rules of fairness, reason, justice and humanity—established principles of international law.”
The Philadelphia Public Ledger also criticized it for ignoring altogether “the protest in the name of humanity against submarine warfare upon non-combatants,” and the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune laid bare the “absolute ignoring of the vital principles set forth in the Wilson letter,” adding that “there is a half contemptuous, albeit entirely courteous, suggestion of ‘Well, they are still dead; now, what do you propose to do about it?’”
No Use.
The German claim that the Lusitania was in effect a warship, with mounted guns, and carried ammunition and Canadian soldiers, was emphatically denied in a public statement by Dudley Field Malone, collector of the port of New York, and the New York World vehemently answered the German claim by declaring that “the Lusitania was a warship in the same way that Belgium was an aggressor against Germany; in the same way that the University of Louvain and Rheims Cathedral were ‘fortifications’; in the same way that various seaside resorts in England, raided by Germans, were ‘defended.’”
Many newspapers joined in calling for more drastic action on the part of the United States government. “We have but one thing in mind,” announced the New York Tribune, “that these crimes shall cease. Any answer, therefore, which fails to guarantee their stoppage as a condition precedent to diplomatic rectification cannot be expected to satisfy the just expectation of the United States.” The Washington Herald followed this by saying: “The patience of the American people in the face of contemptuous disregard of their rights and a series of outrages against their countrymen has been sublime, but surely it has a limit. Surely a way will be found, without much longer delay, to compel Germany to cease her attacks on American vessels engaged in neutral commerce and to guarantee the safety of American lives and property.”
On the other hand there was a strong element that counseled coolness and restraint. “This is not a time,” declared the Albany Knickerbocker Press, “to suggest to President Wilson what ought to be done. It is not a time to become impatient. It is a time for restraint. Nothing can be gained now by playing upon the strings of excitable public opinion in America. The President must find his way out and every true American must support him loyally.” Echoing this sentiment, the Springfield Republican added, “but the German government may fairly be required to give definite assurances that during the period of the negotiations no more torpedo attacks on passenger ships which may be carrying American citizens will be permitted.”
CULTURE SWEPT AWAY — BREAKING POINT OF CIVILIZATION — BARBARISM AND WOMEN — AFTER BARBARISM, WHAT?
[The following article is reproduced by the courtesy of the New York Times.]
There is in Brussels—if the Uhlans have spared it—a mad and monstrous picture. It is called “A Scene in Hell,” and hangs in the Musée Wiertz. And what you see on the canvas are the fierce and blinding flames of hell; and amid them looms the dark figure of Napoleon, and around him the wives and mothers and maids of Belgium scream and surge and clutch and curse—taking their posthumous vengeance.
And since Napoleon was a notable emperor in his time, the picture is not without significance today. Paint in another face, and let it go at that.
War is a bad thing. Even hell is the worse for it.
War is a bad thing; it is a reversal, sudden and complete, to barbarism. That is what I would get at in this article. One day there is civilization, authentic, complex, triumphant; comes war, and in a moment the entire fabric sinks down into a slime of mud and blood. In a day, in an hour, a cycle of civilization is canceled. What you saw in the morning was suave and ordered life; and the sun sets on howling savagery. In the morning black-coated men lifted their hats to women. Ere nightfall they are slashing them with sabres and burning the houses over their heads. And the grave old professors who were droning platitudes of peace and progress and humanitarianism are screaming, ere today is done, shrill senile clamors for blood and ravage and rapine.
A reversal to barbarism.
Here; it is in the tea-room of the smartest hotel in Munich; war has come; high-voiced women of title chatter over their teacups; comes swaggering in the Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria; he has just had his sabre sharpened and has girt his abdomen for war. His wife runs to him. And she kisses the sabre and shouts: “Bring it back to me covered with blood—that I may kiss it again!” And the other high-voiced women flock to kiss the sword.
A reversal to barbarism.
It has taken place in an hour; but yesterday these were sweet patrician ladies, who prattled of humanity and love and the fair graces of life; and now they would fain wet their mouths with blood—laughingly, as harlots wet their mouths with wine.
The unclean and vampirish spirit of war has swept them back to the habits of the cave-dwelling ages of the race. In an hour the culture so painfully acquired in slow generations has been swept away. Royalty, in the tea-room of the “Four Seasons,” is one with the blonde nude female who romped and fought in the dark Teutonic forests ere Caesar came through Gaul.
Reversal to barbarism.
War is declared; and in Berlin the Emperor of Germany rides in an open motor car down Unter den Linden; he is in full uniform, sworded, erect, hieratic; and at his side sits the Empress—she the good mother, the housewife, the fond grandmother—garmented from head to foot in cloth the color of blood.
Theatricalism? No. The symbolism is more significant. The symbol bears a savage significance. It marks, as a red sunset, the going down of civilization and the coming of the dark barbarism of war.
There was war; and the whole machinery of civilization stopped.
Modern civilization is the most complex machine imaginable; its infinite cogged wheels turn endlessly upon each other; and perfectly it accomplishes its multifarious purposes; but smash one wheel and it all falls apart into muddle and ruin. The declaration of war was like thrusting a mailed fist into the intricate works of a clock. There was an end of the perfected machine of civilization. Everything stopped.
That was a queer world we woke in. A world that seemed new, so old it was.
Money had ceased to exist. It seemed at that moment an appalling thing. I was on the edge and frontier of a neutral state. I had money in a bank. It ceased to be money. A thousand-franc note was paper. A hundred-mark note was rubbish. British sovereigns were refused at the railway station. The Swiss shopkeeper would not change a Swiss note. What had seemed money was not money.
Values were told in terms of bread.
It was a swift and immediate return to the economic conditions of barbarism. Metals were hoarded; and where there had been trade there was barter. And it all happened in an hour, in that first fierce panic of war.
Traffic stopped with a clang as of rusty iron. The mailed fist had dislocated the complex machinery of European traffic. Frontiers which had been mere landmarks of travel became suddenly formidable and impassable barriers, guarded by harsh, hysterical men with bayonets.
War makes men brave and courageous? Rubbish! It fills them with the cruelty of hysteria and the panic of the unknown. I am not talking of battle, which is a different thing. But I say the men who guarded the German frontier—and I dare say every other frontier—in the first stress of war, were wrenched and shaken with veritable hysteria. At St. Ludwig and Constance those husky soldiers in iron-mongery, with shaved heads and beards and outstanding ears, fell into sheer savagery, not because they were bad and savage men, but simply because they were hysterical. The fact is worth noting.
It explains many a bloody and infamous deed in the tragic history of sad Alsace and of little Belgium. The war-begotten reversal to savagery brought with it all the hysteria of the savage man. The sentries at St. Ludwig struck with muskets and sabres because they were hysterical with terror of the new, unknown state into which they had been plunged, not because they were not men like you and me. Surely the savage Uhlan who ravaged the cottages of Alsace was your brother and mine, as were the Magyar beyond the Danube and the Cossack at Kovna. Only they had gone back to the terrors of the man who dwelt in a cave.
Traffic stopped; and when it stopped civilization fell away from the travelers. That was strange. Take the afternoon of the day war was declared, the date being Aug. 1, in the year of our Lord 1914, and the hour 7.30 P.M., Berlin time. It was the last train that reached the frontier from Paris. Between Delle and Bicourt lies a neutral zone about three kilometers—say, nearly two and a half miles—in extent. On one side France and invasion and terror and war; on the other side of the zone the relative safety of Switzerland. Six hundred passengers poured out of the French train at noon into that neutral zone and started to walk to Swiss safety. A blazing August sun; a road of pebbles and stinging, upblown dust.
The passengers had been permitted to bring on the train only what luggage they could carry; so they were laden with bags and coats, dressing bags and jewel cases—all they had deemed most valuable. Mostly women. German ladies fleeing for refuge; Russian ladies; English, American; and a crowd of men, urgent to reach their armies, German, Swiss, Russian, Austrian, Servian, Italian; withal many of the kind of American men who go to Switzerland in August.
And the caravan started in the dust and heat of a desert. A woman let fall her heavy bag and plodded on. Another threw away her coats. Men shook off their bundles. The heat was stifling. And through the clouds of dust a panic terror crept. It was the antique terror of the God Pan—the God All; it was a fear as immense as the sky.
A woman screamed and began to run, throwing away everything she had safeguarded so she might run with empty hands. A score followed her. Men began to run. They thrust the women aside, cursing; and ran. And for over two miles the road was covered thick with coats and bags, with packages and jewel cases. The greed of possession died out in the causeless fear.
These hoarse, pushing men, these sweating, shameless women had gone back 10,000 years into prehistoric savagery. Lightly they threw away all the baubles and gewgaws civilization had fashioned for adorning and disguising their raw humanity, and the habits of civilization as well.
They had touched but the outermost edge of war, and their very clothes fell off them.
War; and it takes eighty-four hours to make a twelve-hour journey from the Alps to Paris; the cable is dead; the telegraph is dumb; letters go only when smuggled over the frontiers by couriers; you look about you and find you are in a mediæval and mysterious world. You stand amid the melancholy ruins of canceled cycles. The mailed fist of war has smashed your world to pieces. You do not know it.
The man you thought of as a brother looks at you with eyes of passionate hatred; you have eaten bread and salt together; you have drunk together; you have been uplifted by the same books; you have been sublimed by the same music; but he is a German, and your blood was made in another land, and he looks at you with suspicion and hate—perhaps you are a spy. (The spy mania! Dear Lord, what absurd, bloody, and abominable stories I could write of this madness which has Europe by the throat, this madness which is only another form of war hysteria!) A reversal to barbarism; you and the man who was your friend have gone back to the fear and hatred of primitive savages, meeting at the corner of a dark wood. All of humanity we have acquired in the slow way of evolution sloughs off us.
We are savages once more. For science is dead. All the laboratories are shut, save those where poison is brewed and destruction is put up in packages. Education has ceased, save that fierce Nietzschean education which declares: “The weak and helpless must go to the wall; and we shall help them go.” All that made life humanly fair is hidden in the fetid clouds of war where savages (in terror and hysteria) grope for each other’s throats.
The glory of war—rot! The heroism of war—rot! The scarlet and beneficent energies of war—rot! When you look at it close what you see are hulking masses of brutes with fear behind them prodding them on, or wild and splendid savages, hysterical with hate, battling to save their hearth fires and women from the oncoming horde. Reversal to barbarism.
Think it over. Upon whom falls the stress of war? Not upon the soldier. He is killed and fattens the soil where he falls; or he is maimed and hobbles off toward a pension or beggary—both tolerable things; anyway he has drunk deep of cruelty and terror and may go his way. By rare good grace he may have been a hero. In other words, he may have been a Belgian—which is a word like a decoration, a name to make one strut like a Greek of Thermopylae—and become thus a permanent part of the world’s finest history.
******
I would like to write here the name of a friend, Charles Flamache of Brussels. He was twenty-one years old. He was an artist who had already tasted fame. He had known the love of woman. That his destiny might be fulfilled he died, the blithe, brave boy, in front of Liège. It was the right death at the right time—ere yet the massed Prussians had rolled in fire and blood over his fair small land. Wherefore, hail and farewell, young hero!
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But upon whom falls the stress of war?
In a time of barbarism those who suffer are always the weak. War is in its essence (as said Nietzsche, the German philosopher of “world power”) an attack upon weakness. The weakest suffer most.
I saw children born on cinder heaps, and I saw them die; and the mothers die gasping like she dogs in a smother of flies.
Some day the story of what was done in Alsace will be written and the stories of Visé and Aerschot and Orsmael and Louvain will seem pale and negligible; but not now—five generations to come will whisper them in the Vosges.
What I would emphasize is that in the natural state of barbarism induced by the war the woman falls back to her antique state of she animal. In thousands of years she has been made into a thing of exquisite and mysterious femininity; in a day she is thrown back to kinship with the she dog. Slashed with sabres, pricked with lances, she is a mere thing of prey.
Surely not the dear Countess and Baroness? Of course not. War is made in the palaces, but it does not attack the palaces. The worth of every nation dwells in the cottage; and it is upon the cottage that war works its worst infamy. Go to Alsace and see.
Pillage, loot, incendiarism, “indemnity”—you can read that in the records of the invasion of Belgium; that is war; it is all right if war is to be, for all this talk of chivalrous consideration for foes and regard for international law is all nonsense; necessity, as Bethmann-Hollweg said, knows no law, and necessity has always been the tyrant’s plea; it is the business of a soldier to kill and terrify; if he restricts his killing and terrifying he is a bad soldier and bad at his work of barbarism; but—
There is a more sinister side to Europe’s lapse into barbarism. The women are paying too dear. And to make them pay dear is not really the business of a soldier, not even a bad soldier. Yet the woman is paying, God knows. A tragic payment.
One morning at dawn—it was at Ambérieu—I saw the long trains go by carrying the German wounded and the German prisoners, who had been taken in the battles of the Vosges. There were 2,400 taken on toward the south. There were French nurses with the wounded. I saw water and fruit and chocolate given to the prisoners.
This was early in the war. The sheer lapse into barbarism had not yet come. Soon the German newspapers announced:
“Great concern is expressed in press and public utterances lest prisoners of war receive anything in the line of favored treatment. Newspapers have conducted an angry campaign against women who have ventured at the railway station to give coffee or food to prisoners of war passing through; commanding officers have ordered that persons ‘demeaning themselves by such unworthy conduct’ are to be immediately ejected from the stations, and in response to public clamor official announcements have been issued that such prisoners in transport receive only bread and water.”
And the French followed suit; no “coddling” of prisoners; back to barbarism, the lessons of humanity forgot and savagery come again.
Civilization in the old world is smashed. I have traversed the ruins; and my feet are still dirty with mud and blood. But I can tell you what is going to come out of that welter of ruin. There will come a sane and righteous hatred of militarism. What will be surely destroyed is Cæsarism. Prophecy? This is not prophecy; I am stating an assured fact. Even at this hour of hysterical and relentless warfare there lies deep in the heart of the democracy of Europe a consuming hatred of militarism.
Drops of water (or blood) do not more naturally flow into each than did the English hatred of Cæsarism blend with the high French hatred of the evil thing; and when the palaces have done fighting, the cottages of Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and from the Black Sea to the Hebrides, will proclaim its destruction.
And you will see it; you will see Cæsarism drowned in the very blood it has shed. And the German, mark you, will not be the least bitter of the foes of militarism. He will be indeed a relentless foe.
Reversal to barbarism, say you? A shuddering lapse into savagery?
Quite true; that is the state of Europe over the fairest and most highly civilized provinces. The picture of Sir John French strolling up and down the battle line smoking a cigarette does not give a fair idea of it; nor do you get it from the Kaiser on a hilltop surveying his massed war bullocks surging forth patiently to battle; all that belongs to the picture books of war.
The real thing is dirtier.
THE MARTYRDOM OF BELGIUM — ABYSS OF WANT AND WOE — NO WORK AND HEAVY WAR TAXES — PATIENCE OF BELGIANS — CRYING NEED OF FOOD — BELGIAN PEOPLE WARDS OF THE WORLD.
[Sir Gilbert Parker went abroad at the request of the American Committee for the Relief of Belgium, and the following graphic statement and appeal to the American people, dated December 5, 1914, appeared in the New York Times.]
Since the beginning of the war the hearts of all humane people have been tortured by the sufferings of Belgium. For myself the martyrdom of Belgium had been a nightmare since the fall of Liège. Whoever or whatever country is to blame for this war, Belgium is innocent. Her hands are free from stain. She has kept the faith. She saw it with the eyes of duty and honor. Her government is carried on in another land. Her king is in the trenches. Her army is decimated, but the last decimals fight on.
Her people wander in foreign lands, the highest and lowest looking for work and bread; they cannot look for homes. Those left behind huddle near the ruins of their shattered villages or take refuge in towns which cannot feed their own citizens.
Many cities and towns have been completely destroyed; others, reduced or shattered, struggle in vain to feed their poor and broken populations. Stones and ashes mark the places where small communities lived their peaceful lives before the invasion. The Belgian people live now in the abyss of want and woe.
All this I knew in England, but knew it from the reports of others. I did not, could not, know what the destitution, the desolation of Belgium was, what were the imperative needs of this people, until I got to Holland and to the borders of Belgian territory. Inside that territory I could not pass because I was a Britisher, but there I could see German soldiers, the Landwehr, keeping guard over what they call their new German province. Belgium a German province!
There at Maastricht I saw fugitives crossing the frontier into Holland with all their worldly goods on their shoulders or in their hands, or with nothing at all, seeking hospitality of a little land which itself feels, though it is neutral, the painful stress and cost of the war. There, on the frontier, I was standing between Dutch soldiers and German soldiers, so near the Germans that I could almost have touched them, so near three German officers that their conversation as they saluted me reached my ears.
I begin to understand what the sufferings and needs of Belgium are. They are such that the horror of it almost paralyzes expression. I met at Maastricht Belgians, representatives of municipalities, who said that they had food for only a fortnight longer. And what was the food they had? No meat, no vegetables, but only one-third of a soldier’s rations of bread for each person per day. At Liège, as I write, there is food for only three days.
What is it the people of Belgium ask for? They ask for bread and salt, no more, and it is not forthcoming. They do not ask for meat; they cannot get it. They have no fires for cooking, and they do not beg for petrol. Money is of little use to them, because there is no food to be bought with money.
Belgium under ordinary circumstances imports five-sixths of the food she eats. The ordinary channels of sale and purchase are closed. They cannot buy and sell if they would. Representatives of Belgian communities told me at Maastricht that the crops were taken from their fields—the wheat and potatoes—and were sent into Germany.
There is no work. The factories are closed because they have not raw material, coal, or petrol, because they have no markets.
And yet war taxes are falling with hideous pressure upon a people whose hands are empty, whose workshops are closed, whose fields are idle, whose cattle have been taken, or compulsorily purchased without value received.
In Belgium itself the misery of the populace is greater than the misery of the Belgian fugitives in other countries, such as Holland, where there have come since the fall of Liège one and a half million of fugitives. To gauge what that misery in Belgium is, think of what even the fugitives suffer. I have seen in a room without fire, the walls damp, the floor without covering, not even straw, a family of nine women and eight children, one on an improvised bunk seriously ill. Their home in Belgium was leveled with the ground, the father killed in battle.
Their food is coffee and bread for breakfast, potatoes for dinner, with salt—and in having the salt they were lucky—bread and coffee for supper. Insufficiently clothed, there by the North Sea, they watched the bleak hours pass, with nothing to do except cling together in a vain attempt to keep warm.
Multiply this case by hundreds of thousands and you will have some hint of the people’s sufferings.
In a lighter on the River Maas at Rotterdam, without windows, without doors, with only an open hatchway from which a ladder descends, several hundred fugitives spend their nights and the best parts of their days in the iron hold, forever covered with moisture, leaky when rain comes, with the floor never dry, and pervasive with a perpetual smell like the smell of a cave which never gets the light of day. Here men, women, and children were huddled together in a promiscuous communion of misery, made infinitely more pathetic and heartrending because none complained.
At Rosendaal, at Scheveningen, Eysden, and Flushing, at a dozen other places, these ghastly things are repeated in one form or another. Holland has sheltered hundreds of thousands, but she could not in a moment organize even adequate shelter, much less comforts.
In Bergen-op-Zoom, where I write these words, there have come since the fall of Antwerp 300,000 hungry marchers, with no resources except what they carry with them. This little town of 15,000 people did its best to meet the terrible pressure, and its citizens went without bread themselves to feed the refugees. How can a small municipality suddenly deal with so vast a catastrophe? Yet slowly some sort of order was organized out of chaos, and when the Government was able to establish refugee camps through the military the worst conditions were moderated, and now, in tents and in vans on a fortunately situated piece of land, over 3,000 people live, so far as comforts are concerned, like Kaffirs in Karoo or aborigines in a camp in the back blocks of Australia. The tents are crammed with people, and life is reduced to its barest elements. Straw, boards, and a few blankets and dishes for rations—that constitutes the ménage.
Children are born in the hugger-mugger of such conditions, but the good Holland citizens see that the children are cared for and that the babies have milk. Devoted priests teach the children, and the value of military organization illuminates the whole panoply of misery. Yet the best of the refugee camps would seem to American citizens like the dark and dreadful life of an underworld, in which is neither work, purpose, nor opportunity. It is a sight repugnant to civilization.
The saddest, most heartrending thing I have ever seen has been the patience of every Belgian, whatever his state, I have met. Among the thousands of refugees I have seen in Holland, in the long stream that crossed the frontier at Maastricht and besieged the doors of the Belgian Consul while I was there, no man, no woman railed or declaimed against the horror of their situation. The pathos of lonely, staring, apathetic endurance is tragic beyond words. So grateful, so simply grateful, are they, every one, for whatever is done for them.
None begs, none asks for money, and yet on the faces of these frontier refugees I saw stark hunger, the weakness come of long weeks of famine. One man, one fortunate man from Verviers, told me he could purchase as much as 2s. 8d. worth of food for himself, his wife and child for a week.
Think of it, American citizens! Sixty-six cents’ worth of food for a man, his wife, and child for a whole week, if he were permitted to purchase that much! Sixty-six cents! That is what an average American citizen pays for his dinner in his own home. He cannot get breakfast, he can only get half a breakfast, for that at the Waldorf or the Plaza in New York.
This man was only allowed to purchase that much food if he could, because if he purchased more he would be taking from some one else, and they were living on rations for the week which would represent the food of an ordinary man for a day. A rich man can have no more than a poor man. It is a democracy of famine.
There is enough food wasted in the average American household in one day to keep a Belgian for a fortnight in health and strength. They want in Belgium 30,000 tons of food a month. That is their normal requirement. The American Relief Committee is asking for 8,000 tons a month, one-quarter of the normal requirements, one-half of a soldier’s rations for each Belgian. The American Committee needs $5,000,000 a month until next harvest. It is a huge sum, but it must be forthcoming.
Of all the great powers of the world the United States is the only one not at war or in peril of war. Of all the foremost nations of the world the United States is the only one that can save Belgium from starvation if she will. She was the only nation that Germany would allow a foothold for humanity’s and for Christ’s sake in Belgium. Such an opportunity, such responsibility, no nation ever had before in the history of the world. Spain and Italy join with her, but the initiative and resources and organization are hers.
Around Belgium is a ring of steel. Within that ring of steel is a disappearing and forever disappearing population. Towns like Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war. Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States enters with an adequate and responsible organization upon the mission of humanity.
No such opportunity was ever given to a people, no such test ever came to a Christian people in all the records of time. Will the American nation rise to the chance given to it to prove that its civilization is a real thing and that its acts measure up with its inherent and professed Christianity?
I am a profound believer in the great-heartedness of the United States, and there is not an American of German origin who ought not gladly and freely give to the relief of people who, unless the world feeds them, must be the remnant of a nation; and the world in this case is the United States. She can give most.