Where Wars Go to Die Read online

  From Current History; the European War; The New York Times Company; New York, 1915.

  I Am a Professional Observer

  —Arnold Bennett

  To come at the truth by observation about a foreign country is immensely, overpoweringly difficult. I am a professional observer: I have lived in Paris and the French provinces for nine years; I am fairly familiar with French literature and very familiar with the French language—and I honestly would not trust myself to write even a shilling handbook about French character and life.

  Still, I do myself believe that the heart of the German people is in the war, and that the heart is governed by two motives—the motive of self-defense against Russia and the motive of overbearing self-aggrandizement. I do not base my opinion on phenomena which I have observed. Beyond an automobile journey through Schleswig-Holstein, which was formidably tedious, and a yacht journey through the Kiel Canal which was somewhat impressive, I have never traveled in Germany at all. I base my opinion on general principles. In a highly educated and civilized country such as Germany (the word “civilized” must soon take on a new significance!) it is impossible that an autocracy, even a military autocracy, could exist uprooted in the people. Prussian militarism may annoy many Germans, but it pleases more than it annoys, and there can be few Germans who are not flattered by it. That the lower classes have an even more tremendous grievance against the upper classes in Germany than in England or France is a certitude. But the existence and power of the army are their reward, their sole reward, for all that they have suffered in hardship and humiliation at the hands of the autocracy. It is the autocracy’s bribe and sweetmeat to them.

  The Germans are a great nation; they have admirable qualities, but they have also defects, and among their defects is a clumsy arrogance, which may be noticed in any international hotel frequented by Germans. The war may be autocratic, dynastic, what you will; but it is also national, and it symbolizes the national defect.

  From Current History; the European War; The New York Times Company, New York, 1915.

  The Children of Attila

  —Romain Rolland

  I am not, Gerhart Hauptmann, one of those Frenchmen who regard Germany as a nation of barbarians. I know the intellectual and moral greatness of your mighty race. I know all that I owe to the thinkers of old Germany; and even now, at this hour, I recall the example and words of our Goethe—for he belongs to the whole of humanity—-repudiating all national hatreds and preserving the calmness of his soul on those heights “where we feel the happiness and misfortunes of other people as our own.” I have labored all my life to bring together the minds of our two nations; and the atrocities of this impious war in which, to the ruin of European civilization, they are involved, will never lead me to soil my spirit with hatred.

  Whatever pain, then, your Germany may give me, whatever reasons I have to stigmatize as criminal German policy and the means it employs, I do not attach responsibility for it to the people which is burdened with it and is used as its blind instrument. It is not that I regard, as you do, war as a fatality. A Frenchman does not believe in fatality. Fatality is the excuse of souls without a will. War springs from the weakness and stupidity of nations. One cannot feel resentment against them for it; one can only pity them. I do reproach you with our miseries; for yours will be no less. If France is ruined, Germany will be ruined too. I did not even raise my voice when I saw your armies violating the neutrality of noble Belgium.

  But when I see the fury with which you are treating that magnanimous nation whose only crime has been to defend its independence and the cause of justice to the last … that is too much! The world is revolted by it. Keep those savageries for us, Frenchmen, your true enemies! But to wreak them against your victims, this small, unhappy, innocent Belgium people … how shameful this is!

  And not content to fling yourselves on living Belgium, you wage war on the dead, on the glories of past ages. You bombard Maines, you burn Rubens, and Louvain is now more than a heap of ashes—Louvain with its treasures of art and of science, the sacred town! What are you, then, Hauptmann, and by what name do you want us to call you now, since you repudiate the title of barbarians? Are you the grandsons of Goethe or of Attila? Are you making war on enemies or on the human spirit? Kill men if you like, but respect masterpieces. They are the patrimony of the human race. You, like all the rest of us, are its depositories; in pillaging it, as you do, you show yourselves unworthy of our great heritage, unworthy to take your place in that little European army which is civilization’s guard of honor.

  It is not the opinion of the rest of the world that I address myself in challenging you, Hauptmann. In the name of our Europe, of which you have hitherto been one of the most illustrious champions, in the name of the civilization for which the greatest of men have striven all down the ages, in the name of the very honor of your Germanic race, Gerhart Hauptmann, I abjure you, I challenge you, you and the intellectuals of Germany, among whom I reckon so many friends, to protest with all your energy against this crime which is recoiling upon you.

  If you fail to do this, you will prove one of two things: either that you approve what has been done—and in that case may the opinion of mankind crush you—or else that you are powerless to raise a protest against the Huns who command you. If this be so, by what title can you still claim, as you have claimed, that you fight for the cause of liberty and human progress? You are giving the world a proof that, incapable of defending the liberty of the world, you are even incapable of defending your own, and that the best of Germany is helpless beneath a vile despotism which mutilates masterpieces and murders the spirit of man.

  I am expecting an answer from you, Hauptmann, an answer that may be an act. The opinion of Europe awaits as I do. Think about it: at such a time silence itself is an act.

  From Above the Battle; The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago, 1916.

  Are We Barbarians?

  —Gerhart Hauptmann

  You address me, Herr Rolland, in public words which breathe the pain over this war (forced by England, Russia and France), pain over the endangering of European culture and the destruction of hallowed memorials of ancient art. Your beautiful novel Jean-Christophe will remain immortal among us Germans. But France became your adopted fatherland; therefore your heart must now be torn and your judgement confused. You have labored zealously for the reconciliations of both peoples. In spite of all this when the present bloody conflict destroys your fair concept of peace, as it has done for so many others, you see our nation and our people through French eyes, and every attempt to make you see clearly and as a German is absolutely sure to be in vain.

  Naturally everything which you say of our Government, of our army and our people, is distorted, everything is false, so false that in this respect your open letter to me appears as an empty black surface.

  War is war. You may lament war, but you should not wonder at the things that are inseparable from the elementary fact itself. Assuredly it is deplorable that in the conflict an irreplaceable Rubens is destroyed, but—with all honor to Rubens!—I am among those in whom the shattered breast of his fellow-man compels far deeper pain.

  And, Herr Rolland, it is not exactly fitting that you should adopt a tone implying that the people of your land, the French, are coming out to meet us with palm branches, when in reality they are plentifully supplied with cannon, with cartridges, yes, even with dumdum bullets. It is apparent that you have grown pretty fearful of our brave troops! That is to the glory of a power which is invincible through the justice of its cause. The German soldier has nothing whatsoever in common with the loathsome and puerile were-wolf tales which your lying French press so zealously publishes abroad, that press which the French and the Belgium people have to thank for their misfortune.

  Let the idle Englishmen call us Huns; you may, for all I care, characterize the warriors of our splendid Landwehr as sons of Attila; it is enough for us if this Landwehr can shatter into a thousand pieces the ring of our m
erciless enemies. Far better that you call us sons of Attila, cross yourselves in fear and remain outside our borders, than that you should indict tender inscriptions upon the tomb of our German nation, calling us the beloved descendants of Goethe. The epithet Huns is coined by people who, themselves Huns, are experiencing disappointment in their criminal attacks on the life of a sound and virtuous race, because it knows the trick of parrying a fearful blow with still more fearful force. In their impotence, they take refuge in curses.

  I say nothing against the Belgian people. The peaceful passage of the German troops, a question of life for Germany, was refused by Belgium because the Government had made itself a tool of England and France. This same Government then organized an unparalleled guerrilla warfare in order to support a lost cause, and by that act—Herr Rolland, you are a musician!—struck the horrible keynote of conflict ….

  The barbarian Germany has, as is well known, led the way among other nations with her great institutions for social reform. A victory would oblige us to go forward on this path and to make the blessings of such institutions general. Our victory would, furthermore, secure the future existence of the Teutonic race for the welfare of the world ….

  I hear that abroad an enormous number of lying tales are being fabricated to the detriment of our honor, our culture, and our strength. Well, those who create these idle tales should reflect that the momentous hour is not favorable for fiction. On three frontiers our own blood bears witness. I myself have sent out two of my sons. All our intrepid German soldiers know why they are going to war. There are no illiterates to be found among them; all the more, however, of those who, beside their rifle, have their Goethe’s Faust, their Zarathustra, a work of Schopenhauer’s, the Bible, or their Homer in their knapsack. And even those who have no book in their knapsack know they are fighting for a hearth at which every guest is welcome.

  On the frontier stands our blood testimony; the Socialist stands side by side with the bourgeois, the peasant beside the man of learning, the Prince beside the workman; and they all fight for German freedom, for German domestic life, for German art, German science, German progress; they fight with the full, clear consciousness of a noble and rich national possession, for internal and external goods, all of which serve for the general progress and development of mankind.

  From Current History; the European War; The New York Times Company, New York, 1915.

  The Man Who Does His Fighting with His Mouth

  —Jerome K. Jerome

  There is a certain noisy and, to me, particularly offensive man (and with him, I am sorry to say, one or two women) very much to the fore just now with whose services the country could very well dispense. He is the man who does his fighting with his mouth. Unable for reasons of his own to get at the foe in the field, he thirsts for the blood of the unfortunate unarmed and helpless Germans that the fortunes of war have stranded in England. He writes to the paper thoughtfully suggesting plans that have occurred to him for making their existence more miserable than it must be. He generally concludes his letter with a short homily directed against the Prussian Military staff for their lack of the higher Christian principles.

  Our weapons have to be hard blows, not hard words. We are tearing at each other’s throats; it has got to be done. It is not a time for yelping.

  Jack Johnson as a boxer I respect. The thing I do not like about him is his habit of gibing and jeering at his opponent while he is fighting him. It isn’t gentlemanly and it isn’t sporting. The soldiers are fighting in grim silence. When one of them does talk, it is generally to express admiration of German bravery. It is our valiant stay-at-homes, our valiant clamorers for everybody else to enlist but themselves, who would have us fight like some drunken fish hag, shrieking and spitting while she claws …

  Half of these stories of atrocities I do not believe. The truth is bad enough, God knows. There is no sense in making things out worse than they are. War puts a premium on brutality and senselessness. Men with the intelligence and instincts of an ape suddenly find themselves possessed of the powers of a god. And we are astonished that they do not display the wisdom of a god!

  When this war is over we will have to forget it. To build up barriers of hatred that shall stand between our children and our foeman’s children is a crime against the future.

  From Current History; the European War; The New York Times Company, New York, 1915.

  All Normal Americans

  —Booth Tarkington

  All normal and educated Americans have been from the beginning “pro-ally.” There are no exceptions. A few “prominent” citizens, not a dozen, have been entertained and personally enlightened by the Kaiser, or by his close adherents, and are “pro-Germans”; but that sort of enlightenment, of course, is destructive to education, and these troubled gentlemen have had no visible influence, though one hears that two or three of them have been able to convert their wives to the German view. There are also, here and there, a few “pro-German” oddities, quirk-brained persons and tender hearted souls, who are “for Germany” because everybody else is cursing Germany. They are of no consequence and may fairly be classed as not normal …

  We were the onlookers from the beginning, and we saw that the Germans made the war. We saw that the German Nation went into the war with a patriotic stupidity, magnificent and horrible; that the German Nation was wholly in the grip of a herd instinct which had been used by manipulators; and that these manipulators, having made the Germans into a loyal, warlike tribe, brought on the war in the approved manner employed by all war chiefs desiring a war. Their unblemished hypocrisy was of an old, old model always employed by war chiefs—and absolutely obvious to any mind not under the sway of herd instinct. The Germans saw what happened here. They understood that an impartial national mind had judged them; so they naturally organized a stupendous campaign attacking our judgement. For their purpose, their propaganda accomplished precisely nothing. Their descendants, who will probably become civilized over the course of time, will be dishonored by this crime, but the barbarians who committed it will naturally never comprehend the shame of it …

  And about our getting rich through the sale of munitions to the Allies. I am sorry if that sale is what causes our prosperity. It is a horrible way to make money. It is absolutely necessary that we furnish munitions to the Allies; and we shall not tolerate interference with our manufacture and shipping of these munitions, but I wish there was no profit-taking. However, under any circumstances, the Allies must be supplied with munitions—for they must win!

  That is the American thought.

  From Current History; the European War; The New York Times Company, New York, 1916.

  Chapter Two:

  Moralize

  After the initial war hysteria ran its course, a slightly more measured, nuanced, and thoughtful response became possible, especially by the prominent older writers who had hitherto remained silent. Compared to the likes of Doyle and Arnold Bennett, they were the literary heavy hitters, writers with real insight into the human condition. Their motives differed from the jingoists and apologists; they weren’t trying to justify the war (though most of them supported it) as much as they were trying to understand it, and understand in particular the complex moral issues at stake.

  Implicit in their writings is a difficult question—literature never faced a tougher one, at least not until the Holocaust. Can an elegant prose style, a flexible syntax, talent with simile, an ear for rhythm and cadence, parenthetical phrasings, a huge vocabulary be brought to bear on the horrors of total war?

  Well, they would give it a try—and they would do this without any illusions about the enormity of the task.

  While the mood temporarily brightened in September 1914, when the Battle of the Marne saved Paris, the elation was soon sobered by the stalemate of trench warfare. Christmas that year featured the spontaneous, short-lived truce on the western front, but 1915 saw disaster after disaster, including the first use of poison gas at Ypres, the butchery
at Loos (forty-eight thousand British casualties), the sinking of the Lusitania, the spread of fighting to Africa and the Middle East, the fiasco of Gallipoli, brutal “wastage” on the eastern front (by early 1915, Austria-Hungary had lost 1,268,000 men), and the massacres of the Armenians in Turkey.

  The enormous trench system fronted by barbed wire on both the western and eastern fronts came to symbolize the war’s futility. By 1917, measured from Memel on the Baltic to Czernowitz in the Carpathians, and from Nieuport in Belgium to the Swiss border near Freiburg, the trenches stretched for over 1,200 miles.

  “You could get to Switzerland along this trench,” an officer explained to Rudyard Kipling when he visited the front.

  “And from here to the other end you will find the same mess. This isn’t war. It’s worse. It’s an entire people who are being engulfed and swallowed up. They arrive here, fill up the trenches, and then die here. They die and they die and then watch others who die just as they will die.”

  While soldiers facing no man’s land could still fool themselves into thinking that the war would soon be over, this was harder to do for the well-connected, well-informed writers trying to take in the larger picture. Conrad, James, Hardy, Wells. They tried to be the adults in the room, detached from the politics, but fully engaged with the enormous tragedy their civilization was facing.

  Should they have done more? Toward the end of the war, Romain Rolland, writing from his refuge in Switzerland, judged them very harshly.

  “The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the intellectuals placed their art, their reason, at the service of the government. Let us point out the disasters that have resulted from the almost complete abdication of intelligence throughout the world, and from its voluntary enslavement to the unchained forces. Thinkers, artists, have added an incalculable quantity of envenomed hate to the plague which devours the flesh and spirit of Europe. They have worked to destroy mutual understanding and mutual love among men. So doing, they have disfigured, defiled, debased, degraded thought, of which they were the representatives.”