Without having in view any acquisitions whatsoever in the northern part of the Peninsula, Russia is deeply interested in seeing to it that Germanic influence does not acquire preponderance there, because that influence, in its turn, has no aims save territorial acquisition. The Balkan Peninsula is admitted to be the most influential camp of Pan-Germanism for the colony desired by the Germanic world, from which it is but a step to Central Asia. And it was this plan that Russia was compelled to combat. Unfortunately, she resisted too feebly, and our diplomacy betrayed an extremely poor comprehension of Russian problems. Austria's snatching appetite was fully revealed in the formula of partition of the Peninsula into two spheres of influence: Austria was to have Serbia and Bosnia, Russia the Bulgarian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. We all know how that ended: Serbia was abandoned by Russia at the Berlin Congress, and had no choice but to throw herself into the arms of Austria, which wrought fearful demoralization in the land. Tens of years were required before little, tormented Serbia—which had not, nevertheless, lost her freshness of spiritual power "found herself," that is to say, turned again to Russia, and did not reject her even during the period of the persecutions of 1908 which followed. This constituted the great service rendered to his people by the King of Serbia, Peter. Serbia has not perished, has not fallen into ruin, and has shown herself able to endure a war with Turkey, as she is now bearing the incredible blows of Austria-Hungary. But Bulgaria, which rejected Russia, has been seized in the grip of internal disturbances; she stands distracted before her Slavonic duty, and knows not whither she must go or why. If, at the last moment, she has sufficient sense to find her only way of salvation, which is in friendship with Slavdom, that, again, will be to the credit of Russia.
That is why, at the present moment, when the last act of the Balkan tragedy, begun long ago, is being played, we can look history in the face with calm eyes. Whatever may be formed after the end of this war, whether a Slavonic Federation, in which Russia could hardly take much interest, since she requires, first of all, the concentration of her own forces, or a series of independent, separate Slavonic kingdoms, we may say that, in having summoned the Slavs to unity, Russia has not deceived them, has not led them along a false road to destruction.
Absolutely nothing is published in the Italian papers or reviews concerning military or naval operations until the result of a given movement is known. Meanwhile, what are Italians reading and what is the intellectual food given them to sustain the wonderful sentimental enthusiasm with which they welcomed the war?
Previous to Italy's declaration of war against Austria-Hungary, on May 24, the press in general dealt with the negotiations between the two Governments from the point of view of domestic politics, which gave foreigners the impression that Italy was only waiting to receive her price to remain neutral until the end of the war. Austrian intrigue and dilatoriness were alike criticized. Little was said about Germany in regard to Italy, although her military methods in Belgium and northern France, her raids on the defenseless coast towns of England, and her submarine activities in the War Zone were severely condemned. This censure, however, was entirely academic and objective. The reviews republished a quantity of English, French, Russian, and even American articles as to the causes of the war, and the illustrations which accompanied them could hardly be considered pro-Teutonic. Only the comic press—and this in spite of its augmenting circulation which should have indicated to observers the sentiment that was elsewhere suppressed—gave full vent to popular emotion.
The moment war was declared there was a complete change. To be sure the "Green Book" was published in numerous 20-cent editions and sold by the hundreds of thousands and the closing speeches of Italian and Austrian diplomats were given in full with comments, yet little time was wasted with explanations of the failure of the Italo-Austrian negotiations and the meaning of the Seventh Article of the Triple Alliance. The daily press, the weekly periodicals, and the monthly reviews suddenly changed their objective expositions of Germany's conduct in regard to others and began to expound, explain, and elucidate, in an intimate subjective manner, how that conduct affected Italy.
Austria was almost ignored. The anti-German riots at Milan and other cities, where thousands of dollars worth of property was systematically destroyed before the authorities could interfere, showed the volcano that had been lying dormant beneath the surface. Articles which must have been prepared months before suddenly appeared in the press and reviews showing how Germany had come to control the banks and steamship lines of the Peninsula and how German capital, under the guise of promoting Italian enterprises, had laid hold of vast industries whose profits went to fill the pockets of the Germans; and, worst of all, how the savings of Italian immigrants in America had gone, through the German-conducted banks, to enrich the same persons without any contingent benefit to Italians.
Indeed, it almost seemed as though the press and reviews alike had been organized as completely as had the army and navy for the prosecution of the war with the sole object in view of preventing Germany ever again from using the Peninsula as a territory for exploitation. The propaganda for Italia Irredenta suddenly sank into insignificance beside the determination to throw off, once and for all, the German commercial, industrial, and financial yoke, revealing the abiding faith of the Italian people that their army would attend to the former as completely as desirable and without the advice and criticism of civilians. Faith in their King and their army and in their ultimate success is not a matter for argument among Italians.
Meanwhile, the staffs of all publications, from editors to compositors, have felt the weight of conscription—sacrifices they enthusiastically make for the common cause. Their pages may be fewer and some favorite contributors may be heard of no more, but they are sure that the public will bear with them. On the other hand, a new periodical has sprung into existence called La Guerra d'Italia nel 1915—The Italian War of 1915—the first number of which has just come to hand. Its introduction accompanied with several well-made portraits constructs the basis of Italy's action—how Italy having been tricked through a fancied fear of France and the apparent unresponsiveness of England into entering the Triple Alliance in 1882, had been forced to remain there, possibly protected thereby from actual Austrian aggression, but ever a prey to German exploitation. Then comes an analysis of the Italo-Austrian negotiations, conducted directly and through Prince von Bülow, the Special German Ambassador in Rome, showing why these negotiations could not possibly have succeeded. Like the Government itself the new periodical is in no haste to describe military operations.
The first review to devote almost its entire space to the war was La Vita Internazionale of Milan. The opening article is by the well-known publicist E.T. Moneta. He begins:
Without boast but with self-esteem secure, Italy has taken her place in the combat among the nations which for ten months have been fighting for the liberty of the people and the cause of civilization. The enthusiasm with which this announcement has been received in France, Russia, and England, and especially in martyred Belgium, is enormous. For they have all understood what decisive effect our army would produce on the destiny of the Great War.
The fighters for liberty and civilization who have always hoped for an ultimate victory, today feel the certainty of that hope, and that the duration of the war with the loss of millions of other lives will be shortened. For this reason, from those governments and people, from their parliaments and from their press, from workingmen's societies and from institutions of learning there have come to our country warm words of admiration and of social unity. All these things form an added inspiration for us to do our best to hasten the end of this slaughter of men.
Signor Moneta goes on to compliment the diplomacy of Premier Salandra for resigning from office and thus giving the people the opportunity to show through their demonstrations that they desired war and to silence once and forever the propaganda of Giolitti who had declaimed in vain that the people did not want war, as they could secure by negotiations unredeemed Italy—as though that were all.
Another article is by D. Giuseppe Antonini and is entitled "The German Madness." Its subject, full of quotations from Treitschke, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi, is not new to Americans. For Italians it may come as a revelation. It demonstrates the formative influences which have found expression in what is called "Prussian Militarism," as an attitude of mind which believes in the supremacy of force over all things—over goodness, virtue, kindness, and all else that make life worth living. It declares that Prussian Militarism has so possessed all Germans that not only their moral but their logical point of view has become distorted, so that they behold nought but virtue in applying science to bring about Mediaeval results. The conflict, he declares, is between absolutism which pretends to be sufficient unto itself and democracy which receives its power from the people, and that the latter must win unless centuries of the power, by revolutions without number, for the benefit of the masses are to end in failure.
Paolo Baccari deals with "The Supreme Duty." He says that the intervention of Italy was not merely to complete Unification by uniting all Italians of the Peninsula and the Adriatic littoral under one flag and government, but to register herself as standing for justice, law, and humanity against organized barbarity, injustice, illegality, and inhumanity, which, if victorious, would not rest until it had conquered the world. He calls the peace propaganda at this time a "vile lie of conventionality" because its success could only mean the victory of those forces which all honest nationalities and persons condemn.
As to the other serious reviews, such as the Nuova Antologia and the Rivista d'Italia, their June numbers, aside from expounding Italy's relations to Germany, have not gone beyond academic discussion of the causes of the war and the economic phases as revealed by the budgets of France, England, and Russia, and the sacrifices that Italy must endure in order to make her a worthy ally of these countries, all putting forth their greatest efforts in the battle for the world's salvation.
There are in Italy a large number of popular, well illustrated, monthly magazines, which, taking it for granted that their readers have already been thoroughly instructed as to the diplomatic phases of the war, have started a campaign of education in regard to the war itself. There are articles contrasting the armies of the days of Garibaldi and the great King Victor Emmanuel with those of the present. There are also articles, historical and descriptive, sociological and economic, on Trieste, Trent, and other cities of Unredeemed Italy, and historical monographs showing the bonds that formerly bound Italy to England and to France which have now been cemented anew, free from all Teutonic influence.
Among the magazines of this class are the Secolo XX, the Noi e il Mondo, and La Lettura; all, whenever the occasion offers, deal generously and enthusiastically with Italy's allies.
In all this published matter one thing has been revealed since Italy entered the war. Previously all the Italian writers placed in the same category of contempt the alleged attempts that were being made to influence Italy by the Central Empires as well as by the Entente Powers and unblushingly declared that if Italy ever entered the war it would not be for the benefit of one party or the other but for the benefit of herself alone. Now they frankly confess that the Entente Powers made no attempt to influence Italy, knowing all the time that when she was ready she would line up on their side.
Stockholm, May 10, 1915.
English people know that the Swedish nation is practically unanimous in supporting the Government in its policy of strict neutrality. Yet a large section of the people, whether the majority or not we cannot say, is anything but neutral in their feelings at the methods of warfare which have been adopted in this terrible war, and have culminated in the sinking of the Lusitania.
The misconception that war suspends all laws of humanity must prove fatal to the future of civilization and disastrous for that human solidarity that is of such vital interest to the smaller nations especially.
(Signed)
The subjoined article, appearing as a letter to The New York Times, was provoked by the appearance on hundreds of billboards in New York of flaring appeals to American women that they use their influence to prevent the further exportation of arms and munitions to the enemies of Germany.
New York, July 5, 1915.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
As I do not belong to any of the suffrage or other woman's organizations in New York, may I say in your columns that for the honor of my sex, if for no other reason, I hope the Mayor will consent to the obliteration of those disingenuous posters addressing "American citizens," and so cunningly worded and signed as to produce an impression of representing the women of the United States? If the people that are spending their thousands so freely had come out frankly and stated that they were pro-German, and that the success of their propaganda would mean defeat for the Allies, short of ammunition, and victory for a nation that has nine-tenths of all the ammunition in Europe, then at least we should have the sheep separated from the goats; we could put it down to masculine influence over the weaker female vessel, which at least was trying to be honest, and let it go at that.
But I hold that such a poster, flaring from every billboard, is a defamation of patriotic American women, and a distinct blow to the cause of suffrage. It will not only antagonize men, who alone have the power to grant the franchise in those States still obdurate, but disgust thousands of women not yet won over to the cause, and far too intelligent not to know the precise meaning behind those lying and hypocritical words. For if that poster were really representative of American women it would mean that American women were traitors to their country, just as all pro-German American men, whatever their descent, are traitors, whether they realize it or not. What was the cause of the roar of indignation that went up all over the United States on Aug. 1? Anti-Germanism? Not a bit of it. If Russia had made the declaration of war the roar would have been as immediate and as loud. It was the spontaneous protest of the spirit of democracy against an arrogant autocracy that dared to plunge Europe into war and the world into panic, without the consent of the people; the manifest of a mediaeval power by an ambitious and unscrupulous group over millions of industrious, peace-loving men who had nothing to gain and all to lose.
It has been pointed out over and over again how diametrically opposed are the German and American ideals; therefore, it seems incredible that every American who champions the cause of a powerful and sublimely egotistic nation does not realize that what he hopes to see is not only the victory of the German arms in Europe, but the eventual destruction of democracy, the annihilation of the spirit of America as epitomized in the Declaration of Independence. I have not the least apprehension of immediate war with Germany, any more than of physical defeat at her hands did she, with the rest of Europe prostrate, make a raid on our shores; but it seems hardly open to question that with Europe Prussianized, we, the one heterogeneous race, and always ready to absorb and imbibe from the parent countries, should lose, in the course of half a century, our tremendous individual hustle, and gratefully permit a benevolent (and cast iron) despotism (not unnecessarily of our own make) to do our thinking, perhaps to select our jobs and apportion our daily tasks.
For that is what it almost amounts to now in Germany, and it is for this reason, no less than to escape military service, that so many millions of Germans have immigrated to this country. Unlike the vast majority of the bourgeois and lower classes, a kindly but stupid people, they were born with an alertness of mind and an energy of character which gave them the impetus to transfer themselves to a land where life might be harder but where soul and body could attain to a complete independence. Their present attitude is, however unconsciously, hypocritical, but it is not altogether as traitorous as that of the American born, who has not the excuse of that peculiar form of sentimentality which has fermented in Germans at home and abroad during this period of their Fatherland's peril. It is this curious and wholly German brand of sentimentality which is the cohering force in the various and extraordinarily clever devices by which modern Germany has been solidified. It is a sentimentality capable of rising to real exaltation that no other nation is capable of, and that alone should make the American pro-German pause and meditate upon a future United States where native individualism was less and less reluctantly heading for the iron jaws of the Prussianized American machine; and, furthermore, upon the weird spectacle of the real gladiatorial contest—German sentimentality wrestling in a death grapple with American downright unpicturesque common sense.
During the seven years that I lived in Munich I learned to like Germany better than any state in Europe. I liked and admired the German people; I never suffered from an act of rudeness, and I never was cheated out of a penny. I was not even taxed until the year before I left, because I made no money out of the country and turned in a considerable amount in the course of a year. When my maid went to the Rathaus to pay my taxes, (moderate enough,) the official apologized, saying that he had disliked to send me a bill, but the increased cost of the army compelled the country to raise money in every way possible. This was in 1908. The only disagreeable German I met during all those years was my landlord, and as we always dodged each other in the house or turned an abrupt corner to avoid encounter on the street, we steered clear of friction. And he was the only landlord I had.
I left Munich with the greatest regret, and up to the moment of the declaration of war I continued to like Germany better than any country in the world except my own.
The reason I left was significant. I spent, as a rule, seven or eight months in Munich, then a similar period in the United States, unless I traveled. I always returned to my apartment with such joy that if I arrived at night I did not go to bed lest I forget in sleep how overjoyed I was to get back to that stately and picturesque city, so prodigal with every form of artistic and aesthetic gratification. But that was just the trouble. For as long a time after my return as it took to write the book I had in mind I worked with the stored American energy I had within me; then for months and in spite of good resolutions and some self-anathema I did nothing. What was the use? The beautiful German city so full of artistic delight was made to live in, not to work in. The entire absence of poverty in that city of half a million inhabitants alone gave it an air of illusion, gave one the sense of being the guest of a hospitable monarch who only asked to provide a banquet for all that could appreciate. I look back upon Munich as the romance of my life, the only place on this globe that came near to satisfying every want of my nature. And that is the reason why, in a sort of panic, I abruptly pulled up stakes and left it for good and all. It is not in the true American idea to be too content; it means running to seed, a weakening of the will and the vital force. If I remained too long in that lovely land—so admirably governed that I could not have lost myself, or my cat, had I possessed one—I should in no long course yield utterly to a certain resentfully admitted tendency to dream and drift and live for pure beauty; finally desert my own country with the comfortable reflection: Why all this bustle, this desire to excel, to keep in the front rank, to find pleasure in individual work, when so many artistic achievements are ready-made for all to enjoy without effort? For—here is the point—an American, the American of today—accustomed to high speed, constant energy, nervous tenseness, the uncertainty, and the fight, cannot cultivate the leisurely German method, the almost scientific and impersonal spirit that informs every profession and branch of art. It is our own way or none for us Americans.
Therefore, if loving Germany as I did, and with only the most enchanting memories of her, I had not immediately permitted the American spirit to assert itself last August and taken a hostile and definite stand against the German idea (which includes, by the way, the permanent subjection of woman) I should have been a traitor, for I knew out of the menace I had felt to my own future, as bound up with an assured development under insidious influences, what the future of my country, which stands for the only true progress in the world today, and a far higher ideal of mortal happiness than the most benevolent paternalism can bestow, had in store for it, with Germany victorious, and America (always profoundly moved by success owing to her very practicality) disturbed, but compelled to admire.
The Germans living here, destitute as their race seems to be of psychology when it comes to judging other races, must know all this; so I say that they are traitors if they have taken the oath of allegiance to the United States. If they have not, and dream of returning one day to the fatherland, then I have nothing to say, for there is no better motto for any man than: "My country, right or wrong."
[Harvard Prize Poem]
Professor Kuno Meyer, of the University of Berlin, resigned his incumbency as Visiting Professor at Harvard University during the next season because of this poem, which was printed in The Harvard Advocate of April 9th, last, and won the prize in a competition for poems on the war conducted by that publication. This announcement of it appeared editorially: "Dean Briggs and Professor Bliss Perry, the judges of the Advocate war poem prize competition, have awarded the prize to C. Huntington Jacobs, 1916."
No doubt ye are the people: Wisdom's flame
Springs from your cannon—yea from yours alone.
God needs your dripping lance to prop His throne;
Your gleeful torch His glory to proclaim.
No doubt ye are the people: far from shame
Your Captains who deface the sculptured stone
Which by the labor and the blood and bone
Of pious millions calls upon His name.
No doubt ye are the folk; and 'tis to prove
Your wardenship of Virtue and of Lore
Ye sacrifice the Truth in reeking gore
Upon your altar to the Prince of Love.
Yet still cry we who still in darkness plod:
"'Tis Antichrist ye serve and not our God!"
Friedrich Curtius, of Strassburg, had attained such distinction at the beginning of the century that Prince Chlodwig of Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst, who succeeded Count Caprivi as Chancellor of the German Empire, on his retirement in 1900, asked Curtius to co-operate with him in the preparation of the Memoirs (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1906) which have since become famous. But the joint work was brought to a sudden end by Prince Hohenlohe's death, and Friedrich Curtius devoted himself, for the next six or seven years, to the completion of the unfinished task. When the Memoirs were finally published, first in America and then in Germany, they were so outspoken as to bring down on Prince Alexander Hohenlohe and Friedrich Curtius the disfavour of the Kaiser. This article by Curtius appeared originally in the Deutsche Revue, May, 1915.
"All the world must hate or love; no
choice remains. The Devil is
neutral."
SO sang Clemens Brentano in the year 1813. Today, we once more realize
that the attempt to remain neutral through a conflict which is
deciding the history of the world not only brings great spiritual
difficulties, but is even felt to be a downright moral impossibility,
just as the poet saw it a hundred years ago. Legal neutrality is, of
course, a simple thing. Every state can itself practice it, and impose
it as a duty on its citizens. One may even think that modern states
should go further in this direction than they do. The indifference of
the Government toward the business transactions of its citizens with
foreign states is a political anomaly, comprehensible in an age when
foreign policy in war and peace was viewed as something that concerned
the ruler only, but contradictory in a democratic age, when wars are
peoples' wars. Today, in all civilized states, the Government is
morally answerable for those activities of its subjects which have
international results. The American policy which permits the supply of
weapons to England but allows England to prevent the export of grain
to Germany, is a bad neutrality, morally untenable, a mere passivity,
which lacks the will to do right. Such a standpoint might exist in a
despotically governed state, but in a democratic Republic it is
incomprehensible. For, from a genuinely democratic point of view, it
does not signify whether the government or the citizens intervene to
help or to hinder in an armed conflict. If we venture to speak at the
right time of the development of international law, this, before all,
must be demanded: that neutral states shall forbid the export of
weapons, and that belligerents shall not hinder the import of
foodstuffs for civilian populations.
Meanwhile the insecurity of the international attitude of neutrals is only a symptom of the difficulties to which neutrality of view is subject. These begin with the outbreak of the war. Each belligerent government believes itself to be in the right, and publishes a collection of documents which seem to it fitted to prove this right. This literature appearing in all the colours of the spectrum is really aimed at neutrals. For the belligerent nations themselves have weightier matters in hand than to sit in judgment upon their own governments. But the neutrals find themselves to decide which side is right. Yet this whole idea of a "just war" (coming to us from the moral philosophy of the Schoolmen) which shall expiate an injustice, as the judge punishes crimes, is antiquated. When, in the middle ages, the citizens of a town were maltreated or robbed by the authorities or citizens of another town, and the guilty party refused satisfaction, then the consequent feud might be viewed as a modified criminal case, and the right of the wronged town to help itself must be recognized. In exactly the same way, differences over questions of inheritance between independent states could only be decided by force, where, as in a civil suit, each party was convinced of its own justice. But the great wars of our time arise from causes which are different from their immediate occasions, from opposed interests which can only be decided by discovering which side has the power to enforce its will. If one wishes to ascribe the blame for a war to one of the parties, one need only ask which of them pursued an aim which could not be reached through a peaceful understanding. In the present war, we Germans have clear consciences, for we know, concerning ourselves and our government, that we strove for nothing but the maintenance of our position as a world-power, bought with heavy sacrifices, and the free, peaceful expansion of our sphere of action in the world. On the other hand, Russia desired to get to Constantinople ahead of Berlin and Vienna, France desired to win back Metz and Strassburg, England desired to destroy our sea-power and commerce—goals which could only be reached over prostrate Germany. On this understanding, it would not be difficult for neutrals to arrive at a clear and just judgment. But as the belligerents themselves did not announce their purposes, but much rather took pains to turn public attention from the causes to the occasion of the conflict, the judgment of neutrals is affected by this, and if they are really impartial in their view, they suffer morally under the burden of an insoluble problem. But if outspoken sympathy draws them toward one of the belligerent powers, then their judgment is as little objective as that of the belligerents themselves. Their pretended neutrality gives to their expressions a loathsome Pharisaical aspect, because they come to a decision according to their opinions as if they stood on a height above the contestants and, from this lofty standpoint, were holding an anticipated Last Judgment on kings and statesmen.
The same phenomena show themselves with regard to judgments concerning methods of warfare. It goes without saying that each belligerent party reports all the atrocities which are committed by its opponents and is silent as to its own shortcomings. Once more, neutrals feel compelled to form a judgment, and therefore, if they are conscientious, read the reports of both sides, and, as a result, find themselves in a desperate situation, because it is impossible, from the assertions and counter-assertions of the belligerents, to ascertain the actual facts of the case. In practice, mere chance decides which set of reports one comes across. And the exact proof of details is impossible to the most zealous newspaper-reader. Therefore one's judgment remains vacillating, and one is likely to come to this conclusion: to believe nothing at all. Naturally, the case is different here also, if one is previously in sympathy with one party. Then one believes the reports coming from that side, and leaves out of consideration those that stand against them. In this case, again, neutrals become as one-sided as belligerents, without having the indubitable right to be one-sided which the belligerents have.
And finally, in the decisive question, neutrality is excluded. Whatever judgments one may form as to the cause of the war, and as to methods of waging it, the final outcome is always the decisive factor. Only a completely demoralized and stupid man can boast, in cynical indifference, that the result of the war leaves him cold. Where spiritual life functions, wishes and prayers, hopes and fears, are passionately involved in the course of the mighty conflict. For it is not a question whether this or that nation shall experience more pleasure or pain, but the form of all Europe and of the world, for long periods to come, will be fixed by the decision of this war. That cannot be a matter of indifference for any thinking human being. An equilibrium of view, a real neutrality is as little possible here as it would have been in the Persian or Punic wars, or, a hundred years ago, in the revolt of Europe, against the domination of Napoleon. He who, invoking the neutrality of his state, does not takes sides in this decisive question, debases himself and his people with him. For to stand indifferent, taking no part in the mightiest events of history, is a degradation of humanity.
The neutrals in this world-war are, therefore, to be pitied rather than esteemed happy. Either they are only legally uncommitted, but have, in feeling and thought, taken the side of one of the belligerent parties: in which case it must weigh heavily on their hearts not to be able to come out openly for that side and to aid it with all their power; or they hold to neutrality as a positive political ideal: then the ethical solution of the dark questions of the right and wrong of the war, and the methods of warfare become a torturing and hopeless problem, and, in considering the future, the weakness and impracticability of what one has accepted as a legal precept becomes evident.
If the world-war should last much longer, then neutrality, as such, will probably go bankrupt. The economic injuries of the war weigh on neutrals as heavily as on belligerents. But they are far harder to bear when one has nothing to hope from the outcome of the war, when one must make continued sacrifices in sheer passivity, without knowing why. One would finally fall into despair, and accept anything that would bring this intolerable condition to an end. We hope that this extremity will not be reached, but rather that the decision of the war will come early enough to permit neutrals to preserve their attitude. That this should happen, is the common interest of mankind. For, in the collective life of civilized nations, neutrals have their own mission. Just because they share only the sufferings of the war, but do not partake of its inspiring and exalting forces, they are, of necessity, opponents of war, the providential mediators of the idea of peace, of international understanding, of the development and strengthening of international law. They can, during and after the conclusion of peace—if they unite and go forward with clearly formed ideals—have a notable effect. It will, in part, depend on their wisdom and firmness, whether it will be possible, within a conceivable time, to heal the deep wounds of humanity and international comity.
A Reuter dispatch, dated Amsterdam, June 26, 1915, reports that the "Kölnische Zeitung," in a semi-official defence of the German employment of gases, says:
"The basic idea of the Hague agreements was to prevent unnecessary cruelty and unnecessary killing when milder methods of putting the enemy out of action suffice and are possible. From this standpoint the letting loose of smoke-clouds which, in a gentle wind, move quite slowly towards the enemy is not only permissible by international law, but is an extraordinarily mild method of war. It has always been permissible to compel the enemy to evacuate positions by artificially caused flooding.
"Those who were not indignant, or even surprised, when our enemies in Flanders summoned water as a weapon against us, have no cause to be indignant when we make air our ally and employ it to carry stupefying (betäubende) gases against the enemy. What the Hague Convention desired to prevent was the destruction without chance of escape of human lives en masse, which would have been the case if shells with poisonous gas were rained down on a defenceless enemy who did not see them coming and was exposed to them irremediably. The changing forms of warfare make new methods of war continually necessary."
This article by Pierre Loti (Captain Viaud) originally appeared in L'Illustration as the last of a series of three entitled "Visions of the Battle Front," and is translated for The New York Times Current History by Charles Johnston.
TO see it, our legendary and marvellous French basilica, to bid it farewell, before its fall and irremediable crumbling to dust, I had made my military auto make a detour of two hours on my return from completing a service mission.
The October morning was foggy and cold. The hillsides of Champagne were on that day deserted; with their vines with leaves of blackened brown, damp with rain, they seemed all clad in a sort of shining leather. We had also passed through a forest, keeping our eyes alert, our weapons ready, for the possibility of marauding Uhlans. And at last we had perceived the immense form of a church, far off in the mist, rising in all its great height above the plots of reddish squares, which must be the roofs of houses; evidently that was it.
The entrance to Rheims: defences of every kind, barriers of stone, trenches, spiked fences, sentinels with crossed bayonets. To pass, the uniform and accoutrements of a soldier are not enough. We must answer questions, give the pass-words....
In the great city, which I had not visited before, I ask the way to the cathedral, for it is no longer visible; its silhouette which, seen from a distance, so completely dominates everything, as a giant's castle might dominate the dwellings of dwarfs, its high gray silhouette seems to have bent down to hide itself. "The cathedral," the people reply, "at first straight on; then you must turn to the left, then to the right, and so on." And my auto plunges into the crowded streets. Many soldiers, regiments on the march, files of ambulance wagons; but also many chance passers-by, no more concerned than if nothing was happening; even many well-dressed women with prayer-books in their hands, for it is Sunday.
Where two streets cross, there is a crowd before a house, the walls of which have been freshly scratched; a shell fell there, just now, without any useful result, as without any excuse. A mere brutal jest, to say: "You know, we are here!" A mere game, a question of killing a few people, choosing Sunday morning because there are more people in the streets. But, in truth, one would say that this city has completely made up its mind to being under the savage field-glasses ambushed on the neighboring hillsides; these passers-by stop a minute to look at the wall, the marks of the bits of iron, and then quietly continue their Sunday walk. This time it was some women, they tell us, and little girls that this neat jest laid low in pools of blood; they tell us that; and they think no more of it, as if it were a very small thing in days like these.... Now the district becomes deserted; closed houses, a silence, as of mourning. And at the end of a street, the great gray doors appear, the high pointed arches marvellously chiseled, the high towers. Not a sound, and not a living soul on the square where the phantom basilica still sits enthroned, and an icy wind blows there, under an opaque sky.
It still keeps its place as by a miracle, the basilica of Rheims, but so riddled and torn that one divines that it is ready to founder at the slightest shock; it gives the impression of a great mummy, still upright and majestic, but which a mere nothing will turn to ashes. The ground is strewn with precious relics of it. It has been hurriedly surrounded with a solid barrier of white boards, within which its holy dust has formed heaps: fragments of rose-windows, broken piles of stained glass, heads of angels, the joined hands of saints. From the top of the tower to the base, the charred stone has taken on a strange color of cooked flesh, and the holy personages, still upright in rows on the cornices, have been peeled, as it were, by the fire; they no longer have faces or fingers, and, with their human forms, which still persist, they look like the dead drawn up in files, their contours vaguely indicated under a sort of reddish grave-clothes.
We make the circuit of the square without meeting anyone, and the barrier which isolates the fragile and still admirable phantom is everywhere solidly closed. As for the old palace adjoining the basilica, the episcopal palace where the kings of France came to rest on the day of their consecration, it is no longer anything more than a ruin, without windows or roof, everywhere licked and blackened by the flame.
What a peerless jewel it was, this cathedral, still more beautiful than Notre Dame in Paris. More open and lighter, more slender also, with its columns like long reeds, wonderful to be so fragile, and yet to hold firm; a wonder of our French religious art, a masterpiece which the faith of our ancestors had caused to blossom there in its mystic purity, before they came to us from Italy, to materialize and spoil everything, the sensual heaviness of what we have agreed to call the Renaissance....
Oh! the coarse and cowardly and imbecile brutality of those bundles of iron, launched in full flight against the lace-work, so delicate, that had risen confidently in the air for centuries, and which so many battles, invasions, scourges have never dared to touch!...
That great closed house, there, on the square, must be the Archbishop's residence. I try ringing the bell at the entrance to ask the favor of admission to the cathedral. "His Eminence," I am told, "is at mass, but will soon return." If I am willing to wait.... And, while I wait, the priest who receives me relates to me the burning of the episcopal palace: "Beforehand, they had sprinkled the roofs with I know not what diabolical substance; when they then threw their incendiary bombs, the timbers burned like straw, and you saw everywhere jets of green flame, which spread with the noise of fireworks."
In fact, the barbarians had premeditated this sacrilege, and prepared it long ago; in spite of their foolishly absurd pretexts, in spite of their shameless denials, what they wished to destroy here was the very heart of old France; some superstitious fancy drove them to it, as much as their instinct of savages, and this is the task they plunged into desperately, when nothing else in the city, or almost nothing, suffered.
"Could not an effort be made," I said, "to replace the burned roof of the cathedral?—to cover the vaulted roofs again as quickly as possible? For without this they cannot resist the coming winter."
"Evidently," he said, "at the first snows, at the first rains, there is a risk that everything will fall, the more so, as those charred stones have lost their power of resistance. But we cannot even try that, to preserve them a little, for the Germans never take their eyes off us; at the end of their field-glasses, it is the cathedral, always the cathedral; and as soon as a man ventures to appear on a turret, in a tower, the rain of shells immediately begins again. No, there is nothing to be done. It is in the hands of God."
Returning, the prelate graciously gives me a guide, who has the keys of the barrier, and at last I penetrate into the ruins of the cathedral, into the denuded nave, which thus appears still higher and more immense. It is cold there; it is sad enough to make one weep. This unexpected cold, this cold much keener than outside, is, perhaps, what from the first takes hold of you, disconcerts you; instead of the slightly heavy odor which generally fills ancient churches—the vapor of so much incense that has been burned there, the emanations of so many coffins that have been blessed there, of so many generations of men that have crowded there, for agony and prayer—instead of this, a damp and icy wind, which enters rustling through all the crevices of the walls, through the breaches in the stained glass windows and the holes in the vaulted ceilings. Those vaulted roofs, up there, here and there smashed by grapeshot—one's eyes are immediately lifted up by instinct to look at them, one's eyes are, as it were, drawn to them by the up-springing of all these columns, as slender as reeds, which rise in sheaves to sustain them; they have retreating curves of exquisite grace, which seem to have been imagined, so as not to allow the glances sent heavenward to fall back again. One never grows weary of bending one's head back in order to see them, to see the sacred roofs which are about to fall into nothingness; and they are up there also, far up, the long series of almost aerial pointed arches, on which they are supported, pointed arches indefinitely alike from one end of the nave to the other, and which, in spite of their complicated carvings, are restful to follow in their retreating perspective, so harmonious are they.
And it is better to go forward beneath them with raised head, not too carefully looking where one walks, for this pavement, rather sadly sonorous, has recently been soiled and blackened by the charring of human flesh. It is known that, on the day of the fire, the cathedral was full of German wounded, stretched on straw beds which caught fire, and it became a scene of horror worthy of a dream of Dante; all these creatures, whose raw wounds were baked in the flames, dragging themselves, screaming, on their red stumps, to try to reach the narrow doors. One knows also the heroism of the ambulance bearers, priests and nuns, risking their lives in the midst of the bombs, to try to save these hapless brutes, whom their own brother Germans had not even thought of sparing; however, they did not succeed in saving them all; some remained, and were burned to death in the nave, leaving foul clots on the sacred flagstones, where of old processions of kings and queens slowly dragged their ermine mantles, to the music of the great organ and the Gregorian chants....
"Look!" says my guide to me, showing me a large hole in one of the aisles, "that is the work of a shell which they fired at us yesterday evening; then come and see a miracle." And he leads me into the choir, where the statue of Jeanne d'Arc, preserved, one would say, by some special grace, is still there, intact, with eyes of gentle ecstasy.
The most irreparable loss is that of the great stained glass windows, which the mysterious artists of the thirteenth century so religiously composed, in meditation and dream, gathering the saints by hundreds, with their translucent draperies, their luminous halos. There also German scrap-iron rushed in great stupid bundles, crushing everything. The masterpieces, which no one will ever reproduce, have scattered their fragments on the flagstones, forever impossible to separate, the golds, the reds, the blues, whose secret is lost. Ended, the rainbow transparencies, ended, the graceful, naïve attitudes of all these holy people, with their pale little ecstatic faces; the thousands of precious fragments of these stained glass windows which, in the course of centuries, had little by little become iris-tinted like opals, are lying on the ground—where they still shine like jewels....
A whole splendid cycle of our history, which seemed to go on living in this sanctuary, with a life almost terrestrial, though immaterial, has just been plunged suddenly into the abyss of things that are ended, whose very memory will soon perish. The Great Barbarity has passed by, the modern barbarism from beyond the Rhine, a thousand times worse than the ancient, because it is stupidly and outrageously self-satisfied, and, in consequence, fundamental, incurable, final—destined, if it be not crushed, to throw a sinister night of eclipse over the world....
Verily, this Jeanne d'Arc in the choir has very strangely remained, untouched, immaculate, in the midst of the disorder, with not even the slightest scratch on her dress....