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Title: Brothers in arms
Author: E. Alexander Powell
Release date: October 24, 2023 [eBook #71951]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Houghton Mifflin company, 1917
Credits: Peter Becker, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROTHERS IN ARMS ***
BROTHERS IN ARMS
BROTHERS IN ARMS
BY
E. ALEXANDER POWELL
[Illustration]
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK :: THE
RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published June 1917_
_To_
_Brigadier-General Joseph E. Kuhn, U.S.A.
and his associates of the Army War College
in appreciation of the many kindnesses
they have shown me_
BROTHERS IN ARMS
BROTHERS IN ARMS
We fight once more for freedom. For the fifth time in our history we
draw the sword in the cause of liberty. The Revolution won the freedom
of the nation. In 1812 we fought for the freedom of the seas. The Civil
War was waged for the preservation of the Union and the liberation of
the slaves. We went to war with Spain that Cuba might be free. Now we
enter the Great War to preserve democracy and to insure the freedom
of the world. And France, after an interim of nearly seven-score
years, is our ally once again. In order to draw closer the bonds of
our ancient friendship, to hearten us in the tremendous task which we
have undertaken, and to place at our disposal the knowledge for which
she has paid in blood and tears, France sent to us across perilous
seas a mission composed of her most illustrious men. She sent them as
a reminder that she was our first friend among the nations and an old
comrade in arms, and because her ideals and aspirations are identical
with our own. It was as though she had stretched out a hand across the
ocean and laid it on America’s shoulder and had said, “Sister, well
done.”
Though the coming of these men stirs our souls and grips our
imagination, we are still too close to the picture to perceive its full
beauty and grandeur. Real appreciation of its significance to ourselves
and to the world can come only with the years. When time grants it the
justice of perspective, the visit of the French envoys to our shores
will be recognized as one of the turning-points in our history. It
will prove as epochal as the landing of the Pilgrims, as the coming
of Rochambeau, as the emancipation of the slaves. Meanwhile we must
not make the mistake of looking on it as merely a picturesque incident
which afforded an excuse for processions and banquets and addresses of
welcome. It has a far deeper meaning; it means that History, in writing
the story of the American people, has begun a new chapter.
Because I have myself marched with the armies of France, because in
her hospitals I have seen the endless rows of white-bandaged wounded
and upon her hillsides the other rows of white crosses, because I have
witnessed the desecration of her churches and the destruction of her
cities and the cruelties inflicted on her civil population by a brutal
and ruthless soldiery, because from the bottom of my heart I admire
her courage, her serenity, her abstinence from all complaint, because
I appreciate the sentiment which prompted her to send us these great
men as a pledge of her friendship and faith, and because I wish those
of my country-people who have not had the opportunity of knowing the
French as well as I have to understand what manner of men are these,
our brothers in arms, I have written this little book.
On the 25th of April, 1917,--it is a date which we shall teach our
children,--the anchor of the Lorraine, which brought the commissioners
from France, rumbled down off the Virginia shore. The route by which
the mission traveled from the Capes of the Chesapeake to the Capital
held in its one hundred and eighty-five miles more places of historical
significance to the American people than any other route of like
distance that could be laid out on a map of the world. At Hampton
Roads, where the commissioners boarded the Mayflower, which was to
take them up the Potomac to Washington, was fought the first battle
between ironclads; a battle which sent the wooden navies of Europe
to the scrap-heap and changed the history of the world. Across the
bay the visitors could see the mouth of the James, up which sailed,
two centuries ago, Captain John Smith and his fellow-adventurers, to
found on its shores the first permanent English settlement in the
New World. A half-hour’s steam brought them to the mouth of another
river, the York, where once lay the frigates of the Comte de Grasse,
the lilied flag of France drooping from their sterns. Here one of
the commissioners, the young Marquis de Chambrun, might have said
with pardonable pride, “A few miles up that river my grandfather, the
Marquis de Lafayette, helped General Washington to win the battle which
assured to the American Colonies their independence.”
Now the Mayflower entered the Potomac, a stream whose every mile is
peopled with the ghosts of the history-makers. Here the imaginative
Frenchmen, leaning over the steamer’s rail, with the incomparable
landscape slipping past, could not but have yielded to the river’s
mystic spell. Lulled by the ripple of the water running aft along
the hull, they found themselves living in this region’s storied and
romantic past. Indians in paint and feathers slipped silently along in
their barken war-canoes. Lean and sun-bronzed white men, clad in the
fringed buckskin of the adventuring frontiersman, floated past them
down the stream. A square-rigged merchantman poked its inquisitive
bowsprit around a rocky headland, seeking a spot at which its band of
colonists might land. Frigates, flying the flag of England and with
the black muzzles of guns peering from their tiers of ports, cautiously
ascended, the leadsmen in the shrouds sounding for river-bars. Log
forts and trading posts and mission stations once again crowned the
encircling hills. Forgotten battles blew by on the evening breeze. A
yellow dust-cloud rose above the river-bank and out of it emerged a
plodding wagon train. The smoke of pioneer camp-fires spiraled skyward
from those rich Maryland valleys, where in reality sleek cattle browsed
in lush-green pastures and the orchards were pink and white with
promised fruit. Borne on the night wind came the rumble of ghostly
cannonading, and the thoughts of the visitors harked back to the
month-long battle of the Wilderness, fought yonder, amid the Virginia
forests, by the armies of Grant and Lee. Dawn came, and out of the mist
to starboard loomed the peninsula of Indian Head, where the ridiculed
inventor, Langley, flew, for the first time in history, a motor-driven
aeroplane--forerunner of the thousands of aircraft which to-day swoop
and soar and circle above the battle-line. In the very waters through
which the Mayflower was now ploughing, a poor Irish schoolmaster, John
Philip Holland, evolved the marvel of the undersea boat and thereby did
more to shape the course of this war than Haig or Hindenburg or Marshal
Joffre himself. Now above the port rail, high on its wooded hillside,
showed the stately white façade of Mount Vernon, the home of the
founder of this nation and the first leader of its armies, and, close
by, the modest brick tomb where the great soldier and his wife lie
sleeping. Rounding the river bend, the mighty shaft of the Washington
Monument rose skyward like a pointing finger, as though emphasizing
the motto graved upon our coins. Alexandria, with its white steeples
and its old, old houses, came in view, and beyond it the templed hills
of Arlington, where rest, in their last bivouac, the men who died for
the Union. Now the long journey of the Frenchmen was almost finished;
their destination was at hand. Slowly, with much clanging of bells and
shouting of orders, the white yacht sidled up to the quay, the gangway
was run out, the Marine Band burst into Rouget de l’Isle’s splendid
Hymn, and the envoys, filing between massed rows of bluejackets whose
rifles formed a lane of burnished steel, set foot on the soil of the
United States, not as strangers, but as allies and friends.
Each step in the route of the commissioners through Washington was a
lesson in American history, and it was this that gave the route its
great dignity and significance. It was not the cheering throngs that
lined it, or the thousands of flags that fluttered from the buildings
on either side, but the silent statues and the dumb reminders of
those who had gone before, who had created this nation and had laid
down their lives that this nation might live, and who had come back
this day to charge the route with their unseen presence. The Navy
Yard, where the commissioners landed, was burned, with the rest of
Washington, by the British in 1814, yet now, barely a century later,
its foundries were roaring night and day in the manufacture of guns to
aid Britain. Swinging from Seventh Street into Pennsylvania Avenue,
there rose in the path of the visitors the splendid dome of the
Capitol, and beneath that dome the representatives of eight-and-forty
States were enacting into law the measures which would send to the
aid of France millions of American soldiers and billions of American
dollars. At the foot of Capitol Hill the envoys passed the Naval
Monument, “In memory of the officers, seamen, and marines who fell in
defense of the Union and Liberty of their country.”
And now Pennsylvania Avenue stretched, broad and straight and white,
before them. At the corner of Tenth Street they found Benjamin Franklin
waiting to greet them, clad in the dress he wore when sent by the
infant republic to solicit the sympathy and aid of France, and he
might have said to them, “We owe our independence to the men and money
which your country gave us.” From his granite pedestal at the corner
of Thirteenth Street, Casimir Pulaski, the Polish soldier who fell
before Savannah, debonair in his busby with its slanting feather and
his swinging dolman, saluted the Frenchmen as they passed. At the end
of the Avenue, opposite the imposing portico of the Treasury, Sherman
sat on his bronze charger, just as he must have sat, half a century
ago, when down this same avenue swept in the Last Review the war-worn
hosts of the Grand Army, their tattered battle-flags flaunting above
the slanting lines of steel, while the delirious crowds which packed
the sidewalks chanted the marching-song of Sherman’s men:--
“So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia.”
Swinging around the corner of the Treasury Building, with a distant
glimpse of the stately Grecian temple reared by a loving people in
memory of their murdered President, the procession passed the White
House, rising, pale and lovely, from amid its trees and flowers. At the
corner of Madison Place our first French friend, Lafayette, extended
a welcoming hand to his countrymen, and awaiting them, a few rods
beyond, was Rochambeau, who commanded the French armies at Yorktown.
In the center of the square Andrew Jackson, the frontiersman who at
New Orleans routed the Peninsular veterans of Wellington, sat on his
prancing horse, guarded by captured cannon, and raised his cocked
hat in hearty greeting. Then past the statue of Baron von Steuben,
the adjutant and friend of Frederick the Great, who exchanged the
glitter of the Prussian Court for the misery of Valley Forge, and who,
were he alive to-day, would, I fancy, once again be fighting on the
side of freedom. A stone’s throw beyond, in front of the house where
Dolly Madison once held her republican court, stood Kosciusko, the
Polish light-horseman, who, when his sword was no longer needed by
America, returned to his own people and lies buried in the Cathedral
of Cracow. Then the cortège, with its cloud of clattering troopers in
blue and yellow, swerved sharply into Sixteenth Street, the beautiful
thoroughfare which should, and some day doubtless will, be dignified by
being named “The Avenue of the Presidents,” and was lost to sight amid
its foliage and its fluttering flags.
The procession was not as effective as it might have been, first,
because it moved so rapidly as to give the impression that those
in charge of it were worried and anxious to get it over with, and
secondly, because so many generals and admirals and cabinet ministers
were crowded into the automobiles that the people on the streets had
great difficulty in distinguishing them. In a foreign country there
would have been lines of soldiers and police to push the onlookers back
and keep the way clear, but here there was nothing of the sort, for
the men in the crowd acted as their own police and looked after their
guests themselves, which was more democratic and essentially American.
But the most memorable feature of the affair, when all is said and
done, was the extraordinary warmth and spontaneity of the welcome which
the people extended to their visitors. The sidewalks surged with waving
hats and upraised hands as the cortège passed and the cheers rose into
a roar which drowned the chorus of the motor-horns and the clatter of
the cavalry. The women in the windows and on the balconies waved their
handkerchiefs and cheered, and the men beat the air with their hats and
cheered, and the white-mustached old soldier raised his hand again and
again to the visor of his scarlet _képi_ and smiled at the people and
winked away the tears in his eyes.
In sending Marshal Joffre to the United States, the French Government
did a peculiarly wise and happy thing. Viviani, Chocheprat, de
Chambrun--their names held no significance for most Americans. But
Joffre! Ah, there was a name to conjure with. The hero of the Marne,
the bulwark of civilization, he was the one figure in the whole
world the mere sight of whom would instantly fan into flame the
slumbering fires of American patriotism. In the first place, he did
not come to us as a stranger. We already knew him, you see, through
the illustrated papers and the motion-picture screens,--a stoutish,
white-mustached, twinkling-eyed, benevolent-looking old gentleman in
a great blue coat, walking rather heavily down lanes of motionless
troops with their rifles held rigidly toward him, or stooping over
a hospital cot to pin to the breast of a wounded soldier a bit of
enamel and ribbon,--and seeing him thus, day after day, he became as
familiar to us as Colonel Roosevelt and Andrew Carnegie and Billy
Sunday. And because we recognized that he was, despite his splendid
achievements and his sounding title, a simple, kindly, homely man,
our great admiration for him grew into a sort of personal affection.
He does not dazzle us with the glamour of Napoleon; he does not pique
our curiosity like Kitchener; he does not appeal to our sympathies
like King Albert; the appeal that he makes is to our hearts and our
imaginations. He is--I must have recourse to a Spanish word to express
my meaning--_simpatico_. We recognize his greatness, but it does not
awe us. We feel that he is “home folks,” that in the humblest dwelling
he would be at home; we would like to give him the big armchair by the
fire and a pair of slippers and a cigar and visit with him. For he is a
man of the people, as simple, as friendly, as democratic as Lincoln. We
remember the story told about him; that he said that when the Germans
had been driven out of France he wanted no triumphal entry into Paris,
but that he wanted to go fishing. We understand such a man.
This war has been singularly barren of heroic figures, perhaps because
its very magnitude has produced such a multitude of heroes that no one
can be placed before the rest, yet, when this greatest phase of history
comes to be written down with historic perspective, it is probable that
Joseph Joffre will stand forth as its most imposing figure. As Charles
Martel, “the Hammer of God,” saved Europe from Arab conquest at Tours,
and John Sobieski, by turning back the Turks from the gates of Vienna,
saved the cause of Christianity, so Joffre broke the wave of German
invasion at the Marne and saved mankind from subjection to a no less
barbarous despotism. In this elderly man in the scarlet _képi_ we see
one of the world’s great captains. His fame is immortal; his place in
history is secure. Future generations will point to his visit to these
shores as one of the great events of our history. But I like to think
that the delirious enthusiasm which he everywhere aroused was something
more than a tribute to the greatness of the man and the magnitude of
his achievements. I like to think that the cheers which greeted him
meant, rather, that we welcomed his presence on American soil as a
tangible sign that we had at last returned to the traditions of our
fathers, that we had regained our self-respect, that we had offered the
sacrifice which will save the nation’s soul.
Though the coming of Joffre had in most quarters the effect of a
great spiritual awakening, it was only to be expected that there
should be some who would question the motives which brought him.
These mean-souled little men went about whispering in their mean and
furtive way that the Marshal and his companions were by no means as
disinterested as they would have liked us to believe. When we hear such
cynical intimations, it might be well for us to bear in mind, however,
that in their day the motives of Washington and Lincoln were repeatedly
impugned. But their critics have long since passed into the limbus of
oblivion, while the men they criticized will live forever in the hearts
of their countrymen. That the French hoped and prayed for our aid they
would, I imagine, be the last to deny. Certainly their need of it was
desperate. But the fact that we have afforded them financial assistance
does not justify us in assuming the airs of philanthropists, for we are
nothing of the sort. The money that we have furnished France is not
given, but loaned, just as a bank loans money to an individual of known
responsibility, and, moreover, every dollar of it is to be expended
in the United States, thus providing employment for millions of our
people. That we, who sent Franklin to implore the aid of the French
king, we who accepted from France a loan which we have never repaid,
we who owe our very existence as a nation to French soldiers, French
ships, and French money, should presume to criticize France for eagerly
accepting what we freely offered, is but to show a lack of gratitude
and of good taste. Nor let us forget that France, the grip of the
invader at her throat and her resources in men and money drained all
but dry, has never, by word or hint, reminded us of our long-standing
obligation.
The purposes which prompted the sending of the French Mission are set
forth by M. Viviani with a grace and beauty of expression which are
peculiarly French. No true American can read his words and not be
thrilled by the sincerity and unselfishness breathed in every line:--
“We have come to this land to salute the American people and its
government, to call to fresh vigor our life-long friendship, sweet and
cordial in the ordinary course of our lives, but which these tragic
hours have raised to all the ardor of a brotherly love--a brotherly
love which, in these last years of suffering, has multiplied its most
touching expressions. You have given help, not only in treasure, in
every act of kindness and good-will; but for us your children have shed
their blood, and the names of your sacred dead are inscribed forever in
our hearts.”
One feels, upon reading these words, that the glowing tribute is
undeserved. It has taken us three years--three long and bitter years of
agony for France--to recognize what she has known from the beginning:
that the cause for which she is fighting is our cause, that not merely
the future of France but our own future, the future of democracy, is at
stake. We are late in acting, and some historians of the future will
probably be unkind enough to say that we were almost too late; but let
us resolve that we will make up for the tardiness with which we enter
the struggle by the fullness of the strength which we put into it; that
we will spend, if need be, our last dollar and our last man; and that
we will not relax our efforts by a whit until this Prussian horror is
no more.
I believe that we are at heart a people of high ideals. Critics have
said of us that our finer sensibilities have been blunted by our
extraordinary commercial success, that our earlier ideals have been
lost sight of in the business of growing rich, that we prefer the
dollar mark to the laurel wreath. It is true that we have drunk too
deeply of material success, but, thank God, we have come to our senses
before it is too late! We are our true selves once again. We have shown
that the altruism which caused us to go to war with Spain that Cuba
might be free, which led us to pay for the Philippines, already ours
by force of arms, which induced us to return the Boxer indemnity to
China, still guides our actions. We have not entered upon this war to
avenge our murdered citizens; we have not gone into it for territorial
aggrandizement or trade expansion, we have not gone into it to pay our
debt to France; we have gone to war from the most unselfish motive that
ever actuated a nation--the desire to serve mankind. Our victory--for
we never have and we never will enter upon a losing war--will be a
victory of morality and right and will assure to all our children a
world in which they can live in peace and happiness.
We have been charged with being France-mad. Yet, when you stop to
think about it, there is nothing strange in our attachment for the
French. We are both idealistic and intensely sentimental peoples. The
name of France is indissolubly linked with the early history of this
country. The first religion, the first education, the first attempts at
government, and the first settlement of that vast middle region which
stretches from the Great Lakes to the Gulf were French, and French
influence has extended over its entire existence. A son of France,
Jacques Cartier, was the first European to step beyond the threshold
of the unguessed continent. Our mightiest river was first explored
throughout its length by a Frenchman, and the people who dwell to-day
upon the lands it waters are geographical descendants of France. At
the mouth of this river the metropolis of the South is named after a
city in France; a thousand miles upstream another busy city keeps on
the lips of thousands the name of a French king; while, still farther
to the north, yet a third great hive of industry is named for the
_détroit_ on which it stands, though the Frenchman who gave it its name
would not understand our pronunciation of it. Such was the domain which
France conquered for Civilization. Our national capital was planned by
a Frenchman, and to the vision of another Frenchman we owe the waterway
which links the oceans at Panama. The debt of America to France, though
more direct, is no less obvious than France’s debt to America, for the
American Revolution inspired the French Revolution, and the spectacle
of a free America under Washington’s administration proved a continual
stimulus to the French in their own struggle for freedom. It is this
solidarity of history, of sentiment, of aspiration which brings the
French and ourselves so close together in this supreme struggle for
liberty.
Even our national colors are the same: that red, white, and blue
which--as some poetic Frenchman has said--symbolizes the rise of
democracy from blood, through peace, to Heaven.
There has been much talk of France having been reborn through the
agony of this war. Therein we are wrong. It is merely that we
Americans have known the French only superficially, and that, in
thinking and speaking of them, we have indulged in the careless
and inaccurate habit of generalization. We have subscribed to the
tradition of the superficiality and frivolity of the French people.
We have believed them lacking in seriousness and perseverance, a
strange misunderstanding of the race which has produced Richelieu and
Talleyrand and Robespierre, La Salle and Marquette and Champlain. We
thought them volatile and temperamental, these countrymen of Bossuet
and Montesquieu, of Pascal and Corneille. We were wont to say quite
patronizingly that French soldiers, though they possessed _verve_ and
_élan_, were not stayers and “last-ditchers”--this of the men of the
Marne and Verdun! The trouble has always been not with France, but with
ourselves. The France that we knew before this war gave us a broader
vision was the France of Rue de la Paix and the Champs Élysées, of
Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, of the Louvre and the Luxembourg, of
Longchamps and Auteuil, of Poiret and Paquin, of Giro’s and Voisin’s,
of the Bon Marché and the Galeries Lafayette, of the Opéra and the
Comédie Française, of the Riviera and Trouville and Aix-les-Bains.
What have we known of the sober, simple-hearted, industrious, frugal,
plain-living, deeply religious people who are the real France? France
has _not_ been reborn. It is an affront to her to say it. She has but
cast aside the glittering garment which she wore for the gratification
of strangers in order to free her sword arm.
If you would understand the spirit which animates the French people,
read this letter which was written by a French cook to his wife the day
before he was killed in action. It is but a sample of thousands.
_My dear Yvonne_:--
Do not worry. I have good hope of seeing you again, as well as our
Raymond. I beg you to take care of yourself and also of my son, for
you know that I should never forgive you if anything should happen to
you or to him.
Now, if by chance anything should happen to me,--for, after all, we
are in war, and of course we are running some risk,--I hope you will
be courageous, and be sure that if I die I put all my confidence in
you, and I ask you to live in order to bring up my son to be a man--a
man of spirit--and give him a good education as far as your means
will permit.
And above all you shall tell him when he is grown up that his father
died for him, or at least for a cause which should serve him, as well
as all the generations to come.
Now, my dear Yvonne, all this is but a precaution, and I expect to be
there to aid you in this task; but as I have said, one never knows
what may happen. In any case we are leaving (for the front) all in
good spirits and in the firm belief that we shall conquer.
As to you, my dear Yvonne, know that I have always loved you and that
I will love you always no matter what happens. As soon as you can,
leave for Fontenay, for on my return I should prefer to find you
there; and once more let me say that I count on you, and that you
will be brave.
I will give you no more advice, for I believe that would be
superfluous.
Your little husband, who embraces you tenderly, as well as dear
Raymond--
GEORGES
America’s entrance into the war is the surest guarantee that the world
can have for a peaceful future. Our practically inexhaustible military,
financial, industrial, and agricultural resources give us all the
trump cards. We can double and, if necessary, redouble, every bid that
Germany makes. We must beware, however, of one pitfall: of assuming
that the war is going to be a short one. England, notwithstanding the
solemn warnings of Lord Kitchener, made that mistake at the beginning
of the war, and she has paid for it in blood and tears. Though we are
warned with all earnestness by the men who are best qualified to know
that peace is not in sight, and probably will not be in sight for
many, many months to come, one nevertheless hears on every hand the
confident assertion that Germany is on her last legs, that the morale
of her armies is weakening, that her supply of men is almost exhausted,
that her people are starving, and that American troops will never get
within sound of the guns because the war will be over before they can
be made ready to send to France. There is no surer way to prolong the
war than to indulge in such talk as this. Why deceive ourselves? Let us
look the facts in the face. Germany is _not_ starving, nor is there any
prospect of her being brought to that point for a long time to come,
if, indeed, at all. Her man-power, though greatly depleted, is _not_
giving out. Her morale apparently remains unimpaired; in short, her
military machine still seems impregnable. Remember, moreover, that she
is everywhere fighting on the enemy’s soil and that her own frontiers
remain intact. The extreme gravity of the situation was recently made
plain to the Canadian Parliament by the Premier, Sir Robert Borden, in
these words: “A great struggle still lies before us, and I cannot put
it before you more forcibly than by stating that _at the commencement
of this spring’s campaign Germany put into the field a million more men
than she put into the field last spring_. And that million was provided
by Germany alone and not by the whole of the Central Powers.” There
is, indeed, nothing to indicate at this time that the German Government
is prepared to negotiate peace save on impossible terms. It has been a
fallacy, and nearly a fatal one for the Allies, this underestimating
the power of Germany. She has, as some one has truthfully said, made
of war “a national industry.” She is a professional, while the rest
of us are, after all, but amateurs, and she has repeatedly shown,
moreover, that she has not the slightest intention of adhering to the
rules laid down by _civilized_ nations for the conduct of the game.
She has spikes on her boots and brass knuckles on her fingers, and she
will not hesitate to gouge or kick or strike below the belt. She is a
ferocious, formidable, and desperate adversary, possessed of immense
staying power, and the only way we can hope to crush her in reasonable
time is by intelligent coördination of effort, by the fullest and most
painstaking preparation, and by the exertion of every ounce of our
strength.
Don’t let us be deceived by the made-in-Germany talk of an early
peace. In accepting it we are only playing the enemy’s game. In every
possible way Germany is throwing out the idea that the end of the war
is in sight. She is doing this because she knows that she has reached
the crest of her military strength. She is at “the peak of the load.”
She knows that every day she is weaker by so many men, and that she
no longer has any considerable reserves from which to replace these
losses. She is ready and anxious to quit--upon her own terms. But she
is prepared to fight a long, long time yet before accepting the terms
that we and our allies must insist upon in order to safeguard the
future peace of the world. The mere appearance of American troops upon
the battle-line is not going to end the war, as so many of our people
seem to think. Not until America begins making war as though she was
facing Germany alone will it be possible to predict with any certainty
when the end will come.
The truth of the matter is that the American people utterly fail to
realize the seriousness of our situation. In fact, the Government
itself did not realize its gravity until from the lips of the French
and British commissioners it learned the startling truth. Up to the
moment of our entrance into the war the Allied Governments, controlling
all the channels of information, had so successfully fostered the
impression that they had the Germans on the run, that all of our
people, save a handful who were in possession of the facts, looked
to see the war end in a sweeping victory for the Allies before the
close of the present year. The truth of the matter is that, had we
remained aloof, the war would in all probability have ended before
this year was over, but _not_ in a victory for the Allies. The almost
pathetic eagerness with which the Allied Governments welcomed our
proffered aid in money and men is the best proof of how desperate was
their plight. Here are the facts: Germany’s submarine campaign is an
almost unqualified success. Unless we can successfully and immediately
combat this menace, England is in grave danger of being brought within
measurable distance of starvation. France is rapidly approaching
complete military and economic exhaustion. The drain upon her vitality
of nearly three years of war has left her faint and gasping. Though
she has inflicted huge losses upon the enemy, her own losses have been
enormous, and, with her much smaller population, she is less able to
stand them. It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that France
is in as crying need of American assistance as were the American
Colonies when Rochambeau and his soldiery disembarked upon these
shores. Should the Russian Republic be betrayed into making a separate
peace--and, at the moment of writing, the Russian prospect is anything
but cheering--the Central Powers would have released for use upon the
Western Front not less than two million veterans. The war has become,
indeed, a race between ourselves and Germany. Can we build food-ships
faster than Germany can sink them? Can we raise enough food to feed
our allies as well as ourselves? Can we put more men and guns upon the
Western Front than Germany can? Upon the answers to these questions
depends the duration and decision of the war.
If we are to win this war it will be necessary for us to practise
self-denials, to endure hardships, perhaps to know sorrows of which we
have never dreamed. We must hold back nothing. Our sheltered, ordered,
comfortable lives will be turned topsy-turvy. There will be no man,
woman, or child between the oceans which this war will not in some way
affect. It will impose burdens alike on the rich and the poor, on the
old no less than on the young, on women as well as on men. It will
entail innumerable sacrifices, many of which will be hard and some of
which will seem unjust, yet we must accept them cheerfully.
If millions of our young men are prepared to give up their lives for
their country, is it too much to ask the rest of us to give up for a
time our comforts and our pleasures?
The civilian must do his duty no less than the man in khaki. And
“duty,” at this time, has many meanings. It is a duty to pay taxes.
These will, without doubt, be increased again and again and yet again
before this war is over, and in many cases they will be directly
felt. The man who dodges taxes when his country is at war is more
deserving of contempt than the soldier who shows the white feather
on the firing-line, for whereas the one fears for his life the other
fears only for his pocketbook. It is a duty to raise foodstuffs and to
give every possible encouragement to others to do so. The householder
who refuses to plough his yard and plant it to vegetables because
it would spoil the looks of his place is as much a slacker as the
man who attempts to evade his military obligations. It is a duty to
refrain from every form of extravagance. By this I do not mean to imply
that people should suddenly stop buying, but only that they should
stop buying things that they do not need or that they can get along
without. For how, pray, are we to place some seven billion dollars of
purchasing power at the disposal of the Government unless we curtail
our individual expenditures? And it is the duty of our merchants and
business men to promptly cease their gloomy prophecies that an era of
national economy will bring on a paralysis of trade and industry. As
a matter of fact, it will do nothing of the sort. There is far more
danger of there being a lack of workers than there is of there being
a lack of work. Already there is more work in sight than can possibly
be done. The shipyards, the steel-mills, the clothing-factories, the
munitions plants, the mines, the farms, the railways are all clamoring
for it, and they will clamor for labor still more insistently when a
million or so men have been taken out of industry for the army. It is
a duty to keep cool, to think sanely, to avoid hysteria. It is a duty
to refrain from giving circulation to sensational rumors. It is a duty
to refrain from nagging the Government, for the Government is, you may
be sure, doing the best it can. And finally, it is a duty to buy your
country’s bonds. Buy all you can. Take that ten or hundred or thousand
dollars that you have been saving for some cherished personal purpose
and invest it in the Liberty Loan. That is the most practical way I
know of showing that your patriotism is not confined to words.
There is another form of sacrifice which the American people will
inevitably be called upon to make, and that is to accept without
complaint the heavy restrictions which the Government will find it
necessary to put on their private activities. The Government must have
the first call on coal, iron, steel, timber, chemicals, on supplies
of every kind, and particularly on transportation and labor. The
sooner the public gets over the idea that we must have “business as
usual,” the better. The country must immediately awake to the fact
that we cannot carry on a war like this with one hand and continue
to do all the business we did before with the other. We can no more
expect to change from peace conditions to war conditions without
business inconvenience and loss than we can expect to send an army
into battle without having killed and wounded. We must, therefore,
adjust our business and personal affairs so as to support the army
with the greatest possible efficiency, and we must do it with the
least possible delay. The woman who orders a gown which she does not
need is not helping labor to find employment, as she likes to think;
she is preventing a soldier from having a uniform--for how is labor to
be had for making uniforms unless it is released from making other
clothes? Our soldiers must have blankets--but how are those blankets
to be had unless the looms are released from something else? How is
steel to be had for food-ships and field-guns and destroyers unless
there is a prompt curtailment of its use for other purposes? If one of
your pet trains is suddenly discontinued, don’t grumble, but just stop
to remember that the Government needs that train and its crew for the
purpose of moving troops and munitions. If your favorite restaurant
curtails its menu, bear in mind that it has been done by order of the
Government, which recognizes the imperative necessity for food control.
It is a stupendous task that we have undertaken, and it will require
every particle of grit and staying power that we possess to see it
through.
I would that every man and woman in these United States might show
the spirit which led the third-year cadets at West Point, who were
this summer entitled by law and custom to the one furlough a cadet has
in four years, to unite in waiving their right to these two months
to which they had looked forward so long and so eagerly and for the
spending of which they had made so many plans, and to offer their
services to the Secretary of War in any work for which he thinks them
fitted. In writing to his parents to explain why he would probably not
be home on the long-talked-of furlough, one of these cadets said:--
“You know, as cadets, we haven’t anything but these two months to
give, so we thought if we offered all we had it would maybe be worth
while, even if it wasn’t much.”
How about it, my friend? Have _you_ offered your country all you have
to give?
There are doubtless those who sometimes ask themselves, though they
may deem it the part of wisdom not to ask others, “Even if the Germans
were to win this war, what difference would it make anyway?” Well,
just for the sake of argument, suppose that our European allies had
been forced to sign a separate peace and that Germany, thus left free
to give us her undivided attention, had landed an army on these shores
(which she could do with comparatively little trouble, the military
experts agree) and held a portion of our Eastern seaboard. And suppose
that one evening a column of men in gray came tramping into the little
town where you live--Quincy or Tarrytown or Plainfield or New Rochelle,
which it doesn’t matter. And suppose that the first thing they did
after establishing themselves in your town was to arrest the mayor and
a score or so of the leading citizens--some of your closest friends,
members of your own family, perhaps, among them--and lock them up in
the jail or the town hall. And suppose that the next morning, when you
start down town, your eye is caught by a notice tacked to a tree. The
notice, which is headed by the Prussian eagle, reads something like
this:--
PROCLAMATION
In future the inhabitants of places situated near railways and
telegraph lines which have been destroyed will be punished without
mercy (whether they are guilty of this destruction or not). For this
purpose hostages have been taken in all places in the vicinity of
railways in danger of similar attacks; and at the first attempt to
destroy any railway, telegraph, or telephone line, they will be shot
immediately.
THE GOVERNOR
And supposing, still for the sake of argument, that that same evening
some one, ignorant of the German threat or wishful to hamper the
invaders at any cost, succeeds in destroying a bridge or cutting a
telegraph line. And that, early the next morning, you are awakened
by a sudden crash, as though many rifles were fired in unison. And
that, hurriedly dressing, you hasten down town to learn what has
happened. And that, turning into the main street, you see a row of
bodies--the bodies of men some of whom you had known all your life, men
with whom you had gone to college, men who were fellow lodge-members,
men with whom you had played bridge at the club, the body of your
father or your son or your brother perhaps among them--sprawled on
the asphalt in grotesque and horrid attitudes amid a slowly widening
lake of crimson. Suppose that this dreadful thing happened, not in
some European town of which you had but vaguely heard, but in your own
town--in Newburyport or Yonkers or Princeton, which it doesn’t matter.
Then would you ask “Even if the Germans were to win this war, what
difference would it make anyway?” The proclamation just quoted is not
imaginary. It was signed by Field Marshal von der Goltz when German
governor of Belgium and was posted on the walls of Brussels in October,
1914. I saw it there myself. It is to destroy the monstrous system
which permits and approves the execution of people “whether they are
guilty or not” that we have gone to war. For if we don’t destroy it,
it will most certainly destroy us. The trouble is that we stubbornly
shut our eyes to the gravity of the situation which confronts us; we
have not aroused ourselves to the colossal magnitude of our task.
Sacrifices and sorrows without number await us. Before this business
is over with, we must expect to be deprived of many of our comforts
and most of our pleasures. We must be prepared to accept without
grumbling the imposition of very burdensome taxes. We must be prepared
to make countless personal sacrifices, to submit to innumerable
annoying restrictions. We must expect months of discouragement and
heart-breaking anxiety and gloom. We must gird ourselves for those dark
days when the lists of the wounded and the dead begin to come in. For
such will be the price of victory.
The surest way to bring about an early peace is to convince Germany,
beyond the possibility of misunderstanding, that we stand behind the
Government to the last cent in our purses and the last breath in our
bodies; that in our vocabulary there is no such word as “quit”; that,
no matter how appalling the price that may be exacted from us, we shall
not relax our efforts by one iota until the world has been “made free
for Democracy” forever.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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