of households have it largely in their hands.
The answer at the beginning of March was
matter for anxiety. It is still matter for
anxiety now — at the begiiming of May.
Let us, however, return for a little to the
Army. What would the marvellous organisa-
No. 6] TRAINING OF OFFICERS 115
tion which England has produced in three
years avail us, without the spirit in it, — the
body, without the soul ? All through these
days I have been conscious, in the responsible
men I have been meeting, of ideals of which
no one talks, except when, on very rare occa-
sions, it happens to be in the day's work like
anything else to talk of ideals — but which are,
in fact, omnipresent.
I find, for instance, among my War Ofhce
Notes, a short address given in the ordinary
course of duty by an unnamed commandant
to his ofhcer-cadets. It appears here, in its
natural place, just as part of the whole;
revealing for a moment the thoughts which
constantly underlie it.
"Believe me when I tell you that I have
never found an officer who worked who did not
come through. Only ill-health and death
stand in your way. The former you can guard
against in a great measure. The latter comes
to us all, and for a soldier, a soldier's death is
the finest of all. Fear of death does not exist
for the man who has led a good and honest
life. You must discipHne your bodies and
your minds — your bodies by keeping them
healthy and strong, your minds by prayer and
thought."
116 RESPONSIBILITY [No. 6
As to the relation between officers and men,
that also is not talked about mucli, except
in its more practical and workaday aspects —
the interest taken by officers in the men's
comfort and welfare, their readiness to share
in the men's games and amusements, and so on.
And no one pretends that the whole British
Army is an army of " plaster saints," that
every officer is the " little father " of his men,
and all relations ideal.
But what becomes evident, as one penetrates
a httle nearer to the great organism, is a sense
of passionate responsibility in all the finer
minds of the Army towards their men, a
readiness to make any sacrifice for them, a deep
and abiding sense of their sufferings and
dangers, of all that they are giving to their
country. How this comes out again and
again in the innumerable death-stories of
British officers— those few words that com-
memorate them in the daily new^spapers !
And how evident is the profound response of
the men to such a temper in their officers !
There is not a day's action in the field— I am
but quoting the eye-witnesses— that does not
bring out such facts. Let a senior officer— an
" old and tried soldier "—speak. He is de-
No. 6] THE BRITISH SOLDIER 117
scribing a walk over a battlefield on the Ancre
after one of our victories there last November :
"It is a curious thing to walk over enemy
trenches that I have watched like a tiger for
weeks and weeks. But what of the boys who
took those trenches, with their eleven rows of
barbed wire in front of them ? I don't think
I ever before to-day rated the British soldier
at his proper value. His sufferings in this
weather are indescribable. When he is not
in the trenches his discomforts are enough to
kill any ordinary mortal. When he is in the
trenches it is a mixture between the North
Pole and Hell. And yet when the moment
comes he jumps up and charges at the im-
possible — and conquers it ! . . . Some of the
poor fellows who lay there as they fell looked
to me absolutely noble, and I thought of their
families who were aching for news of them and
hoping against hope that they would not be
left unburied in their misery.
' ' All the loving and tender thoughts that are
lavished on them are not enough. There are
no words to describe the large hearts of these
men. God bless 'em ! And what of the
French on whose soil they lie ? Can they ever
forget the blood that is mingled with their
own? I hope not. I don't think England
has ever had as much cause to be proud as she
has to-day."
118 SOLDIERS' HUMOUR [No. 6
Ah ! sucli thouglits and feelings cut deep.
They would be unbearable but for the saving
salt of humour in which this whole great
gathering of men, so to speak, moves suspended,
as though in an atmosphere. It is every-
where. Coarse or refined, it is the universal
protection, whether from the minor discom-
forts or the more frightful risks of war.
Volumes could be filled, have already been
filled, with it — volumes to which your Ameri-
can soldier when he gets to France in his
thousands w411 add considerably — pages all
his own ! I take this touch in passing from a
recent letter :
" A sergeant in my company [writes a young
officer] was the other day buried by a shell.
He was dug out w^ith difficulty. As he lay,
not seriously injured, but sputtering and
choking, against the wall of the trench, his
CO. came by. ' Well, So-and-so, awfully
sorry ! Can I do anything for you ? ' ' Sir,'
said the sergeant with dignity, still struggling
out of the mud, * I want a separate feace ! ' "
And here is another incident that has just
come across me. Whether it is Humour or
Pathos I do not know. In this scene they are
pretty close together — the great Sisters !
No. 6] A BOY HERO 119
A young flying officer, in a night attack, was
hit by a shrapnel bullet from below. He
thought it had struck his leg, but was so
absorbed in dropping his bombs and bringing
down his machine safely that, although he was
aware of a feehng of faintness, he thought no
more of it till he had landed in the aerodrome.
Then it was discovered that his leg had been
shot away, was literally hanging by a shred of
skin, and how he had escaped bleeding to
death nobody could quite understand. As it
was, he had dropped his bombs, and he in-
sisted on making his report in hospital.
He recovered from the subsequent opera-
tion, and in hospital, some weeks afterw^ards,
his CO. appeared, wdth the news of his recom-
mendation for the D.S.O. The boy, for he
was little more, listened with eyes of amused
increduhty, opening wider and wider as the
Colonel proceeded. When the communication
was over, and the CO., attributing the young
man's silence to weakness or grateful emotion,
had passed on, the nurse beside the bed saw
the patient bury his head in the pillow with
a queer sound of exasperation, and caught the
words, " I call it ^perfectly cliildish ! "
That an act so simple, so all in the bargain,
120 " THEY HAVE DONE THEIR JOB " [No. 6
should have earned the D.S.O. seemed in the
eyes of the doer to degrade the honour !
• • • • •
With this true tale I have come back to a
recollection of the words of the flying ofiicer
in charge of the aerodrome mentioned in my
second letter, after he had described to me the
incessant raiding and fighting of our airmen
behind the enemy lines.
" Many of them don't come back. What
then ? They will have done their job."
The report which reaches the chateau on our
last evening illustrates this casual remark.
It shows that 89 machines were lost during
February, 60 of them German. W^e claimed
41 of these, and 23 British machines were
" missing " or " brought down."'
But as I write the concluding words of this
letter (May 3rd) a far more startling report —
that for April — hes before me. " There has
not been a month of such fighting since the w^ar
began, and the losses have never reached such
a tremendous figure,'' says the Ti7nes. The
record number so far was that for September
1916, in the height of the Somme fighting —
322. But during April, according to the official
reports, " the enormous number of 717 aero-
No. 6] CASUALTIES 121
planes were brought to earth as the result of
air-fights or by gun-fire." Of these, 369 were
German — 269 of them brought down by the
British and 98 by the French. The British
lost 147 ; the French and Belgian, if the Ger-
man claims can be trusted, 201.
It is a terrible list, and a terrible testimony
to the extreme importance and intensity of
the air-fighting now going on. How few of us,
except those who have relatives or dear friends
in the air- service, realise at all the conditions
of this fighting — its daring, its epic range, its
constant development !
All the men in it are young. None of them
can have such a thing as a nerve. Anyone
who betrays the faintest suspicion of one in his
first flights is courteously but firmly returned
to his regiment. In peace the airman sees this
solid earth of ours as no one else sees it ; and
in war he makes acquaintance by day and night
with all its new and strange aspects, amid
every circumstance of danger and excitement,
with death always at hand, his life staked, not
only against the enemy and all his devices on
land and above it, but against wind and cloud,
against the treacheries of the very air itself.
122 RECONNAISSANCE [No. 6
In the midst of these conditions the fighting
airman shoots, dodges, pursues, and dives,
intent only on one thing, the destruction of
his enemy, while the observer photographs,
marks his map with every gun-emplacement,
railway station, dirnip of food or ammunition,
unconcerned by the flying shells or the strange
dives and swoops of the machine.
But apart from active fighting, take such a
common experience as what is called " a long
reconnaissance." Pilot and observer receive
their orders to reconnoitre '' thoroughly '' a
certain area. It may be winter, and the cold
at the height of many thousand feet may be
formidable indeed. No matter. The thing
is done, and, after hours in the freezing air,
the machine makes for home ; through a winter
evening, perhaps, as we saw the two splendid
biplanes, near the northern section of the line,
saihng far above our heads into the sunset,
that first day of our journey. The recon-
naissance is over, and here is the first-hand
testimony of one who has taken part in
many, as to what it means in endurance and
fatigue :
" Both pilot and observer are stiff with the
No. 6] AIR FIGHTING 123
cold. In winter it is often necessary to help
them out of the machine and attend to the
chilled parts of the body to avoid frost-bite.
Their faces are drawn with the continual
strain. They are deaf from the roar of the
engine. Their eyes are bloodshot, and their
whole bodies are racked with every imaginable
ache. For the next few hours they are good
for nothing but rest, though sleep is generally
hard to get. But before turning in the observer
must make his report and hand it in to the
proper quarter.''
So much for the flights which are rather for
observation than fighting, though fighting
constantly attends them. But the set battles
in the air, squadron with squadron, man with
man, the bombers in the centre, the fighting
machines surrounding and protecting them,
are becoming more wonderful, more daring,
more complicated every month. " You'll
see " — I recall once more the words of our
Fhght-Commander, spoken amid the noise and
movement of a score of practising machines,
five weeks before the battle of Arras — " when
the great move begins \ve shall get the mastery
again, as we did on the Somme."
Ask the gunners in the batteries of the April
124 USE OF AEROPLANES [No. 6
advance, as they work below tlie signalling
planes ; ask tke infantry whom the gunners so
marvellously protect, as to the truth of the
prophecy !
" Our casualties are really light/' writes an
officer in reference to some of the hot fighting
of the past month. Thanks, apparently, to
the ever-growing precision of our artillery
methods ; which again depend on aeroplane
and balloon information. So it is that the
flying forms in the upper air become for the
soldier below so many symbols of help and
protection. He is restless when they are not
there. And let us remember that aeroplanes
were first used for artillerv observation, not
three years ago, in the battle of Aisne, after
the victory of the Marne.
But the night in the quiet village wears
away. To-morrow we shall be flying through
the pleasant land of France, bound for Paris
and Lorraine. For I am turning now to a new
task. On our own fine I have been trying to
describe, for those who care to hsten, the crowd-
ing impressions left on a woman-witness by
the huge development in the last twelve
months of the British mihtary eflort in France.
But now, as I go forward into this beau-
No. 6] TERMS OF PEACE 125
tiful country, which I have loved next to
my own all my Hfe, there are new purposes
in my mind, and three memorable words in
my ears :
" Reparation — Restitution — Guarantees ! "
No. 7
May 10th, 1917.
Dear Mr. Eoosevelt, — We are then, for
a time, to put France, and not the British
line, in the forefront of these later letters.
For when I went out on this task, as I think
you know, I had two objects in mind — inti-
mately connected. The first was to carry on
that general story of the British effort, which
I began last year under your inspiration, down
to the opening of this year's campaign. And
the second was to try and make more people
in this country, and more people in America,
reahse — as acutely and poignantly as I could
— what it is we are really fighting for ; what is
the character of the enemy we are up against ;
what are the sufferings, outrages, and devas-
tations which have been inflicted on France,
in particular, by the wanton cruelty and
ambition of Germany ; for which she herself
must be made to suffer and pay, if civiHsation
and freedom are to endure.
126
No. 7] AMONG THE FRENCH 127
With this second intention, I was to have
combined, by the courtesy of the French Head-
quarters, a visit to certain central portions of
the French Une, including Soissons, Reims,
and Verdun. But by the time I reached
France the great operations that have since
marked the Soissons-Reims front were in active
preparation ; roads and motor-cars were
absorbed by the movements of troops and
stores ; Reims and Verdun were under re-
newed bombardment; and visits to this sec-
tion of the French line were entirely held up.
The French authorities, understanding that I
chiefly wished to see for myself some of the
wrecked and ruined villages and towns dealt
with in the French official reports, suggested,
first Senhs and the battle-fields of the Ourcq,
and then Nancy, the ruined villages of Lorraine,
and that portion of their eastern frontier fine
where, simultaneously with the Battle of the
Marne, General Castelnau directed from the
plateau of Amance and the Grand Couronne
that strong defence of Nancy which protected
—and still protects— the French right, and
has baulked all the German attempts to
turn it.
Meanwhile, in the early days of March, the
128 GERMAN BARBARITIES [Xo. 7
German retreat, south of the Somme and in
front of the French line, was not yet verified ;
and the worst devastation of the war — the
most wanton crime, perhaps, that Germany
has so far committed — was not yet accom-
pHshed. I had left France before it was fully
known, and could only reahse, by hot sym-
pathy from a distance, the passionate thrill of
fury and wild grief which swept through
France when the news began to come in from
the evacuated districts. British correspon-
dents with the advancing armies of the Alhes
have seen deeds of barbarism which British
eyes and hearts will never forget, and have
sent the news of them through the world. The
destruction of Coucy and Ham, the ruin and
plunder of the villages, the shameless loot
everywhere, the hideous ill-treatment of the
country folic, the deportation of boys and girls,
the massacre of the fruit trees — these things
have gone deep into the very soul of France,
burning away — except in the minds of a few
incorrigible fanatics — whatever foohsh " paci-
ficism "" was there, and steehng the mind
and will of the nation afresh to that victory
which can alone bring expiation, punishment,
and a peace worth the name. But, every-
No. 7] GERMAN BARBARITIES 129
where, the ruins with which northern, central,
and eastern France are covered, whether they
were caused by the ordinary processes of war
or not, are equally part of the guilt of Ger-
many. In the country which I saw last year
on the Belgian border, from the great phantom
of Ypres down to Festubert, the ravage is
mainly the ravage of war. Incessant bom-
bardment from the fighting lines has crumbled
village after village into dust, or gashed the
small historic towns and the stately country
houses. There is no deliberate use of torch
and petrol, as in the towns farther south and
east. Ypres, however, was deliberately shelled
into fragments day after day ; and Arras is
only a degree less carefully ruined. And
whatever the mihtary pretext may be, the
root question remains — " Why are the Ger-
mans in France at aWi " What brought them
there but their own determination, in the words
of the Secret Report of, 1913 printed in the
French Yellow book, to "strengthen and
extend Deutschtum (Germanism) throughout
the entire world'" ? Every injury that poor
France in self-defence, or the Allies at her side,
are forced to inflict on the villages and towns
which express and are interwoven with the
10
130 BEAUTY OF FRANCE [No. 7
history and genius of the French, is really a
German crime. There is no forgiveness for
what Germany has done — none ! She has
tried to murder a people ; and but for the
splendid gifts of that people, she would have
achieved her end.
Perhaps the tragedy of what is to be seen
and heard at SenHs, on the battle-grounds of
the Ourcq, and in the villages of Lorraine,
was heightened for me by the beauty of the
long drive south from the neighbourhood of
G.H.Q. — some hundred and forty miles. It
was a cold but clear March day. We had but
parted from snow a Httle while, and we were
soon to find it again. But on this day,
austerely bright, the land of France unrolled
before us its long succession of valley and
upland, upland and valley. Here, no trace
of the invader ; generally speaking no signs
of the armies ; for our route lay, on an
average, some forty miles behind the line.
All was peace, sohtude even; for the few
women, old men, and boys on the land scarcely
told in the landscape. But every mile was
rich in the signs and suggestion of an old
and most hmnan civilisation — farms, villages,
towns, the carefully tended woods, the fine
No. 7] FRENCH FAMILIES 131
roads running their straight unimpeded course
over hill and dale, bearing witness to a State
sense, of which we possess too little in this
country.
We stopped several times on the journey —
I remember a puncture, involving a couple
of hours' delay, somewhere north of Beauvais
— and found ourselves talking in small hot
rooms with peasant families of all ages and
stages, from the bhnd old grandmother, like
a brooding Fate in the background, to the last
toddhng baby. How friendly they were, in
their own self-respecting way ! — the grave-
faced elder women, the young wives, the
children. The strength of the family in
France seems to me still overwhelming — would
we had more of it left in England ! The pre-
vaiHng effect was of women everywhere carry-
ing on — making no parade of it, being indeed
accustomed to work, and famihar with every
detail of the land ; having merely added the
tasks of their husbands and sons to their
own, and asking no praise for it. The dignity,
the essential refinement and inteUigence — for
all their homely speech— of these sohdly built,
strong-faced women, in the central districts
of France, is still what it was when George
132 PARIS [No. 7
Sand di'ew her Berri peasants, nearly a hundred
years ago.
Then darkness fell, and in the darkness we
went through an old, old town where are
the French General Headquarters. Sentries
challenged us to right and left, and sent us
forward again with friendly looks. The day
had been very long, and presently, as we
approached Paris, I fell asleep in my corner,
only to be roused with a start by a glare of
hghts, and more sentries. The harriere of
Paris ! — shining out into the night.
Two days in Paris followed ; every hour
crowded with talk, and the vivid impressions of
a moment when, from beyond Compiegne and
Soissons — some sixty miles from the Boule-
vards — the French airmen flying over the
German hues were now bringing back news
every morning and night of fresh withdrawals,
fresh villages burning, as the sullen enemy
relaxed his hold.
On the third day, a most courteous and able
official of the French Foreign Office took us
in charge, and we set out for Senhs on a morn-
ing chill and wintry indeed, but giving httle
sign of the storm it held in leash.
To reach Senhs one must cross the military
No. 7] TO SENLIS 133
enceinte of Paris. Many visitors from Paris
and other parts of France, from England, or
from America, have seen by now the wreck of
its principal street, and have talked with the
Abbe Dourlent, the " Archipretre " of the
cathedral, whose story often told has lost but
httle of its first vigour and simphcity, to judge
at least by its efiect on two of his latest
visitors.
We took the great northern road out of
Paris, which passes scenes memorable in the
war of 1870. On both sides of us, at frequent
intervals, across the flat country, were long
lines of trenches, and belts of barbed wire,
most of them additions to the defences of
Paris since the Battle of the Marne. It is
well to make assurance doubly sure ! But
although, as we entered the Forest of Chan-
tilly, the German Hne was no more than some
thirty-odd miles away, and since the Battle of
the Aisne, two and a half years ago, it has
run, practically, as it still ran in the early
days of this last March, the notion of any
fresh attack on Paris seemed the merest
dream. It was indeed a striking testimony to
the power of the modern defensive — this
absolute security in which Paris and its neigh-
134 SENLIS [No. 7
bourhood lias lived and moved all that time,
with — up to a few weeks ago — the German
batteries no farther off than the suburbs of
Soissons. How good to remember, as one
writes, all that has happened since I was in
Senhs ! — and the increased distance that now
divides the German hosts from the great pri^e
on which they had set their hearts.
How fiercely they had set their hearts on
it, the old Cure of Senhs, who is the chief
depository of the story of the town, was to
make us feel anew.
One enters Senhs from Paris by the main
street, the Rue de la Republique, which the
Germans dehberately and ruthlessly burnt on
September 2nd and 3rd, 1914. We moved
slowly along it through the blackened ruins
of houses large and small, systematically fired
by the German fetroleurs, in revenge for a
supposed attack by civilians upon the enter-
ing German troops. Les civils ont tire — it is
the universal excuse for these deeds of wanton
barbarism, and for the hideous cruelties to
men, women, and children that have attended
them— beginning with that incident which
first revealed to a startled world the true
character of the men directing the German
No. 7] THE CURE OF SENLIS 135
Army — the burning and sack of Louvain.
It is to be boped tbat renewed and careful
-investigation will be made — (mucb preliminary
inquiry has already of course taken place) —
after the war into all these cases. My own
impression from what I have heard, seen, and
read — for what it may be worth — is that the
plea is almost invariably false ; but that the
state of panic and excitement into which the
German temperament falls, with extraordinary
readiness, under the strain of battle, together
with the drunkenness of troops traversing a
rich wine-growing country, have often ac-
counted for an honest, but quite mistaken
behef in the minds of German soldiers, with-
out excusing at all the deeds to which it led.
Of this abnormal excitabihty, the old Cure of
SenHs gave one or two instances which struck
me.
We came across him by chance in the
cathedral — the beautiful cathedral I have
heard Walter Pater describe, in my young
Oxford days, as one of the lovehest and grace-
fullest things in French Gothic. Fortunately,
though the slender belfry and the roof were re-
peatedly struck by shrapnel in the short bom-
bardment of the town, no serious damage was
136 THE GERMAN OCCUPATION [No. 7
done. We wandered round the church alone,
dehghting our eyes with the warm golden
white of the stone, the height of the grooved