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 OLD TRAILS AND 
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 By EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
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 OLD TRAILS AND 
 NEW BORDERS 
 
 By 
 EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
 Author of "On the Trail of the Immigrant," 
 "From Alien to Citizen," etc. 
 
 New York Chicago 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh
 
 Copyright, 1921, hj 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago : 1 7 North Wabash Ave. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street
 
 
 To my friettds 
 "THE FRIENDS" 
 
 both English and American 
 
 this book 
 
 is affectionately dedicated 
 
 152493 

 
 Introduction 
 
 ALL of us see events through our moods, 
 " as in a glass darkly," and I do not pro- 
 fess to have seen Europe but with' a 
 heavy heart and a depression of spirit, which 
 was not lifted because American money could buy 
 almost anything my heart desired, or because the 
 pleasure spots were brighter than ever. 
 
 My cheer, and there was enough, lay in two 
 solemn facts which turned my faith into assur- 
 ance. First, that there is a moral order in the 
 universe, and God is on the side of the right; and 
 the second, that the only way to overcome evil is 
 through good. 
 
 I am greatly indebted to the Friends Service 
 Committee of Philadelphia for making my jour- 
 ney through Europe possible. If my criticism of 
 its work of relief abroad turns often into a pane- 
 gyric it is due to the fact that in spite of much 
 human frailty In the endeavour, the net result of 
 its work is of profound spiritual value. 
 
 I owe much gratitude to Alfred Scattergood, 
 the head of the German mission, to Doctor Hilda 
 Clark and Elizabeth Pye, of the mission in 
 Vienna, and to all the dear comrades who ranged 
 
 7
 
 8 INTEODUCTION 
 
 in their religious beliefs from Quakers to Roman 
 Catholics, and who everywhere glorified their 
 faith in the forgiving and redeeming Christ. 
 
 Seven of these chapters were printed in the 
 New York Independent, and are here reprinted 
 
 with the publisher's permission. 
 
 E. A. S. 
 Grinnell, Iowa.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 The Immigrant's Faith 
 
 • 
 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 The Rainbow Flat . 
 
 
 
 i8 
 
 III. 
 
 A Narrow Escape . 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Lure of Europe 
 
 1 
 
 
 35 
 
 V. 
 
 The New Steerage . 
 
 
 
 42 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Old Cabin 
 
 
 
 51 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Cost of " La Patrie " 
 
 
 59 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Shadow of the Hills 
 
 
 71 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Gray Dawn 
 
 
 82 
 
 X. 
 
 Ships and Guns 
 
 
 
 . 96 
 
 XI. 
 
 Sin and Sacrifice . 
 
 
 
 . 104 
 
 XII. 
 
 Finis Austria . 
 
 
 
 . 112 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Merry Widow . 
 
 
 
 . 120 
 
 XIV. 
 
 New Barriers for Old 
 
 
 
 . 131 
 
 XV. 
 
 Madam Poland 
 
 
 
 . 147 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The Mind of Europe 
 
 
 
 . 166 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Vice Versa 
 
 
 
 . 184 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Last Border . 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 199
 
 THE IMMIGRANT'S FAITH 
 
 HAPPY was the man who was young, a 
 Christian, and who Hved in America be- 
 fore the war. He wore a triple-plated 
 armour of optimism. He believed in progress, in 
 brotherhood, and in himself, to help bring about 
 the new day, foretold by prophets, whose golden 
 dawn they strained their vision to see. I was thus 
 happy and armoured. I saw visions, large visions 
 and wholesome, and voiced them with ardour and 
 in faith. 
 
 History to me then was a noble pageant ; none 
 of this semi-theatrical stuff by which we are now 
 trying to glorify the past: Kings with pasteboard 
 crowns, knights swathed in cotton batting, coun- 
 terfeit immigrants bowing before Columbia all 
 done in bunting, and held together by safety pins 
 as she welcomes the whole world into her ample 
 lap; and the crowning feature, angels in white 
 nightgowns, singing: " My Country 'Tis of 
 Thee " 
 
 My pageant was slow moving, through hundreds 
 of thousands of years, from cave and lake dwelling 
 to hearth and fireside; from clan, and tribe, and 
 
 II
 
 12 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 race, to native country, and my native country was 
 always America; tlie leader from man's still low 
 estate was America, the culminating apex, a glori- 
 fied America. I had visions of a United States of 
 the World, the capitol at Washington a gigantic 
 wedding cake at the marriage feast of the nations, 
 Uncle Sam the bridegroom, and humanity the 
 bride. 
 
 My America was not an armour-plated super- 
 nation, whose strength was ordained by big 
 Berthas, whose might was right, and whose wis- 
 dom was the art of killing — but a human and hu- 
 mane America, blending in herself the discordant 
 elements of mankind and creating a new type of 
 state, wider than geographic boundaries, broader 
 than race and deeper than creed; still it was 
 America, a glorified, spiritualized America ; a not 
 unworthy, Apocalyptic successor to the tarrying 
 New Jerusalem. 
 
 I had faith, not only in America and her people, 
 but in the broken fragments of the human race, 
 drifted here by the ill winds blowing across the 
 Old World. 
 
 And my faith was not blind. To keep alive 
 the best of America against so much of the 
 worst of Europe, I urged an ardent Americanism, 
 a practice of rather stern virtues, an illumined 
 Puritanism. I did warn against intolerance, 
 against the zeal of the converter, against the hope 
 that law could create loyalty, against the use of
 
 THE IMMIGEANT'S FAITH 13 
 
 sharp acids on the bright spots of strange customs 
 and folk life. I believed that in spite of the alien 
 crowds, as much of the American spirit would 
 remain as we would guard and nourish. 
 
 I never minimized this peril of a million new 
 people coming full grown into our already crowded 
 life, even if they were the best, and I never said 
 Amen, when they were praised as cheap labour and 
 their rough palms appraised at so much, to keep 
 our children soft handed. I knew that they would 
 rise and ask for more and better bread, and for 
 justice in shops and courts, and that the labour 
 world's longings would come to them sooner or 
 later ; for ideas need no passports, they travel upon 
 the air. They would ask for all the good things 
 we possessed, for the low standard of living was 
 not biological but sociological. 
 
 This faith in the immigrant was merely a part 
 of my larger faith in the human race. 
 
 When my vision of a new day was so clear that 
 I believed I saw the dawn; when I believed the 
 world was ready for a universal embrace; when I 
 saw an ascending civilization and America at its 
 highest pinnacle; when I had the faith and cour- 
 age to condemn war as wholly inhuman and out 
 of keeping with Christian standards and ideals, a 
 pistol shot was fired in Serajevo whicTi plunged 
 the world into war, and my orderly pageant be- 
 came a stampede. 
 
 I watched the passing of the war fever and the
 
 14 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 coming of the Saint Vitus dance of peace, from the 
 large vantage ground of New York, to which city 
 I moved temporarily, to study the reaction of the 
 war on immigrant groups. 
 
 Our tenement house was bounded to the north 
 by Italy, to the east and southeast by Bohemia, to 
 the south and west by Poland and Russia, mostly 
 Ghetto, and to the west by^ America, a not too 
 healthy spinal column running through Manhattan 
 Island, and called Fifth Avenue. 
 
 Our immediate neighbours were Irish (the police 
 station being next door), Italians and Jews. The 
 kind of flat we occupied was called a " railroad 
 flat," probably because the rooms all ran hori- 
 zontally like cars, two rooms of equal length, the 
 kitchen, and the bathroom, the caboose. 
 
 I called our flat a union suit, because the two 
 rooms were really one, and my wife was properly 
 shocked when I thus spoke of our New York home 
 to our friends. She called It her rainbow flat, be- 
 cause she had glorified it with a splash of red from 
 a mandarin skirt, a few choice pieces of wedge- 
 wood, brass candlesticks and dainty curtains. 
 
 We found the whole East Side flagged, shabby 
 flags of course, worn by weather and by waving. 
 There were streamers and banners, and there were 
 .very few flats whose windows displayed no stars, 
 many of them paled into gold. The East Side was 
 coming out of the war enthusiasm more slowly 
 than the rest of America, for there the masses live
 
 THE IMMIGRANT'S FAITH 15 
 
 pressed close, and the contagion had settled. 
 Moreover the war, for the first time, had swept 
 them into the national enthusiasm and in vital 
 touch with the nation's concern. 
 
 Elsie and Rosie Silverstein, Mrs. Rosalsky and 
 all the female Rosalskies had been co-workers in 
 Red Cross and Liberty Bond drives, with the 
 Morgans, the Rockefellers and the various hy- 
 phenated Smiths and Smyths; and the little Ikies 
 and Pietros, the Jackies and Jankos had button- 
 holed the population into buying war stamps, 
 just like the sons of the mighty, and with the same 
 zeal and perhaps more success. 
 
 Moreover, the East Side swelled with pride over 
 its khaki-clad boys. It was an honour to lose a 
 son upon the battlefield and have him enrolled 
 among the heroes whose names did not end in sky 
 or contained so many consonants. 
 
 I met none who tried to escape the Americaniza- 
 tion which came through a common sacrifice, and 
 none who did not feel proud of their share in the 
 misfortunes of war. 
 
 They all shared in the lavish welcome which 
 Fifth Avenue gave to their sons who returned 
 from the battlefield, and none of them can easily 
 forget those days when New York, this catch 
 basin of the world's refuse, this bargain counter 
 of the remnants of humanity, became like the 
 city of God, one people with a common devotion 
 and a common gratitude.
 
 16 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 Fifth Avenue became the people's avenue, not 
 only down there where Broadway has spilled itself 
 all over it, with its lofts and shops and lunch 
 counters; even beyond Central Park, where there 
 are bronze gates such as Giotto might have 
 claimed for his tower, and palaces which might 
 grace the Grand Canal, and where sunlight filters 
 through windows fit for Notre Dame. There 
 were miles of grand stands, and the palaces looked 
 as if they were emerging out of packing cases. 
 
 The boys, the dear boys were coming home, and 
 the sirens from the boats on river and bay, and 
 guns from the islands and whistles from the fac- 
 tories gave the noisy welcome, as the transports 
 slipped into the harbour. The people of New York, 
 the American people, were standing together shoul- 
 der to shoulder, through weary hours, along Fifth 
 Avenue. Though they were aliens to each other's 
 speech and faith, they had all made a common 
 sacrifice, and this was its lasting fragrance which 
 they came to breathe into their souls. Fifth Ave- 
 nue was gorgeously glorious, a street made for 
 pomp and ceremony. A mighty arch spanned it 
 at one end, a dazzling crystal curtain made it 
 luminous at the other; flagstaff s were joined to 
 each other by wreaths of hopeful green; while 
 Roman lances, spikes, breastplates, helmets and 
 hovering war eagles turned the space before the 
 Library into a Champs de Mars. 
 
 There was no temple for peace, for Fifth Ave-
 
 THE IMMIGRANT'S FAITH 17 
 
 nue knew better than the East Side that there was 
 no peace. In the swelHng roar of its welcome 
 there was already a note of doubt, which it did not 
 share with those whose sons came marching back. 
 East Side, Harlem boys mostly; round-headed, 
 square-headed, hook-nosed, fiat-faced, tawny- 
 skinned, gray-eyed, black-eyed, the despair of the 
 prophets of evil, who cannot conceive of a nation 
 of many blood strains and faiths, and who foretold 
 a doom which has not yet come upon us. 
 
 Roar ye Irish, exult ye Hebrews, shout oh 
 Italians, delight ye Germans, jubilate oh Slavs, be 
 mirthful oh Greeks! Your sons have been rebap- 
 tized by blood and tears and are coming back, 
 Americans! 
 
 That is what I felt and heard, standing there in 
 the throng, still with a heavy heart, for I, too, 
 knew that peace had not yet come — not even to 
 America in America, certainly not to Europe. 
 
 The war had settled nothing, it had unsettled 
 many things; the darker days were ahead. The 
 romance of the war over, the dull aches of reality 
 were left, the embraces of those who felt like one 
 in their war tasks, had already loosened, and when 
 Katy Finkelstein and Iky Kohn and Tony Vizitaly 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Pucinelli, who were in mourn- 
 ing, had returned home from welcoming their own, 
 they were again aliens who had to be American- 
 ized.
 
 II 
 
 THE RAINBOW FLAT 
 
 A STORM cloud hovered over our rain- 
 bow flat, and my wife put her finger 
 warningly to her Hps. Instinctively 
 obeying her gesture I lowered my voice, then 
 noticed that Mrs. Pucinelli, the janitress, had 
 stopped her vigorous sweeping, and was frankly 
 listening. 
 
 Why should one want to be janitress in a 
 tenement house, if not for the joy of " listening 
 in " on the melodramas of four floors and thirty- 
 six scenes, the number of families Mrs. Pucinelli 
 was serving or rather, mastering? She sus- 
 pected something was wrong with us, for we had 
 rather strange-looking callers for people who 
 lived in a tenement house on the East Side; 
 callers who came in limousines, and more inter- 
 esting people who came without. She even 
 half suspected that we were not husband and 
 wife, because we never had quarrelled as far as 
 she knew, and what she did not know, had never 
 happened. 
 
 To-day the callers had been especially nu- 
 merous, and my work nerve-wearing and irk- 
 
 i8
 
 THE EAmBOW FLAT 19 
 
 some, and being about to give way to my 
 temper there might have been a quarrel, had not 
 my wife raised her warning linger just in time. 
 
 I had been "Americanizing " New York City 
 all day long, and an evening engagement 
 awaited me. At nine o'clock that morning I 
 had had an appointment at the State Headquarters 
 of Americanization, in one of the most expen- 
 sive hotels in the city. These I found to be a 
 suite of rooms fit for a king, with a charming 
 young lady in attendance, who explained an 
 elaborate and expensive scheme of lectures on 
 the ethnic and historic background of the immi- 
 grants, to be delivered to the public school 
 teachers of the state. I gave my blessing to the 
 scheme, and after promising to aid and abet it, 
 rushed to the subway, for at ten o'clock I was 
 expecting a call from a lady who had heard 
 from a friend of a friend of mine, that I was 
 interested in immigration. She was waiting for 
 me when I arrived, breathless, at the flat. 
 
 It is needless to describe her. She lectured 
 on Americanization to women's clubs. She 
 wanted me to give her first-hand information 
 about the Bolsheviki, who were supposedly- 
 lurking in every corner of the East Side. She 
 gave me a sample of her lecture before the 
 women's clubs. It was a tearful lament, and 
 whatever she got for it, she was overpaid. I 
 cured her of her hysteria by taking her into a
 
 20 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 number of homes, walking her through half a 
 dozen closely packed blocks, where she watched 
 the children at play, and giving her a glimpse 
 into the busy shops. She had never before seen 
 so much decency under such great handicaps, so 
 much cleanliness where keeping clean was a 
 struggle, or so much honest sweat for daily 
 bread. 
 
 I explained to her that Americanization was 
 not something that could be handed down in 
 lessons and lectures, or in correspondence 
 courses, but something to be experienced. And 
 to the degree that our neighbourhood saw jus- 
 tice done, where in the Old World it saw in- 
 justice, to that degree the immigrant would turn 
 from the Old World to the New. 
 
 "Above all else, if they come to know Ameri- 
 cans who arc Americans, not merely because they 
 were born in this country, but because they have 
 inherited its spiritual culture, then will they love 
 it and serve it as it deserves." My lady left me 
 with a new vision I believe, with a new lecture I 
 know; a lecture with less sob and more hope. 
 
 At noon I took luncheon down-town with a 
 man who was eager to turn the wealth of in- 
 dustrial magnates into Americanization chan- 
 nels. I ate his luncheon, which was very good, 
 and listened to his scheme, which was very 
 poor. He had no interest in adult education, a 
 much neglected field in the United States; he
 
 THE KAINBOW FLAT 21 
 
 wanted a patriotic propaganda, the subsidizing 
 of newspapers, posters and slogans for foreign- 
 speaking peoples. His object was to keep for- 
 eign-born workmen from becoming restless. I 
 have too much respect for the millions of mil- 
 lionaires to be a party in wasting them that 
 way. 
 
 At three o'clock a man called whom I would 
 have kicked out of the house, were I not a pro- 
 fessor of Applied Christianity, and had he not 
 been at least twice my size. He asked me to 
 help him raise ten million dollars for Christian 
 Americanization, on a percentage, and all he 
 wanted was my endorsement. I sent him away 
 with a very poor opinion of me, for I told him I 
 believed that a Roman Catholic can be a per- 
 fectly good American, as can also a Jew, and the 
 better Jew, the better American. I even in- 
 cluded Mormons, Mohammedans and Agnostics 
 among those who might work out their national 
 salvation without the aid of his costly and re- 
 ligious scheme. 
 
 His desire to convert them was certainly 
 laudable, and if he could convert the population 
 of the whole United States to the religion of 
 Jesus, I wish he might get his millions; it would 
 be cheap at that; but the attempt to proselytize 
 under the cover of patriotism did not appeal to 
 me. 
 
 No wonder I was in ill humour and at the
 
 22 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 verge of a quarrel with my wife. For there was 
 the evening engagement ahead, an American- 
 ization dinner at that, and my wife insisted that 
 I must wear full dress. There it lay in all its 
 unshapely ugliness: the stiff-bosomed shirt, the 
 razor-edged collar and the tie, which I never 
 could manipulate. 
 
 My wife, of course, was wearing her dinner 
 gown, which she had abbreviated at both ends, 
 to conform to what a dinner gown in New York 
 should lack. I am a Puritan, and I had mis- 
 givings. 
 
 Pacing up and down, having to restrain my 
 revolt on account of Mrs. Pucinelli, I contem- 
 plated the festooned wash-lines which zigzagged 
 through the back yards; for there was nothing 
 else to contemplate, except the pathetic-looking 
 alley cats. Then I marched to the front win- 
 dows and looked out upon the block, full of 
 children — Italian, Irish, Jewish children — and I 
 listened to the clatter of their voices which 
 drowned the roar of the Third Avenue Ele- 
 vated, and the rush of the Lexington Avenue 
 subway, and the rumble of the street traffic. 
 Their voices were pitched to the American key, 
 high and shrill, and they spoke American as 
 " she is spoke " on the East Side, and they 
 danced American dances, though it was an 
 Italian hurdy-gurdy that played the tunes. 
 
 Some of the boys played marbles, which is an
 
 THE EAINBOW FLAT 23 
 
 American game, and others played ball in defi- 
 ance of windows, the police and the passer-by. 
 Still others had half the block chalked off into 
 squares, and were kicking an old tin can across 
 the lines, that game being the oldest and poor- 
 est relative of golf, which, by adoption, is more 
 or less American. The girls skipped ropes and 
 I listened to songs, born not in Italy or Odessa, 
 but in " good old New York." This is what 
 they sang: 
 
 " My mother, your mother, lives across the way, 
 Three-sixteen East Broadway, 
 Every night they have a fight 
 And this is what they say : " &c. 
 
 " Mother, mother, I am sick. 
 Get the doctor quick, quick, quick! 
 Mother, mother, will I die? 
 Yes, my child, by-and-by." 
 
 No Jewish girl in the pale of Russia, no Italian 
 girl in Naples, no Irish girl in Cork ever cared 
 or dared jump so high or so often (if she jumped 
 at all), as these children of the East Side. At 
 least I have never seen it done, not even in this 
 year Ninteen Twenty-One, when, on just such 
 spring days as that, I went about the streets of 
 foreign cities. 
 
 Watching those immigrant children I re- 
 flected upon what I had done for weeks and
 
 24 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 months; the little bits of Americanizing machin- 
 ery which I had tried to inspect and lubricate, 
 or where defective, stop from running; and then 
 I rebelled, thinking of the misspent day, the 
 yawning chasm of a long evening to be given to 
 eating, and listening to after-dinner speeches, 
 one of them being mine ! I thought of the fu- 
 tility of it all as the wind and the dust and the 
 traffic were Americanizing these aliens, with 
 nothing to withstand it in spite of the Yiddish 
 signs over the shops and stores, in spite of the 
 Italian hurdy-gurdy and the hokey-pokey man, 
 of like extraction. Stale newspapers a minute 
 old swished about by the wind, the chief refuse 
 of our cities, were Americanizing, and those 
 printed in foreign script, sometimes better than 
 our best and rarely worse than our worst, were 
 Americanizing; for though they brought the 
 news from the homeland, they were, after all, 
 but a paper link, which the new generation tore 
 without conscious effort. 
 
 The settlement around the corner was Ameri- 
 canizing; the public schools were Americaniz- 
 ing, crowded as they were, presided over by 
 some sprig of a girl, still undrained of her enthu- 
 siasm, always the high-priestess of the Ameri- 
 can Spirit, and this since the days of Myra, 
 Kelly, whose love Americanized the alien, when 
 Americanism had not yet been measured by the 
 yard-stick, and enforced oaths of allegiance had.
 
 THE RAINBOW FLAT 25 
 
 not yet aroused doubt in the stranger's mind, 
 where little or none existed before. 
 
 No youngster born in New York City, or in 
 any city or town or hamlet in America (unless 
 it be on some agricultural island or in the back- 
 woods) can escape the mighty pressure of pa- 
 triotic impulses which sweep and permeate the 
 country, and which manifest themselves in 
 churches of whatever faith, in the schools, the 
 settlements, the libraries and in the newspapers. 
 If there is hesitancy in accepting the American 
 creed, it is only here and there, and that only 
 since patriotism has been perverted and made 
 the excuse for exploitation, and since Ameri- 
 canization has become a compulsion by machin- 
 ery, rather than an impulsion by the spirit. 
 
 My wife roused me out of my contemplative 
 mood, which served as a sort of preparation for 
 my after-dinner speech, by telling me that it was 
 time to go. She never looked more lovely than 
 she did that night, in spite of her gown's few 
 inches more or less, or because of them. But 
 I was Jove and had to thunder, and I reminded 
 her of her Puritan ancestors, and how she was 
 aiding and abetting society in its determination 
 to go to the devil. I declared that I would not 
 tolerate it; moreover, I wouldn't put on my 
 dress suit, especially as there was no time left, 
 and bravely I concluded: "A thousand horses 
 shall not drag me to that dinner!" Pointing
 
 26 OLD TEAILS AND I^W BOEDERS 
 
 to her satin slippered feet she replied: " Not a 
 thousand horses, my dear, that would be too ex- 
 pensive, or the subway, for I couldn't risk my 
 slippers; but a taxi, and you'd better hurry and 
 order one for it is half-past seven, and we are 
 sure to be late as it is." 
 
 So it happened that I went to that Ameri- 
 canization dinner in a taxi, wearing my business 
 suit, and watching the meter measuring off 
 dollars from my bank account, which is most 
 often an overdraft.
 
 Ill 
 
 A NARROW ESCAPE 
 
 BEING late for dinner in New York City is 
 nothing unusual, and no attention was 
 paid us by the guests, who had eaten 
 through a part of the elaborate menu. No one 
 seemed to take it amiss that I appeared at the great 
 feast without my " wedding garments," though I 
 felt conspicuous among those wide expanses of 
 white shirt-bosoms. It salved my Puritan con- 
 science, however, to find that my wife was quite 
 modestly gowned in contrast to some of the ana- 
 tomical displays of the other women. 
 
 My neighbour on the right was a charming 
 lady, with an American name which was saved 
 from being common by hyphenation. There 
 was a certain voluptuousness about her that 
 spoke of warmer blood than that of New Eng- 
 land; yet I dared not study her closely; for 
 hers were searching eyes with strange depths, 
 and my salad remained untasted; for who could 
 eat salad with a Greek goddess watching him? 
 
 Turning my attention to the lady on my left, I 
 found her a very comfortable, virile type, and I 
 was able to do full justice to the next course, in 
 spite of the fact that she, too, looked at me. 
 
 87
 
 28 OLD TEAIL8 AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 When our eyes met, she smiled, and I ventured 
 to tell her that her name and her skull and eyes did 
 not match. " Your name is Irish, your forehead 
 is Slavic, and your hair is — blond." 
 
 " Red, you mean," she corrected, laughing at 
 my attempt to be polite. *' Brick red — Irish red. 
 One of my forefathers was Irish," she continued, 
 " and he married a Polish Countess. That was 
 before the Revolutionary War." 
 
 " When an Irishman marries a Polish woman, 
 there is sure to be war," the Greek goddess inter- 
 posed; "isn't that so. Professor?" Then she 
 asked me to look at her, and tell her whether her 
 name and face matched. They did not; but I 
 hardly felt at liberty to reveal the crossed strains 
 in her racial ancestry, at that point in the world's 
 history. 
 
 " I am mostly French," she said, after I de- 
 clined to commit myself, and then added hesitat- 
 ingly, " and a little German." 
 
 French ancestors, I find, have marvellously mul- 
 tiplied during the war, and German blood has cor- 
 respondingly decreased, and I felt sure that the 
 lady at my right was as Teutonic as Brunhilde. 
 
 Amid the subdued buzz of conversation and the 
 pianissimo of well-bred diners, I was kept busy by 
 my two neighbours, guessing at the ancestry of the 
 guests, assembled in the interests of Americaniz- 
 ing un-Americanized America. 
 Looking over their names, to aid me in my some-
 
 A NAEROW ESCAPE 29 
 
 what hazardous game, I saw that not more than 
 ten per cent, of us were Americans of New Eng- 
 land strain. The majority were Scotch-Irish in 
 ancestry, a fine, fibrous, and enduring element of 
 our physical, spiritual, and mental make-up. 
 There were more Slavs than Germans, which was 
 understandable in that rather abnormal period; a 
 few Italians, and some Greeks and Armenians, 
 who, in one generation, had risen from the steer- 
 age to the American peerage, who were wearing 
 evening clothes easily and knew which fork to use. 
 There was a goodly number of Jews, broad- 
 skulled, Tartar, Semitic types, and others more 
 Teutonic than Jewish ; while there were not a few 
 whose Semitism had been bred out of their sys- 
 tems. 
 
 I enjoyed studying them, and looking at them, 
 for this was the face of America which I loved, 
 and in which I had faith. 
 
 At last the waiters cleared the tables, the chair- 
 man cleared his throat, and taking advantage of 
 the fact that he held the gavel, made a speech of 
 great length, in which he anticipated most of the 
 speakers; for he voiced America's doubt that it 
 was a nation ; that the war had revealed a danger- 
 ous hyphenation ; that there were foreign agitators 
 who were sowing seeds of discontent; that the 
 government was in danger of being overthrown; 
 that we had been too easy-going, and that the time 
 had come for action. Action, according to him,
 
 30 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 consisted in the elimination of the foreign press, 
 the teaching of EngHsh to foreigners, making 
 them acquainted with our form of government, 
 compelHng them to learn the Constitution, and 
 watching over our public schools so that they do 
 not fall into the hands of disloyal persons. 
 
 Speaker after speaker followed, ringing the 
 changes on the subject of the evening. Those 
 who knew the least about immigrants expressed 
 the most fear, and those who had been in actual 
 contact with them and watched over them and 
 worked for them, were the most optimistic; yet 
 their words received the least credence and ap- 
 plause. Among those who spoke were the super- 
 patriots who wanted the " hurrah " feeling kept 
 alive, and that always demands fears and stress; 
 others again were left with an accumulated stock 
 of war suspicion and hate, and that had to be 
 worked off; a few, who had tasted the sweets of a 
 common impulse and effort, wanted something to 
 do, now that the Red Cross had its millions, and 
 the Belgian and French children were provided 
 for. Many had moribund institutions on their 
 hands, and Americanization was a good basis for 
 appeal for funds ; while a very few who, neverthe- 
 less, were real patriots, had the good sense to real- 
 ize that the process of Americanization was going 
 on as fast, perhaps, as was advisable; certainly 
 as fast as possible, and that what was needed 
 was a higher type of Americanism on the part of
 
 A NAEEOW ESCAPE 31 
 
 Americans; a higher regard for law and order 
 when law and order interfere with their personal 
 pleasure and profit; a deeper appreciation of their 
 spiritual inheritance; greater reliance upon justice 
 and truth, good-will and neighbourliness; and less 
 upon pressure of law, which at best cannot compel 
 loyalty. 
 
 So one speaker followed another ad naiiscum, 
 till my turn came. Ardent believer that I am in 
 the fact that America is a nation, I challenged 
 the previous speakers to point out here, any real 
 cleavage of political import, such as exists in 
 nearly every country in Europe, or to draw the 
 geographic lines where patriotism cooled, or the 
 ethnic lines where we had not been wedded and 
 welded into a common purpose during the war. 
 And I proudly declared the United States the 
 safest national unit in the world, and again I chal- 
 lenged any one to name any single country in 
 which there had been less treason or more loyalty 
 than in America. Social unrest has nothing to do 
 witli Americanization, and it could not be quieted, 
 even if every foreigner knew English perfectly, 
 and had learned the Constitution by heart. 
 
 Everywhere the working classes have grown 
 suspicious of the virtue of patriotism as ex- 
 pounded by the privileged classes, just as they 
 have grown suspicious of religion. I ventured to 
 say that suspicion was more strongly expressed in 
 France, in Germany and in England than here in
 
 32 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 the United States, and that in Europe it found 
 organic expression, which could not be repressed 
 there as here, because there it is represented in 
 parHaments, even in government itself. More- 
 over, the most radical organization in the United 
 States is of American origin, the majority of the 
 membership of the I. W. W. being native born. 
 The worst strikes America has experienced were 
 in the highly organized crafts, which are safely 
 American. 
 
 If discontent exists among the immigrants, it 
 is not because they are foreigners, who are still 
 smarting under the wrongs from which they have 
 escaped, as is usually supposed to be the case, but 
 because they are the bottom layer of our industrial 
 order, and it is there that the pressure is heaviest 
 and the discontent greatest, the world over. Law- 
 lessness is not characteristic of foreigners; as a 
 rule they come here respecting and fearing the 
 law. If they disregard it and seek by force to 
 gain their ends, they have good American prec- 
 edent. 
 
 Nothing can bring us industrial peace but eco- 
 nomic justice, and we shall never get that by be- 
 fuddling our brains with phrases, and labelling as 
 un-American everything which is not silent under 
 Injustice. " The fact is," I concluded, " that one 
 of the supposed virtues of our Democracy is the 
 spirit of self-assertion, the willingness to fight for 
 one's rights."
 
 A NAREOW ESCAPE 33 
 
 My wife who sat opposite me, had for some 
 time been giving me the S. O. S. signal, for she 
 sensed the situation ; but I disregarded it, and kept 
 on to the end of my time. 
 
 There was but feeble applause when I sat down, 
 after which the toastmaster called on a celebrated 
 man of generous avoirdupois and a large collec- 
 tion of stories, who " sat down " upon me good 
 and heavily. He appealed to the Constitution, to 
 the flag, he spoke of one hundred per cent. Ameri- 
 cans, and resented (as perhaps he had a right to) 
 my criticism of America. After all, he said, I was 
 foreign born and did not, and could not, know 
 what it meant to be an American. 
 
 All things have an end, even banquets; there 
 was a rush for the cloak-rooms, and in the 
 crowded hall, where I was lost among long 
 coats and tall hats, I heard one woman say to 
 another in an awestruck voice: "Why, that man 
 is a socialist!" And her companion replied: 
 "Yes, but he is an anarchist also! " 
 
 Two very prosperous looking men were dis- 
 cussing the evening, and one said to another: 
 " That little man is dangerous ! He ought to be 
 hung ! " He was an ardent believer in national 
 salvation by way of the hardware store. 
 
 The evening would have been utterly ruined, 
 had I not pushed close to the two ladies who had 
 to endure me as their neighbour during the ban- 
 quet I was about to bid them good-night, when
 
 34 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 I heard Brunhilde say to the lady whose ancestors 
 were responsible for the Revolutionary War: 
 " Isn't he a dear ? I should have liked to hug 
 him!" 
 
 That night I did not sleep. A many-coursed 
 dinner followed by speeches makes a poor seda- 
 tive, especially when one's own speech runs coun- 
 ter to the popular current. There were long hours 
 in which to search my heart, and I tried very 
 hard to discover any spot in it unfaithful to my 
 country. I tried, too, and without success, to find 
 wherein the truths I now spoke, differed from 
 those I spoke when I was received with appre- 
 ciation and enthusiasm. 
 
 I heard the low rumble of the city grow Into 
 mild thunder, the milkman made his rounds, and 
 the newsboy had deposited the morning paper. 
 When I saw the glaring headlines telling of raids 
 of radicals, plots to overthrow the government, 
 and columns of wild tales of projected terror, I 
 suddenly realized that the times, and not I, had 
 changed.
 
 IV 
 
 THE LURE OF EUROPE 
 
 FOR the first time in thirty years I realized 
 that I was still a foreigner, although I 
 , knew I was an American, with my love 
 and loyalty undiminished. It was a curious 
 feeling, almost a physical hurt, a sense of being 
 out of place among these people, who believed 
 that nativity means natural loyalty and superi- 
 ority, and that being foreign-born means indif- 
 ference and inferiority. 
 
 I felt it every time I had to suffer through 
 the discussions on Americanization, a subject 
 which one could not escape; for it was never 
 mal apropos, even in funeral sermons. Although 
 I did not flatter myself that the speakers 
 thought of me, it seemed as if they were point- 
 ing in my direction when they spoke of an 
 " unassimilated American," " the riffraff of 
 Europe," and the inferior blood strains which 
 will make us a mongrel people, and lead to the 
 ruin of our liberties as well as our physical well- 
 being. 
 
 I was made conscious of it every time I faced 
 an American audience; something had come be- 
 
 35
 
 36 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 tween us, and we were no longer en rapport. 
 They wanted food for their fears and I wanted 
 them to have the courage to face facts. I knew 
 that the national personality which we call the 
 United States was fairly sound — its ills not of 
 body, but of mind and spirit. It had not at- 
 tained that fullness of being which comes from 
 right relation to God, or to those individuals 
 who were not as yet like it, but were waiting to 
 be reborn by the power of the national spirit. 
 
 For this, no paper schemes would avail; no 
 patriotic organizations with their secret or open 
 persecutions, no compulsion by law, which only 
 makes for premature birth; no exaggeration of 
 the national ego, no purgatives in the way of 
 wholesale deportations, no sugar-coated pills, 
 coloured red, white and blue and fed to Chau- 
 tauqua audiences; none of these would avail. 
 Only a realization of the nation's need of grow- 
 ing in the direction of a spiritual personaUty, 
 and above all else, a belief that each individual, 
 regardless of racial origin, may grow the same 
 way, given the chance. 
 
 I knew that we shall never grow in that di- 
 rection till we stop, talking about our Nordic 
 superiority and Aryan leadership. 
 
 However, I began to realize that I could not 
 understand the problem of Americanization, be- 
 cause I was a part of it; that I was prejudiced 
 in favour of the foreign-born by my natural
 
 THE LUEE OF EUEOPE 37 
 
 sympathy with them. I began to feel the need 
 of a new perspective, and Europe came into my 
 vision. I reaHzed that the war had made me a 
 " landlubber " and that my ship was stranded 
 in the black mud of the corn-belt. 
 
 Thirty-four times I had sailed, and each re- 
 turning had strengthened my faith in the 
 American people, as I shared the solemn, pain- 
 ful, yet glorious agony of being born out of the 
 womb of the steerage, into a strange new world, 
 and at the same time experiencing the thrill of 
 coming home. 
 
 I needed the tonic of the unconfined seas, the 
 quickening of vision which comes from new 
 experiences; but the sea which had been 
 wormed through by the menacing submarine, 
 and the sudden graveyard of unsuspecting 
 travellers, had lost its attractiveness; while 
 Europe had become one witli Nineveh and 
 Tyre. 
 
 I did not care to see the Mother Continent 
 which I knew in her voluptuous strength, now 
 haggard and wan, while her hungry children 
 vainly seek nourishment at her leathern breast. 
 Why should I care to see Paris again, after see- 
 ing her in 1900, the World's Fair year, unmad- 
 dened and unexhausted by war, and but for the 
 touch of revanche in her brain, as sane as that 
 international pleasure market ever could be? 
 
 They said that there was disorder, and dirt,
 
 38 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 and dismay in Berlin. It was impossible to be- 
 lieve! For I saw her two millions, marching 
 over the spotless pavements to the tune of the 
 Grenadier March; while the guardians of the 
 city's peace and order wiped the dust from the 
 nostrils of the HohenzoUerns, standing in 
 bronze and marble in that insolent Sicges-Alle. 
 
 Why should I wish to go again to Vienna, 
 whose honey of music and song I have tasted 
 SO many times, and whose coffee and crisp rolls 
 are the acme of my epicurean memories? She 
 was my first love among the cities, and I want 
 to remember her dancing to the " Blue Danube 
 Waltz," a ravishing German, Slavic, Semitic, 
 Magyar beauty, living for unrestrained pleas- 
 ure. Why should I want to see my young love 
 wrinkled, and old, and homeless, begging for 
 bread? 
 
 I did not care to see dismembered empires 
 any more than I cared to see amputated legs 
 and arms; and the new self-determined, undeter- 
 mined kingdoms were no doubt as unattractive 
 as babies born before their time, and their future 
 as precarious. I had no desire to visit war 
 zones and ruined cathedrals, lest my respect for 
 the human race be entirely destroyed. 
 
 Who would care to see Budapest after the 
 Red and White Terrors have ravished her, and 
 Latin mongrels have stolen what the mob left 
 undamaged? Humbled and defeated Magyars
 
 THE LUKE OF EUEOPE 89 
 
 must be as sorry a sight as Samson with gouged 
 eyes, treading the mill. 
 
 I wanted to remember Petrograd with her 
 long streets and broad squares up to the knees 
 in freshly fallen snow, the frozen fog like a 
 gauze curtain, through which one swathed 
 Ischvodjik after another drove his troyka madly. 
 I wanted to hear always the laughter of the gay 
 women, their blood a-tingle from the bracing 
 cold; and of the solemn, merry gentlemen, their 
 stomachs pouchy from the abundant food. Even 
 then there were enough starving people, their 
 half-naked bodies exposed to the biting winds; 
 but they had the decency to be humble and ask 
 God's blessing upon you, even if you gave them 
 no kopeks. Petrograd's poor were mostly saints, 
 who knew no envy, and were content with the 
 riches of heaven. 
 
 Moscow, now the Red Oueen, I knew as the 
 Holy City, the bells from a thousand steeples 
 bellowing metallic sounds, so that the air be- 
 came as hard as steel and as vibrant as a watch 
 spring. Who would care to see her if he had 
 seen her on an Easter eve and an Easter morn- 
 ing, after the suspended, holy hush, lasting 
 through a long, and lean, and penitent Lent? 
 A dark night of waiting, the throng around the 
 Kremlin so dense that it moved like a huge crea- 
 ture pregnant from joy. Sacred fire burst 
 through cathedral gates, swung open to a loud
 
 40 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 Te Deum, and like a myriad fireflies, candles 
 burned, and swayed, and leaped. There fol- 
 lowed among the multitude, warm, Christian 
 embraces, holy and undiscriminating kisses, and 
 triumphant rejoicings. 
 
 "Christ is risen!" And jubilant replies: 
 " Christ is risen indeed! " After the long fast, 
 the feasting; weeks of suppressed desire burst- 
 ing forth in a mad outbreak of eating, drinking, 
 and embracing. Drunk they were to the glory 
 . of the risen Christ, dead drunk and joyously 
 drunk for " Peace on earth and good-will to 
 men." 
 
 Who would care to see Moscow turned Bol- 
 shevik? No holy Easter, heavy from the odour 
 of burning wax candles, the frying of long-denied 
 meats, the stupefying fumes of alcohol, the chants 
 of the priests, and the maudlin praises of the tipsy 
 multitudes. 
 
 I did not want to see Central Europe torn, 
 bleeding, and not even decently bandaged, being 
 fed milk by the spoonful. Yet I went, in spite 
 of the fact that I said " No" a thousand times 
 to the lurking desire and to the felt need. And 
 when I went I did not go reluctantly; for I was 
 to follow the victorious trail of the Quakers, 
 who went in the wake of the war to build houses 
 while the German guns were still menacing; 
 who went into the beaten enemy's lines as a 
 friend, when the blockade had fastened its iron
 
 THE LUEE OF EUEOPE 41 
 
 fingers on the throats of little children; who 
 went in the spirit of Jesus, when Cscsar ruled 
 in the embittered hearts of mankind. 
 
 I wanted to follow the " sowers who went 
 forth to sow," I wanted to search the furrows 
 for signs of the new life, and to see what hope 
 there was for the Old World, and what hope for 
 the New; for they are more closely linked than 
 parliaments allow or statesmen believe. I 
 wanted to voice that hope if I could but find it. 
 But I went to Europe, mostly, to have a far- 
 range look at America.
 
 v: 
 
 THE NEW STEERAGE 
 
 MY way lay across the ocean and " there 
 is no more sea." The Apocalyptic 
 vision is fulfilled for those who travel 
 on this ship and in the first cabin. Forty- 
 five thousand tons, in height topping the Wool- 
 worth building, in splendour rivalling not only 
 Rome, but making any Ritz-Carlton look cheap 
 and tawdry; a mile of glass-enclosed deck, and the 
 passengers like precious orchids in a conservatory. 
 There is the great Tudor Hall, with crackling fire 
 and inviting seats, a London club room, American 
 in comforts and luxuries, a gymnasium and swim- 
 ming pool and a dining-room amidship, quietly, 
 elegantly unobtrusive, and a symphony orchestra. 
 Caesar's favourite palace would have looked mean 
 to him in comparison had he crossed the ocean on 
 this ship in February, 1921. 
 
 There is nothing more than a seventh heaven 
 promised to the saints; but there is more than a 
 first cabin, for the rich — a super-cabin and private 
 decks. If our steak was thick, theirs must be 
 thicker, and if our lamb was tender, theirs must be 
 more so ; for " what doth it profit a man " to be 
 
 4a
 
 THE NEW STEEEAQE 43 
 
 ultra rich, unless he can have what other people 
 cannot have ? 
 
 I did not envy them; for I was rather uncom- 
 fortable surrounded by unwonted luxury, and was 
 reminded of my steerage days, only by the fact 
 that I shared my inside cabin with two Lithu- 
 anians, going back as generals to their newly 
 made Republic. They, too, came to America in 
 the steerage, and still have its simple manners. 
 Though they had handsome, leather bags, the 
 latest and best in clothing, they had no pajamas. 
 They slept au naturel when they went to sleep, 
 which was early in the morning; the rest of the 
 time they smoked cigarettes, practiced wearing 
 their gorgeous uniforms, and tried to act as gen- 
 erals ought to act. I was sorry I could not help 
 them; but unfortunately, I have not often asso- 
 ciated with generals. They are the first fruit from 
 the tree of self-determination that I have had a 
 chance to behold, and it is very green fruit, which 
 will add to the world's political dypepsia. 
 
 My generals were going back to a country whose 
 boundaries were fitted by tailors in France, and 
 are as new and as ill-fitting as their uniforms, 
 made in the same country. From their conver- 
 sation it seems that Lithuania is an undefined 
 territory, surrounded by — friction. 
 
 One thing I can say in favour of my generals — 
 they are not talking about conquering the world, or 
 about the mission of their country to Lithuanize
 
 44 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 the rest of mankind; which is, as I have discov- 
 ered, a favourite topic of conversation among 
 the generals of some of the countries which owe 
 their existence to the doctrine of self-determina- 
 tion. 
 
 Habit is stronger than the lure of a luxurious 
 lounge, and though it was but the second day out 
 and my sea-legs not yet established, I sought the 
 steerage. On that ship both ends never meet or 
 see each other. In between, travels the doomed 
 second class, which sees the striking contrast and 
 feels the pressure from both sides. 
 
 I found my way to the steerage unerringly. 
 My " nose knows " and — with shame I confess it 
 — I feel at home. The steerage never changes; 
 either in location, furnishings or tout ensemble. 
 It lies over the stirring screws, sleeps to the stac- 
 cato of trembling steel railings and hawsers ; nar- 
 row, steep and slippery stairs lead to it ; dishevelled 
 women emerge with the unfailing babies in their 
 arms (there are none in the first cabin) ; crowds 
 of burly, surly men, ill-smelling bunks, uninviting 
 wash-rooms presided over by unofficially untidy 
 stewards and stewardesses. The odour of scat- 
 tered orange peel, tobacco, garlic and disinfect- 
 ants, meeting but not blending; no lounges or 
 chairs for comfort, and a babel of tongues. " As 
 It was in the beginning Is now and ever shall be." 
 My friends In the cabin said: "But the steerage 
 thinks differently." They were singing, and in their
 
 THE NEW STEERAGE 45 
 
 singing lies their hope and our menace, that " the 
 last shall be first and the first last." They are new 
 songs, born in the last five tragic years, and there 
 is no doubt nor fear, but passionate certainty. 
 
 Before we sailed I heard those songs from a 
 throng of men and women crowding the dock. 
 They were seeing their countrymen off, those who 
 were leaving the " Sweet Land of Liberty " for 
 Soviet Russia. " Blessed are the poor, for theirs 
 is the kingdom of " — song. Deep-throated, 
 harshly melodious, and melancholy, were the 
 Slav's strains; for though they sang of a new 
 "world, in which nationalities shall blend and dis- 
 appear, the dominant note was Russian. 
 
 At first I thought the steerage joyless. Even 
 the first cabin is apprehensive of the evil days to 
 come ; but the dense crowd opened like a hole in a 
 doughnut. A squat, sturdy Russian danced with 
 athletic abandon, and the hole grew larger as 
 others joined him. The contagious rhythm af- 
 fected the onlookers, who clapped their hands and 
 beat the deck with their feet. A semi-American- 
 ized Russian pushed through the crowd and asked 
 the balalayka player for ragtime, and to a poor 
 imitation of American jungle-music he gyrated, 
 then shimmied, while the crowd laughed de- 
 risively. " American dancing no good ! " they 
 cried and then continued a la Russc, which was 
 more to their, and my, liking. It was a very un- 
 Americanized crowd. There was fearful and
 
 46 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 wonderful English, and more fearful and more 
 wonderful clothes in various combinations. There 
 were over 1,400 men going back, sturdy, fine 
 physical specimens, lured by a dream which they 
 say is taking shape, leaving America without re- 
 gret. 
 
 The singing and dancing ceased, groups were 
 formed, and conversation, oration and preach- 
 ment began. They were discussing war, politics 
 and Bolshevism, especially Bolshevism. Two men 
 talked back and forth at each other while the rest 
 stood by, pop-eyed and open-mouthed. " Ha ! " 
 says one of them, " in Poland they say they have 
 a socialized government. They dress a man up 
 in peasant clothes, and he smokes and spits like a 
 peasant — but he is only a puppet, and the aris- 
 tocrats pull the strings. In Russia under the 
 Soviet (the true Socialist government), produc- 
 tion belongs to the producer." 
 
 A tall young man of more refined appearance 
 was reading " The Riddle of the Universe." He 
 is a clothing cutter and is going back to help 
 Russia. All Russians are going back to help 
 the Soviet Republic. " The new day has come ! 
 No Czar, no priests, no bosses ! " 
 
 I joined another group, and a rusty, pale, pim- 
 ple-faced youth was talking about war. " It says 
 plainly in the Bible, ' Thou shalt not kill,' " he 
 said, " yet the priests are the tools of the capital- 
 ists."
 
 THE NEW STEERAGE 47 
 
 tc 
 
 'Yea," answered a broad-shouldered, flat-faced 
 Russian. "If Jesus would come to New York 
 the priests would have Him arrested, and de- 
 ported to Russia. In Russia He would be wel- 
 
 come." 
 
 Another group was being read to by a youth 
 of about twenty-four. " What are you reading to 
 them?" I asked. " Out of the new Bible," he re- 
 plied, and showed me the book — Upton Sinclair's 
 " The Cry for Justice," a compilation of the old 
 agonies and the new prophecies. 
 
 So enthusiastic, so brave, so hopeful, so en- 
 chanted by new phrases, so eager to reach Soviet 
 Russia, so glad to have escaped Capitalistic 
 America — and I am sure that he w^ill be disillu- 
 sioned. 
 
 "Are you coming back to America?" I asked 
 him in parting. 
 
 " Yes," he replied. " But then we, the work- 
 ers, will travel in luxury, and you, parasites, will 
 be in the steerage." 
 
 There were smaller groups of Czechs, Poles, 
 and Slovaks who were returning, also with new 
 hopes and ideals; only theirs were national and 
 not international, and they, too, are ready to fight 
 and die for them. 
 
 Mankind, in the steerage, and out of it, believes 
 in two religions — Bolshevism and Nationalism. 
 I spent all my mornings interviewing the steer- 
 age and I have not found one man who loves
 
 48 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 America as I love it, or as those loved it who re- 
 turned in the steerage prior to the war. 
 
 I am sick at heart. It all seems a great pity 
 and a great waste. " America no good ! " And 
 it hurt to hear it, accustomed as I was to their 
 adulation, to unstinted praise, to their carrying 
 the American flag back with them. 
 
 If they were complaining about lack of work or 
 wages I would not care; but they are complaining 
 about our poverty of spirit, our lack of ideals, our 
 hardness, and coldness, and blind suppression. 
 " America is ruthless," one of the men told me. 
 " Life is nothing, money is everything. I worked 
 in a shipyard in Camden, and every day regularly 
 one man or more was killed. The Americans 
 don't care; there are other men to take their 
 places." 
 
 " America is like Russia," another man com- 
 plained. " And she will be punished like Russia," 
 he prophesied. 
 
 I have said to my heart that speech is of no 
 avail and that I would keep silence — and lo, and 
 behold, I preached on the steerage deck six morn- 
 ings in succession. Every word of mine chal- 
 lenged and every statement riddled, as I spoke and 
 pled for America, for a better understanding of 
 her ; not that it matters much to America that this 
 young man, a native of Rochester, New York, 
 born of foreign parents, should go to Russia with 
 distorted vision, and cursing his country. But it
 
 THE NEW STEERAGE 49 
 
 mattered much to me and to him, and he promised 
 at last to write to me and let me know how he 
 fared, and what his heart said to him, when he 
 reached his voluntary exile. 
 
 It meant much to me to combat the idea being 
 carried back by peasant Poles, that America has 
 no conscience; only cash registers and no throb- 
 bing heart; only machinery. Poor devils, I can- 
 not blame them; yet I bombarded them with 
 words and asked them: "Who cleansed them of 
 their filth but America? " " Who debused their 
 children and saved them from ignorance but 
 America?" "Who gave them a chance to lift 
 themselves out of their pauperism but America? " 
 I outdid all professional Americanizers in my at- 
 tack upon their Ingratitude, and my praise for 
 what America had done for them, and I meant 
 every word of it. 
 
 I studied with especial care the self-confessed 
 Bolsheviks, and gave myself to them, eager to 
 snatch these " brands from the burning." Some 
 of them were highly nervous men, who could not 
 stand the gaff of our industrial life, and were go- 
 ing to pieces under It. They were like unhappily 
 married husbands who, finding their wives shrews, 
 lose their faith In matrimony. They were men 
 with a superabundance of brain, little muscle, and 
 narrow chests ; they were born to be scholars, not 
 labourers, and to tliem wage-life was, Indeed, slave 
 life.
 
 60 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 There were not a few who suffered from 
 thwarted ambitions, who wanted to become capi- 
 taHsts and had not succeeded; they were perhaps 
 not shrewd enough, not honest enough, or too 
 honest. I could not tell. I am sure that a small 
 bank account would have cured them of Bolshe- 
 vism. 
 
 There were more who had in them the element 
 of leadership, the thirst for power, and this was 
 a way in which to exercise their gifts. In the 
 present order there was no chance for them. 
 They were like Germany, looking for a " place 
 in the sun " when all the places were already 
 taken. They were born agitators, narrow, dog- 
 matic, eloquent; and a militant church lost some 
 possible bishops, when the Bolshevist faith claimed 
 them. 
 
 There was, however, a goodly number of them 
 who were men of vision, men with prophetic In- 
 stinct, who believed every word they said, who 
 were willing to suffer and die for their convic- 
 tions. These were the men who pierced my 
 armour most effectively, and made me unsteady 
 on my feet; we saw alike the injustice of the 
 present system. They saw a new and better world 
 possible through a new system; I saw no chance 
 but through better men. Time will prove which 
 of us was right.
 
 VI 
 
 THE OLD CABIN 
 
 IT is quite a long journey from the steerage 
 to the first cabin; it has taken me nearly 
 thirty years to reach it, and I am not at home 
 there ! It is not that I do not love cleanliness, and 
 cannot appreciate rich comforts. I managed to 
 enjoy my tea in the Tudor Hall and eat my meals 
 with two stewards attending to my wants. I even 
 ate a private dinner in a private dining-room, and 
 I took my constitutional daily on the glass-en- 
 closed deck; but always with a guilty conscience, 
 with a look toward the steerage and the memories 
 of its agonies. 
 
 I recall a journey on a palatial steamer of this 
 same line ; only it was not palatial in the steerage. 
 Three days and three nights a storm raged, and 
 we were locked in, breathing fetid air. We had 
 nothing to eat except the same fat meats and the 
 same soggy potatoes. 
 
 How longingly I looked toward the clean cabin, 
 and the sheltered decks ; how a glimpse of the gilt, 
 and tinsel, and the clear crystal made me tremble 
 with joy, and how a bite of delicate food, 
 crumbs from the rich man's table," purchased 
 
 51 
 
 «
 
 52 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 from a steward, revived me. At that time 
 ]\Iarxian philosophy had not filtered far through 
 the steerage, and though I knew its principles, I 
 made no demands for myself, neither was I en- 
 vious; but I realized, even then, how the great 
 contrasts in life are overemphasized on board 
 ship, how sharply the line is drawn, and how 
 merely having a hundred, or a thousand dollars 
 more to spend, makes the vast differences. 
 
 Then I was pushed about by the stewards, like 
 so much merchandise which was in the wrong 
 place; now I can order them about, though not so 
 freely as if I had finer clothes and were spending 
 my time in the smoking-room, drinking, and bet- 
 ting on the ship's run. 
 
 On the seven hundred feet of the ship's length, 
 not only the whole social problem revealed it- 
 self, but one's own helplessness. " To him that 
 hath shall be given," and evidently not according 
 to one's deeds. Probably those of us who were 
 receiving the most service gave the least. 
 
 There were titled women from England In bad 
 need of repair, like their half-ruined castles. 
 Maids and nurses travelled with them, and they 
 were the centre of constant attention. 
 
 Flabby Lord this, or Lord that, returning from 
 a hunting trip on some of the far-flung domains of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 Ruddy-faced, beefy Yorkshire men, who had 
 been inspecting Alaskan mines were returning to
 
 THE OLD CABIN 53 
 
 London, where they will sell lithographed papers 
 called by courtesy, stock. 
 
 At my table sat a nondescript cosmopolitan 
 mongrel, who talked of women as if they were 
 mere flesh, of men as something which it is good 
 to exploit at poker, and of the United States as 
 that " D — d place where they restrict a man's 
 personal liberty." 
 
 Then there were the ghastly women, enamelled 
 and animated clothes-racks, upon which some in- 
 dulgent husband has hung fearful and wonderful 
 garments and costly jewels. I may be unjust to 
 them ; perhaps they are getting according to their 
 deeds, but I know that frank, open-faced, boyish 
 looking Sir Ernest Shackelton, simple and unaf- 
 fected, as are the truly brave, was not receiv- 
 ing half as much attention as a pug-faced prize- 
 fighter, going back to England with American 
 money and a black eye of the same origin. 
 
 I noticed, especially, a group of German capital- 
 ists who had gone to the United States to look 
 after their interests. They kept to themselves, a 
 huddled, half-frightened group, certainly sick at 
 heart, as they recalled the short time ago, when, 
 for every great English ship launched in Glasgow, 
 twin ships were launched in Germany; the great 
 time when the various Kaisers and the Crown 
 Princes and Princesses raced the Cunarders and 
 the White Star boats across the Atlantic. 
 
 The Ltisitama is avenged, and its ghost haunted
 
 M OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 those Germans as we sat in the smoking-room, and 
 talked over the difference between EngHsh and 
 German Imperialism. I could not convince them 
 there was a difference in aim ; but they acquiesced, 
 though reluctantly, when I showed them that right 
 there on our boat there was a difference in 
 method. 
 
 The captain of the ship, the largest and fastest 
 English built ship, is a modest, gray-haired gentle- 
 man, whom nobody noticed as he crossed the deck, 
 and I had to be told that he was the captain. I 
 might have taken him to be an English business 
 man who happened to wear a dark blue suit, and 
 a sailor cap. 
 
 I have sailed on all the big German boats and 
 have watched their captains, with their chests ex- 
 panded in ratio with the ship's tonnage, their 
 voices harsher and more commanding as the num- 
 ber of smokestacks multiplied, and the sirens grew 
 louder. When they paced the deck it was with 
 martial tread, and when they smiled at one, it was 
 as by the Grace of His Majesty. Only the blind 
 could be ignorant that they were the captains, for 
 their gold braid rivalled the sunset. 
 
 Good discipline, like good children, should be 
 " seen and not heard." German discipline was 
 both seen and heard, in fact it shrieked so noisily 
 that it got onto the nerves of mankind. My 
 German companions who drank their English ale 
 very solemnly, agreed with me that Germany was
 
 THE OLD CABIN 56 
 
 at least more provocative in her method, and 
 therefore the more guilty. Germany lacked that 
 sense of respect for the individual which is char- 
 acteristic of Britons; for whatever else their 
 faults, they have a realization of the value of other 
 people's traditions, which makes them better ru- 
 lers of weaker peoples; something the Germans 
 seemed unable to learn. 
 
 One of the men who had not realized that Eng- 
 lish ale was stronger than German beer said: 
 " Veil, ve helt our noses so high up ze air, unt ve 
 fell into ze — ditch. Now ve vill get out of it, you 
 bet ve vill." Doubtless they will. 
 
 Of course, there were Americans on board in 
 goodly numbers, many of them of English blood, 
 but strikingly un-English. Keen-eyed captains of 
 industry, going over to scan the stormy horizon 
 of the industrial world — eager to export Ameri- 
 can goods, more eager to shut out foreign goods 
 from America; an impossible thing which a Re- 
 publican administration will try to make possible. 
 
 I like to look at such well-groomed men. If 
 their eyes are blue, they turn to gray when they 
 talk business, and I should hate to have to match 
 my wits against theirs in trading. There were 
 many buyers on board, bound for Paris, and a 
 sort of General Department Store air betrayed 
 their vocation. Numbers of them were floor- 
 walkers once, and one never overcomes the habit. 
 The males wore the last thing in men's clothing.
 
 56 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 and the females the least thing in women's, a mix- 
 ture of elegance and vulgarity. 
 
 There were smartly gowned, well-bred Ameri- 
 can women, who were helping to save France at 
 long range during the war, and were going over to 
 inhale the fragrance of their good deeds; there 
 were middle-aged couples going to Egypt for the 
 season, and there were not a few, who, judging 
 from their behaviour in the smoking-room, jour- 
 neyed across, for the sole purpose of slaking a 
 long thirst, undisturbed by a cruel amendment to 
 the Constitution. 
 
 Some men on board knew me, and I piloted 
 them over the steerage, where they watched my 
 mental fisticuffs in the Bolshevik arena. We dis- 
 cussed these things afterwards. Curious, that my 
 acquaintances who have large economic interests, 
 know nothing of economics. They have read 
 nothing but the stock reports, the sporting page; 
 they have gone to no plays except musical come- 
 dies, and they meet my arguments with such 
 phrases as: " We must break the power of organ- 
 ized labour." 
 
 The poor things do not know that If they break 
 the power of organized labour, they break the dam 
 which holds back the Bolsheviki. They laugh at 
 me because I tell them that they would do well to 
 make friends of organized labour; in fact, they 
 could afford to be friendly with the right wing of 
 the socialist party.
 
 THE OLD CABIN 57 
 
 " Line them up against a wall and shoot 
 them!" "Hang them!" These are the reme- 
 dies they propose for a sick world suffering from 
 vertigo. 
 
 Everything which they cannot understand is 
 dangerous, and they have no patience with me be- 
 cause I try to make them understand. 
 
 I like the Sunday on board an English ship, if 
 for no other reason than to hear the service read 
 by a ship's officer, in a layman's way and with a 
 layman's voice. The pulpit tone spoils it for me. 
 This Sunday, a young — very young — third, or 
 fourth officer read the service. He blushed so 
 beautifully, as with fear and trembling he as- 
 cended those Old Testament heights, and stum- 
 bled over them as he pronounced their names. 
 
 I listened to the great confession to which the 
 small congregation in the Tudor room assented, 
 what sinners they confessed themselves to be in 
 general. I wonder what they would say to a bill 
 of specifications? 
 
 I wonder, too, if the compilers of the Prayer 
 Book had no sense of humour; for as I heard the 
 prayers, I noticed that they took it for granted 
 that the Almighty can easily convert the heathen 
 and the Jews, and can bless all manner and condi- 
 tions of people without difficulty; but when they 
 wrote the prayer for the clergy, they realized the 
 Lord's problem. 
 
 " Oh Lord," they wrote, " Thou Who perform-
 
 68 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 est miracles, move the hearts of the Bishops and 
 the Clergy." 
 
 I smiled to myself, then I grew very serious. 
 They were after all, right. Converting the Clergy 
 may be the Lord's hardest task; and if they were 
 all converted as Paul was converted, as John was 
 converted, as Wesley and Finney were converted, 
 the rest of the task would be comparatively easy. 
 
 Six days we had been on board ship, so com- 
 fortable that we were unconscious of both ship 
 and sea, and much of that comfort was due to the 
 men who served; who did the hard and dirty and 
 dangerous things. 
 
 As I sat writing, the steward was walking about 
 attending to his duties. The last time I sailed, 
 his class was servile — beaten into servility. His 
 was an ill-paid task. He had to eat his meals 
 standing, and I have seen him asleep, leaning 
 against a pillar. 
 
 What marked my steward was his evident 
 self-respect. He did his work without cringing 
 and without debasement. He was not ordered 
 about as if he were a slave; he seemed to take 
 pleasure in seeing me comfortable, and he took as 
 much pride in making my bed as I am taking in 
 writing my book. 
 
 " There is the light at Land's End ! " he cried. 
 I dropped my pen and ran to see its welcome, 
 flashing over the deep.
 
 VII 
 
 THE COST OF " LA PATRIE " 
 
 N 
 
 ORMALCY " is a poorly-made but ex- 
 pressive word, and the shores of 
 France, rising out of the mist of a 
 raw, March day, have attained it. The eye 
 searches in vain for some dent, or bruise, or ugly 
 scar, left by the teeth of the war-dogs. 
 
 The great convulsion has affected the continent 
 of Europe about as much as a war between red 
 ants and white ants would affect the crust of 
 Africa. One moment's trembling of the bosom of 
 Mother Earth, one instant's swaying of the eternal 
 balances — " He uttereth His voice — the earth 
 melteth." 
 
 Verily, man is still like an ant, in spite of hav- 
 ing put fire to his anger, the fierce blast to his 
 fury, and poison-gas to his hate. He can never 
 equal God, except in his love, and in that he is 
 still not much larger than an ant. 
 
 The straight lines of the breakwater of Cher- 
 bourg, the fine harbour safely tucked behind it 
 and the welcome green of an early spring, made 
 one conscious that the boat had stopped ; just as a 
 sound sleeper wakens to the morning. 
 
 59
 
 60 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 The prophets who compared mankind to sheep 
 knew both sheep and men, and we crowded and 
 pushed though there were ample space and time, 
 and the boat was in no danger of sinking. 
 
 Never having had the need of a passport be- 
 fore, except in going to Russia, I now had my first 
 taste of the freedom for which milUons of men 
 gave their lives. I stood in line for two hours, 
 holding in my hands two precious pieces of paste- 
 board containing a description of myself (fur- 
 nished by a reluctant and homely lady clerk in a 
 United States Court), the signature of the Secre- 
 tary of State and my picture. (" Ten for a dollar 
 —finished while you wait.") "Oh Lord!" if I 
 really look like this, no wonder the French officer 
 scrutinized me suspiciously and carefully before 
 he permitted me to pass into beautiful France. 
 
 A thousand passengers for Paris, and we were 
 all seemingly loaded into the same fragile-looking 
 boat, our luggage thrown in through a chute, the 
 struggling mass of passengers entangling and dis- 
 entangling itself In the attempt to put themselves 
 and their belongings together, before we reached 
 the Custom House. Followed the hurried exami- 
 nation, came the race for the train, the same 
 leisurely journey to Paris and our arrival there at 
 the most inconvenient hour of three o'clock In the 
 morning. 
 
 The city looked like a great gray cat asleep, and 
 I loved to listen to her purrings. Gaunt, witch-
 
 THE COST OF "LA PATEIE " 61 
 
 like women appeared, before the sun, and began to 
 scratch the cat's back with long-handled brooms, 
 making her purr a little louder. Milkmen and 
 breadmen made their rounds, carts rumbled, mar- 
 ket-women scolded, keys rattled in locks, shutters 
 M'ere lifted, and the sleeping, gray cat awoke. 
 Then I noticed that she wasn't a cat at all but a 
 kitten — eternally the same young, kittenish kitten; 
 but she has the claws of an old cat. 
 
 Paris, the city of cities, looks, if anything, 
 younger, more brilliant and enchanting, more con- 
 sciously and proudly French. 
 
 France is swept clean of American uniforms, of 
 Red Cross nurses, of Y. M. C. A. secretaries in 
 khaki, of Y. W. C. A. workers, of all the dear and 
 good saviours of that country, with their signs and 
 symbols and badges, who came with willing hearts, 
 more or less skillful hands, and an overabundance 
 of zeal ; all anxious and over-anxious to make the 
 French people efficient. They are all but gone. 
 
 Paris was glad they came, and is more than 
 glad that they are gone. Now she is welcoming 
 those Americans who come without smelling of 
 disinfectants or the odour of sanctity — who do 
 not care to save anything or anybody, not even 
 themselves. 
 
 Lovely, leisurely Paris, is crazily busy in pur- 
 veying pleasure. As always, one crosses the 
 boulevards in safety, by the grace of God, and not 
 by the care of the traffic policeman. Guides haunt
 
 62 OLD TEAILS AlH) NEW BOEDEES 
 
 one with their desire to show off Paris by night. 
 Cook's and The American Express offices are 
 crowded by famihar, and not always pleasant, 
 types of Americans, and one cannot imagine that 
 a little while ago the city's walls vibrated to the 
 shock of bombs and shells, that anxious eyes 
 watched the sky for the " terror which flieth by 
 night " — and day ; that here was the aching heart 
 of a nation, feeling the beat of the ebb and flow of 
 battle. 
 
 I wondered what would have happened in a 
 city less moulded by national spirit, less immune 
 to the pain of war through previous experience? 
 
 What would have happened, say, in New York, 
 if that city had been within the range of big guns 
 for months? If the shadow of enemy fliers had 
 been cast over Fifth Avenue for years? I imagine 
 that New York would have stood the test as Paris 
 has, and one must remember, too, that Paris had 
 nearly the whole world to comfort her and to 
 feed her, and more than half the world ready to 
 defend her. 
 
 There were but few homes in the United States 
 from which sustenance in one form or another 
 did not reach France. Milk for the babies, meat 
 for the soldiers, clothing for the refugees. We 
 ate impossible mixtures of flour substitutes that 
 France might have wheat for her bread; we sang 
 the " Marseillaise " better than we sang the Star 
 Spangled Banner; men prayed for France, and
 
 THE COST OF <* LA PATEIE " 63 
 
 fought for France, and threw themselves into the 
 conlhct for love of the great enchantress. 
 
 Without blare of trumpets, unnoticed and un- 
 announced, came the Quakers from England — and 
 from America, when America entered the war. 
 Unarmed men and women in gray, good Samari- 
 tans, ready to do clean work, dirty work, safe 
 work, or dangerous work ; everything but kill men. 
 
 They transported women and children to zones 
 of safety; gave them beds for the night; fed them 
 when food was scarce and dear; stood at the cross- 
 roads to direct the solid streams of fleeing hu- 
 manity ; unloaded the wounded as they came from 
 the field of battle, and gave first aid to the Red 
 Cross, when that organization had more than it 
 could do. 
 
 The Quakers have built houses at Troyes, at 
 Dole, at Desancin, and over the ruins of Verdun. 
 Carloads and trainloads of houses were built as if 
 by magic, overnight, at a time when a whole roof 
 meant home and peace again. 
 
 There is not a name made illustrious by heroic 
 fighting, to which the Quakers did not add lustre 
 by their heroic service. They reaped grain near 
 the battlefields of the Marne, and when the air 
 was still vibrant with the hum of flying machines, 
 their threshing machines beat out the grain for 
 much-needed bread. They restocked farms with 
 bees, with cattle, and with poultry. No work was 
 too great or too small for them to undertake.
 
 64 OLD .TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 I visited the Quaker Headquarters in the Hotel 
 Brittanique, on the Avenue Victoria, which, is 
 quiet and very respectable, as behooves an Avenue 
 named after the British Queen. The hotel is 
 modest enough and would be called second-rate 
 in time of peace. It is not to be compared with 
 the palatial headquarters of other relief organiza- 
 tions. From there the emissaries of good-will and 
 practical helpfulness went to all parts of the war 
 zone. They are called by the French " L'Amis" 
 
 The Friends were gathering for their " first 
 day " meeting. 
 
 Most of them were from England, as evidenced 
 by their heavy boots, solemn demeanour, unemo- 
 tional features, and unmistakable English voices. 
 A few of them were French, not proselytes of 
 war-time; for the Friends have made no propa- 
 ganda and asked neither souls nor statistics as a 
 reward for their labour. The French men and 
 women at the meeting had for a long time waited 
 for the inner voice and the leading of God, and 
 had discovered in the Quakers, kindred spirits. 
 
 The room in which they met was simple and 
 homely; an office, library, sitting-room and meet- 
 ing-place combined. The meeting began with rig- 
 orous silence. They were waiting for God to 
 speak through them. 
 
 The eye of the uninitiated wandered from face 
 lo face, heavy- featured most of them, showing
 
 THE COST OF "LA PATEIE" 65 
 
 both struggle and victory. Careless of modes 
 tliey were — tlie hats of the women unspeakably 
 out of mode with up-to-the-minute Paris, the 
 skirts shockingly low, and tlie waists high, re- 
 versing the world order. 
 
 Ten, fifteen minutes passed; the inner voice was 
 still unmoved by the spirit, and the onlooker be- 
 came restless. At the more formal meetings to 
 which he is accustomed, the minister would have 
 been a third of the way through the order of serv- 
 ice. At last a voice was heard: low, sweet, me- 
 lodious. A man began to speak in French. 
 
 If Jesus could have had His choice in speaking 
 a modem tongue, He would have spoken in that 
 language — not a harsh note in it. The Sermon 
 en the Mount ought always to be read in French. 
 That man echoed its spirit, and for a moment it 
 seemed as if the voice were coming from a far- 
 away source. It was not preaching, it was re- 
 vealing, and though my understanding of French 
 is poor, I was carried along upon the stream of 
 peace which was poured out of the heart of the 
 man. Only the voice of God within him could 
 make a Frenchman, at this time, speak as he spoke. 
 
 " The whole world is confused and stricken 
 with paralysis and it needs guidance and healing. 
 Guidance toward peace, and healing from hate," 
 he said. " The nations have been drunk with 
 power and blinded by greed; they deserved the 
 punishment meted out to them, and now their only
 
 €6 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 Salvation is to turn to God. In the Catholic cathe- 
 drals, in the formal Protestant churches, in the 
 Jewish synagogues men need to turn to God; for 
 God is everywhere, even as He is here." 
 
 There was another long silence, then a deep, 
 rich, heavy almost masculine voice was heard. An 
 English woman was speaking in her own tongue, 
 and she, too, spoke as the spirit moved her. 
 
 " The Apostle Paul did not know, when he gave 
 the formula of unity, * One Lord, One faith, One 
 baptism,' that the whole of Christendom would be 
 divided into countless sects," she declared, " that 
 church members of diverse creeds would hate one 
 another. He did not know, that after two thou- 
 sand years, these breaches would remain unhealed, 
 that new ones would arise, that nations would 
 commit suicide because of mutual hate, that races 
 and classes would cleave society into hundreds of 
 fragments." 
 
 She pled for mutual understanding, forbear- 
 ance and patience. It was hers to gather the 
 scattered, abandoned children of many race mix- 
 tures, branded by the curse of war; mothers re- 
 pudiating them, because maternity had been 
 thrust upon them ; but in all of them she had found 
 the common need of — and the common response 
 to — love. 
 
 " Some day It is all coming true," she W'ent on. 
 " We do not as yet understand the law w^hlch un- 
 derlies the movements of the human race, the
 
 THE COST OF ''LA PATEIE" 67 
 
 pressure of history; even as we do not understand 
 the law of gravitation. We seem farthest from 
 unity now, we may be nearer than we think." 
 
 Then a woman, her face framed in widow's 
 weeds, bowed her head and prayed. Her husband 
 had been killed at Verdun, and such a prayer as 
 hers must not be reported. 
 
 The Quakers' confidence and peace are the re- 
 sult of their work in France when France was 
 bleeding, and now, when the wound is healing. 
 
 I did not want to visit the war-zone, yet I had 
 to pass through it. The Gare du Nord is normal, 
 soldiers still crowd the cars; the blue-gray of their 
 uniforms is now spick and span, and their young 
 faces have lost their anxiety. 
 
 The environs of Paris had remained un- 
 scathed, the young spring had budded the trees, 
 there were timid blossoms. Here and there, men 
 and women were breaking the expectant earth. 
 New roofs and walls, the scars of war, increased 
 in frequency, then suddenly we saw a desolated 
 village. Black, broken, empty walls, church tow- 
 ers like decayed teeth in the shrunken gums of the 
 aged. Then a town in ruins, a chateau devastated, 
 a name to thrill one — Chateau Thierry! 
 
 The edge of the German push, at which the 
 Yankees stood, and the miracle of the Stars and 
 Stripes was performed. Something gripped my 
 throat, my cheek felt the scalding tears, and the 
 cloud of war hung over me again. Other names
 
 68 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 we passed, which three years ago were not merely 
 railroad stations, but marked the recession or the 
 advance of civilization. Then the immortal 
 Mame, and I was in Chalons. 
 
 The driver of the cab did not understand my 
 French; but "L'Amis" caught fire in his slow 
 brain, and he began to drive me through the long, 
 ugly streets of his provincial city, over the rough, 
 cobblestone pavement — then through an unfin- 
 ished arch. He told me that it was built in honour 
 of Marie Antoinette when she came from Austria 
 to marry a French king, and through it she passed 
 again in her unsuccessful flight. 
 
 " You drove her, of course," I said — congratu- 
 lating myself on my wit. 
 
 " Oh, Monsieur," he replied, looking at me re- 
 proachfully; "every devil of an American has 
 tried the same joke on me." 
 
 At the northern edge of the city, behind the 
 grim walls of the poorhouse, I heard the voices 
 of children, pathetic voices, crying mostly. Out 
 there they were wrapped in gray blankets, catch- 
 ing the sunshine which makes their pale, pinched 
 faces ghost-like. There were nurses in Quaker 
 gray. One of them, an English girl, took my 
 card. I was expected, and the directress. Made- 
 moiselle Merle, would be down in a minute, she 
 said. 
 
 In those few, drear rooms, the great work of 
 saving the children of that region is being doBC
 
 THE COST OF "LA PATEIE " 69 
 
 Through the window I saw a famiUar sight — 
 clapboard houses, built " a I'Americaine " by the 
 Quakers. They withstood the bombardment, 
 while the heavier walls and roofs succumbed. 
 
 Mademoiselle Merle came. She has a finely- 
 cut, French face. Huguenot, staunch. It might be 
 austere, were it not for the love and light within. 
 She told her story, simply and with dramatic di- 
 rectness. The numerous evacuations, the nights 
 in the champagne cellars (not cabarets for drink- 
 ing, but cellars where wine was stored, not con- 
 sumed). The harvest of homeless, parentless, 
 abandoned children, the coming of expectant 
 mothers, the difficulties of organizing the work, 
 the final triumph. Catholics, Protestants and Jews 
 forming a committee, and best of all, the building 
 of a modern maternity hospital, the first of its 
 kind in France, founded and endowed by English 
 and American Quakers. 
 
 I wanted to see the children, and much as I love 
 children I wish I had not seen them. Abandoned 
 children, many of them forced into life by the 
 brutality of war. No pretence even, of love, all 
 anguish, pain and hate, and they show it. 
 
 One picture is enough: A small bundle of hu- 
 manity, a broad Mongolian skull, black, coarse 
 hair, straight French eyes with a trace of the 
 Mongolian fold on the eyelid. The mother is a 
 sixteen-year-old girl, forced by two Amiamese 
 soldiers.
 
 70 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOKDERS 
 
 Children are nursed back to health; there are 
 some with rickets, others are imbeciles, and worse, 
 some are poisoned by syphilis. Why are they per- 
 mitted to live ? 
 
 Up-stairs is the maternity ward. If this is the 
 best in France, what must be the worst? Bed 
 upon bed, and the cradles touching each other. 
 Mothers are compelled to nurse their babies, so 
 that they may learn to love them. After two 
 weeks some of them do. Others gladly abandon 
 them to the Ponponiere. The state needs popula- 
 tion, especially boys, and it asks but few questions 
 as to the wherefore or the why. 
 
 My tour of inspection was followed by tea — 
 English tea; and there were English, American 
 and French nurses. So this institution is to re- 
 main one of true internationalism, perpetuated by 
 the love of humanity. 
 
 When I returned to Paris I did what I have so 
 often done in New York. I walked the length 
 and breadth of the city; through forbiddingly 
 monotonous streets, along straight avenues, and 
 circled its system of boulevards. I envied Paris 
 its unity, though I found it monotonously gray, 
 and the walk toilsome. There are no Ghettos, 
 little Italics, Hungaries or Chinatowns to stumble 
 into. The poverty, filth, and vice, are all of one 
 brand, and not International. But let no Ameri- 
 can think that because Paris is French, Paris is 
 safe from social and political upheavals. The
 
 THE COST OF "LA PATRIE' 71 
 
 cleavage between rich and poor is great enough; 
 but there is more open discontent, the radicals are 
 not in hiding, and they are more vocal than in the 
 United States. They are represented in parlia- 
 ment, they have an elite leadership, and an output 
 of a high type of revolutionary literature. 
 
 That very day there was a rumour of mutiny 
 in a regiment destined for the occupation of 
 Germany, and it marched under guard to the rail- 
 road station; but beside the tri-colour floated the 
 red flag. 
 
 Victory has left the reactionary, military party 
 in control; but had France been defeated, and had 
 Russia been victorious, Bolshevism would have 
 raged in Paris rather than in Moscow. Though 
 Paris is at least ninety-nine per cent, pure French, 
 the present order will remain undisturbed, only, as 
 long as the suffering among the working men is 
 at the minimum. 
 
 However, it is true that nationalism in France 
 is in no immediate danger of being swallowed by 
 internationalism, or capitalism by Bolshevism. 
 ** France " is not a label pasted onto a country, it 
 is woven into the fabric of the nation's life. I 
 felt this keenly as I approached the Arc de 
 Triomph, the meeting point of Avenues and vistas 
 of history. There the love and loyalty of the na- 
 tion, and its still great grief are poignantly felt. 
 Overshadowed bv gray stones, eloquent with the 
 names of heroes — names which make French his-
 
 72 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 tory — lies an unknown soldier. The French have 
 done wisely not to bury him m a cathedral, as did 
 the English, or in a National Cemetery as has been 
 done by Americans; but right out there in the 
 open, at the meeting point of hurrying feet. It 
 is the most simple, at the same time the most dra- 
 matic war memorial in existence. 
 
 " Ici repose un soldat Francais mort pour 
 La Patrie — 1914-1^18 " 
 
 Every foot is arrested, every head is bowed, 
 there is a quivering of lips, a shedding of tears. 
 Children are lifted above the crowd to have a 
 look, young boys grow solemn, young girls weep, 
 and one feels like comforting the women in 
 mourning, who, dry-eyed, gaze at the stone. They 
 are the numberless mothers and widows, whose 
 loved ones are among the missing, and they have 
 wept until they can weep no more. 
 
 Millions of French women have suffered, mil- 
 lions of young men have died, and in some way 
 this grave of an unknown soldier visualizes for 
 an instant the preciousness of France to the 
 French, and the cost of " ha Patrie."
 
 VIII 
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS 
 
 C>( ERMANY, 1914. German ships, German 
 -w- songs, German music, German science, 
 ■^ the German army and the Kaiser. 
 
 Germany, 1931? Gray skies, the peaks of the 
 Bavarian Alps playing hide and seek in the clouds, 
 mist rising from Lake Constance, gray skies — 
 clouds — mists. It was a defeated and humiliated 
 Germany that I found in 1921. I saw it in the 
 listless crowd gathered at the boat-landing, I no- 
 ticed it in the officials who examined my passport 
 and my baggage. The two pellets of saccharin 
 which came with my coffee proclaimed it, and the 
 stack of paper marks given me in exchange for 
 my Swiss, silver coin, told the story. 
 
 The waiter's suit blended with the prevailing 
 gray, and the second-class railroad coach which 
 took me on my journey had a humble and de- 
 graded look and seemed a few classes below its 
 original station. My fellow passengers hugged 
 the corner seats and gave curt answers to my per- 
 sistent questions. 
 
 Bavaria, the most smiling of the German states 
 
 73
 
 74 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 with its rich plains, picturesque villages, clean 
 cities and lofty mountains; with its tingling Celtic 
 blood unrepressed by the sedate Teutonic blend — 
 even Bavaria looked somber in spite of the con- 
 quering sunshine. It was gloomy and silent, 
 though it was Sunday, when ordinarily beer and 
 song, and fun and fights enlivened the day of rest. 
 
 So this was after-war Germany! Intact, 
 scarcely a brick out of place; yet Northern France, 
 through which I passed a few days before, with 
 the skeletons of villages, towns and cities rattling 
 their bones at me, and the ghosts of houses and 
 churches pursuing me, is less damaged in spirit, 
 where the damage waits longest for repair. 
 
 There is Munich. If one knew Germany in the 
 old days one loved Munich, the friendliest of her 
 cities and, in many respects, the most beautiful; 
 a benign sort of beauty, unspoiled except in spots 
 by impossible Germanias and other Hohenzollern 
 glorifications in bronze and stone. But there were 
 the quiet, solemn, picture galleries which exalted 
 nothing but art; the Fraiien Kirchc, with its twin 
 towers like huge, cowled monks, casting long 
 shadows ; the unrivalled opera, the annual cycle of 
 Wagner, the splendid art stores, where if one 
 lingered, one was lost, to the tune of a good many 
 hundreds of marks. 
 
 Every one remembers the banter and laughter 
 in the Hofbrau with its smoky rafters, its thou- 
 sands of guests, its modest revellers happier over
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS 75 
 
 their steins and sausage and pretzels, than Lucul- 
 lus ever was. It is all there, unharmed by bullets 
 or the Volstead act — but as different from what 
 ii once was as a sick man is from one who is well, 
 or as a psychopathic ward in a hospital is different 
 from a kindergarten. 
 
 Fat-bellied men, rosy-cheeked women and chil- 
 dren, the noisy throng of students, Cook's tourists 
 making their weary rounds through the art gal- 
 leries; throngs crowding around the displays in 
 the art stores, the martial beat upon the pavement 
 made by marching soldiers; gossiping women in 
 the doorways, tipsy beer consumers singing folk- 
 songs — are no more. Munich is ashen gray, the 
 street traffic is negligible and the public buildings 
 neglected. No picturesque soldiers are on guard, 
 and the nights are silent and long. The steins are 
 only half full and " the mourners go about the 
 streets." Munich is sick, physically depleted and 
 mentally deranged — and no wonder! It went 
 through the war, a terrible revolution, a counter 
 revolution, and famine. It has to drink beer with- 
 out " influence " and it daily sees women, children 
 and university students fed by the bounty of a 
 triumphant enemy; it feels the relentless grip of 
 the Allies ; it swung from the extreme left of Bol- 
 shevism to the extreme right of Monarchism, 
 where it now is, digging in — waiting 
 
 Any one who knows Munich knows the hotel, 
 " Zu den Vicr Jahrcs Zeitcn" a modest place,
 
 76 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 famed for its quiet, and the respectability of its 
 guests, a reputation I had no intention of injur- 
 ing; yet my room was visited one night by two 
 patrols of police: one concerned with my morals, 
 the other with my passport. 
 
 I shall long remember the afternoon spent at 
 the police station; the crowded room, full of 
 strangers seeking to obtain permission to stay be- 
 yond the twenty-four hour limit, permission which 
 was quickly granted me when my turn came, and 
 my Quaker connections were discovered ; even the 
 usual fee being remitted. 
 
 I visited the sanctum of the Muenchner Neiiste 
 Nachrichten, in pre-war days the most liberal 
 newspaper in Bavaria. The building is an archi- 
 tectural gem, in perfect harmony with the near-by 
 Rathhaiis. In an interview with the editor-in- 
 chief I realized how badly demoralized are the 
 German mind and heart and vision. He talked 
 wildly about the past— the dead Irredeemable 
 past. The future he saw gray, tinged by stormy 
 red; for in Munich, Bolshevism is more than a 
 spectre. I spent three hours trying to calm the 
 man, only to find that he is a sick man. His 
 malady is a sort of sleeping sickness, which stupe- 
 fies if it does not kill, and it is a prevailing malady 
 among Germany's leading men. 
 
 He Introduced me to the editor of their foreign 
 news, a former admiral of the German Fleet. He 
 knew as much about conditions abroad as one
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS 77 
 
 might expect from an admiral who has sailed the 
 oceans in an iron-clad tub, and knows foreign 
 countries only from their harbours. He was nat- 
 urally stupid, and may the Lord have mercy on 
 the readers of the Neuste Nachrichtcn, whose for- 
 eign news is edited by such a man. 
 
 His hopes for the future good relationship be- 
 tween Germany and the United States were 
 based upon the German- American Alliance; for 
 he does not know that this Beer Camarilla has as 
 much political influence as Bevo has alcoholic 
 content. 
 
 I met not only the most insane but also the 
 sanest Bavarians, and chief among them. Prof. 
 Frederick W. Foerster, of the University of Mu- 
 nich, now at Luzerne. I spent two hours, quiet 
 inspiring hours, with him. He was the one great 
 man in Germany who condemned the invasion of 
 Belgium and the sinking of the Litsitania. 
 
 As nearly all the people I met gave me the im- 
 pression of confused, guilty men, trying to justify 
 themselves, so I received from him the impression 
 of a man of absolute probity. He reminds one of 
 Tolstoy, though he is gentler, and his blue eyes 
 are kindlier; but he puts the same insistence upon 
 salvation through the words of Jesus, upon the 
 condemnation of war, and of patriotism as the su- 
 preme virtue, and of brutal exploitation of the 
 poor. He is convinced of the guilt of Germany, 
 and believes in her redemption through suffering.
 
 78 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 His hold upon the masses is remarkable, and to 
 that he owes the fact that he could preach and 
 teach his doctrines during the war. He delivered 
 his lectures, protected by his students, while his 
 lecture room was being stormed by " blind pa- 
 triots." The reaction at the present time, how- 
 ever, made his work so difficult that he thought 
 it wisest to retire to Switzerland, where he is writ- 
 ing, and waiting in the quietness and confidence 
 of those " whose trust is in the Lord." 
 
 I have met sane women in Munich, women who 
 show and confess the impress of Jane Addams. 
 They see the salvation of Germany in confession 
 and cleansing, and struggle politically for a de- 
 mocracy which is both safe and efficient. They 
 are a growing minority, and are the hope of their 
 country. 
 
 If you know Munich, the Koenig's Plat::; is fa- 
 miliar to you, with the King's Palace facing it ; a 
 quiet, homely, old-fashioned sort of place, at 
 which you looked with some awe. A company of 
 soldiers used to guard it and you pitied the two 
 who constantly walked up and down by the huge 
 gateway. For hundreds of years Bavarian sol- 
 diers have trod those stones, and have worn deep 
 grooves into them. The grooves are still there, 
 but the guards are gone, and I entered the King's 
 palace without knocking, for it has been given 
 over to the Quakers. Verily, "The meek shall 
 inherit the earth."
 
 THE SHADOW OP THE HILLS 79 
 
 An American Quaker sits before a gold-and- 
 ivory desk, directing tlie feeding of Bavaria's un- 
 dernourished children. Seeing this act of mercy 
 gave me my first thrill. A Bavarian girl, the 
 daughter of a former university professor, was 
 my guide — a charming girl, who told me of the 
 privations during those dreary two winters, when 
 the diet was beets, and not much else. 
 
 We went to inspect the kitchens, and I noticed 
 that it took nearly a plateful of beans to convince 
 her that they were well cooked, and a whole cup 
 of cocoa to judge if it was properly sweetened. 
 A four-years' hunger is not easily appeased. 
 
 Those four years of hunger were desperately 
 hard on the aged, and many of them died of star- 
 vation. They were harder on the middle-aged 
 who survive in a sort of sleepy, inanimate way; 
 but they were hardest on the children. I shall 
 never forget my first sight of these infant war 
 cripples, these war veterans of the cradles, with 
 their crooked legs and sunken eyes; their large 
 heads and narrow chests. I have seen hundreds 
 and thousands of them since, worse even than 
 those — a hospital full of them, yes literally " the 
 woods are full " of ricketty and tubercular chil- 
 dren. 
 
 One grows used to even such terrible sights ; but 
 when I saw them for the first time in Munich, I 
 swore an unholy oath, I felt like running up and 
 down the streets, damning war and calling upon
 
 80 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 the fools of scientists to come and see how war 
 " improves the race." 
 
 Some day — the Day of Judgment I am sure — 
 these milHons of crippled and underfed children 
 will be God's witnesses against the war-makers. 
 
 It was one of the saddest days of my life, and 
 when, after seeing all this human wreckage, I 
 stepped into the street car, I was raging. Then 
 some one called my name, and I looked into the 
 smiling, beautiful face of Marie Mayer (now Mrs. 
 Lothar Becker), the Magdalene of the last Pas- 
 sion Play of Oberammergau. She is now an 
 American, a burningly enthusiastic American, 
 and her sublime faith and courage saved the rest 
 of the day for me. 
 
 We talked about Chicago where she lives, and 
 which she loves, and one must be a thorough 
 American, indeed, to love Chicago. We talked 
 about the years of the war, how hard they were 
 for those of us whose vision and hope were 
 blighted; and of these dreadful days of so-called 
 peace. 
 
 I felt that after all, the Oberammergau Passion 
 Play was more than a theatrical performance ; for 
 Marie Mayer had really sat at the Saviour's feet, 
 and had carried Into her life, which was often hard 
 and tragic, a devout, strong and courageous faith. 
 
 She has brought America and the Kingdom of 
 God close together for me, and every day, as for 
 three months I watched the feeding of children
 
 THE SHADOW OP THE HILLS 81 
 
 through Central Europe, I thanked God for 
 America and praised Him for the chance He gave 
 us, to heal what the war had hurt so cruelly. 
 
 The immediate future of Bavaria is dark; she 
 is full of fear, and her little children are being 
 poisoned by the prevailing mental disease. The 
 bright spots are few: chiefly a small group of 
 honest, intelligent men under the leadership of 
 Foerster, a larger number of liberal-minded 
 women, training themselves for the task of guid- 
 ing others, and in no small degree the fact that 
 calm, sweet-spirited Quakers are feeding the 
 starving children, and are heaping " coals of fire " 
 or rather hot cocoa — and beans, upon the heads of 
 our enemies. 
 
 As Professor Becker, the head of the Student 
 Social Service Department, told me: " The one 
 bright spot in our dark times is the work and the 
 spirit of the Quakers. They came and gave food 
 and themselves; they asked no questions and ped- 
 dled no opinions. 
 
 " I am a convinced Roman Catholic, and I will 
 die one, but I am conquered by the Quaker spirit, 
 and I am not the only one ! " 
 
 We walked together through the old picturesque 
 part of Munich and talked ; we were both in spir- 
 itual agony. Then we saw from afar the outlines 
 of the mountains, and he said: " I will lift up mine 
 eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." 
 
 And I said " Amen."
 
 IX 
 
 THE GRAY DAWN 
 
 GERMANY is like a starched collar on the 
 neck of a perspiring man. The shape is 
 there, though much shrunken at the 
 edges: Alsace-Lorraine, Posnania, a part of East- 
 ern Prussia and a good part of Northern Germany- 
 are gone — the rest has the starch soaked out of it. 
 
 The conductors, the brakemen, the waiters; 
 even the muddy coffee and wrinkled sausages 
 served at the station without the customary rolls, 
 all testify that the old system is dead. 
 
 The people are ruling — " government of the 
 people, by the people," in the people's confused 
 way. I realized it as I travelled through Bavaria 
 into Saxony, and through Prussia into Berlin. 
 There were harassing delays on account of com- 
 munistic plots, derailed trains lay beside the track, 
 and the city of Halle, a large industrial centre, 
 was in a state of siege. Something like a civil 
 war prevailed; now under cover, now breaking 
 into flame. They call it a '' putch," and Germany 
 is in the " putch." 
 
 The old system is dead, and the new system is 
 not working smoothly; perhaps never will. The 
 
 82
 
 THE GRAY DAWN 83 
 
 old system had the support of nearly the whole 
 of Germany, with but small opposition. The new 
 system has but little support and large opposition. 
 At every unusual stoppage of the government ma- 
 chinery, one hears some one exulting, some one 
 sighing for the good old times, some one invoking 
 the old Gott, the old system and the Hohenzol- 
 lerns. 
 
 It was a great system which held seventy mil- 
 lions of people as in a vise, but comfortable and 
 proud, like a big family all crowded into one pew 
 on a hot, summer Sunday. There were fine 
 clothes, bright clothes, mostly uniforms; every one 
 keeping step. "Left, Right! Left, Right!" 
 Every man in his place, and all eyes fixed on the 
 Kaiser. 
 
 The poet, the preacher, the banker, the ship- 
 builder, the peasant and the cobbler, looked up to 
 him, for he was the head of the system, and noth- 
 ing could go wrong with that. 
 
 The new system knocked at the door of the 
 proud building long ago, and Bismarck said: 
 " Come in," just in the same friendly way that a 
 lion admits a lamb into his system. Everything 
 was grist to Bismarck's mill, and he ground up the 
 new social system into fine meal, and fed it to the 
 old system, and it grew very sleek and fat on the 
 Bismarckian diet. 
 
 The old Emperor grew more benign under it 
 and Prussia and the Prussians more prosperous
 
 84 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 and arrogant, and the young Crown Prince waited 
 impatiently for his turn at the head of the system. 
 
 "A young, Hvely, sparkHng youth, hard to con- 
 trol," his teacher, Hinzpeter, confesses, 'and the 
 military Camarilla, which knew that it was only a 
 question of time when he would be Emperor, sur- 
 rounded him, flattered him, and taught him how to 
 sow his wild oats military fashion ; how to break 
 champagne glasses against mirrors, against crystal 
 chandeliers, and against fluttering little hearts of 
 flattered barmaids and ballet dancers. He mar- 
 ried a sedate Princess, who was content to preside 
 over the three K's, " Kirche, Kiieche, und Kinder/' 
 The fourth K, her Kronprinz soon to be the 
 Kaiser, no one could control. 
 
 " When I am Emperor," he said to the Cam- 
 arilla, "the world will know that a genius is ruling, 
 and Germany shall be great with the greatness of 
 ancient empires. 
 
 " I shall rule in politics, commerce, music and 
 art. But first I must get rid of this old, gray 
 watch-dog, Bismarck, who thinks he is the 
 Emperor," 
 
 Wilhelm had not long to wait for the realization 
 of his dreams. He became Emperor at thirty, a 
 youthful ruler, " to whom the world," says a 
 German author, " was like a merry-go-round, and 
 he in the centre, making it go." The diseased ego 
 in him was always eager to show off, always 
 studying new effects, never happy unless he was
 
 THE GRAY DAWN 85 
 
 the chief topic of conversation in the beer-halls, 
 churches, universities, everywhere. Bismarck 
 said he was " a man who wanted to celebrate a 
 birthday every day." 
 
 Gray-headed generals began bowing and scrap- 
 ing, and kissing his hand, and he showered them 
 with decorations atid titles. Like a Jove from 
 the clouds, he made speeches, declaring his people 
 subjects, and himself the supreme ruler, account- 
 able to no one but to God. That was true; for 
 Bismarck, who had built the system with " blood 
 and iron" (rivers of blood and mountains of 
 iron), and made his grandfather (who had the 
 genius of a corporal) Emperor of Germany — 
 Bismarck had been hurled from his pedestal, and 
 the thud of his fall echoed through the world. 
 
 Wilhelm's Gott remained invisible, and because 
 he could not pin decorations on the coat of the 
 Almighty he built Him churches, and graciously 
 made Jehovah's quarrel with the Amalekites his 
 own — the Amalekites being the Chinese who op- 
 posed Germanic Israel which came with trade, 
 Kultur and religion. As Moses held high his 
 hands until Amalek was beaten, so the Kaiser 
 would pray till the German soldiers should return 
 from Asia — victorious. 
 
 No doubt he prayed — fourteen years later he 
 also prayed. He prayed all through the war; but 
 God remained invisible and silent, and Germany 
 was beaten into the dust.
 
 86 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 " I did not want the war," he said, and most 
 people believe he was sincere. " For that," says 
 the German writer already quoted, " he was too 
 weak. He had no iron will, no energy for such a 
 deed; his power lay in his talking. He was 
 crushed by the shadows of Hindenburg and Lu- 
 dendorf, of Von Tirpitz and the Junkers. 
 
 " Now when it was a question of action, not of 
 speech, when he might have been the great leader 
 of his people which he always pretended he was, 
 he proved to be a small, helpless man — a comedian 
 whose make-up melted in the light of the glaring 
 sun." 
 
 On the ninth of November, 1918, the old sys- 
 tem crumbled. The new system was already at 
 work in Berlin. A telephone bell in the palace 
 rang. "Has his Majesty not abdicated yet?" 
 " No." 
 
 " Very well, then we will do it for him." 
 
 At five o'clock the next morning the ex-Em- 
 peror, with his diminished entourage, made his last 
 journey through Germany toward the Dutch bor- 
 der. There were no flags and no garlands; no 
 huzzas were heard, no national anthems were sung 
 and no one strewed flowers in his path. In the 
 dark and in the fog, he ran away, like a deserter. 
 
 Under the old system when I arrived at the An- 
 halter Bahnhof, there stood a helmeted and white- 
 gloved policeman, who handed me a brass check 
 which established my place in the line of patient
 
 THE GEAY DAWN 87 
 
 travellers, waiting for a cab. The cab was clean, 
 the high hat of the driver was of patent leather 
 and shining, the Lcipciger Strasse through which 
 we drove was brilliantly illumined, and electric 
 signs performed their gymnastics and advertised 
 cham.pagne and other luxuries. This time there 
 was no crowd, no policeman ; the cab and the horse 
 looked battered and weather-worn; cabby's hat 
 had lost its lustre, quite as much as the L,eipziger 
 Strasse and the Hohenzollerns. 
 
 " Untcr den Linden " looks shabby now. (Per- 
 haps I am comparing it with Fifth Avenue, and 
 not with its own glorious past.) All its architec- 
 tural monstrosities seem doubly discordant; the 
 Dom Kirche looks like a wedding cake at a fu- 
 neral; the series of statues on the bridge leading 
 to the Schloss, and representing the making of a 
 warrior, are in the poorest taste, and the big 
 Kaiser Wilhehn Denkmal is a German atrocity. 
 With Kaiser Wilhelm II on the throne, these 
 things harmonized; they now offend the eye. 
 They were a part of him, they emanated from 
 him. 
 
 I visited the New University Library. My 
 companion, a disillusioned professor, pointed to 
 the baroque curves and heavy-limbed gods, the 
 gilded crowns and the spreading initials of Wil- 
 helm guarding its portals, and he said: "This is 
 what deceived us. We thought we were some- 
 bodv, and we discovered that we were nobody."
 
 88 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 The Priedrich Strasse, which was never a road 
 to Paradise, has become a sewer in Sodom. 
 Around the Bahnhof is a clustering Coney Island. 
 One sees open gambling, an unashamed woman- 
 market, foul pictures and fouler print offered for 
 sale; the pellets of saccharin which are served in 
 the coffee houses cannot sweeten the cup of worm- 
 wood which the Berlinese is asked to drink, and 
 the liqueurs served in grotesque cabarets are as 
 deadening myrrh. 
 
 The market-halls have been turned into soup 
 kitchens where the children of the half-starved 
 poor, the university students, expectant mothers, 
 aind new-born infants are kept alive, being fed 
 with Quaker food, by the grace of the American 
 people. Berlin is vocal from the crunching of 
 stale Brotchen. At the University, the Philhar- 
 monic, the opera, the church and the banks, bitter 
 war-bread is being eaten " in season and out of 
 season," and the nouveau riche eat the delicacies, 
 drink expensive wines, and occupy the choice seats 
 at concerts and theatres. 
 
 The red flag makes a lurid background to the in- 
 sistent black and white of the Prussian. Com- 
 munistic literature is peddled openly, poverty, once 
 restrained and decent, has become insistent. War 
 cripples sit on the sidewalks exposing their 
 maimed limbs, and gassed soldiers writhe and 
 twitch to arouse pity, and lure from the passers-by 
 the depreciated mark.
 
 THE GEAY DAWN 89 
 
 Under the old system, the mighty were unap- 
 proachable; they barked their commands at their 
 underlings, and those who wore no uniform were 
 anathema; now, Samson has been shorn of his 
 locks, and he says: " Bitte " and " Danke schoen " 
 and is straining his weakened muscles against the 
 pillars of the young republic. The civil servants, 
 once the pride of Germany, are struggling be- 
 tween ingrained honesty and the falling value of 
 the mark, and they yield to temptation; for they 
 are human. 
 
 Politics is putting its greedy fingers on char- 
 itable institutions, on the schools and on business; 
 parties are splitting into new factions, the Allies 
 are moving their soldiers beyond the Rhine, and 
 the German " will to power " is paralyzed. 
 
 The past lies heavy upon the spirit of the Ber- 
 linese. A few, a very few, are repentant, and call 
 upon the people to free themselves from guilt by 
 repentance. But their voices are drowned in a 
 stormy protest, and they are called the "new 
 traitors." 
 
 A year ago they could say it openly and many 
 repeated with them " mca culpa." Now the reply 
 is: " We are sinners, but our sins were those of an 
 age, of a world policy, of a competitive struggle 
 for dominion." 
 
 A larger number admits a greater share of guilt 
 in Gennany through an unnecessary provocation, 
 an unrestrained, open worship of the "golden
 
 90 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 calf," dumb devotion to the nation and an unparal- 
 leled cult of militarism. 
 
 Many, — one knows not how many, — are wait- 
 ing for another "Tag." "In the Schloss/' they 
 say, " a new Kriegs Herr will lodge. ... In 
 twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years he will lead 
 out another army, weaponed with the might 
 of hate and hurled forth by the spirit of venge- 
 ance. 
 
 *' We must teach our children that we were be- 
 trayed by words and not conquered by arms, that 
 we were humiliated and starved by our merciless 
 enemies; we must train them for vengeance." 
 One hears that with ascending emphasis, and it 
 will become the belief in Germany unless justice is 
 tempered by mercy and good-will. 
 
 The University of Berlin has grown reaction- 
 ary, and the older men have lost faith in the fu- 
 ture, standing as they are in the midst of chaos. 
 American anthropological scholars know the 
 founder and curator of the Natiir Wissenshaft- 
 liche Museum, Professor Von Luschati — a genial, 
 sunny soul, in spite of the fact that most of his 
 life has been spent digging for skulls, of which he 
 has secured and accumulated some ten thousand. 
 He was always gracious, and now is more so, mel- 
 lowed by misfortune. He led me through Asia 
 and Africa, the latter his especial pride. He 
 showed me Negro sculpture and bronze castings, 
 and then, step by step, through his discovery that
 
 THE GRAY DAWN 91 
 
 the use of Iron came from Negro Africa into 
 Egypt. 
 
 We walked for two hours through the loot from 
 ancient civilizations, which once were Babylon and 
 Tyre. Then came his " swan song " for the de- 
 parted glory of scientific Germany. " Now law- 
 yers and saddlers rule the country. They have no 
 regard for culture." His collection of skulls has 
 been bought by America, his library is being scat- 
 tered; in a year he must retire, because of a new 
 law which sets the time for retirement at sixty- 
 eight years. Then — he will go to Hawaii. 
 
 He loved the Fatherland, but that love has been 
 killed and he will die in exile. As he escorted me 
 to the street, past the golden Buddha and the Bulls 
 of Bashan I tried to console him by saying that 
 though everything perishes, the spirit surv^ives. 
 That seemed to be of no comfort ; but I brought a 
 smile to his face when I promised him a sack of 
 American flour, and I trust that his Easter morn- 
 ing was a little more glorious to him because he 
 could have white rolls with his coffee. 
 
 In Berlin Northeast, the workers' quarter, one 
 sees the gray faces of men and women, the opaque 
 pallor of little children, shirtless backs and shoe- 
 less feet. There the terror of the past years tells 
 its full story; there, hope, if she lifts herself at all 
 above the vision of a full stomach, rests upon the 
 proletarian revolution. 
 
 I heard one man speak in a crowded hall. He
 
 92 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 hobbled to the platform on one leg, and as his pas- 
 sion kindled in speaking, the stub of his right arm 
 moved like the bobbed tail of an angry dog; his 
 soldier's coat was patched and repatched, and 
 looked like a map of the war zone. 
 
 " This they have made of me ! " he cried. 
 " The war lords, the profiteers ! They have saved 
 their limbs and grown fat and rich, and ride in au- 
 tomobiles, and we are beggars ! Our children have 
 to be fed by the Quakers ! 
 
 " Don't be caught in the net made by their old 
 flags! They are no better than the French and 
 the English ; they are of the same class and we are 
 their victims ! 
 
 "Down with Capitalism! If we workers have 
 our way there will be no war lord in the Schloss. 
 Some other master of our own electing will rule ! 
 
 " Workers of the world, unite ! You have 
 nothing to lose but your chains ! " 
 
 In spite of misery, crime and rebellion, I found 
 many pleasing and hopeful pictures in the drear 
 gray of Berlin. Germans, cooperating with Amer- 
 ican and English Quakers in saving the children, 
 are being mellowed by the contact with these gen- 
 tle folk, and are learning that there is another 
 force other than brute force. They feel the power 
 of conquering love, and they wonder if this is the 
 long-denied revelation of the coming Christ. 
 
 I shall always cherish that first sight of the 
 Quaker workers gathered in their monthly meet-
 
 THE GKAY DAWN 93 
 
 ing in Berlin, with Alfred Scattergood, the head of 
 the mission, presiding. The staff calls him " Pa." 
 He is both fatherly and masterly, and his meek- 
 ness is not weakness. He has kindly eyes, a firm 
 chin and a well modelled face. He is sparing of 
 words, but when they come, they are clear as a 
 bell. 
 
 About seventy-five or a hundred of us had as- 
 sembled to hear reports; but first there was a mel- 
 low silence, our spirits coming close to each other. 
 So graphic were the reports from the fields, from 
 Hamburg to Munich, from Kattowitz to Cologne, 
 and all stations in between, that one could almost 
 see thousands of huge boilers being stirred, tens of 
 thousands of containers of cocoa, beans, and por- 
 ridge being delivered piping hot, hundreds of 
 thousands of loaves of bread and cinnamon buns 
 being eaten by half a million underfed boys and 
 girls, who licked half a million spoons clean, and 
 sent half a million " thank yous " toward Amer- 
 ica. 
 
 Oh America, America! You may see the sta- 
 tistics ; row upon row of clean, typewritten figures 
 in terms of pints and gallons, and meals, and 
 calories, and costs. But I have seen the children 
 eating your soups and crunching your crusty rolls, 
 and I have heard them say in chorus: "America, 
 we thank you ! " 
 
 How can one write into statistics the voices of 
 little children, or tlieir smiles? And above all, the
 
 94 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 sweet, tender faces of mothers feeding their little 
 ones, with never a spoonful for themselves; for 
 the Quaker food is for the children only. 
 
 The Quakers ought to arrange a travelling ex- 
 hibit to go through the United States, showing the 
 German children's gratitude in their little paint- 
 ings and verses, embroideries and carvings. That 
 would be better than statistics, though the statistics 
 do no harm. 
 
 After our business meeting the Quakers went to 
 the Gntcnewald for their evening meal. From 
 the railway station it was a long walk in the sun- 
 set, through spindly, well-trimmed pines, to the 
 Jacgerhaiis, and while we waited for our supper 
 we sang song after song; merry songs, college 
 songs, Negro tunes, and patriotic airs. After the 
 simplest, plainest meal, I, who, when I left the 
 United States, thought I had escaped lecturing, 
 was asked to speak, and made my first speech in 
 Germany. 
 
 Gladly I spoke to them, for my heart was full. 
 All the way and everywhere, I had heard the word 
 " Quakers " held in esteem, and America glorified 
 through them. They are healing the wounds of 
 war, the wounds that most need healing; not only 
 in the bodies but In the minds of the children of 
 Germany. 
 
 "Tell us," writes Wilhelm Schaefer, one of 
 Germany's great poets, in the Frankfurter Zei- 
 iung, "whether this is He, or whether we must
 
 THE GRAY DAWN 96 
 
 wait for another?" And longingly he stretches 
 out his hands to these Christians, who want noth- 
 ing in return for their labours, not even converts 
 to their sect; only an increase in good-will. 
 
 Germany appreciates the Quakers, not only be- 
 cause they bring food, but because she has the 
 spiritual capacity to understand them. Germany 
 is not only the home of the Reformation but the 
 birthplace of a fine Christian mysticism, and the 
 Quakers' spirit is not an alien on German soil. 
 
 There is a stir, a spiritual turmoil moving 
 through the Vaterland. The young men and 
 women have felt it, and are striving for a simpler 
 life, saner living, a finer, spiritual culture. They 
 are known as " Jung Deutschland " and are organ- 
 ized into various groups, some of which are dis- 
 tinctly religious, while others turn to nature for 
 inspiration. All of them are radical in their de- 
 sire to help create a new Germany. I learned to 
 know best a group called " Das Ncue Wcrk.'* 
 They have turned to art, labour, and prayer; to 
 wholesome, simple living; and they express them- 
 selves in books and pamphlets, disseminating, not 
 a new faith, but an old faith with a new ardour. 
 In the defeated Germany I have seen them eager 
 for the "Bread of Life," and I could hear "the 
 Spirit and the Bride say: Come."
 
 X 
 
 SHIPS AND GUNS 
 
 MY usual coming into Germany was by 
 way of one of her two great ports, 
 Hamburg or Bremen; aristocratic cities 
 in a commercial way, proud, free cities, their har- 
 bours crowded with shipping, the jargons and 
 colours of the whole world on their spacious 
 docks, and the sky almost obliterated by masts and 
 spars, funnels and fluttering flags. 
 
 Coming through Europe, these ports were my 
 objective as I travelled on immigrant trains, and 
 followed the never-ceasing stream of humans seek- 
 ing a sea-gate to America. This time I came to 
 Hamburg from the east. How has the city fared 
 during these bottled-up years? What is left of 
 the ancient pride ? Is the sky still almost obliter- 
 ated by masts and spars, and funnels and fluttering 
 flags? What has become of that village of bar- 
 racks, with its inns, baths, and churches for the 
 reception of the immigrants? 
 
 The harbour is well-nigh paralyzed — about one- 
 third of it only, showing any life. Once, or at the 
 most, twice a month, a ship arrives from America, 
 flying an English or an American flag. The vast 
 
 96
 
 SHIPS AND GUNS 97 
 
 warehouses are half-full of war stuffs, mostly use- 
 less, the American Relief Association filling some 
 of them with packages of salvation, such as bacon, 
 oil, beans, cocoa and milk, to be sent to all parts 
 of Central Europe. 
 
 One sees hulls of half-grown ships in no hurry 
 to grow up; for they are to be delivered to the 
 Allies when finished. Everywhere there are 
 armed guards, and barbed wire entanglements 
 reach far into the city, encircling the Rathaus; 
 for Hamburg is in the grip of a Communistic 
 " putch," which extends through the whole of in- 
 dustrial Germany. 
 
 In the room next mine there were revellers, 
 drinking and singing — the good old-time drinking 
 and singing. I complained in a mild sort of way 
 to the clerk. " The gentlemen are celebrating 
 Easter," he replied. Yes, it was Easter Day; but 
 ho church bells announced it, for they had been 
 melted into cannon long ago ; there was tlie " tat, 
 tat, tat " of a machine gun, followed by answering 
 pistol shots. Crowds surged through the streets, 
 like huge, senseless monsters, conscious of an un- 
 appeased hunger. 
 
 " Tat, tat, tat," a hardly perceptible smoke, and 
 the crowds broke up, leaving a crooked line of 
 wounded. Ten, twenty, forty, fifty huddled bun- 
 dles of lifeless flesh. Then there was silence, and 
 my neighbours returned to their cups. 
 
 Those Communists nearly spoiled our 
 
 <(
 
 98 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 Easter ! " And they began to drink and sing 
 where they had left off, making up for lost time; 
 while I vainly tried to sleep. 
 
 Indeed it was a spoiled Easter, with a raw wind, 
 a blanket of fog, no Easter bells and the Easter 
 rabbits laying but few eggs, which cost five marks 
 apiece. There was barbed wire for Easter deco- 
 rations, and for Easter music, guns, saying: "tat, 
 tat, tat," and then a week of Communist funerals. 
 
 I have friends in Hamburg besides the Quakers, 
 and one of them whom I called upon was once the 
 Admiral of the Hamburg-American fleet. A fine 
 old sea-dog, as much at home in Hoboketi as in 
 Hamburg, squat and sinewy. His once ruddy 
 cheeks are now pale, and his hair white. Chained 
 to an office chair, he is giving advice to prospective 
 immigrants. We talked over olden times, the war, 
 and the better days ahead, far away as yet, with 
 all sorts of troubles without and within. 
 
 From him I went to the immigrant village at the 
 edge of the city. They were shrewd business 
 men, were Ballin and the rest of them, when in- 
 stead of bare barracks they built a picturesque vil- 
 lage, with colourful walls, churches for all faiths, 
 restaurants for varied tastes, hotels for different 
 kinds of pocketbooks, and a brass band to cheer 
 everybody. The plan worked splendidly and paid 
 good dividends. 
 
 Now the colour has gone out of the village, 
 faded away with the hopes of victory. It was
 
 SHIPS AND GUNS 99 
 
 used as a military hospital during the war, but is 
 again an Immigrant Receiving Station. 
 
 There are scarcely two hundred prospective 
 steerage passengers, all under close observation for 
 typhus; while once the place housed three thou- 
 sand, and did not look crowded. Then, there was 
 much drinking of beer and wine, and much eating 
 of pickles, which are supposed to prevent sea-sick- 
 ness. On the day of sailing, fifteen hundred to 
 two or three thousand embarked on one ship. 
 Those days are over. The immigrant crop is 
 short, will be shorter, and will never grow again as 
 it did. 
 
 From Hamburg I went to Essen, which is the 
 birthplace of the " Big Bertha " and all " her sis- 
 ters and her cousins and her aunts." Father Iron 
 and Mother Coal, the parents, were born, "brought 
 up " and married there, Meistcr Krupp being the 
 priest who performed the ceremony. Of course 
 other things were born there too — pans and ket- 
 tles, ingots and steel girders, and a very fine sys- 
 tem of housing, and caring for working people. 
 
 Hospitals, recreation halls, and homes for con- 
 valescents interested me when I came to see them 
 some ten years ago ; not the guns and the pots and 
 the kettles. 
 
 Then Essen was black and heavy from sulphur 
 fumes, and lighted up by the flare of open hearths 
 and the flow of molten metal. Endless walls shut 
 in the huge works, and through the great gates,
 
 100 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 well guarded, tens of thousands of men passed to 
 and from their work. 
 
 I was welcomed then to see the good works — 
 but not the evil. A guide was given me to show, 
 what the Krupps were doing for their employees. 
 I saw happy, care-free old men and women, in pic- 
 turesque cottages, awaiting their release. I saw 
 men recovering from bruises or burns, reclining 
 in easy chairs or playing games. 
 
 There were working men's homes, inspected and 
 controlled, bronze monuments to labour, and one 
 to the " dear departed " younger Krupp, whose 
 end was veiled in mystery. I walked and talked, 
 wearying my guide, who would have preferred sit- 
 ting in some inn, drinking a glass of Krupp beer 
 (the beer was also benevolently controlled). 
 
 Now, Essen is raw and cold, the hotel is un- 
 heated, the streets are dimly lighted, the flames 
 flare but feebly ; guns and cannon are being broken 
 into junk, and locomotives being turned out by the 
 Krupps at the rate of one and a half a day — that 
 is when there is no strike, or when the Spartacists 
 are not threatening to blow up the landscape, as 
 they did the day I was there. 
 
 The walls of the Krupp works and walls every- 
 where are plastered with placards, red, white and 
 pink — one over the other. Now a Communistic, 
 then a Socialistic, a German Nationalistic, or over 
 them all, a proclamation by the burgomaster, coun- 
 selling against more than two people being to-
 
 SHIPS AND GUKS 101 
 
 gether on the streets, and prohibiting all public 
 demonstrations. 
 
 Ten years ago hundreds of soldiers, or even 
 thousands, marching down the streets would have 
 created no sensation. A dozen of them now, 
 walking as slowly as a funeral procession, com- 
 mand every one's attention; for their guns mean 
 real business and their belts are full of hand gre- 
 nades. The day before my arrival they killed 
 thirty people, wounded twice as many, and are 
 ready to shoot again. 
 
 The Kaiserhof Hotel was new to me. It is a 
 gorgeous hostelry with an almost American lobby. 
 A group of American relief workers sat at the din- 
 ner table with two German guests, a poet, and the 
 city physician, the latter speaking no English. 
 
 Edward Moon, the head of the Quaker mission, 
 speaks a fantastic German. He is indignant (hu- 
 morously so) over the way he learned his college 
 German. " Mein teacher taught me Wilhelm Tell 
 und die Lorelei, und ich hahc now to know about 
 Umsteigcn and Kochen Beans, and I learned about 
 comben mein golden hair," he said, dramatically 
 sweeping his hand over the top of his head, which 
 is as free from hair as his heart is from guile. His 
 wife is a jewel, a Quaker jewel, and we all got on 
 famously with the poet and the city physician. 
 Every one knows that the Germans are thorough 
 and are much given to statistics; but the physician 
 admits that these Americans have made statistics
 
 102 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 intelligible, and, above all else, have centered Ger- 
 many's attention on her children. 
 
 The offices of the Quaker Mission in the KerOr- 
 mik House are typically American, with their 
 typewriters, tabulating machines, mani folders, and 
 a something more cheery and homelike, and mar- 
 vellously human. They have atmosphere, a new 
 atmosphere unknown in the Bureaus of German 
 Bureaucracy. 
 
 I visited the home of the Moons, on the Bis- 
 marck Strasse. The widow of a steel master 
 owns it and lives in it, in harmonious relationship 
 with these Americans, who were quartered there 
 by the law, which allows just so many rooms to a 
 householder, and commandeers all surplus. In 
 this home there are thirteen people who live where 
 one old couple once resided, in pompous splendour. 
 The house is over-furnished, and smothered in 
 bric-a-brac in the poorest of poor taste. I have 
 never seen such poor taste in America, and we 
 have sinned grievously in that direction. There 
 are grotesque vases, impossible furniture, cabinets 
 stuffed full of knickknacks, and portraits of the 
 Imperial family! For the old lady will not be 
 weaned from her loyalty to the Hohenzollerns. 
 
 I also visited the home of a radical miner whom 
 I met ten years before. Then, he was a moderate 
 Socialist, now, he is the reddest of the red. 
 His home is one room and a kitchen, for five peo- 
 ple. His noon meal was a slice of bread with a
 
 SHIPS AND GUNS 103 
 
 very thin coating of lard over it, a plate of pota- 
 toes and cabbage mixed, and a weak brew of coffee 
 without sugar or milk. Upon that he has to sub- 
 sist, working eight hours a day in the bowels of 
 the earth. For what ? For whom ? 
 
 If the home had been dirty and the children had 
 been in rags; if they had begged for money or 
 bread, it would not have been half so pathetic as it 
 was, with the rooms sweet smelling, the children's 
 threadbare clothes clean and neatly patched, the 
 wife's face a marble pallor, like that of a suffering 
 Madonna. The man is a burning torch, ready to 
 consume or be consumed. I could not stay long, 
 hardly fifteen minutes, the room was so tragically 
 chilly, like a tomb, in which living beings had been 
 immured. 
 
 " I may die to-morrow," the husband said. " I 
 shall be glad to die ; It is better to die than to live." 
 
 It does not matter what one's views are upon the 
 question of reparations. When they are paid, it 
 will not be the Krupps who will feel the burden, 
 or the steel master's widow In that bourgeois 
 home, who will suffer. They will be provided 
 for. It is the miners and the melters of metal, 
 who are now living at the edge of despair, who 
 will be crushed.
 
 XI 
 SIN AND SACRIFICE 
 
 I WONDER whether the city fathers of 
 Frankfort -on -the -Main dehberately put 
 their war memorial opposite the Bismarck 
 Statue — the crushed figure of a woman, every line 
 crying out in grief, even the bare breast? If they 
 did place it there with ynalice prepense did they 
 mean to point a moral? The Bismarck statue 
 shows him leading the mounted Germania. She 
 does not even look at her foes, crushed beneath 
 the horse's feet; but gazes far out into the il- 
 limitable distance, seeing conquests, colonies, con- 
 tinents — perhaps the world — to be ruled by her. 
 
 A few yards away, now stands the war me- 
 morial, a pitiable, weary, drained, sorrowful 
 mother, who mourns not only the children of 
 her womb, lying deep in the dust of Belgium and 
 France, — not only the squandered wealth of the 
 fathers, the health of infants, the mortgaged fu- 
 ture of the yet unborn — she mourns her fair 
 name, soiled and besmirched, dragged through the 
 
 deep mire of history. 
 
 104
 
 SIN AND SACRIFICE 106 
 
 Are the city fathers reproaching Bismarck for 
 his policy of " blood and iron," the dominance of 
 Prussia, the rulership of the Hohenzollerns ? Or 
 do they mean to say: "If Bismarck had led 
 Germania's steed, it might not have come to this " ? 
 
 Upon that point the German people are not 
 agreed; but there are not a few men living who 
 foresaw in Bismarck's policy the inevitable 
 doom. Baron von Putzkammcr, himself a Prus- 
 sian, said in the spring of 1915, when the German 
 offensive was checked, and victory did not perch 
 obediently upon the German banners — " Finally, 
 finally, comes the judgment. Now the sin will be 
 atoned for. I had lost faith in the moral code of 
 the universe! Praised be the judgment which has 
 come upon Prussianized Germany! There will 
 arise out of it the Germany of old. God be 
 praised ! 
 
 " The work of blood and iron is being des- 
 troyed. So it had to come; for one does not con- 
 jure the evil spirits for fifty years for nought! 
 Now Bismarck has come to his end, finally, 
 finally ! " 
 
 Finally, yes, finally, Germania is checked on the 
 bridgeheads of the Rhine. Whatever sin there 
 was in the Bismarck policy, here is the penalty. 
 "The Rhine, the Rhine, they shall not have it; 
 the German, German Rhine ! " 
 
 The Rhine is occupied, and bears the marks. 
 A proud, haughtily smiling river, it is more than
 
 106 OLD TEAIL9 AOT) NEW BOEDEES 
 
 a river, it is a stream of blood, and the occupa- 
 tion has turned the corpuscles from red to pale 
 white. There are companies of soldiers around 
 stacked arms, the noses of menacing tanks point- 
 ing up into the air, machine guns with lean necks 
 and round fat stomachs; then, looming up sud- 
 denly, like two hands lifted in solemn petition, are 
 the towers of the '' Dom of Coin." 
 
 In the " good old days " Cologne was either the 
 beginning or the end of the Rhine journey, and 
 the Dom was the objective. Innumerable throngs 
 of " Cooky " tourists looked at the superb cathe- 
 dral, and some of them felt the power of every 
 upreaching turret. Some compared its height to 
 the stand-pipe or some other tallest thing back in 
 their booming town in the U. S. A. None could 
 escape the holy power of that noble interior, and 
 they whispered admiration and felt the worshipful 
 mood. 
 
 Now the Dom seems lost to view. English 
 Tommies squat on the steps, one's favourite hotel 
 has been commandeered and made into headquar- 
 ters for something; another and another has 
 shared the same fate, showing the same wear and 
 tear. There are placards in English commanding 
 this or that thing, and when the Tommies read 
 them aloud, one stumbles over dropped h's. Such 
 and such a place is closed to civilians, soldiers are 
 permitted to go to the public restaurants until the 
 fantastic hour of twenty-three; so that magic
 
 SIN AND SACEIFICE 107 
 
 number comes into its own again. (There is no 
 A. M. or p. M. in the EngHsh zone.) The Enghsh 
 officers are unmistakably and uncompromisingly 
 English, the monocle making their immobile faces 
 more rigid. 
 
 A few hours of daylight, then the night, a new 
 morning and after a short railroad journey I saw 
 the American flag floating from the fortress of 
 Bhrcnbreitenstcin. The Vatcrland is a little rnhi- 
 ger where the Yanks keep " Watch on the Rhine " 
 — though feverish enough, and the truth of it even 
 stranger than fiction ! Any man who had foretold 
 this ten years ago, who had visioned the American 
 flag waving from the Kaiser's favourite palace, 
 and Yankee soldiers spilled all over the streets of 
 Coblenz, would have been declared a lunatic. 
 
 Friendly boys they are, young boys on the 
 whole, these Yankee soldiers, with here and there 
 a toughened specimen of the regulars. The rest 
 are youngsters upon an adventure, doing their 
 time without much else on their minds than how 
 many marks one gets for a dollar. Yet how 
 quickly they go in spite of their number, because 
 of everlasting thirst, blue-eyed frduleins and fickle 
 fortune at cards. 
 
 The Y. M. C. A. keeps brotherly guard over 
 them — and sisterly, which they like better. There 
 are huts everywhere, from Andernach to Biebrich ; 
 cheerful places with pictures, flowers, ham sand- 
 wiches, ice-cream, and " Oh Lady ! — Pie ! **
 
 108 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 Young women, some of them old enough to be 
 older sisters, keep the huts, adorn them, sell the 
 goodies, offer good advice gratis, and make these 
 soldiers' camps as sweet and attractive as only one 
 or two young women, resourceful to the finger- 
 tips, can. 
 
 A militarized Y. M. C. A. secretary took me the 
 rounds. First to the fortresses. Fort Roland, 
 then to Bhrenhreitenstein. Unchallenged, our 
 Ford entered, and bumped us through dark tun- 
 nels; huge gates, never before opened to sight-see- 
 ing civilians, swung wide upon ugly barracks, sun- 
 baked, empty drill grounds, guard-houses full to 
 overflowing, and in a labyrinth of walks and walls 
 is the Y. M. C. A. hut. 
 
 The *' Y " girls were busy ; it was pay-day and 
 heyday, for the boys spend their money while the 
 sun shines — also, alas, when it does not shine. I 
 saw on one boy's plate two ham sandwiches, two 
 chocolate sundaes, three pieces of pie stacked like 
 pancakes ; and then he had a second helping. The 
 boys can't be homesick at Coblenz. They are in 
 America, more indeed than if they were at Yuma, 
 or in some other hot place in Arizona or New 
 Mexico, and the reason is, largely, the Y. M. C. A. 
 men, and especially the women. 
 
 The citizens do their share to make the boys 
 feel at home. " Come in and get a genuine boot- 
 black," " Bootblacking done in all colours," 
 " Mince pies that mother used to bake," "Amer-
 
 SIN AND SACRIFICE 109 
 
 ican money changed at highest rats.'' By these 
 and other signs they express their interest in the 
 boys, and the boys reciprocate. 
 
 On pay-day they go from cafe to cafe. They 
 buy everything, from Marizpan cakes to bottles of 
 wine, and judging by the unsteadiness of some of 
 them, they have purchased Cognac, which they 
 pronounce " Kooneyack," and which the law pro- 
 nounces " dangerous and forbidden." 
 
 The great " Fest-Halle" belongs to the boys, 
 and nowhere in their native country have they so 
 fine a place for entertainment. Boxing, theat- 
 ricals, concerts, everything is theirs, the best there 
 is ; yet when one gets beneath the surface, one sees 
 that they also get the worst there is — both they 
 and the people of the occupied area. The America 
 they bring to Coblenz and the neighbouring vil- 
 lages is hardly fit for export, and an army of oc- 
 cupation is rarely a cultural agency. The ofiicers, 
 even the militarized Y. M. C. A., are forbidden 
 fraternizing with the native population, so what- 
 ever of the good or noble we have, is not spread 
 abroad; while the vulgar or wicked is scattered 
 broadcast. 
 
 If the English and American occupation rests 
 heavily upon the inhabitants of the Rhine region, 
 what is to be said of the pressure of grim, French 
 soldiers, each one a foe, a bitter foe? English and 
 American, especially American soldiers, meet 
 their kinsmen in these Germans, and leave them
 
 110 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 still more closely related; for they marry German 
 Frduleins, and the Rhine will be a river-in-law to 
 thousands of our soldiers. But the French sol- 
 diers march through Mayence and Wiesbaden, 
 their heels striking the pavement hard, as if to 
 say: " You, you Germans are under our heels and 
 we will grind you to powder." 
 
 The Colonials, the coloured soldiers of France, 
 look worse to us in America, with our colour- 
 phobia, than they do to the Germans upon 
 whom they are inflicted, according to the testi- 
 mony of the Germans in the occupied region. The 
 coloured soldiers are no worse than the white. 
 They are only different, and very attractive to the 
 white women there. Mulatto children are born on 
 the Rhine, and the head nurse of the Maternity 
 Hospital told me that in each case it was a volun- 
 tary surrender. 
 
 The editor of the frankfurter Zeitung, a man 
 whose vision has remained refreshingly clear, told 
 me the following: During the brief occupation of 
 Frankfort by the French, he, as a newspaper man, 
 was free from the compulsion of being indoors at 
 nine o'clock at night. Walking through the de- 
 serted street one night, he met a coloured trooper 
 and said to him in French: " This is not very' ex- 
 citing." To which the man replied: "No, 
 Monsieur, it is not, and I don't want excitement. 
 I want to go home to my people. Perhaps some 
 day, white men will have sense enough to prevent
 
 SIN AND SACEIFICE 111 
 
 such a calamity as this war, and we may all re- 
 main at home and eat our bread in peace." 
 
 Perhaps it has come true that God has " con- 
 founded the wise and prudent," and that " out of 
 tlie mouth of " — Colonials — who are but " babes 
 and sucklings," " He has ordained strength."
 
 XII 
 FINIS AUSTRIA 
 
 ANIGHT in bed is time lost in sleep, a 
 night in a railway station, waiting for a 
 train, is an experience. At such a time 
 life assumes a strange aspect. From eleven p. m. to 
 one A. M. each hour has one hundred and twenty 
 minutes; after that, one hundred and eighty. 
 One's body has at least eight sides, twice as many 
 angles, and bones are discovered where none were 
 before. Odours become so distinct that they as- 
 sume individuality, eight minutes of sleep do as 
 well as the orthodox eight hours spent in bed, and 
 a cup of coffee has the quickening power of a 
 hypodermic injection. 
 
 The happy moment of semi-unconsciousness 
 had come to me, in spite of scolding barmaids and 
 crying children, the snoring drummer, and the 
 boastful immigrants returning from America. 
 An occasional switch engine and the ticking tele- 
 graph instruments blended Into a lullaby. I was 
 being rocked to sleep by invisible hands, when 
 suddenly I became aware that my body had been 
 cut into three parts, and each part had retained 
 consciousness. One part of me had already en- 
 tered Austria, after a long parley with the offi- 
 
 112
 
 FINIS AUSTRIA 113 
 
 cials, who were not accustomed to grant entry to 
 trunkless heads. My legs were still in Germany, 
 and it seemed impossible to obtain permission to 
 remove them. The middle of me had sagged be- 
 tween the two countries, and was not particular 
 where it went. 
 
 Professor Freud certainly would have found 
 the source of my dream in " suppressed desires"; 
 but it was more easily explained. I had gone to 
 sleep on three chairs in the railway station at 
 Passau, where a through train from Frankfurt 
 had dropped me, refusing to go further. The 
 chairs had accepted the doctrine of self-determina- 
 tion and were drifting apart. 
 
 The noises began to be distinct again, the 
 odours also; I heard the barking of a dog, and 
 strange yet familiar noises and odours suddenly 
 intruded upon the first. I distinguished the smell 
 of Russian sheepskin coats added to the sweat of 
 ages, odours of camels, musty oriental rags, cab- 
 bage and salted fish — all ineffectively drowned in 
 carbolic acid, 
 
 I felt a dog's cold nose rubbing my face, and 
 opening my eyes I saw a huge, gray fur cap, a 
 shaggy sheepskin coat, and a beard such as Rus- 
 sians raise, as a monument to their spent youth. 
 Feverishly glowing eyes were looking into mine 
 from out a pale, emaciated face, and sensitive 
 lips were smiling at my having slid to the floor. 
 
 I became aware of a roar of voices, such as I
 
 114 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 had never heard before; neither human nor ani- 
 mal, but an unhappy combination of both. I 
 began to distinguish speech: German in various 
 Austrian dialects, and the hard Magyar, children 
 crying in Esperanto, and the shrill voices of 
 women, scolding in Russian. 
 
 " We are war-prisoners returning from the 
 East," the pale face spoke. Then as men, women 
 and children came pouring into the room and 
 out again in a most strange and uncanny manner, 
 I began slowly to realize that I was witnessing one 
 of the last, long-delayed phases of the World 
 War; the return of the Austrian prisoners, who 
 were the first to be captured and the last to be 
 released. This, then, was the last page of the last 
 chapter: Finis Austria. 
 
 This, what was left of the valiant ones, after 
 typhus, Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangle and the Bol- 
 sheviki had finished with them. Eighteen hun- 
 dred bundles of skin and bone, and filthy rags, 
 bringing home Russian women and half-breed 
 children; more hungry ones to stare at the empty 
 larder. 
 
 What a sight it was ! No nurses, no Red Cross 
 officials, no steaming cups of coffee, no fluttering 
 flags, no brass bands. Nothing but one wretched 
 train-load after another, insupportable delays, and 
 finally home — if home there was. 
 
 This was the end of dreams of Empire, the 
 result of Alliances, and the plotting of Pan"
 
 FINIS AUSTEIA 116 
 
 Germanism; of conspiracies, of stupid policies by 
 a half-witted, selfish dynasty. 
 
 We talked it all over, the pale-faced one and I, 
 as we drank numerous cups of hot coffee; he in a 
 high-pitched, nervous voice interrupted by a rack- 
 ing cough; I, awestruck and questioning. 
 Strange tales he told of hardships and long wan- 
 derings, of unspeakable cruelties where kindness 
 was to be expected, and of unexpected kindness 
 where none was hoped for. Of bleak camps, and 
 the crowding together of thousands and tens of 
 thousands of unfortunates; of human greed, of 
 cruelty among those who had already suffered 
 much. Of the strong oppressing the weak, and 
 the shrewd, exploiting the simple; of law and 
 order created by circumstances, and of the beast 
 in man, refusing to be governed. 
 
 He had been all but dead, the pale-faced one. 
 He knew the feeling of the grave, and of earth- 
 worms eating his skin. Then the touch of kind- 
 ness warmed him back — a dog — a masterless, 
 hungry dog — the dog sitting on his haunches by 
 us as we talked, looking virtuous, as if he knew 
 we were speaking of his good deed. 
 
 So the pale one was finally brought back — to 
 what? To a changed world in which he was a 
 stranger, not knowing of what country he was a 
 citizen, with no news from home for years, igno- 
 rant of what desolation might await him there. 
 
 Hundreds like him crowded the station, frag-
 
 116 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 ments of a great army, fragments of an Empire in 
 ruins, fragments of human beings with bodies 
 worn and minds dulled. 
 
 " Lost, a Fatherland ! " That is what he said 
 to me with a bitter smile. Lost, the faith he cher- 
 ished, a wisp of straw whirled about by the ex- 
 piring breath of a cyclone. 
 
 It was a gruesome sight, those hundreds of gray 
 figures in the gray morning, and with the sunrise 
 they were gone, like a bad dream. 
 
 About nine o'clock in the morning I was ad- 
 mitted into the fragment of a country, once great 
 and powerful, always proud. Nothing is left of 
 the broad, rich plains which fed her, little of min- 
 eral mines, nothing of coal, the harbours to the 
 sea gone. Just a wrinkled peanut in a cracked 
 shell — that is Austria. 
 
 One could not love the Austro-Hungarian mon- 
 archy, except, perhaps, as a little boy loves a 
 menagerie; yet as I saw the wreck of it I felt a 
 profound pity. I wanted to get out of the train 
 and climb those blue foothills of the Alps, and pet 
 them, and speak comforting words to those pic- 
 turesque villages and towns, nestling close. I 
 wanted to tell them that I loved them in their hu- 
 miliation, as I did not love them in the days of 
 their pride. 
 
 I wanted to call to the Danube, along whose 
 beautiful banks we travelled, and tell it that I
 
 FINIS AUSTEIA 117 
 
 loved it when, a student, I wandered beside its 
 waters; how I envied it because it was uncon- 
 scious of the poHtical and racial quarrels which 
 wrung my heart. I wanted to sing to it the Dan- 
 ube songs I used to sing, when the river inspired 
 in me high thoughts, and made me dream dreams. 
 
 The Danube narrows, and rushes, and roars, 
 and grows ever more glorious. Ruins of castles 
 were reflected in its turbulent waters, and beyond, 
 I saw the Abbey of Melk, like a city crowning a 
 hilltop. Vast fields and forests circle the mon- 
 astery, the church and the schools. 
 
 I wished I might make a pilgrimage to Melk, 
 and tell the padres how a little boy used to haunt 
 the Abbey on Sunday afternoons. How he 
 breathed deeply of the pure, sweet, solemn air, and 
 how it strengthened his spirit, struggling with the 
 flesh. 
 
 I wanted to creep into that vaulted library to see 
 if that same old, tall, thin librarian still watched 
 over those sacred tomes. Once, he pulled one of 
 them out for the little boy, and made his eyes 
 fairly bulge, seeing those stiff, yellow, illuminated 
 pages, upon which pious monks wrote with infinite 
 patience, letter upon letter, that piety and learn- 
 ing might not vanish from the world. That little 
 boy had an ambitious thought born in him among 
 those books. He would write books, too, or, like 
 the good padres, wander about the cloisters of a 
 library, reading them.
 
 118 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 Theirs were saintly faces, sweet, calm faces 
 which the little boy, long since grown to be a man, 
 misses in our hurly-burly America. He wanted 
 to tell those men that looking at them did him 
 good; though they probably never noticed the 
 curly-haired, blue-eyed youth, who came to Melk. 
 
 We were approaching the suburbs of Vienna, 
 and my heart was heavy from sadness and pity. 
 Yonder I saw the Kahlenberg, faithful sentinel, 
 guarding the city ever since the Romans called it 
 Vindobona. I wanted to pat its bald head, and 
 tell it how much joy I had when, as a child, I 
 climbed it, and saved my thirty hellers by not 
 using the funicular railway. I spent that huge 
 sum in buying a glass of fresh milk, a big slab 
 from a huge loaf of rye bread, and a pat of sweet 
 butter, I have tasted nectar and ambrosia, sit- 
 ting at rich men's tables; but never has food 
 tasted like that Vesper feast on the Kahlenberg. 
 
 Always we looked to you, little high mountain. 
 Good news and bad news was flashed from your 
 height, since the days when the Turks besieged the 
 city, and Sobijewsky and his brave Poles came to 
 its relief. Little but bad news has come since, 
 little high mountain ; but glory and beauty always, 
 and fireworks on St. John's night, and the Em- 
 peror's Jubilee. Don't be discouraged, mountains 
 must rise above their troubles. 
 
 Hey! Ho! Here is the Vienna forest, draped 
 around the city like a shawl around a lady's shoul-
 
 FINIS AUSTRIA 119 
 
 ders. It, too, shows the wear and tear of war, 
 the long, cold, coalless winters; for they have 
 come there with desecrating axes, those armies of 
 shivering folk. 
 
 I must go out there and wander about, and see 
 if I cannot heal its hurt pride; for that forest 
 never grew for firewood. It grew to echo songs, 
 to shade lovers, to hide them, to house little scat- 
 tered inns, where the merry Viennese — father, 
 mother, and all the children came, to drink the 
 new, mild wine, and dip crisp rolls, crystal white 
 with salt, into the red gravy of Gidash. That 
 forest grew to hear the petty quarrels of the 
 homeward bound, in the evening, and the trees 
 grew close together, to keep the tipplers from fall- 
 ing. It was as safe in the night as during the 
 day. 
 
 We were almost in the city, for I saw the rail- 
 road yard, looking like a hospital for engines, or 
 a poorhouse for trains. Poor, bruised, unhealed, 
 unrenewed, unrenewable, dead engines; shot 
 through and through, the pistons sticking into the 
 steam chest like a tired man's hands into his 
 trouser pockets, the steam pipes exposed like the 
 vitals of a man — hopeless, hopeless ! 
 
 At last we pulled into the railroad station, the 
 yellow, sooty, Wcsthahnhof. I took a deep 
 breath ; for I knew I must suffer more, and com- 
 fort more, in this doomed city, this gay city, this 
 loveliest among the cities of Europe.
 
 XIII 
 THE MERRY WIDOW 
 
 VIENNA had reenchanted me, and I had to 
 tear myself away from her. In fact I 
 had never before seen her so beautiful, so 
 winning, so gracious, in spite of her consumptive 
 children, underfed apprentices, half-starved stu- 
 dents and emaciated professors. Vienna is still 
 the loveliest of cities, in spite of the hard-pressed 
 mittlcstand, the schiehcrs (profiteers) and smug- 
 glers, rapacious traders, body sellers and snatch- 
 ers; in spite of the ooze of iniquity in which she 
 wallows, yes, even in spite of death and decay, 
 Vienna is still matchless. She is like a widow 
 after the first shock of grief is over. She has 
 wept ; but has dried her tears. She has mourned ; 
 but laughter is creeping back into her heart. She 
 was forsaken ; now she is being wooed again, and 
 the lovers of life are at her door asking for her 
 songs, her wit, her dances, the smile of her pretty 
 face, the skill of her nimble fingers. 
 
 The children who deserted her and left her to 
 die, confess that they cannot live without her. 
 Czechs and Jugo-slavs, Slovaks and Magyars, 
 Roumanians and Serbians, with false passports 
 
 X20
 
 THE MERRY WIDOW 121 
 
 and good money, crowd her shops, hotels and 
 cabarets, glad to escape the drab, hard life of their 
 new-made states ; thrilling to her ancient rapture. 
 
 With heavy heart I came to Vienna as to the 
 house of mourning; but her tears were like 
 diamonds smiling back the sunlight a thousand 
 times. Her complaints were only for the day. 
 The yesterday is forgotten, and to-morrow may 
 not come. 
 
 To the careless observer there are but few 
 things missing in Vienna. The parks are there 
 in their old-time beauty, including the Prater, the 
 Coney Island of Vienna; or, one should say that 
 Coney Island is the Prater of New York; for the 
 Prater antedates Coney Island by only a few 
 centuries. 
 
 The same crowds in which I was lost as a boy, 
 the same merry-go-rounds which gave me my first 
 whirl around the world, and oh, joy of joys! the 
 same Punch and Judy shows, yea verily ! 
 
 The music, however, is softer, for the military 
 brass bands are gone; the merriment is subdued, 
 for the beer is thin, and the wine is dear. 
 
 The cry of the Italian peddler of cheese and 
 salami — " salami, salamundi ! " is heard no more. 
 Peanuts and moving pictures have been added to 
 the delights of the Prater, both blessings from the 
 United States. 
 
 Bosnian venders of canes, and pipes, and home- 
 made daggers, are gone, and the Slovak women
 
 122 OLD TEAILS AKD NEW B0RDEE3 
 
 selling embroidery or black radishes have also 
 disappeared. Indeed, all the exotic-looking peo- 
 ples of the monarchy have fled to tlieir various cor- 
 ners, Vienna now being a German-speaking city. 
 
 The soldiers, the trim, tightly-trousered, red 
 and blue-coated soldiers are gone. Here and 
 there one sees a few, pathetically shabby, like de- 
 generate children of heroic parents. The Ho f burg 
 seems a strange place without them. Once, alert 
 guards stood at every gate watchful for superior 
 officers and royalty. A dozen, a hundred times a 
 day, came the sharp word of command, the rattle 
 of drums, a company presenting arms. 
 
 In the olden days, noontime at the Hofhurg 
 was the golden hour for children and students, 
 apprentices and loafers. From some distant bar- 
 racks came the new guard, beating the hard pave- 
 ment to the tune of the Radeczky march. Win- 
 dows on the route were thrown open, maids and 
 Frduleins, lured by gold braid, brass buttons and 
 fierce mustachios, waved and smiled; while work 
 waited as long as the magic music or the roll of 
 the drum was heard. 
 
 Behind the guard came the real guard of 
 honour, the proletariat of Vienna, children and 
 grown-ups, hand in hand, blocking traffic, stop- 
 ping business, moving In perfect step to the Hof- 
 burg. There, facing the balcony where the state 
 chambers were, the band circled and began to 
 play. The eager crowd looked upward, to be re-
 
 THE MERRY WIDOW 123 
 
 warded, perhaps, by the sheen of an ancient 
 spear, the glow of a red coat, or the ghtter of the 
 brass helmet of an inner or outer guard, standing 
 immovable at his post. 
 
 All that is now but a memory. The Hofhurg 
 is empty of royalty and pomp, and sheen of splen- 
 dour. Charity is now the Empress, and instead of 
 guards and bands, hungry crowds gather for their 
 rations, American tin cans are stacked in royal 
 chambers, and the Quakers sit modestly in 
 princely halls, dealing out the bounty of the Eng- 
 lish and American people to generals and colonels, 
 to their widows and orphans, to ladies and gentle- 
 men of robes, and to masters of hounds and 
 stables. The Hapsburgs are gone out of their 
 castle forever and ever, and, strange to say, they 
 are not missed by those who, from afar, feasted 
 on their magnificence. 
 
 Is it the light-heartedness of Vienna? Is it in- 
 gratitude? Is it weariness? Is it because the 
 Quaker gray is a better colour for times like these 
 than the black and yellow of the Hapsburgs? 
 
 Street cars are moving with their usual slow 
 dignity, though the conductors refuse to take tips, 
 unbelievable as that sounds. 'Buses have sent the 
 horses which drew them to the butcher-shop, and 
 are double-decked and smell of gasoline. Business 
 seems normal with the hours shorter and sweeter. 
 The coffee houses have diminished in number, 
 grown shabby, and sert'e vile coffee, with saccha-
 
 124 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 rin in place of sugar. The white, crisp rolls and 
 the twisted things full of cinnamon and raisins 
 are in the realm of the unattainable, and black 
 bread, in scant rations, is a bitter reality. 
 
 Upon the ruins of the coffee houses banks are 
 growing. Marble and plate glass, Corinthian 
 columns and shining brass adorn these temples of 
 Mammon, and give that sense of security which, 
 everywhere, children who play with baubles of 
 gold, demand. 
 
 Theatres and concert-halls are more numerous 
 and are nightly filled by a feverish throng. Art 
 has become a narcotic, and is cheaper, infinitely 
 cheaper than clothing. Luckily " the wind is 
 tempered to the shorn lamb," for clothes are fash- 
 ionably scant. Vienna has not lost its good taste 
 or its marvellous skill, and shears and needle have 
 done wonders with inferior materials. 
 
 The Graben and the Kaerntner Strasse, the main 
 shopping streets of Vienna, were blossoming into 
 spring styles, so beautiful and so expensive 
 that, for the Viennese, they are like the 
 " fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden " — ■ 
 a feast for the eye, tempting to Eve and Adam 
 alike. Clothing, next to food, is the great desire, 
 and men steal to buy it, and women do worse, and 
 both are cast out of Paradise. 
 
 One evening I was invited to a theatre party 
 in the Burg. We occupied a box so near the 
 draped and crowned enclosure where Royalty used
 
 THE MERRY WIDOW 125 
 
 to enjoy the performances, that we could look into 
 it. Long ago I saw my first play in the fourth 
 gallery of the old Burg, that dim and dingy home 
 of the muses. At that time the Vienna stage was 
 sacred, consecrated only to the best in drama. It 
 was an institution which the Viennese worshipped 
 and revered, and the court subsidized. The actors 
 were demi-gods, and after a successful perform- 
 ance they were carried home on the shoulders of 
 the crowd, and loudly acclaimed. 
 
 Such names as Sonnenthal, Lewinsky, Charlotte 
 Walter, Hohenfels, were household words. Some 
 of them were knighted, all of them had royal 
 decorations showered upon them. One of them, 
 Madame Schraft, was said to enjoy the favour of 
 Francis Joseph till his dying day. 
 
 The crowns, the eagles, the shields, the lances, 
 all the decorative motifs of imperialism are there. 
 
 Not so many years ago the royal box was sac- 
 rosanct. That night schichcrs occupied it and ate 
 sausages between the acts. The repertoire used to 
 be in harmony with monarchic prejudice. This 
 night the play was Molnar's comedy, " The 
 Swan." It is a satire on royalty in which the char- 
 acters are unmistakably Hapsburgs, and the prob- 
 lem of a match with the heir apparent, contem- 
 porary history; yet these Viennese who, a little 
 while ago, looked upon tlie ceremonial which sur- 
 rounds royalty, as equivalent to the sacredness of 
 the mass, were thoroughly enjoying it.
 
 126 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 Vienna is suffering, and will suffer ; there is no 
 doubt about that, for the calamity which has over- 
 taken her is overwhelming. The capital of a great 
 Empire from which about forty million people 
 were more or less ruled, is now a city of two mil- 
 lions, and but four millions of people to maintain 
 
 it 
 
 All the purveyors to royalty, all the ladies in 
 waiting, all the officials of a frightfully over- 
 officialized kingdom — the many hangers on who 
 were paid for hanging on; the pensioned officers 
 or their widows and the thousands who invested 
 their all in war bonds — all of them are left 
 stranded in Vienna, with an income of paper 
 kronen, six, seven or eight hundred of them for 
 an American dollar, when formerly, at par, a 
 kronen was worth twenty cents. 
 
 For a long time the privileged class lived by 
 selling its accumulated luxuries, and later its com- 
 forts, until now, the walls are bare and beds are 
 hard. 
 
 With an official Quaker visitor, I made the 
 rounds one morning, and we came into a flat in 
 which there was actually nothing left, not even 
 beds; only a sofa and a wardrobe. An old woman 
 in rags was lying 111, on the sofa, while a middle- 
 aged daughter moved about with difficulty. The 
 name ? Ah well, the name was once a proud one. 
 The name of a General in the Austrian army, now 
 the name of a beneficiary of benevolent Quakers.
 
 THE MEERY WIDOW 127 
 
 So it was, the entire morning, more or less the 
 same story. 
 
 Food is scarce and dear, children are under- 
 nourished, clothes are almost unpurchasable and 
 thousands of people stand in line daily, to buy 
 shoes which the state sells at, or below, cost. The 
 rich, of course, get all and everything they want; 
 the workmen strike on every occasion and get 
 more paper crowns. With each increase in 
 wages prices rise, just as with us, but they man- 
 age to get food enough, and in summer clothes 
 enough. 
 
 Students and many professors could not exist 
 if it were not for the one meal a day, which they 
 receive from the American Relief Association ; yet 
 they pursue knowledge with the old time vigour. 
 In fact, every one in Vienna seems to study, judg- 
 ing by the young people who crowd the University, 
 the working men who throng the Volkshcim and 
 the serious books one sees being read on the cars 
 and in the parks. It sometimes seems as if it 
 would be best to close the schools and compel the 
 young people to go out and dig; but that is more 
 easily said than done. Austria has not enough 
 soil or raw material, and working men are crowd- 
 ing one another for jobs. However, there are 
 movements in that direction, and organizations 
 have been started to acquire land, to build simple 
 homes, and to have their members live off and on 
 the land.
 
 128 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 The Quakers are doing much in that direction, 
 not only by giving needed and expert advice, but 
 by importing from Holland and England pure 
 stocks of cattle and breeds of chickens, supervis- 
 ing their care, and allotting the increase to those 
 who will make the best use of them. 
 
 Naturally there is the danger that the relief 
 work which has saved the morale of the Viennese 
 may turn into immorale, as they are naturally an 
 easy-going people. For centuries the Czechs 
 have been their tailors and cobblers, and the 
 Slovak men and maidens their servants. They 
 have lived luxuriously because of the toil of the 
 Magyar and Serb farmers; so they are finding it 
 hard to rest back upon their own endeavour, and 
 the help which has poured in from all over the 
 world has made their sense of dependence greater. 
 The relief workers, realizing that, are cutting 
 down wherever possible, and stimulating the spirit 
 of self-help. 
 
 I did not visit all the places I intended to; so 
 much of the hurt of Vienna has gone uncom- 
 forted, because I was so absorbed in watching the 
 work of relief and seeing a new order developing 
 upon the ruins of the old. 
 
 I did not visit the Vienna forest or the Kahlen- 
 berg; but I did go to " Schoenhrunn" the favour- 
 ite residence of the old Emperor situated in a su- 
 perb park, open to the public. 
 
 In one corner of it is a zoological garden, the
 
 THE MEKRY WIDOW 129 
 
 delight of my childhood. There I first saw an 
 elephant and the fearsome lions and tigers; also 
 my supposed relatives, the anthropoid apes. I 
 have lost my taste for menageries since knowing 
 the human family better, and I did not even look 
 at the animals as I passed. I had a more serious 
 errand at '" Schocnbrunn." 
 
 I climbed the broad stairways of the palace to 
 the top floor, and there found the children of the 
 so-called proletariat, living in the spacious rooms, 
 breathing the clean air blowing in through the 
 high windows; going to school in the salons and 
 ballrooms, working with saw, chisel, brush and 
 modelling tools; with no visible discipline, gently 
 guided by three men of vision, or visionary men, 
 who have consecrated themselves to educating the 
 children for the new order. 
 
 An Emperor's palace occupied by the children 
 of the working men! Why not? One old man 
 and his entourage occupied these hundreds of 
 rooms full of the useless trappings of royalty. 
 At last it is used as it ought to be, by the children 
 of the workers. 
 
 It was good to see them happy and healthy, be- 
 ing prepared for a happy and healthy social order. 
 The spirit of the pupils of this school Is character- 
 ized by their greeting to each other, to the teach- 
 ers, and to us who visited them: " Friendship." It 
 was glorious to hear the word in that palace where 
 for so many years wars were hatched and race was
 
 130 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 played against race — the big word, the biggest 
 word in the world — Friendship. 
 
 The fate of Austria is still hanging in the bal- 
 ance. Vienna may shrink and dwindle, — but she 
 may not die. She has the gift of immortality, she 
 has the treasures which are not in " earthen ves- 
 sels." She has art and full joy in creating, she 
 has a tuneful heart against which the smallest joys 
 vibrate into mighty solos. 
 
 She harbours no revenge, she bears no malice, 
 knows no hate. She is rid of the incubus of an 
 army and of a royal house, from which decay has 
 percolated through the wholesome middle-class, to 
 the very bottom. 
 
 Above all else she has a sense of humour — even 
 now she laughs at herself. Her inflated currency, 
 her deflated aristocracy, her being fed through the 
 nursing bottle of charity and allowed just so many 
 pulls; not knowing where to-morrow's food for 
 her two millions will come from or " where- 
 withal " she " shall be clothed." All this gives her 
 a chance for banter and jesting. She Is the "Merry 
 Widow " and she glides to a seductive waltz, not 
 knowing or caring who will pay the fiddlers.
 
 XIV 
 NEW BARRIERS FOR OLD 
 
 IN Austria the Danube is still blue: there alone 
 its waves roll to waltz time and not to war 
 tunes; there alone its shores are still sacred 
 to poets, composers and lovers. There is no 
 " Watch on the Danube " to be kept, sword in 
 hand, though one can scarcely turn around in that 
 decimated country without striking a foreign land. 
 
 The boat on which I travelled sailed under the 
 Hungarian flag, unchanged in colour and its defi- 
 ant spirit, the crown of St. Stephen with its tilted 
 cross, spread over its folds. If one spoke German 
 when one stepped upon that boat, the stewards and 
 officers were contemptuous; if one spoke Slovak 
 or Czech, he would better have had his coffee 
 tasted by some one whose life was not as valuable 
 as his own. 
 
 As the city of Vienna receded, everything which 
 the Viennese covet and cannot obtain appeared on 
 the dining-room tables: White bread, butter, milk, 
 bacon, coffee, and best of all, lumps of sugar. No 
 wonder the Magyars are haughty. Not only have 
 they food and drink in abundance, an Hungarian 
 
 131
 
 132 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 krone buys ten Austrian in exchange, and the 
 waiter accepted my inferior script with an air of 
 condescension. 
 
 The journey down the Danube is scenically un- 
 important, but from the ethnic standpoint most in- 
 teresting, and never before so much so as on my 
 recent trip, when my fellow-passengers were citi- 
 zens of new countries, and often reluctantly. Now 
 more than ever they speak their respective lan- 
 guages defiantly, and thus develop new angles of 
 friction. The Treaty of Versailles has made the 
 confusion of nationalities worse than ever; for it 
 has merely transferred the turbulent waters of the 
 Old Monarchy into smaller vessels, not a single 
 one of which is as yet strong enough to stand 
 against the pressure. I met Germans who are re- 
 luctant Czechs, Magyars who have had to swear 
 allegiance to Slovakia or Roumania, Austrians 
 who are governed by Italians, and some whose 
 political fate has not yet been decided, and who do 
 not know where they belong. No one seems quite 
 comfortable under the new order, and my fellow- 
 passengers, though boasting of their new coun- 
 tries, republics and kingdoms, looked as happy as 
 the wearer of a new pair of patent leather shoes 
 when the sun is hot ; while those who have no new 
 country to boast of, are happy in nursing a new 
 grudge. Altogether as I watched them around 
 the breakfast table, these children of the old Aus- 
 tro-Hungarian Monarchy, they seemed to be in the
 
 NEW BAERIEKS FOR OLD 133 
 
 attitude of the couple who, after being divorced, 
 discovered that though they could not live with 
 each other, they could not live without each other. 
 Economic necessities are driving them, not into 
 each other's arms, but nearer to one another, and 
 each is waiting for the other to acknowledge the 
 mistake of such complete separation. 
 
 The new confusion began to manifest itself at 
 the first landing place from Vienna. The steam- 
 boat officials called it Poszony, and the Germans 
 good-naturedly said that they would get off at 
 Pressburg; but the Slovaks named it defiantly 
 Bratoslava, and they all got off at the same place, 
 to live with each other as happily as the proverbial 
 cat and dog. I did not leave the boat with them, 
 for it would have meant the cancellation of my 
 vise, for which the Czechs charge ten dollars 
 American money. I went on to Budapest, the 
 Danube fortunately being international, and we 
 crossed the line from Czecho-Slovakia into Hun- 
 gary, unmolested. 
 
 My Magyar fellow-passengers sent a few choice 
 curses upon the government which now controls 
 the city, hallowed by the tombs of Magyar kings, 
 and every stone of which is eloquent of Magyar 
 history. The Danube broadens as one leaves 
 Bratoslava, the luxurious plain of Hungary is 
 seen, broad skirted and picturesque peasants are at 
 work in the fields, towns and cities peacefully rural 
 In their aspect are left behind, and as the night
 
 134 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 came, we passed Margareth Island and landed in 
 Budapest, which, like all cities that have tasted of 
 the Bolshevik terror, is nervous, and the traveller 
 is met by excusable suspicion. 
 
 The police, the hotel porter, innumerable loyal 
 citizens, formerly army officers, " watch your 
 step," and the city smells of the prison, till one can 
 almost hear the clanking of chains. The white 
 terror is a real terror, and a gloom has settled 
 over the people. 
 
 Budapest seemed to me to be the least peaceful 
 spot on the globe, and no one disguises the fact 
 that the vanquished Magyars are gathering 
 strength for another blow. It is not merely 
 wounded pride that makes them build monuments 
 that cry out for vengeance ; not only is there a loss 
 of peoples and territories — millions of their own 
 race are now the subjects of nations which are up- 
 starts in history, and some of them have remained 
 culturally beneath them. The feeling of France 
 for the lost provinces, the Italian passion for the 
 Irridenta were never as strong as is the cry of 
 Hungary for her abducted stepchildren. 
 
 Incapable as the Magyars had shown themselves 
 in governing the minor nationalities, stupid and 
 venal as were their officials, they did display a cer- 
 tain attractive chivalry. In spite of the fact that 
 one could get anything for money in the Hun- 
 garian courts, there was a freedom from sordid- 
 ness. The Magyar was an aristocrat. Too indo-
 
 NEW BAKEIERS FOR OLD 135 
 
 lent to be severe, too pleasure-loving to be indus- 
 trious, he was v^'hat the Americans call a " good 
 fellow." Defeat, revolution and invasion have 
 left their mark upon him, the good fellowship is 
 gone, the government is sternly militaristic, and 
 the officials are the former army officers. There 
 are harsh repression, and unspeakable cruelty, and 
 the Hungarian government at the present time is a 
 militaristic government at its worst. 
 
 My visit coincided with the futile attempt of the 
 former King Charles to regain his throne, and 
 while the houses were not flagged for his welcome, 
 the people were ready for him, and had the Little 
 Entente not threatened, he would have been re- 
 ceived in triumph. Hungary is incurably aristo- 
 cratic and monarchic, and though this last of the 
 Hapsburgs is not even an " inch a king " either 
 physically or mentally, he is the constitutional heir 
 to the crown of St. Stephen, and it may be kept for 
 him until Hungary has made alliances enough to 
 defy the Little Entente, composed of Czecho- 
 slovakia, and the Kingdom of Serbia, Croatia, 
 Slovania, and Roumania. 
 
 Politics makes " strange bed-fellows," and a 
 Magyar alliance with Poland, which is a Slavic 
 nation, is like the proverbial mixing of oil with 
 water; yet they are discovering racial excellencies 
 in each other which they never have seen before. 
 Poets have started their rhyming mills, historians 
 are studying the historic tombstones to prove spiri-
 
 136 OLD TEAILS AKD NEW BORDEES 
 
 tual relationships, and all that, because they now 
 have a common foe. 
 
 Hungary has a peculiarly tender affection for 
 the United States, which is partly historical, 
 though it is due to the excellent work of the Red 
 Cross and other relief organizations. 
 
 One wishes that the altogether abnormal na- 
 tionalism of the Magyars might become modified 
 through this relationship; but that is too much to 
 hope at this stage of the game, for Hungary is a 
 seething caldron of Chauvinism; it is hot with the 
 heat of Tophet and steaming with relentless fury. 
 The Balkan has moved westward, and Hungary is 
 the centre of a new powder magazine. 
 
 I revisited the spot made sacred by a monument 
 to George Washington, which in my childhood 
 was my first glimpse of the lofty peak of Ameri- 
 can history. I linked this experience with that of 
 a visit to the Frencz Deak monument, which cele- 
 brates the deeds of a liberal and constructive 
 statesman, and also the minor fact that I made 
 a speech at his memorial service at the tender 
 age of five years. Thus early I acquired the 
 habit. 
 
 I did not leave Budapest with regret, though I 
 was again thrilled by this modern city which is yet 
 so typically Hungarian, its architecture born of its 
 national life. I felt the majesty of the Danube, 
 its beauty enhanced by monumental bridges, its 
 shores undesecrated by the waste of industries and
 
 NEW BAEEIEES FOR OLD 137 
 
 the clutter of commerce. I visited old haunts, and 
 heard gypsy music at its best and American jazz, 
 played in my honour, at its worst. I wandered 
 through the picturesque markets, my eyes glad- 
 dened by the sight of gorgeous peasant costumes, 
 my hands itching for their possession, and my nose 
 tickled by the sharp odour of paprika, lavish and 
 unconfined, offered for sale. 
 
 In spite of these joys and those which memory 
 brought, it was painful to live there, even the 
 forty-eight hours allowed me by the police; 
 for I found no regrets except for having 
 lost the war, no hope for the future but in recon- 
 quest, no aim but to reestablish a discredited mon- 
 archy, and make permanent the rule of the privi- 
 leged class. In Budapest reaction is in the sad- 
 dle and is riding rough shod over liberal thought. 
 I experienced a peculiar feeling of relief when my 
 passport was viseed for my departure, and when 
 the city was lost in the level plains, as my train 
 crawled reluctantly toward the Czecho-Slovak bor- 
 der. My joy in leaving Hungary was heightened 
 by my anticipation of returning to my native coun- 
 try, which, strange to say, I was visiting for the 
 first time; as ten years ago, there was no Czecho- 
 slovakia, not even in President Masaryk's dreams. 
 An autonomous Bohemia, and a Slovakia in which 
 the Slovak language was recognized as the official 
 tongue, was the most that even such an ardent 
 patriot as myself expected.
 
 138 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 I thought I would fall upon my knees at the 
 border, in the ecstasy of seeing my young dreams 
 more than realized. I thought that I would kiss 
 the soil of Czecho-Slovakia, freed from the rule of 
 the Hapsburgs, and now forever sacred ; but there 
 was no triumphal arch through which to pass, no 
 ornamental gateway, opening wide its portals to 
 the returning patriot worshipper; only a rough, 
 uninviting shed, surly-looking soldiers, and cus- 
 toms officials who have become famous in all Eu- 
 rope for the relentlessness of their search. If the 
 judgment day holds half the terrors of the Czecho- 
 slovak borders, then, oh sinners, haste and repent ! 
 
 I should have been prepared for a certain dis- 
 illusionment ; for freedom is not in new flags and 
 repainted barriers ; but in men's souls. The land- 
 scape was unchanged, Slovak goose girls and geese 
 were as ubiquitous as ever, and the straw-thatched 
 villages as monotonously alike as of yore, but I did 
 expect a thrill, and I feel cheated because I did not 
 have it. I did not anticipate that the gentleman 
 who examined my passport would fall about my 
 neck, and call for a robe and a ring and the fatted 
 calf ; but he might have sensed the situation when 
 he saw an American passport, and read that I was 
 born in this new country, and he might at least 
 have been civil. Perhaps the official who exam- 
 ined my meagre bag could tell from my few be- 
 longings that I was a returning patriot, breathless 
 to enter my native country, and he may have
 
 NEW BAEEIEES FOR OLD 139 
 
 wished to show me special courtesy by compelHng 
 me to undress in a room many degrees below com- 
 fortable warmth; but when he poked his fingers 
 into my armpits 1 thought he carried his joyous 
 welcome too far. Fortunately or unfortunately 
 my experience was no exception, for men came out 
 of other such torture chambers, pale and trembling 
 or flushed and wrathful; one woman grew hys- 
 terical, and one fainted and had to be revived by a 
 physician. The few kronen of revenue which are 
 being added to the treasury because of this supe- 
 rior vigilance cannot compensate the Republic for 
 the ill-will engendered, and such super-zeal ought 
 to be curbed for the sake of the good-will the new 
 country needs. 
 
 At last I was free, or at least I thought I was, to 
 kneel down and kiss the earth or give vent to my 
 emotions in a less ardent way, when I was accosted 
 by two minor officials, who demanded a tax on my 
 bag, just because it was a bag. Having no Czech- 
 ish change, I had to return to the station, get the 
 proper krone and by the time that formality was 
 over and I had relieved my feelings, my patriotism 
 and my enthusiasm had vanished, and I entered 
 my native country with my stock of joy at low 
 ebb. 
 
 Bratoslava, formerly Poszony and still more 
 formerly Pressburg, thrilled me nevertheless. It 
 is Cinderella at last become a queen — or the older 
 and homelier sister making a good match and re-
 
 140 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEKS 
 
 joicing over the widowhood and poverty of both 
 Vienna and Budapest; it is the last becoming 
 first, the reversal of history. All her glory had 
 been taken from her: the glory of crowning the 
 Hungarian Kings, of being the seat of high learn- 
 ing, of having a thriving commerce; and she was 
 reduced to being a second rate garrison city, that 
 Budapest might be the more glorious. 
 
 Now Bratoslava is a real capital of a real coun- 
 try, more than a thousand years of wrong are rec- 
 tified, and she has received back her own — with 
 interest. 
 
 Czecho-Slovak soldiers are wearing Czecho- 
 slovak uniforms, when, a few years ago, they 
 were tightly laced into Austro-Hungarian trou- 
 sers and drilled to an alien tongue. French influ- 
 ence is, however, visible in the cut of the clothes 
 and in the presence of French drill masters. The 
 Central Powers being disarmed, the militaristic 
 performances of Europe are being taught every- 
 where by Frenchmen. 
 
 Business In Bratoslava is booming. The stores 
 are well stocked and crowded by purchasers, nu- 
 merous banks lure the investors and life seems 
 running at high tide; while a bad touch of na- 
 tionalistic fever keeps the pulse irregular. 
 
 There Is a haughty air about Bratoslava, which 
 reminds me of my pride in my first trousers, or the 
 still more exciting adventure of tripping a big 
 bully — a sort of David and Goliath stunt, which
 
 NEW BAERIERS FOR OLD 141 
 
 made me very daring and brave, until another 
 Goliath gave me a licking. 
 
 I should like to tell this to Bratoslava, but it is 
 difficult to know what language to use; for, in 
 spite of the fact that she is the Slovak capital, I 
 heard more German than Slovak — even the Mag- 
 yar tongue being spoken openly and defiantly. 
 
 As formerly, the Slovaks spoke their language 
 to keep alive national hopes and defy their op- 
 pressors, so now the Hungarians speak Magyar in 
 the spirit of revolt. 
 
 Newspapers in all three languages are published, 
 two of them being German; while concerts and 
 theatricals in these divers tongues make their own 
 patriotic appeal, and Bratoslava-Poszony-Press- 
 burg whatever one calls it, is not a dull city polit- 
 ically. 
 
 However, the government seems stable, if not 
 always wise, and there is order even though the 
 former privileged classes call the new order Bol- 
 shevism. The railroads and the post-offices func- 
 tion with regularity, industry and commerce are 
 fostered and thriving, and the contrast between 
 Czecho-Slovakia, reactionary Hungary and ruined 
 Austria is great enough to make one patient with 
 the lesser evils. 
 
 Slovakia is a lovely country, almost altogether 
 agricultural, and Its people so dear to me that I 
 soon forgot the unpleasantness at the border. The 
 stations and towns through which I passed had un-
 
 142 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 familiar names, as one of the first acts of the new 
 government was evidently the rebaptism of the 
 landscape, a sacred ceremonial very dear to na- 
 tionalists everywhere. My native town came off 
 easily, for it remained the same except that it 
 wears a new suffix which is not at all unbecoming, 
 and it is the same drear, " stuck in the mud," drab- 
 looking town it always has been. I could show it 
 to a stranger in fifteen minutes. There are four 
 more or less straight streets, meeting at the town 
 square, two churches, sadly wanting in beauty, and 
 in need of repair, a synagogue, the most unique 
 building in town, one house of two stories which is 
 called a castle, half a dozen stores, two uninviting 
 irms, the three cemeteries, and the tour of the town 
 would be over. I could have tarried for days, for 
 I wanted to see the old, modest house where I was 
 born, on whose damp walls I wrote the alphabet, 
 those cold mornings when the moisture had turned 
 into frost. I wanted to climb up into the garret 
 and smell the apples and pears which were buried 
 in the grain, to keep as long as my keen appetite 
 would allow; I wanted to visit the room where 
 Uncle Joe, the three-quarters of a man, an erst- 
 while Union soldier, showed me the picture of 
 Abraham Lincoln and made me an American and 
 a patriot, and eager to be a deliverer. I wanted 
 to visit the yard where Uncle Joe drilled us, and 
 Yanczy Pal's orchard, where we swore to deliver 
 our Slovak people from the yoke of the oppressor.
 
 NEW BARRIERS FOR OLD 143 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was responsible for some very 
 severe whippings that I got, after a Fourth of July 
 celebration when we nearly burned down the town. 
 
 After all, this coming back to one's childhood 
 home is a sad experience. No one knew or cared 
 that I organized an army of seven boys, one of 
 them lame, to march against our enemies, and I 
 had to report at the police station the same as 
 everybody else, and the Chief of Police had as 
 little consideration for my feelings as had the cus- 
 toms house officials. 
 
 The new order has not rejuvenated anything or 
 anybody, now that freedom is won, and the new 
 masters have made themselves at home. I used to 
 see happy faces, and I saw none. Shops have been 
 plundered twice. Magyar sympathizers, and there 
 are not a few, have been imprisoned, and the new 
 officials are, if possible, more arrogant than their 
 Magyar predecessors. The agricultural labourers 
 have unionized and were on a strike ; taxes are, of 
 course, much heavier, the value of the krone is 
 low, though much higher than the Austrian. Free- 
 dom of movement is restricted by exacting pass- 
 port regulations. " We have more freedom," an 
 old-time friend said to me, " but we have less 
 room to move in." 
 
 My people used to do their shopping in Vienna, 
 which is three hours' distance by railroad. Now 
 they must shop in Prague, which is at least ten 
 hours by fast train, and infinitely more expensive.
 
 144 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 Even severe illness is levied upon for the good of 
 the Czech capital; for one cannot go to see a spe- 
 cialist in Vienna without a passport, which is re- 
 fused, and the sick person is told to go to Prague, 
 where the physicians are " just as good." Of 
 course passports are granted, but one must have 
 " pull " and know whose palm to " grease." No 
 wonder that the average citizen of Slovakia does 
 not enthuse over the new order. The fact is that 
 the Czechs, like most of mankind, have learned 
 nothing from history. They are repeating the 
 blunders of the Magyars. They are accused of 
 being repressive and Chauvinistic, and are too 
 eager to press the Slovaks into their linguistic and 
 cultural mould. 
 
 The Peace of Versailles named the new republic 
 Czecho-Slovakia, and the Czechs are eager to do 
 away with the hyphen; while some of the Slovaks 
 want to widen it and create of their country an 
 autonomous government. Czech officials have 
 given Slovakia a carpet-bag administration, and 
 while they are no more corrupt than their Magyar 
 predecessors, they are rude where the Magyars 
 were civil. One could get favours from a Magyar 
 ofHcial for good words; they count for nothing 
 now. The Czechs want money and plenty of it. 
 This may be merely repeating the gossip of ene- 
 mies, but I have tested the new masters, and I have 
 not had a civil word in all my contact with the new 
 officials.
 
 NEW BAKRIEES FOR OLD 145 
 
 Perhaps civil words are of little consequence, 
 but I wish that the young man whom I approached 
 at the station of Bratoslava to buy my ticket back 
 to Vienna had not shouted at me, asking whether 
 I could not read that his window was for tickets 
 to parts of Czecho-Slovakia only; and he might 
 have been civil when I asked him to direct me to 
 the right place. I wish also that I had suffered 
 less from the hands of the customs officers in leav- 
 ing my native country. I wish they had not 
 broken every one of the six eggs which were to 
 sustain me on my journey. I wanted to say that 
 I was happy in coming home to my people, and 
 that I was eager to come again, which I regret be- 
 ing unable to say. I still love the Czecho-Slovak 
 republic and wish it well. I still believe that Presi- 
 dent Masaryk is one of the greatest statesmen in 
 Europe and the Abraham Lincoln of his people; 
 but, to quote a Slovak patriot: "What does it 
 profit us if the landlord is a good man if the agent 
 and janitors are rascals? " 
 
 Czecho-Slovakia cannot rely upon military 
 strength to keep it safe from its antagonistic 
 neighbours, Poland and Hungary. It needs inner 
 strength and a spiritual solidarity, and that it does 
 not as yet possess. The Czechs need to pray for 
 grace to soften their harsh nationalism, to modify 
 their exuberance, and help them forget the ancient 
 wrongs they suffered; or, if they must remember, 
 to remind them how cruel a political yoke may be.
 
 146 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 and it is not softened by the fact that they and the 
 Slovaks are a kindred race. Even with the Slo- 
 vaks completely loyal to the new order, the new 
 republic has one or two million Magyars and six 
 or seven million Germans to reconcile, and I have 
 seen but little evidence that it is doing it. 
 
 I fear that the modern Czech nationalist is a 
 poor reconciler, and I am not too sanguine in be- 
 lieving that when I again return to my native town 
 it will be a part of that new republic which began 
 its career with the best wishes of every American, 
 especially of those of us who have served the cause 
 of Slovak freedom, and have suffered for it.
 
 XV 
 MADAM POLAND 
 
 CARL EMIL FRANCOIS called the coun- 
 tries east of Germany " Half Asia." To 
 him the line between the two continents 
 was not geographic but cultural, for he noticed the 
 change from order and cleanliness to rutted road- 
 ways, poorly tilled farms, dilapidated villages, 
 slovenly cities and wretched hotels. 
 
 The saving "When West met East the W^st 
 began to scratch " is not elegant but alas, true, as 
 every traveller knows who has ventured far east 
 of Berlin. 
 
 Whatever one may say of the German rule in 
 the east, the fact remains that it has pushed " Half 
 Asia " a good many hundreds of miles back, and 
 there have been good roads, well-tilled fields, neat 
 villages, decent hotels and no vermin. By the 
 Peace of Versailles the former province of Posen 
 has gone to Poland, a decision with which one can- 
 not quarrel ; nevertheless " Half Asia " is creeping 
 westward and makes itself painfully apparent 
 three hours after Berlin is left behind on a train 
 which does not exert itself to leave Germany. 
 
 The German border ends at Stench, and I should 
 remember it even if it were not so unpleasant a 
 
 147
 
 148 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 name, for it was midnight when, with bag and 
 baggage, I had to leave a fairly comfortable corner 
 in my car and stand waiting two hours before the 
 customs house formalities were over. The Ger- 
 mans performed the task courteously but thor- 
 oughly and if it was unpleasant and fatiguing, it 
 served one right for leaving so good a country for 
 Poland. 
 
 Thirty minutes after I had struggled back to my 
 comfortable seat in the car we arrived at Bench, 
 where the Polish customs office is located. Stench 
 and Bench rhyme, but nothing about them does; 
 therefore it seemed wise to put many kilometers 
 between German and Polish customs house offi- 
 cers. The difference between Stench and Bench 
 is that at the latter one has to walk a full quarter 
 of a mile to the customs house, that the officers are 
 a little less thorough in examining one's baggage, 
 and that they are infinitely more careful about 
 scanning one's passport. Fortunately mine was in 
 order, but how awful, had it not been, for I should 
 have had to spend the night at either Bench or 
 Stench. 
 
 Now I really was in free and reunited Poland. 
 The thought overwhelmed me, for this freedom is 
 the consummation of a great, historic struggle, 
 which I had shared, In reading Poland's pathetic 
 history, and in the solemn enjoyment of her art, 
 whose source and inspiration was the national cal- 
 vary.
 
 MADAM POLAND 149 
 
 Over one hundred years ago the diplomatic sur- 
 geons of Europe performed a unique operation by 
 attempting to divide a poHtical, cultural and spiri- 
 tual unit into three unequal parts. Mechanically 
 the operation was successful; one part of the pa- 
 tient was given to Russia, one to Austria and one 
 to Germany; but the divided body refused to be- 
 come a corpse. 
 
 National existence of eight hundred years can 
 be temporarily deadened by ether, but not killed. 
 It had been but a feeble life, tortured by all kinds 
 of political, economic and social ills ; but the opera- 
 tion released latent energies uniting the waning 
 members of the body — and it is just possible that 
 the future generations of the Poles will look upon 
 the one hundred years which were spent in three 
 national hospitals, under divers conditions, as the 
 period necessary to heal old national diseases. At 
 least Poland had the chance to develop nationally 
 and culturally while the doctors were wallowing in 
 the political mire of the nineteenth century. 
 
 In Russia the government, after various experi- 
 ments with this fragment of a state, at last tried to 
 crush Polish culture and the Roman Catholic 
 faith, the two being wedded and welded. The 
 aristocracy and the clergy were persecuted, and 
 the peasants favoured, with the result that. In Rus- 
 sian Poland, the democratic spirit developed and 
 manifests itself to-day in the dominance of the 
 peasant party in the political life of the nation.
 
 150 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 The Austrian portion fared better and at the 
 same time worse. The Hapsburgs exalted aristoc- 
 racy. PoHsh statesmen rose high in Austrian ad- 
 ministration and in the army, the peasants were 
 exploited, Polish art and culture throve, and over 
 the city of Crakow hovered the shadow of Athens. 
 To Crakow the patriotic Poles came to weep over 
 the tombs of Polish kings, and to it they sent 
 their sons to steep themselves in the spirit of the 
 Polish past. 
 
 In Germany the Poles fared the best, and felt 
 the worst. The weapons which were used to kill 
 the Polish spirit were the German language, Ger- 
 man culture and German efficiency. The province 
 of Posen, as it was called, developed economically 
 with the rest of the German Empire ; but while the 
 Germans are good schoolmasters, they are not 
 good pedagogues. They made no allowance for 
 national and racial peculiarities, and the Poles re- 
 mained Poles, in spite of the fact that they learned 
 the German language and German methods of 
 trade and administration. A hundred years of 
 political struggle are over and the victory is won, 
 in spite of hangings, shootings, deportations, flat- 
 teries, and economic and social pressure. 
 
 I have lived, then, to see a free and reunited Po- 
 land, the first and most convincing evidence of 
 which was the crowding of Polish soldiers into my 
 compartment, their demanding the cozy corners 
 and my spending the whole night contemplat-
 
 MADAM POLAND 151 
 
 ing the booted legs of a portion of the PoHsh 
 army. 
 
 The sky was growing gray as the sun struggled 
 through banks of clouds when I looked out upon a 
 typical Polish landscape, flat as North Dakota, 
 soft, wet and swampy as Arkansas, as desolate 
 as " No Man's Land." In Belgium and France 
 one sees at least noble ruins, and posterity will 
 have its thrills in looking upon ruined and 
 damaged cathedrals and castles; the latter, in- 
 deed, often gaining in beauty by being partly de- 
 molished. 
 
 There are no ruins on the Eastern Front; only 
 devastation. There is nothing for the eye, of 
 pleasure or of pleasurable pain; only desolation. 
 Cities one with the mire, and villages one with the 
 dust. Zigzagging trenches and unhealed earth 
 offend the eye, then suddenly comes a piece of 
 plowed ground over which an American tractor 
 moves, with an American boy driving it. A peas- 
 ant stands by watching the chugging monster on 
 its rounds. He cannot understand this phenome- 
 non. 
 
 Four years ago these same " gasoline horses " 
 destroyed his harvest. The men who drove them 
 came from " God knows where " and moved on 
 into the unknown, leaving ruin. That he could 
 grasp — that was " Voyna " War — God ordained, 
 or devil ordained, ordained it was; but this thing, 
 of a man's coming from over the seas to plow with
 
 152 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 one of those " stinking horses," and bringing his 
 seed with him, asking no wage, accepting no 
 thanks — that is beyond him. 
 
 He is one of the thousands of peasant refugees 
 who are now drifting back to the native soil, 
 shell-strewn, thistle-grown soil, and to his house, 
 the thatch consumed by fire and the bricks in a 
 confused heap; but the hearth is still black from 
 the fires the housewife had kindled, and around it 
 with boughs from the forest and mud from the 
 river he rebuilds his habitation, more like a 
 beaver's than a human being's. 
 
 They have suffered, these peasants, without the 
 consolation of some past wrong avenged or 
 righted, or some good to come out of it for their 
 children. They are largely Ruthenians, living in 
 Poland, but not Poles; alienated, not assimilated, 
 a pathetic minority which brought all the sacri- 
 fices and has not received even the imaginary bene- 
 fits of the war. 
 
 They were the dirt under the feet of all the 
 armies. The Russians drove them into the moun- 
 tains, the Hungarians pushed them back, and the 
 Germans trampled upon them, until they were 
 swept into Russia and Siberia, and even beyond; 
 lost for years in a strange, Inhospitable world. 
 Some day, when the great romances about the war 
 are written, the most tragic material will be found 
 on this Eastern Front, In the flight and return of 
 these peasant folk, who had no pleading friends.
 
 MADAM POLAND 153 
 
 no eager defenders, like Belgium and France, until 
 now, when it is almost too late. 
 
 As one travels west and north, there is less 
 devastation. New thatches show that life has be- 
 gun its normal rounds, groups of crosses dot the 
 landscape, marking the graves of Germans, Hun- 
 garians, and Russians, buried where they stood 
 and died, the armies marching over them. 
 
 There are rutted roadways over which wretched 
 peasants in more wretched carts, drawn by most 
 wretched horses, are going to market. Polish 
 Jews creep past in drear black, their pathetic faces 
 wearing a hunted look, their best of life, miserable 
 enough, in the past, and living its worst to-day. 
 Then the huts huddled more closely, the tracks 
 multiplied, low and crowded tenements rose to 
 uniform height, cheerless, block upon block, tall 
 chimneys and church steeples appeared, and we 
 pulled into Warsaw, the capital of Poland. 
 
 It is an interesting, sprawling, modern city, hav- 
 ing far outgrown its picturesque centre, colourful 
 with its touch of the middle ages. Streets radiate 
 in all directions, straight, and solemn, and plain; 
 tenements are crowded by a joyless population, 
 and one hears neither laughter nor music. Both 
 are drowned in the pitiless struggle for existence. 
 A million or more people live in Warsaw, drawn 
 like moths to the flame, or driven in by the war, 
 like sheep into a pen. 
 
 It is a tolerably clean city, having reached the
 
 154 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 Pharisaic standard, as well as or better than Chi- 
 cago ; but the " inside of the cup " ! Ah, " There's 
 the rub." 
 
 Warsaw shares the pride of all the new made 
 capitals. It is full of soldiers, a goodly portion of 
 the army seeming to be quartered in and around 
 the city. Six hundred thousand of them in Po- 
 land, eating their daily bread by the sweat of the 
 poor, overworked and underfed population. 
 
 The spirit of war permeates Warsaw. War 
 machines hum in the *' heavens above," and rattle 
 over the " earth beneath," Bolshevik prisoners are 
 paraded on the Boulevard, and all the ills which 
 follow war, hunger, dirt and disease are rampant 
 in the streets. Perhaps nowhere is prostitution so 
 open and so insolent, nor so many women who 
 seem mere children, engaged in the frightful traffic. 
 
 Yet Warsaw is lovable, with a soft, tender, 
 feminine sort of beauty; especially as I have 
 watched her skyline from the Vistula at sunset, or 
 looked down upon her Cathedral Square from the 
 windows in the exquisite apartments of my hos- 
 pitable hostess. Ten years ago I looked down 
 upon the same Square, the Russian church, with 
 its bulbous bell-tower, the sun bright on its 
 golden roofs and shining crosses, enhancing its 
 barbaric splendour. I am partial to Byzantine ar- 
 chitecture, and this church, a masterpiece, a replica 
 of the Saviour's Church in Moscow, relieved the 
 tameness and drab modernness of Warsaw's sky-
 
 MADAM POLAND 155 
 
 line. However, it was an eyesore to the people of 
 that city, as it was built with no pious intent but to 
 emphasize Russian dominance and to proclaim its 
 permanence. Cossacks were riding the streets, 
 swinging menacing whips, while stolid Russian 
 soldiers guarded the intersections; for Poland's 
 chronic revolt had broken out violently, and the 
 attack was directed against this sacred edifice. 
 
 My hostess recently was the hostess then. I 
 owe her too much for her gracious hospitality to 
 say that her beauty has faded in the intervening 
 years, and if gratitude did not restrain me, gal- 
 lantry would. 
 
 Hers was a proud, defiant, cameo-like face with 
 a delicately modelled, straight nose, a firm, exquis- 
 ite chin, and lustrous eyes in which one could see 
 memory and hope ; for a few days before she had 
 buried her son who was slain in her doorv\^ay. 
 " Pro Patria MortL" 
 
 Now the outlines of her face seem blurred, 
 the glow in her eyes is clouded by mist, her head 
 so proudly poised is bowed. As I anticipated see- 
 ing her joy in the moment of Poland's long-de- 
 ferred triumph, I pictured her exquisite beyond 
 words, and, frankly, I was disappointed. All she 
 hoped for and believed might be realized in fifty or 
 a hundred years has come in less than ten, with far 
 less sacrifice and much larger fullness than she 
 imagined. 
 
 The offending church is still there, but the gold
 
 166 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOKDEKS 
 
 is ripped from the roofs, the crosses have been 
 melted into cannon, the bell-tower is being demol- 
 ished to satisfy patriotic ardour, and the church it- 
 self is being saved only by the strategy of the 
 Archbishop who consecrated it, and pronounced it 
 the Cathedral of his diocese. 
 
 However, a Russian governmental building, all 
 done in gorgeous tile, has been stripped of its 
 beauty and riddled by bullets so that now it looks 
 as if pitted by smallpox. My hostess ought to be 
 prouder and more beautiful now than ever, for 
 Polish regiments lined the square, cannons 
 boomed and bands were playing the national an- 
 them. 
 
 It was the fifth of May. Ascension Day in the 
 church calendar, it was also the centenary celebra- 
 tion of Napoleon's death, and the two occasions 
 blended in the pomp and ritual provided by the 
 church. The initials of the Corsican and those of 
 the Nazarene, met upon the high altar erected in 
 the centre of the square, and I suggested, " mali- 
 ciously," my hostess said, that Poland was celebrat- 
 ing the ascent of Jesus and the descent of Napo- 
 leon. She grew eloquent in narrating Polish his- 
 tory and Napoleon's part in arousing the Polish 
 National Spirit, in recognition of which, this High 
 Mass and also the renaming of a city square as 
 "Napoleon Place." 
 
 Again I brought a cloud upon her face when I 
 suggested that a hundred years after the demise of
 
 MADAM POLAND 157 
 
 Wllhelm II there may be a similar celebration; for 
 without Kaiser Wilhelm the freedom of Poland 
 might have tarried ; and that perhaps by then, the 
 " Napoleon Place " will be rebaptized in the ex- 
 Kaiser's honour and blessed by his name. 
 
 Just then, fortunately for me, the celebrants 
 lifted their holy symbols, Pilsudsky, surrounded 
 by his staff, led a visiting French commission to 
 the seats of honour, and the vast multitudes with 
 bared heads pressed forward for a closer view of 
 their idol. I suspect that when he had his picture 
 taken, copies of which cover a good deal of War- 
 saw, the photographer said to him, " Now look 
 fierce," His is a mild and pleasant face; though 
 his counterfeit makes him look like a cross be- 
 tween Napoleon the Great and Ivan the Terrible. 
 
 Polish soldiers, who adore him, are undersized, 
 their uniforms the discard of many armies, chiefly 
 American; they look underfed, and while I have 
 no doubt about their patriotism and religious ar- 
 dour, I am quite sure that the thought uppermost 
 or nethermost in their minds was of their next 
 meal, and the hope that it would contain meat. 
 
 The gallant Polish officers pled politely with 
 the throng, and firemen with their gleaming hel- 
 mets held on to the ropes which saved tlie space 
 allotted to distinguished visitors. The Polish 
 Marine, which looked suspiciously Teutonic and 
 minded me of the stewards of the Hamburg- 
 American liners, reinforced the strength of the
 
 158 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDESS 
 
 army and the firemen. Fortunately the High 
 Mass was curtailed, and as the dignitaries de- 
 scended from the altar, the lines broke and the en- 
 thusiastic throng became one with the chiefs of 
 the church and nation, and moved toward the 
 square which was to be named in holy baptism 
 after the great Napoleon, who, if he were aware 
 of it, would wonder why this honour is paid him. 
 
 I have intimated tliat my hostess' beauty is not 
 the same as it was. The truth is that she is dis- 
 illusioned, and It is reflected in her face. She said 
 with a sigh : " Yes, there was a great moment 
 which recompensed for all the suffering of the 
 past. Poland was free! There was a universal 
 
 embrace, a marvellous ecstasy ! " She tried 
 
 to describe that golden moment; but her lips 
 quivered and there were tears in her eyes. The re- 
 membrance of it brought back the old beauty for 
 an instant, then It faded again, and she com- 
 plained: "There is lack of order, there is graft, 
 incompetency, class struggle, hate. Ingratitude 
 and a new hunger which is not for freedom but 
 for dominance." 
 
 This time I tried to comfort her. I pled the 
 few years and the inexperience, the general un- 
 rest. I reassured her, though I am not over- 
 sanguine about Poland's to-morrow. 
 
 My hostess and I had been to visit a milk dis- 
 tributing station. A mob filled the courtyard. 
 Old men, young men, women and children, a piti-
 
 MADAM POLAND 159 
 
 able, struggling mass pushing toward a window 
 where the coveted tickets are distributed. Behind 
 the window stood frantic women who feared the 
 place would be stormed. I suggested the forming 
 of a line. A line had been formed, they said, two 
 in fact, one for the women with babies and one for 
 those without. However, as the lines met at the 
 window, each coming from an opposite direction 
 and pushing against the other, the result was 
 bloody noses, torn and tattered garments and a 
 mob, not a queue. I do not pose as a tamer of 
 mobs, but a few calm words, the pulling asunder 
 of female combatants, one line formed and the 
 distribution was made quickly and peacefully. 
 Simple indeed. Strange that no one thought of it 
 before. The same confusion reigns in railroad 
 stations, post-offices, everywhere. Verily, I can- 
 not keep all Poland in line. 
 
 " There are graft and dishonesty," my hostess 
 whispered between sips of chocolate ; and there are, 
 as all relief agencies can testify. Every one seems 
 corrupted and nothing is safe. This, of course, is 
 not peculiar to Poland. One has to be on one's 
 guard everywhere, for the war has knocked recti- 
 tude into a " cocked hat " all over Europe ; but the 
 fact that Austria could not send anv more throudi 
 trains to Warsaw because fourteen passenger 
 coaches had been stolen, does seem a little un- 
 usual. 
 
 My hostess tried to be apologetic about Poland's
 
 160 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 foreign policy. " After all," she said, " White 
 Russia is a sort of * no man's land.' Vilna ought 
 to belong to Poland, and as for Ukrania — ah, 
 well! We just tried to save it from the Bolshe- 
 viki." 
 
 This is a poor time to apologize, for there are 
 inflammatory posters everywhere, bidding the 
 populace come to the rescue of Upper Silesia, and 
 civilians are drilling by the banks of the Vistula. 
 Relief agencies cannot get cars to carry seed to 
 starving Eastern Poland, because soldiers and 
 ammunitions are being sent to help enlarge Po- 
 land's borders v/estward. Warsaw is thronged 
 with soldiers, and is reminiscent of Berlin in its 
 most militaristic days ; military autos rush through 
 the streets, bombing planes whirr aloft. Count- 
 less pitiable beggars and half-starved children con- 
 front one, and there are a hundred thousand chil- 
 dren of school age without instruction, in Warsaw 
 alone. 
 
 Quoting the title of Sienkiewicz's well-known 
 story, " Quo Vadis," I asked my hostess: 
 "Whither are you going?" And she replied: 
 "Ask France." 
 
 She continued : " We have an army but no great 
 military genius; we are embroiled in European 
 politics and have not one statesman." 
 
 Pilsudsky she dismissed with a shrug of her 
 shoulders, and when I mentioned the present Pre- 
 mier, Witos, she smiled derisively.
 
 MADAM POLAND 161 
 
 "Al-i, that is what hurts. This is a peasant's 
 government. No wonder there is no efficiency. 
 The country is in debt and the currency debased. 
 The palaces of the aristocracy are commandeered 
 and they are all out on their estates, while the 
 peasants run the government." 
 
 I reminded her of the fact that the so-called 
 aristocracy and governing class has made a sorry 
 mess of the past, and that anyway it does not take 
 much brains to run a country. 
 
 She insists that Witos is a fraud, that he rides 
 in a private car, but just before he reaches his own 
 village he steps into a third-class coach. " In 
 Warsaw he lives like a prince and at home like a 
 peasant." 
 
 I am afraid that my hostess is in the realm of 
 myths. The fact is that Witos is a shrewd but 
 honest peasant, and the aristocracy have neither 
 characteristic in abundance. 
 
 " W^hat has become of Paderewsky?" I in- 
 quired. 
 
 " Have you asked any one else that question? '* 
 she asked in return. 
 
 " Yes, and the answer is that he was a great 
 piano player. The fact is that I have never heard 
 his name mentioned although I was three weeks in 
 Poland. I have not seen his picture anywhere, 
 even in music stores, though I peered into every 
 show window." 
 
 Republics are ungrateful," my hostess said. 
 
 ft
 
 162 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 " Certainly Paderewsky deserved better of Po- 
 land." 
 
 She invited a company of her intimate friends 
 to five o'clock tea, and before their arrival she took 
 me through her picture gallery. There were 
 mostly historic pictures, a few by Matejko, the 
 greatest of Poland's patriot painters. I criticized 
 not the colours or the drawing, but the Grand 
 Opera style of depicting the past, the ornate, ideal- 
 ized way of presenting the struggles of yesterday. 
 I wonder if my hostess' depression is not due to 
 the fact that, seeing modern history, she finds it 
 commonplace and colourless. The modern heroes 
 are not so colossal, the events not so picturesque, 
 the devotion not so pure. She told me, and she is 
 right, that Poland's hope was kept alive by this 
 idealization of the past. I apologized for having 
 criticized, but her face clouded again; for he 
 who casts doubt upon the complete glory of Po- 
 land's past is worse than he who suspects that 
 King Solomon was not as wise as his reputation 
 warrants us in believing. 
 
 The company assembled. A judge of the High 
 Court, professors of the University, church dig- 
 nitaries, artists and officers. There were many 
 osculatory greetings, after which tea was served 
 and I was asked to speak. 
 
 I had left the United States, glad that for a 
 while I could rest from prophesying, and here I 
 was being urged to speak where a plain word
 
 MADAM POLAND 163 
 
 might be more dangerous than in the United 
 States. I am a friend of Poland, and known as 
 such by my past record, so I felt a rare freedom 
 of utterance. I had also the saving background of 
 the Quaker Mission, which has the reputation of 
 being impartial and non-political; so I began by 
 interpreting its work and its message. I told 
 of what I had seen on the Eastern Front, a devas- 
 tation even more cruel than that in the West. 
 Peasants driven from their homes and wandering 
 as far as India and back again, scarcely able to 
 identify the place where their village stood. I 
 showed samples of bread made of acorns and oak 
 leaves, bitter and scarce, and acting upon the vitals 
 like tannic acid. I had pictures of American trac- 
 tors guided by English and American Quaker boys 
 who plow furrows between unhealed trenches, 
 pyramids of barbed wire and war wastage, I told 
 of half a dozen normal schools and colleges in 
 which the future leaders of Poland live, in squalor 
 and misery. I spoke of brave women delous- 
 ing the population in the midst of a typhus epi- 
 demic, and I asked timidly whether this is the time 
 to continue wars and tlie preparation for future 
 wars. 
 
 As I have the saving grace of humour T pro- 
 voked smiles and tears, and they soothed the 
 wounds made by a faithful friend. There was 
 genuine applause, followed by promises of cooper- 
 ation, and here be it said, the promises were kept.
 
 164 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 Little knots of men and women gathered around 
 me and there was further discussion. 
 
 I remember the professor of Pedagogy of the 
 University of Warsaw. I shall remember his face 
 always. A tender, sweet, manly face; but there 
 were tears in his eyes. 
 
 " We have a hundred years of struggle behind 
 us," he said. " Our strength has been consumed 
 in achieving freedom, our youth has lived for that 
 ideal. We need friends who will aid us in taking 
 the next step." 
 
 I asked him one question, " Is militaristic 
 France the friend you need now ? " He did not 
 answer the question. 
 
 " You must not be discouraged about your coun- 
 try," I said to my hostess when I bade her good- 
 bye, and It seemed strange that I had to speak the 
 words of courage. " You are at least a nation. 
 In Posen, Galicia and here in former Russian Po- 
 land the cultural and economic cleavage is gone. 
 Of course I know that Posen is conservative and 
 is suspicious of Warsaw, which it thinks radical. 
 Galicia is aristocratic and fears both ; but the peo- 
 ple are Poles everywhere and think Polish. You 
 have little or nothing to fear from Bolshevism; 
 your labouring element is patriotic and so are the 
 farmers and business men. Nowhere In all my 
 travels have I found a more united national feeling 
 than In this new, old Poland, and that Is a great 
 deal.
 
 MADAM POLAND 165 
 
 " To guide and restrain this national feeling, to 
 begin to make its strength productive, to turn its 
 attention to the reclamation of land and the educa- 
 tion of its youth, that is the immediate task, and 
 you, my dear lady, you must go to work and do 
 your part. As you have worked and suffered to 
 make Poland free, you must work and if need be 
 suffer to make it turn from the past to the future, 
 from conquest to labour." 
 
 She pressed my hand; I kissed hers gallantly. 
 She had grown strangely beautiful again, as she 
 turned her face from the tragic past and the uncer- 
 tain present to the hopeful future.
 
 XVI 
 
 THE MIND OF EUROPE 
 
 IT is a dull, gray Europe which I shall remem- 
 ber, with just a touch of colour here and 
 there, like " ashes of roses " after a sunset. 
 The rest is a blanket of storm clouds not quite 
 emptied of menace; rumbling thunder from the 
 west, flaming flares of red from the east, now 
 spreading far, threatening all the sky, then show- 
 ing but torn patches of a passing storm. There 
 is no memory of bright days, hardly even mo- 
 ments, to bring back as " souvenirs of the occa- 
 sion," with which to enrich my standardized ex- 
 istence in America, moving in a well-ordered way, 
 between nationally advertised breakfast foods and 
 the village curfew. 
 
 Perhaps my spectacles were misty, and I saw 
 but gray, where I might have seen blue skies. 
 Perhaps following a breadline is a poor way of 
 seeing Europe; but the breadline is the "beaten 
 path " these days, and one visits the soup kitchens 
 rather than the museums, sees proletarian anguish 
 instead of Murillo's Holy Family, and one cannot 
 admire monuments, when so many pedestals are 
 for rent. 
 
 The unusual in Europe soon became the usual 
 
 166
 
 THE MIIsD OF EUEOPE 167 
 
 to me, and when thousands of underfed, tuber- 
 cular children had tramped through my heart, it 
 became incapable of more than wholesale pity. 
 There is no outstanding experience; no visit to 
 some quiet spot where the war has not torn, hurt, 
 maimed or killed something or some one. The 
 war has standardized Europe, the great steam- 
 roller has pressed it flat, the mills of the gods 
 have ground both fast and fine, and have pro- 
 duced the same grist everywhere. 
 
 In the little Slovak villages I heard conversa- 
 tions which had the same trend as in Challons- 
 sur-Marne. I found the political muddle-headed- 
 ness of Paris in Belgrade, and when I fled to 
 Switzerland for the gladness of the mountains 
 and the joy of being among the unhurt, it was 
 aching in the same joints as the rest of the con- 
 tinent. 
 
 Switzerland was not invaded by soldiers, but 
 by armies of spies and refugees, who came with 
 paper wealth, which at first enriched merchants 
 and hotel-keepers, and then Impoverished them. 
 Cantonal ties were badly strained by racial and 
 cultural sympathies; Bolshevism emboldened the 
 poor and frightened the rich. Switzerland be- 
 came the center of financial operations In the vari- 
 ous depreciated currencies of the continent; she 
 had the usual crop of war profiteers as well as the 
 hard-pressed middle class, and the awakened 
 proletariat.
 
 168 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 The high cost of living was the topic of conver- 
 sation everywhere ; among the educated as well as 
 among the ignorant; for the stomach knows no 
 culture-line, and if the profiteers escape the hot- 
 test terrors of hell, it will not be because I have 
 not heard them consigned to it, in many languages 
 and picturesque similies. 
 
 Everywhere I found the financial circus in full 
 swing. Currency taking leaps from almost noth- 
 ing to a little more than something, the American 
 dollar being the aerial gymnast, the German mark 
 performing on the parallel bar; while the Aus- 
 trian kronen and the Polish marks were the 
 clowns, rolling in the sawdust, once in a while 
 making a handspring in a feeble hope of strength, 
 but invariably landing on their backs, to the 
 amusement and profit of those who sat in the re- 
 served seats, but the despair of the many on the 
 top rows. 
 
 To the anxiety of "what shall we eat?" has 
 been added a new one: "where shall we live?" 
 There is a housing shortage everywhere, with the 
 possible exception of Petrograd, from which a 
 good part of the population has moved, thus leav- 
 ing houses for much needed fuel through the 
 many hard winters. 
 
 The most anathematized man In Europe is the 
 landlord, who has had his traditional rapacity 
 curbed ; for while living costs have risen one hun- 
 dred and one thousand per cent., he may raise his 
 
 1
 
 THE MIND OF EUROPE 169 
 
 rent but twenty per cent. He has had his revenge, 
 an unprofitable one on the whole. He has made 
 no repairs and no improvements, with the result 
 that the cities look shabby from neglect, walls are 
 murky from dust and soot, and a " perfectly 
 good " American advertisement is obsolete. 
 There is no more " Spotless Town." 
 
 There are, however, no homeless people ; for the 
 law, almost uniform through Central Europe, al- 
 lows only a certain number of rooms per person, 
 varying somewhat according to the tenant's rank 
 and station. Everybody takes roomers, and it is 
 an unassorted world which is thrown together 
 into hovels and palaces, making the best of a bad 
 situation. 
 
 The extraordinary joys I shared, were the drop 
 in the cost of living, the temporary recovery of 
 the value of money, the discovery that a young 
 couple might begin housekeeping, by virtue of the 
 fact that somebody had departed this life, or been 
 squeezed into closer quarters by a relentless law. 
 
 The feast for the eye was — not a new triumph 
 of architecture or an exquisite painting, but a 
 side of bacon in a butcher's shop, or a window 
 full of shoes, both of American origin. 
 
 The best of men everywhere are not thinking 
 how to conform their lives to high Ideals, that 
 they may escape the punishment hereafter — but 
 how to escape the tax and the customs collectors. 
 Dante would have a new vision of purgatory were
 
 170 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 he travelling through Central Europe to-day, and 
 had to pass the newly-made boundaries. 
 
 The poor who were always poor are serene. 
 They are used to the empty larder, to scarce and 
 bitter bread, with meat only on rare occasions. 
 And there was always the " Bon JDieu " and " Der 
 Gute Gott " who has never forsaken them. The 
 miracle of the loaves and fishes has been per- 
 formed again, and there were also the basketfuls 
 with enough fragments to feed the stai-ving Rus- 
 sians. 
 
 That " Charity covers a multitude of sins " was 
 never more true than now, when there are so 
 many sins to cover: individual sins, national sins, 
 and the sins of the whole human race. 
 
 The war stimulated in men certain virtues — de- 
 votion, courage, self-sacrifice, cooperation on a 
 vast scale, and the affiliation of peoples, far apart 
 in the race and social scale. But the brute self, 
 which had to be fed by hate, grew hungrier the 
 more it devoured ; the holy flame burnt lower and 
 lower, patriotism became a cloak for profiteering, 
 the broken barriers rose again, and Brotherhood 
 was an empty dream. 
 
 As an earthquake alters the face of the earth, 
 so the war has created its own mental, social, and 
 spiritual geography. It has torn new chasms be- 
 tween nations, between neighbours and fellow- 
 citizens. The teachings of science which proved 
 the relationships of everything living, the new in-
 
 THE MIND OF EUROPE 171 
 
 sight vv'hich saw no barriers between matter and 
 spirit, Christianity with its faith in the Father- 
 hood of God and its practice of the Brotherhood 
 of Man, are now opposed by new obstacles be- 
 tween race and race, class and class, shades of re- 
 ligion, and social and economic doctrines. 
 
 The greed for power masks itself behind race 
 struggle. Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism, the 
 sowers of the seed of the last war, are being dis- 
 placed by new slogans pregnant with new wars. 
 
 Anti-Semitism grows more virulent, the rela- 
 tionships between Roman Catholics and Protes- 
 tants are not improved, the Socialist class war is 
 being fought openly, and the ancient gulf between 
 the rich and poor has become wider. 
 
 The newly-made rich are callous to the suffer- 
 ing of the poor, neither their right hand nor their 
 left hand knowing what foreign hands are doing 
 in saving the masses from semi-starvation, and 
 the new generation from growing up with the ef- 
 fects of rickets and tuberculosis unassuaged. I 
 saw the poor in Abraham's bosom, and the rich 
 with unslacked thirst, crying for the cooling 
 drink. Erratic plays, grotesque cabarets, liqueurs 
 with strange ** kicks," dances with new contor- 
 tions, a mad race for more wealth, a struggle 
 against new taxes, and dark schemings to evade 
 the laws. — are their pleasant tortures. I left my 
 ricli friends with loathing and some of my kin- 
 dred were to me as strangers. The poor I found
 
 172 OLD TEAILS Aim NEW BOEDERS 
 
 blessed, and I also was blessed by their suffering, 
 borne without complaint. 
 
 The beggars in rags and vermin, displaying 
 their agonies, seemed to me beautiful. In compari- 
 son with the rich, in their vulgar display of 
 wealth, all too common in Vienna, Berlin, War- 
 saw and Budapest — the cities of great sorrow and 
 great need. 
 
 Concert halls, theaters, and opera-houses are 
 crowded as never before, with the choicest seats at 
 a premium ; but true art is at a low level. Artists 
 have moved again to the garrets, have tightened 
 their belts, and walk the streets like shadows. 
 The holy hush which used to prevail when Wag- 
 ner was sung or played, is no more, and in one of 
 the best boxes In the Berlin Opera, war profiteers 
 were drinking champagne and eating sausages, 
 while Lohengrin sang his swan-song. 
 
 Since the war no great work of art has been 
 produced. Not for want of material; but the 
 wreckage has been so great, the shores are so 
 thickly strewn with humanity's water-soaked 
 treasures, that the artists are stunned, and stand 
 stupidly on the sands, watching the remorseless 
 beating of the waves. 
 
 In statecraft the leaders are equally helpless and 
 stupid. With rare exceptions, the people are 
 drifting, caught by the undertow of alliances, of 
 balances of power, economic selfishness and the 
 collective greed of nations. I met burgomasters,
 
 THE MIND OF EUROPE 173 
 
 ministers, presidents, and those real rulers of 
 mankind, the editors of the great newspapers; 
 after talking with them I was impressed anew by 
 the fact that when Solomon prayed for wisdom, 
 he knew what rulers of people lack the most. 
 
 I went to Europe a fairly modest man; but 
 after meeting some of the leaders of mankind, I 
 have gained so much in self-esteem that I be- 
 lieve, in a pinch, I might govern a country or two, 
 without more damage to them than they are suf- 
 fering now. That is no reflection upon the men 
 who are the present rulers; they may even be an 
 improvement upon those from the hereditary rul- 
 ing class, which they have displaced with such 
 dramatic suddenness. 
 
 Herr Friedrich Ebert, " Saddlemaster by the 
 Grace of God," was born in a narrow street in 
 Heidelberg, brought up in the gray atmosphere 
 of hard labour and poverty, his father, a man 
 with a crooked back, made so by bending over the 
 work-bench. His mother, prematurely tooth- 
 less and aged, a shawl over her head, was one of 
 those ghosts of women who haunt the tenements. 
 When she rocked the cradle, and sang her hush- 
 a-bye, she did not know tliat God would " con- 
 found the wise and prudent," she did not dream 
 that her son would displace the mighty Hohen- 
 zollerns, the last and the proudest of them, Wil- 
 helm the Second, King of Prussia and Emperor 
 of Germany.
 
 174 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 Friedrich Ebert is of medium height, given to 
 Germanic rotundity, caring nothing for pose, 
 knowing no studied gestures; very genial, very 
 gracious, a fairly shrewd politician, and a man of 
 the people, remaining with the people in spite of 
 place and power beyond his wildest dreams. He 
 saw all the great ones, and the trained ones, and 
 those born to rule, pass into oblivion. Those 
 pompous gentlemen, those super-heroes, shrank 
 before his eyes, into small, trembling, frightened 
 creatures. Their dusty files — the springs from 
 which they drew their political wisdom — grew 
 dustier, and failed to yield even a drop of saving 
 wisdom in a great, national calamity. 
 
 It was Ebert who touched the button which 
 produced on the historic film the collapse of the 
 monarchy, and the flight of the Kaiser into exile 
 and oblivion. 
 
 In Vienna I was received by Herr Professor 
 Hainisch, in the same office in which the ultima- 
 tum to Serbia was signed, the first act in the ter- 
 rible drama of the World War. 
 
 Herr Professor Hainisch is the successor of the 
 proud Hapsburgs, "Apostolic Majesties, Emper- 
 ors of Austria, Kings of Hungary and Bohemia," 
 grand dukes of a dozen duchies, once the rulers 
 of half the earth, theirs by conquest, by inherit- 
 ance, by dower, by intermarriage, and by diplo- 
 matic rascalities. 
 
 However, the worm of death lay curled in the
 
 THE MIND OF EUROPE 175 
 
 majestic curve of the Hapsburgs' crown. The 
 jewelled cross surmounting it, the glittering gift 
 of one Pope and blessed by a succession of Popes, 
 drew darts of lightning, and did not save the 
 heads which wore that crown from the curses 
 which fell upon them. 
 
 Next to God I was taught to revere the old Em- 
 peror Francis Joseph, and in my childhood, I 
 stood for hours and hours in the burning heat and 
 choking dust, to catch a glimpse of him. Once, 
 his son. Crown Prince Rudolph, visited our town, 
 and I was chosen to present him with a bouquet 
 of flowers. He listened tolerantly to my stam- 
 mering speech, and I was in the seventh heaven; 
 though I wore patent leather shoes, a size too 
 small, a stiff collar, which sawed at my jugular 
 vein, and a suit of clothes made much too large, 
 in anticipation of my next year's growth. What 
 matter? I saw royalty, and royalty smiled at 
 me in a royal way. 
 
 Now I have met and spoken to, and shaken the 
 hand of the man who rules in the Hapsburg's 
 place. He wore a plain pair of gray trousers and 
 a black Prince Albert coat, and I could offer him 
 an American " smoke " without offending his 
 dignity. 
 
 I saw the peasant Witos, on the streets of War- 
 saw, all eyes fixed on him, the Premier of Po- 
 land. From raising pigs to ruling a countr}'! A 
 new old country, a delicately poised country, in
 
 176 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 the keeping of a peasant! He has held plow- 
 handles but never government-handles. He is 
 middle-aged, sleepy-looking, shrewd-eyed, when 
 the lids are lifted, and has a good head when he 
 puts it to work. 
 
 Polish kings and Polish aristocracy, velvet- 
 coated, gold-trimmed, spur-booted aristocracy, 
 replaced by a peasant, who tucks his trousers into 
 his boots and who, when he opens parliament, or 
 dissolves it, has a hard time not to say: " Git up ! '* 
 and "Whoa!" 
 
 Who says one has to be born and trained to 
 govern people? After all, people are like sheep, 
 and a farmer knows how to handle them. 
 
 I looked up with reverence and awe to the 
 President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, long 
 before he was president, and when no one, least 
 of all he, modest man, once a blacksmith's appren- 
 tice, dreamed of his being one. Tall, thin, ascetic- 
 looking, he is the typical college professor, which 
 position he attained by dint of hard work and his 
 poor parents' sacrificial toil. He was bom in the 
 village of Hodonin, a few miles from my birth- 
 place, and knowing his background and his early 
 history, I could scarcely imagine him in the 
 Hradschin, the palace of the Bohemian kings, peo- 
 pled by the shadows of history and the martyrs 
 of history. 
 
 None of them have an easy task, these men 
 risen from the ranks, and they need to pray for
 
 THE MIND OP EUROPE 177 
 
 wisdom for themselves and for their people; that 
 mass of unredeemed selfishness, called a nation. 
 
 All beaten, bruised, crippled Europe, is suffer- 
 ing from a perverted nationalism, a diseased 
 patriotism. New hates have been added to old 
 hates, and nations are plotting for power, not 
 planning for peace. 
 
 Exhausted and impoverished, having nothing 
 to lose, the nations are the more ready to fight 
 again. The war as a lesson to humanity teaches 
 that the race is hopelessly stupid, and that it does 
 not learn anything from history. 
 
 France, all but drained of her strength, is build- 
 ing an European wall of Jericho, a Balkan Tower 
 of Babel. Drill Master of half a dozen armies, 
 political mentor of nations, she is making chaos 
 of confusion. She is trusting to feeble reeds, and 
 forming burning plots. " Her Kingdom is not 
 from thence," and there are Frenchmen who 
 know the signs of the times — but " what are a few 
 among so many? " 
 
 And England, in whose womb Jacob and Esau 
 have struggled so long, in whose home they have 
 bartered for birthright; England, prophet and 
 profiteer, despoiler and healer of nations; Eng- 
 land which knows — or ought to know — the things 
 which belong to her peace — still trusts in " iron 
 shard," in battleships, and not " Good Will." 
 
 If France and England, at the moment of their 
 triumph, had listened to Abraham Lincoln, as
 
 178 OLD TKAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 they professed to hear him in the midst of the 
 struggle, " the wounds of Europe might have 
 been healed by the charities of God, almost to the 
 transfiguration of humanity." The people, the 
 hard-pressed people, the crushed, crucified people, 
 the war-mad, war-weary people, and those still 
 mad with revenge, might have crucified the men 
 who had dared make a Christian peace; but hu- 
 manity might have begun to reckon time by a new 
 epoch, and the year One, of our Lord's ruling, 
 might have been inaugurated. 
 
 The borders drawn at Versailles are but tem- 
 porary, and are fields for new battles. Militarism 
 has been destroyed in one place, and like the 
 plague, has been scattered broadcast. 
 
 Prague, Bratoslava, Warsaw, Belgrade, are in- 
 fant Potsdams waiting to grow up, and nowhere 
 is Good Will taking the place of suspicion, envy 
 or hate. The beaten and disarmed countries have 
 been disinfected from the plague; give them 
 thirty years, thirty normal years, to cleanse them- 
 selves from' pollution, to wash themselves of their 
 guilt, and they will be the only victors of the great 
 war. 
 
 To-day there are more men unemployed in 
 England than in Germany and Austria. Bulgaria 
 recruits her sons and daughters for constructive 
 service to the state, and solidifies her possessions; 
 w^hile the kingdom of the Serbs, Croates and 
 Slovenes drills soldiers, passes restrictive laws.
 
 THE MIND OF EUROPE 179 
 
 and Is like a barrel gone dry, the hoops unable to 
 hold the staves together. 
 
 The spectre of Bolshevism has given the reac- 
 tionaries everywhere a chance to fear and arrest 
 social progress; while the liberals, the liberated 
 men, the onward moving men, have been hindered 
 and damned by being opprobriously labelled. The 
 reactionaries label them Bolsheviks, and the Bol- 
 sheviks call them reactionaries ; so between the re- 
 actionary Nationalist and the Bolshevist, the Lib- 
 eral has no choice. Both are materialistic to the 
 core; though one may swear by the Bible and the 
 other by Karl Marx. 
 
 The ashen-gray men and women, the armies of 
 ricket-cursed and consumptive children, the 
 wreckage of economic life, and the pauperization 
 of vast multitudes, are the same in nationalistic 
 Warsaw, Berlin and Vienna, or even Glasgow, 
 Birmingham and London — as they are In Bolshe- 
 vik Petrograd, Kiev and Moscow. 
 
 Warsaw Is full of beggars; Insistent, dirty, 
 vermin eaten; Moscow Is full of beggars; 
 ashamed, fairly clean, their clothes Ineffectively 
 mended. 
 
 The ruin caused by reactionary, capitalistic na- 
 tionalism is old — It Is the ruin of the masses, the 
 ruin caused by machines, coal dust, gas fumes, 
 narrow tenements, seasonal occupations, periods 
 of unemployment, periodic wars. 
 
 Bolshevism wrecked the corpse of an Empire.
 
 180 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 Its wreckage is new. The flotsam and jetsam of 
 Petrograd and Moscow are more pathetic because 
 more recent. Pauper princes, professors and 
 technicians; pauperized millionaires, heirs and 
 heiresses, are new and terrible; yet no more ter- 
 rible than the destruction caused by the older sys- 
 tem. Neither the old nor the new system cares a 
 fig for the Kingdom of God, an applied Christian- 
 ity, a practical brotherhood or a genuine interna- 
 tionalism. Both want power; not Peace and 
 Good Will. 
 
 All through Europe I found a feeling, freely 
 expressed, that at a critical moment in the world's 
 history, organized religion failed to fulfill its 
 claims as a bringer of peace. The hopes mankind 
 placed in it were not realized, for the churches 
 failed to function, except as an amen! to the re- 
 actionary, Pagan state. 
 
 The Church gave its all to Caesar; even that 
 which was God's, the folds of the flags obscured 
 the cross, and the great sacrifice of Calvary 
 seemed in vain, 
 
 " Had the churches functioned," men say ; — 
 preachers and bishops say it now — " had the na- 
 tions been permeated by Christian idealism, had 
 they dominated by the power of holiness, the great 
 war calamity might have been averted." Sermons 
 now are full of assertions that militaristic force 
 is futile in settling quarrels between nations, that 
 besides being unchristian it is impractical; and
 
 THE MI^'D OF EUliOrE 181 
 
 not only ministers say it, but also professors, es- 
 sayists, political economists, sociologists. They 
 are saying it between wars, however, when it is 
 safe to say it. 
 
 During the war, the majority of ministers in- 
 voked the war God to grant victory. They har- 
 nessed the lowly Nazarene to the cannon and put 
 Him into the trenches to help in the killing and 
 the maiming. They veiled the New Testament 
 and unveiled the Old; they ignored the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and chanted the imprecatory 
 Psalms. 
 
 If the Church or its ministry were faithful to 
 the Spirit and teachings of Jesus during one war; 
 if the state knew it could not use the Church as a 
 recruiting station, and as a laboratory for the cul- 
 ture of fighting morale, it might be less willing to 
 rush into war. Of course the Church would suf- 
 fer martyrdom; but is it not time that it should 
 be willing to assume the Apostolic function of 
 suffering for truth's sake? 
 
 While organized religion the world over failed 
 in this great crisis, and the multitudes were turn- 
 ing from the churches, Europe is spiritually 
 hungry, and when a man cries with some show of 
 authority, " Lo here, and Lo there ! " masses of 
 men rush to hear the voice of the eternal, and all 
 sorts of religious vagaries prosper, while the 
 Church languishes and decays. 
 
 There is an outspoken demand that Christianity
 
 182 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 manifest itself in its full power, by accepting the 
 consequences of its teachings; or cease its pretense 
 of being the Bride of Christ, when it is only the 
 concubine of Caesar. 
 
 Every traveller from abroad is met by the ques- 
 tion: " What does Europe think of America? " I 
 should not care to answer the question if it hinged 
 upon whether we have maintained our place in 
 the affection of our Allies. The war was the 
 honeymoon of the Allies, and with the armistice, 
 the estrangement which leads to divorce proceed- 
 ings began, Europe loves us as much as a pa- 
 tient loves the doctor who has saved his life — 
 until he presents his bill. 
 
 Nowhere was I received with open arms be- 
 cause I am an American, nor were the keys of any 
 city presented to me, and I venture to say that I 
 was overcharged when the tradesmen saw the cut 
 of my shoes ; " for by their " shoes " ye shall 
 know them." Of enmity I felt none, and of 
 grateful affection much, and that we owe, not to 
 what we did with the sword. In fact, our share 
 is apt to be minimized by the victors. What af- 
 fection Europe feels for us, we owe entirely to 
 what we did through the healing hands of our 
 nurses and social workers, to the splendid and 
 dramatic work of Mr. Hoover, and in no small 
 degree to the unassuming, self-effacing work of 
 the Quakers. 
 
 If I saw Europe in the gray mist, and the king-
 
 THE MIND OF EUROPE 183 
 
 doms confused and confounded, I also saw the 
 dawn of the new day, and felt the monitions of 
 the coming of the Kingdom of God. I am not a 
 pessimist who believes that all is vanity, and that 
 effort is vain, and that the world is going to its 
 chosen doom. Nor am I an optimist, who thinks 
 that to " keep smiling " will rejuvenate an old and 
 wrinkled continent. I am an idealist, who be- 
 lieves that a better world is possible, that a better 
 world will come. 
 
 Everywhere I have found men and women who 
 want this better world. They are stretching out 
 their hands to each other now, across the healing 
 trenches. In their handclasp, when it becomes 
 firm and true, and in their faith, when it becomes 
 a faith for which they are ready to suffer and to 
 die, lies the hope that the Christ did not die in 
 vain, and that His tarrying kingdom is coming.
 
 XVII 
 VICE VERSA 
 
 THE United States was never far enough, 
 nor long enough removed, for me to see 
 it glorified by distance or clarified by 
 time. Even in Europe I was part of it, its people 
 my people, its God my God. I watched Ameri- 
 cans at work, and was too often within the hear- 
 ing of the click of American typewriters, tabula- 
 tors, cash registers, smooth working office sys- 
 tems, the not quite so smooth American voice, the 
 chug and rattle of hustling Fords, and the intoler- 
 able jazz. 
 
 I ate almond-bars (the kind news-butchers 
 drop Into your lap), chocolate candies ("name 
 on every piece "), cookies and pies (" like mother 
 used to make"), white bread ("baked in sani- 
 tary ovens and wrapped in sanitary oiled paper") 
 and many an American dinner, from soup to pie 
 a la mode (all but the celery). 
 
 I found America spread all over Central 
 Europe — in peanut-butter, cotton-seed oil, con- 
 densed milk. Star Spangled Banners, oratory, 
 Y. M. C. A.'s and Y. W. C. A.'s Red Cross, Qua- 
 kers, Rotarians, war zone tourists, bargain hunt- 
 
 X84
 
 VICE VEESA 185 
 
 ers, and a few badly battered fourteen points 
 which have survived the disastrous Peace of Ver- 
 sailles. 
 
 America is the ark of safety, New York being 
 Mount Ararat, and Noah's sons having their of- 
 fice in Wall Street; America is the Land of 
 Goshen, and Hoover is Joseph in Egypt ; the cap- 
 itol at Washington is built on Mount Sinai, Hard- 
 ing is the new Moses, and " Meester Vilson " is 
 Lucifer fallen from Heaven. 
 
 America is standing on the financial pinnacle, 
 and all the kingdoms and republics are spreading 
 out before it. Supreme Councils, League of Na- 
 tions, Chambers of Commerce, sick currencies; 
 decomposed aristocracies, demoniacs, Magda- 
 lenes, and tubercular children carried by weeping 
 mothers, are all crowding to be helped and healed. 
 America could do " signs and wonders " if 
 America only would. 
 
 Yet I was not flattered by Europe's cry for 
 America's financial miracles, or by so many of her 
 people's desiring to reach the " land flowing with 
 milk and honey." I wanted Europe to believe 
 that we have the spiritual forces they need, moral 
 ideals which are superior to theirs, loftier national 
 aspirations; and that America not only invented 
 the great war slogan " to make the world 
 safe for democracy," but that democracy Is at 
 least safe in America. Though I believed that, I 
 could not prove it, for Europe was critical toward
 
 186 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 America, and disillusioned about its newly ac- 
 quired liberties. 
 
 The immigrant whom I met some years ago, 
 who told me that he would like to return to 
 America to give his children a chance to become 
 American citizens, so that some day they might be 
 able to say with him: " To wit' de Presi- 
 dent! " has discovered now that his children have 
 that coveted chance in their own country, and that 
 " cuss " words, as well as fine words, " butter no 
 parsnips " ; though they may add spice to the 
 sauce. 
 
 I suffered great humiliation, when, In criticizing 
 the mediocrity of Europe's political leadership, I 
 was asked to mention any of ours which is su- 
 perior; or, when pointing to the shameless graft- 
 ing in the new republics, I was reminded that I 
 am living in a " glass house " and better not 
 " throw stones." 
 
 In Hungary I condemned the ruthless repres- 
 sion by the White Army, only to discover that the 
 Hungarians knew of our raids upon immigrant 
 quarters, and the needless suffering of inno- 
 cent people at the hands of our Department of 
 Justice. 
 
 I found pilgrims returning to their fatherland, 
 bemoaning the fact that they were discriminated 
 against in the United States because they were 
 immigrants. They had suffered from our mobs 
 as well as from the police. Theirs was an ugly
 
 VICE VESEA 187 
 
 story, not much better than that of a Russian 
 pogrom. 
 
 Yet I know that here our hates have not eaten 
 in as deeply as they have in Europe, though the 
 colour line has reached the heart line, and deeper 
 it cannot go. It is true that the law has not al- 
 ways been the same to the home-born and to the- 
 strangers, that the word foreigner now has an 
 ominous sound; but on the whole, the situation is 
 much worse in many of the European countries. 
 
 While the United States is no longer an asy- 
 lum, it is not a jail, and the chance to become one 
 of the " household of faith," is much better here 
 than anywhere else. 
 
 Bernard Shaw, who preferred not to visit us, 
 fearing the Ku Klux Klan, is mistaken when he 
 believes that this fanatic organization is the meas- 
 ure of America's tolerance and sympathy. Mr. 
 Ford's anti-Jewish propaganda does not propa- 
 gate very fast. 
 
 Anti-Semitism in the United States is still 
 something like German measles — catching but not 
 dangerous, and may always remain one of our 
 minor diseases, provided the Jewish people do not 
 forget " the hole out of which they were dug, and 
 the pit out of which they were hewn." Anti- 
 Semitism is fed by arrogance, a common failing 
 among all peoples suddenly relieved of their 
 handicaps. 
 
 A Jew, to become a good American, must do
 
 188 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BORDEES 
 
 much more than change his over-euphonious name 
 into one of Anglo-Saxon origin. The American 
 people are apt to recognize a gentleman or lady, 
 no matter of what race, even as they are over- 
 sensitive to rudeness and boisterousness. If they 
 do not see the beam in their own eyes, and do see 
 the mote in that of the alien, it only proves that 
 they are very human. 
 
 Many of the national diseases in Europe are 
 chronic, ours are acute; dangerous but curable. 
 I still believe that our nation as a political unit 
 is safer than any European power, certainly as 
 safe, and that, in spite of our ethnic confusion. 
 
 There are growing chasms between capital and 
 labour, a yawning gulf between black and white, 
 rifts between Catholics and Protestants and be- 
 tween Jews and Gentiles; but I believe that 
 some of them can be bridged, and others can be 
 healed. 
 
 I do not believe that this can be done by in- 
 sistence upon rights, but by conviction of wrongs. 
 Minorities must learn that they cannot compel 
 majorities, and majorities will have to learn that 
 their safety Is jeopardized unless they deal justly 
 with minorities. 
 
 In Europe I realized anew the problem of the 
 Immigrant in the United States. After all, there 
 is a sense of solidarity, of national security in a 
 nation which is not only politically a unit, but 
 ethnically and linguistically as well; although but
 
 VICE VEESA 189 
 
 few of the European nations have attained such 
 enviable unity. However, I sensed a Httle more 
 than ever before the feehng of revulsion against 
 the masses of the unlike, who came here in such 
 vast numbers, the sorted and the unsorted, the 
 well-bred and the ill-bred, that heedless, hungry 
 throng at the bottom rung of the economic lad- 
 der, with their blank faces, their faces full of 
 terror, and anger. Their strange speech and 
 strange ways gave the natives just fear for the 
 delicate things of the spirit, which are none too 
 safe in our heedless democracy. 
 
 The Americans feel that the immigrants have 
 pushed them hard in industry and business; but 
 they have pushed many of them up, even the 
 laggards. They have crowded America's jails 
 and asylums, even the gallows ; but also they have 
 filled her factories with honest labour, her fields 
 with conscientious toil, and her banks with accu- 
 mulating wealth, much of it hard earned and 
 honest. They have offended by poor taste and 
 bad manners, some of which they imported, 
 though some were cheap imitations of the cheap 
 things they found here. Yet they also have set 
 standards for art, and have struggled to retain 
 native gifts against heavy odds and great handi- 
 caps. Some of them did resent the usurpation of 
 power by the few, when that power was not 
 wielded for the public good. They did see red 
 when the crimson tide swept across the earth —
 
 190 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 but they were not yellow when the bugles called 
 to battle, and they were called upon to lay down 
 hard-earned treasure and life, upon the altar of 
 our country. 
 
 Here and there in old Europe I found the spirit 
 of revival, or the renewal of spirit, while here 
 and there in America, I see the wrinkles of old 
 age, though we are a young people; but youth is 
 no virtue unless we remain young while we are 
 growing old, and being old is no sin, unless we 
 grow old when we are young. 
 
 In Europe I felt our youthfulness in the energy 
 of those restless Americans with whom I asso- 
 ciated, in their hopefulness as well as their 
 thoughtlessness ; in their undimmed faith in them- 
 selves and their country; in their adaptability, 
 their fine courage in the face of odds. Beside the 
 Europeans with whom they work, they are like 
 cubs beside sedate old bears, or like frisking pup- 
 pies with well-mannered, old dogs. They have 
 the same difficulty in living and working to- 
 gether as older people have with the young, al- 
 though they are of the same age. 
 
 I recall a young woman from Chicago, who 
 landed in Warsaw, and after living there for 
 twenty-four hours, said that she could put Poland 
 on the medical map. She had the sublime assur- 
 ance that if she could give a demonstration in first 
 aid, and deliver lectures on sanitation in her mid- 
 western English, Poland's century-old sores would
 
 VICE VERSA 191 
 
 be healed, and it would be cleansed from its tra- 
 ditional dirt. 
 
 Europe is old, and we Americans disturbed it 
 not a little by our noisy playfulness. We dis- 
 turbed Granny's nap, and she growled at us and 
 said many a time, " You are old enough to know 
 better." She did not realize that we are the chil- 
 dren of a young nation, whose spring fever is 
 baseball, and whose autumn ague is football, 
 which are the diseases of childhood; that they 
 are infectious, and that our National motto is: 
 " United We Yell." We are still in the " gang " 
 age, a nation of joiners. In the old world they 
 have a carnival once a year; but in the United 
 States we have with us always, the Shriners, Ro- 
 tarians, Kiwanis, Lions, etc. Even dignified 
 Chambers of Commerce, when in session, sing, 
 shout city slogans, and rah ! rah ! rah ! 
 
 The youngest among the Americans I met in 
 Europe were those from the young West; the 
 oldest came from the East; the most virile and 
 adaptable were the children of the pioneers, who 
 are not too far removed from the prairie schooner 
 or the steerage. Those who could handle axes, 
 plows and tractors, and find joy in cranking 
 Fords, were the young; those who carried their 
 golf clubs with them, and were unhappy when 
 •out of sight of Pullmans, esculators and elevators, 
 ■were the ones who showed our advancing old age. 
 America seems clean, at least not cjuite so
 
 192 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 *' mussed up " as Europe, where all restraint has 
 been thrown to the winds. We are adolescent and 
 Europe is the seasoned rounder; though we are 
 plunging, and in the last twenty years have lived 
 fast and furiously. We are eating of the forbid- 
 den fruit as fast as Eve can pluck it, and it is no 
 longer from any particular tree but from every 
 variety, growing thick, where once was Paradise. 
 Neither do we hide ourselves in the garden when 
 we hear the footfall of God walking there, and 
 Eve's wardrobe does not suggest that she is 
 ashamed. 
 
 In Europe I found the young revolting against 
 the cultural and political standards, set up by the 
 middle-aged, and seeking their liberty in clean 
 speech and sensible attire, wholesome relations be- 
 tween the sexes, and companionship with nature. 
 There is no such movement In the United States, 
 coming from among themselves. We have Chris- 
 tian Endeavour Societies and Epworth Leagues; 
 but they are efforts to impose the piety and rules 
 of conduct of the middle-aged upon the young, 
 and are, on the whole, ineffective. 
 
 There is no young America in politics, or in 
 religious and social life. "Follow the leader" is 
 inbred in our children. Our college youth occa- 
 sionally runs amuck; but always in standardized 
 form. It storms the movies and parades in pa- 
 jamas, as formerly it stole the chapel bell or car- 
 ried " Prexy's " cow into the recitation hall.
 
 VICE VESEA 193 
 
 College dress, college behaviour, college sports 
 and forms of hazing are of the approved sort, and 
 \voe unto the Freshmen who wear coloured socks, 
 or broad-toed shoes when the upper classmen de- 
 cree otherwise. 
 
 At the close of the war, I was the guest of a 
 college president in the East, one of the many col- 
 lege presidents who believed that the war would 
 cleanse our American youth, wuth its besom of 
 fury. He told me that after the Armistice, he 
 was glad to see the spirit of restlessness which had 
 crept among his students. He hoped that they 
 would revolt against poor teaching, padded lec- 
 tures, against the insincerities of campus life, the 
 corruption of athletics, and the control of the col- 
 lege by " old grads." He encouraged the coming 
 revolution, and one day a committee, appointed 
 by the student body, appeared in his office. The 
 chairman, an ex-service man, thus addressed him: 
 
 " Mr. President, we have a serious complaint to 
 make against the college." 
 
 Prexy's heart rejoiced. The time had come' 
 The great moment! War's spiritual results! 
 The renewal of college life! 
 
 " Speak on! " he urged the stammering youth. 
 
 " Mr. President, our first complaint is, that we 
 have only one dance a month, and we want a 
 dance once a week : and the second is, that we are 
 served bread-pudding twice a week; and we be- 
 lieve that once is enough."
 
 194 OLD TEAILS AND KEW BORDEES 
 
 The revolution in our colleges is safely over. 
 The lid is off on dances, and is on over bread- 
 pudding. 
 
 In Europe, educators see salvation from the 
 prevailing immortality, by establishing coeduca- 
 tion. It is a growing movement; while in the 
 United States we are shaking our heads doubt- 
 fully, for the High Schools are eaten through by 
 sex scandals, and the college campus, the green, 
 sweet-smelling campus, is not as safe as it used to 
 be. 
 
 In the pioneer stage, especially in the West, 
 where the pioneers' struggle was prolonged by 
 droughts, grasshoppers and cyclones — when a 
 college education meant a struggle, coeducation 
 was safe and sane. It is at least a question 
 whether to-day it is either. 
 
 In many of our colleges young women come to 
 the class-room dressed as if a semester were one 
 long tea party, with interruptions for dances and 
 movies. Pampered young men — mothers' dar- 
 lings — come, with high-powered cars and low- 
 powered brains, and the elective system enables 
 them to choose a course which teaches them to do 
 nothing, gracefully. 
 
 The pioneer spirit, now almost unknown, was 
 the marrow of youth in the nation, and we are 
 growing old to the degree of the drought in our 
 bones, the signs of which are here. The passing 
 of the West marks the passing of youth; to find
 
 VICE VEESA 195 
 
 a new West, in industry and commerce, is not as 
 easy as it was in agricultural days, when land 
 could be had for the touch of the plow, and for 
 the stringing of barbed wire around a quarter sec- 
 tion. It was easy to retain the virtues of youth 
 when we were challenged by long journeys in 
 prairie schooners behind a pair of reluctant 
 mules; but the pressing of a pedal on a six-cylin- 
 der car, develops neither muscle nor patience, not 
 even skill, with a garage at every crossroad. 
 
 The forests of Wisconsin, the unbroken 
 prairies of Kansas taught men self-reliance, and 
 made labour an art, a sacrament and a prayer. 
 To wield golf clubs and tennis racquets, to ride 
 ponies at polo, to win a game or a tournament, are 
 quite different from swinging an axe or guiding 
 a plow over stump-sown fields; and the acquiring 
 of a homestead is in quite another class from that 
 of " developing " an estate. 
 
 The achievement now is to remain young when 
 we are growing old, and national youth, or even 
 a semblance of it, cannot be bought in beauty par- 
 lours. It is not in lotions and cosmetics; but in 
 acquiring a spiritual personality, a national will, 
 in harmony with the will of God. 
 
 In Europe I was very fortunate in being among 
 young Americans who owe much of their inspir- 
 ing youth to this very fact. They were whole- 
 somely religious, the children of religious parents, 
 with their inheritance not quite wasted. Most of
 
 196 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 them were Quakers, generous in their sympathy. 
 Among their co-workers were Jews, Roman 
 CathoHcs, Methodists, EpiscopaHans; and some 
 belonged to the " wild religions I have met " in 
 the United States where the soil is favourable to 
 new faiths. The Quakers have found the spirit 
 of youth in the Spirit of God. Though theirs is 
 the smallest among the denominations, without 
 ritual, or sacrament, or ecclesiastical machinery, 
 they showed their strength at a time when 
 strength needed to be more than human. They 
 withstood the nation's fiat, when resistance was 
 treason, and they suffered the consequences. 
 They conquered by relying upon the strength of 
 God, and that is no cowardly escape into pious 
 platitudes. Those who let God be the hammer 
 are not spared being the anvil. That is His way 
 of testing the faith of the faithful. 
 
 Branded by the stigma of the prison and pale 
 from confinement there, many of them came, to 
 prove their strength and courage — the courage of 
 the solitary. I watched with awe, and reverence, 
 those fighters of typhus, those heroes on the hun- 
 ger line, who came out of lice-infested villages for 
 a breath of clean air, for linen and soap; then 
 plunged into tlie repellent mass again. 
 
 I shall never forget Arthur Watts, an English 
 Quaker, emerging from the despair of Moscow, 
 triumphant, like a young god, and as unconscious 
 of his power as a child.
 
 VICE YEKSA 197 
 
 Anna Haines, from Massachusetts, alone, 
 amidst the red terror of revolution and the white 
 terror of starvation. They were true to the voice 
 of God within, undisturbed by the tumult, the 
 shouting of the multitude. 
 
 America needs religion, if it is to be saved from 
 the paralysis of old age. It cannot be saved by 
 advertising, by spurious conversions, inflated sta^ 
 tistics, bowling alleys, swimming-pools, and lec- 
 ture courses. It can be saved only by the heroism 
 of men and women, who take upon themselves 
 the consequences of Christian living. 
 
 In Europe I learned anew that America is 
 worth saving, that she must be saved if a Chris- 
 tian civilization is ever to be established, and such 
 a civilization must have, first of all, reverence for 
 the human. Jesus made that the cornerstone of 
 His teaching. He took little children and blessed 
 them. He performed miracles of healing and 
 feeding. He lifted man above Sabbath rigour, 
 above the temple profiteers. He told the scribes 
 and the Pharisees who wished to confuse Him by 
 their questions, that a man was of more value 
 than a sheep, as He wishes us to say that a man 
 is worth more than all the stockyards in America, 
 all the bonds and banks, all the stores and fac- 
 tories; " for what doth it profit a man if he gain 
 the whole world and lose his own soul ? " 
 
 Religion which is to save, or rather make for a 
 Christian civilization — for as yet tliere is no such
 
 198 OLD TRAILS AND NEW B0EDER9 
 
 civilization — must bridge the chasm between the 
 like and the unlike, it must make Brotherhood 
 real. It is no task for spiritual pigmies, thin- 
 skinned pipers of popular preachments, hunters 
 for big salaries, but a task for noble, brotherly 
 men. 
 
 In Europe I saw my glorious pageant again, 
 the pageant which the war had broken up, and 
 which had sent the actors scurrying to their sev- 
 eral corners. It is forming once more, but the 
 order is not the same. Those who were first are 
 last, there are shrunken columns, halting steps, 
 faded flags, empty places, and the actors are not 
 quite sure of their positions and lines. All of them 
 look intently to America, the chosen one, leading 
 them all past Marah's bitter springs, to Elim's 
 sweet fountains. Can America ascend the smok- 
 ing Sinai and bring down the law, graven by the 
 finger of God? Has she the clean hands, the 
 heart above national vanity? Can she ascend the 
 Holy Hill ? She can bring down Manna to starv- 
 ing people, quail for those who are hungry for 
 fleshpots; but can she make them fear God and 
 keep His commandments? Can she trust in the 
 law of love? There is a promised land beyond Si- 
 nai, beyond struggles with Amalekites, Amorites, 
 and Philistines; beyond tribal wars and jealous 
 tribal gods. It is in that direction that America 
 must lead, and if not America, then we who are of 
 the nations, — even if the nations know us not, and 
 America acknowledge us not.
 
 XVIII 
 THE LAST BORDER 
 
 MY heart laughed within me when my 
 face again turned Westward, for 
 Westward is America and America is 
 home. 
 
 My thirty-fifth Mayflower sailing from Hol- 
 land, stopping at Plymouth; a safe, slow, one- fun- 
 nelled tub, built for phlegmatic, middle-class folk, 
 who care too much for life and have too much use 
 for time, to want to live or move too fast. Dutch 
 burghers, who ate salt herring and cheese for 
 breakfast, sipped Leyden gin and smoked big, 
 cheap cigars. Unprofitable passengers they are to 
 the smoking-room stewards, who prefer Ameri- 
 cans, of whom the ship carried a few, not of the 
 profit-making or profitable kind. There were col- 
 lege and university professors, a missionary from 
 Africa, a minister, a sedate, separate compart- 
 mented, Red Cross official, a jolly bunch of Red 
 Cross nurses, a modestly-behaved consul and his 
 charming wife, and one couple of newly-acquired 
 breeding and distinction, and so conscious of both 
 that they feared to lose them if they associated 
 with the rest of us. 
 
 Besides the Dutch who go to America to sell 
 
 199
 
 200 OLD TEAILS AKD I7EW BONDERS 
 
 tulips, cheese and diamonds, and the Americans 
 ah^eady mentioned, there were many immigrants 
 in the first cabin. They were there because Uncle 
 Sam enforces two weeks' quarantine upon the 
 people who have only enough money for a second- 
 class passage; while various bathings, sweatings, 
 combings and disinfectings are thrust upon those 
 whose still leaner pocketbooks condemn them to 
 the steerage. 
 
 In the first cabin were many old people, mostly 
 parents of flourishing immigrant folk, who 
 spared no expense to get their kin away from the 
 [yoverty and gloom of Europe. Old people they 
 were though some are young In years; for each 
 war year marked ten, in heart, and mind, and 
 tissue. 
 
 1 met a brilliant Russian Jewess, a physician, 
 who spoke English after merely glancing at a dic- 
 tionary. Ages old she seemed, though only some- 
 where In the disillusioned years between twenty- 
 five and thirty. She revealed to me the tragedy 
 of pogroms, the horror of waves of war; the 
 terror of hunger and disease. She told me of the 
 pressure of isolation upon her sensitive mind, 
 used to contact with art and literature, and shut 
 up for seven years, not in a prison of walls, yet 
 as restrained and unfree as If chained to a block. 
 
 A German couple with two Interesting children 
 aboard our ship had lived in the United States 
 for years. Thoroughly American in their love
 
 THE LAST BORDER 201 
 
 for this country, speaking its language and loyal 
 to it, but not citizens, merely through neglect, the 
 war found them in Germany on a visit, and there 
 was no escape. Imagine the situation ! American 
 in their sympathies, surrounded by German kin, 
 German soldiers, and German propaganda. The 
 war being over, there came the tedious years after 
 the Armistice, with hopes deferred; till now at 
 last, they were returning to freedom. They left 
 the United States young and buoyant ; they return 
 old, very old. 
 
 The old, the really old are speechless, and often 
 glistening tears alone tell the story of homesick- 
 ness, their fear of this late transplanting, the 
 terror of the sea, and questionings of the future, 
 which gnaw at their hearts. I loved them and 
 tried to comfort them, painting America rosier 
 than it is, and visioning for them, their joy among 
 their children and grandchildren. 
 
 The second cabin was full to overflowing. 
 Happy throngs, immigrants of a new variety: 
 artists in various fields, sculptors, painters, 
 dancers, singers, from grand opera to vaudeville; 
 a tenor who sings the high C, and a gymnast who 
 walks the tight rope. Both proud of their talents, 
 and generous in their performance for their fel- 
 low-passengers. There were budding violinists 
 and pianists with visions of Carnegie Hall, proud 
 mammas guarding their precious assets, the one 
 thing the war has not destroyed. All sorts of
 
 202 OLD TKAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 purveyors of pleasure there were, the disinherited, 
 side-tracked, the bankrupt, the noble and ignoble, 
 driftwood of the war. 
 
 The steerage looks empty, with its two hundred 
 and fifty passengers rattling around in the space 
 so often crowded by 2,500. None of them are 
 giants for steel mills, and none of them have taut 
 muscle for digging our coal. Most of those who 
 now come are shabby clerks, erstwhile officials 
 and officers, landscape gardeners from great es- 
 tates, trainers of dogs and horses, and there were 
 two young men, graduates of a German beer- 
 brewing college, who had not heard of the Vol- 
 stead act. 
 
 The ship was somber, as all Dutch ships are. A 
 thin, stringed quartet played, out of tune, the 
 Dutch sipped their gin undemonstratively, and the 
 most exciting event of the trip was a shuffle- 
 board tournament, out of which I emerged with 
 the championship. My son will be proud of his 
 dad's athletic glory. 
 
 There was a dance, but no abandonment to it ; a 
 concert was scheduled, but the artists were not in 
 good trim, and it was a failure. 
 
 The ship's run was slow and grew slower, ow- 
 ing to head winds and poor coal. Every one was 
 more or less depressed, especially the steerage 
 passengers, for the new immigration law was ef- 
 fective and most of the immigrants were to be 
 landed or returned, to be damned or saved, by the
 
 THE LAST BOEDER 203 
 
 accident of their birtii under this flag or that, and 
 whether the three per cent, measure was full or 
 
 not. 
 
 Eleven long, dull days, and then the dawn of 
 the twelfth, the angry gray of the sea turning to 
 gentler blue, the air heavy from the heat of the 
 shore, land birds fluttering, and one of them ven- 
 turing upon the deck, responsive to the crumbs 
 thrown for it. 
 
 A pencil-stroke against the horizon — the New 
 World which I had hailed dozens of times, and 
 hailed again; but my buoyancy of spirit was not 
 shared by my fellow-voyagers who were hearing 
 their anxious heart-beats above the slow churning 
 of the sea. 
 
 The earth has changed and "all that therein 
 is." I left a changed Europe, I was coming back 
 to a changed America. They were all slow 
 changes, almost unperceived, suddenly reaching a 
 dramatic climax. 
 
 One of my fellow- Americans, who had been 
 making a decided impression upon the ship's 
 cargo of gin, and who grew gloomier, the nearer 
 we came to the Great Sahara, said with a sigh, 
 deep with measures of pints, quarts and gallons, 
 —"This is where liberty stops." To him the 
 change was one of alcoholic content, and the sigh 
 was for the good old times, when " booze " could 
 be obtained without hazard, and getting drunk 
 was comparatively cheap.
 
 204 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDEES 
 
 Many of the Americans I met abroad saw the 
 Goddess of Liberty with a black eye, her torch ex- 
 tinguished by near-beer. 
 
 This is a hard time for popular deities. The 
 golden calf is suffering from tuberculosis, and its 
 wasted parts are restored by papier-mache. 
 
 Mars, having worked overtime for five years, 
 has nervous prostration; for fighting on land, in 
 the air, on the sea and under the sea, keeps even a 
 god on edge and he would like to retire, if hu- 
 manity would let him. 
 
 And the Goddess of Liberty! What sins have 
 been committed, what blasphemies have been ut- 
 tered in her name ! When I passed her this time 
 I thought she looked anaemic from worry, and was 
 ready to leave her snug island. 
 
 She is no more the popular goddess, no forest 
 of outstretched arms greeted her, no thousand- 
 throated throng acclaimed her. " A bas Lib- 
 erty!" they say now, and turn their backs as they 
 pass her. I wanted to comfort her, and tell her 
 that she has certainly been good to us, to millions 
 and millions who escaped persecution, poverty, 
 filth and ignorance, and to whom she has so gen- 
 erously opened the way. 
 
 It was not easy for us, yonder on Manhattan 
 Island, breathing its hard, metallic air, buffeted by 
 the heartless throng; but many of us fared better 
 than we deserved, and found as much liberty as 
 we were capable of using.
 
 THE LAST BOEDER 205 
 
 There were dozens of ships at quarantine, 
 breathlessly lying at anchor, polluting the bay, 
 food for the watchful gulls. They had raced 
 each other across the Atlantic, and lay fretting at 
 the bar. Quarantine officers came aboard at last, 
 and a shiver seemed to run down the ship's spine, 
 for there was typhus in Europe, and a long, dull 
 quarantine loomed as a possibility. They were in 
 no hurry. The steerage passengers were searched 
 to the seams of their shirts, and the slow hours 
 bred one rumour after another. " Vermin has 
 been found ! " And that meant three days in 
 quarantine. "A death from typhus ! " And the 
 days grew into weeks. 
 
 The bay was alive with craft. A sister boat 
 passed us, eastward bound, and the crew sent a 
 roaring greeting to the " home folks." A ferry- 
 boat manceuvered gracefully, and passed under 
 the nose of our ship. We looked down upon the 
 workers, who were bound for Manhattan, and 
 they looked at us. Some friendly souls waved to 
 us, and we accepted the salutation as a wel- 
 come. 
 
 There were fishing parties in frail boats, chug- 
 ging tugs pulling long fleets of loaded barges, sail- 
 boats stretching their wings, and above us mili- 
 tary planes, purring their way among the silent 
 gulls. 
 
 An old picture, but it always gives me new 
 thrills, and I felt the first, deep stirring In my
 
 206 OLD TRAILS AND NEW BORDERS 
 
 soul, since I had sailed out of this harbour. I 
 feasted my eyes on the low hills of Staten Island, 
 the forest of masts and funnels, the mighty spans 
 bridging the river, and in the background, the 
 Himalayas of business, quarrelling in the blue 
 sky, as to who shall be the greatest in the King- 
 dom of Mammon, 
 
 The quarantine boat at last departed, and the 
 ship breathed more easily; but no anchor chains 
 rattled, and we waited in mute anxiety. Then the 
 boat returned, and hope was changed to fear. 
 
 Another long search for germs and germ car- 
 riers, then it went away for good, and the delayed 
 immigrant officers came on board. The most wel- 
 come and the most feared. The passengers were 
 divided into the " sheep and the goats," the aliens 
 and the citizens. I have seen much mental an- 
 guish among immigrants, but none to compare 
 with the percentage torture. The attitude of the 
 American people toward the immigration problem 
 is reflected in the treatment of steerage passen- 
 gers, and the journey from the quarantine to Ellis 
 Island is like passing from the police court to 
 prison. Rough usage, curses, indelicacy of feel- 
 ing, the whole environment of a penal institution 
 at its worst, surround the immigrant who comes 
 in under the new law. 
 
 The percentage law will always be a cruel law, 
 unless wisely administered and generously inter- 
 preted: and it would be a good thing to employ
 
 THE LAST BOKDER 207 
 
 officials who are not strangers to gentlemanly in- 
 stincts. 
 
 The immigrant's head tax of $8 and the pass- 
 port vise of $10, should entitle him to fair treat- 
 ment, not to mention our boast that the " square 
 deal " is an American virtue. 
 
 The cloud of uncertainty was at last lifted, and 
 after ten hours' delay, which seemed like ten days, 
 we were being pushed into our dock. One more 
 mild torture, the customs examination, and I had 
 crossed the last border and was home again. It 
 was my most solemn home-coming, and I thanked 
 God that America is my home ; not because I came 
 from among starving peoples and back to a land 
 of comparative plenty, but because here is a chance 
 to make my life count, in the struggle against the 
 forces v/hich would make of America a narrow, 
 selfish, brutal counterpart of European national- 
 ism. 
 
 I have grown suddenly old and not a little dis- 
 illusioned. I know the odds against those of us 
 who see the Kingdom of God afar, and who want 
 to bring It near. Nations do not care to be saved 
 by teachers and preachers, but by politicians and 
 soldiers; theirs Is as yet the way of the sword, and 
 not of the cross. I would be a poor patriot, how- 
 ever, If I would not cast my life Into the balance, 
 make war upon war, and oppose the Pagan state 
 which has room only for a tribal god and for 
 tribal moralltv.
 
 208 OLD TEAILS AND NEW BOEDERS 
 
 As an American I was never more in love with 
 my country than now, coming as I do out of the 
 tombs of Empires, and from the grave of a civili- 
 zation. If I could, I would save my country from 
 the doom of Europe, and to that end she must 
 think with the international mind and feel with 
 the interracial heart. 
 
 Beyond the years I see an integrated humanity, 
 not melted into a bell, but shaped into chimes. 
 Each nation rallying around the note which woos 
 its heart, out of which come its songs of cheer, 
 and comfort songs for the dark days; but all the 
 notes shall blend with each other, to the praise of 
 a com.mon Father. That day is coming, and it 
 will come the sooner, if America attunes herself 
 now, to the great doxology. 
 
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