I 
 
 Neighbors 
 Henceforth 
 
 &£&* 
 
 « 
 
 The fire shall ever be 
 burning upon the altar; 
 it shall never go out. 
 
 LEV. 6, 13. 
 
 Owen 
 Wister
 
 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH
 
 BY OWEN WISTER 
 
 Mother 
 Lin McLean 
 The Virginian 
 Lady Baltimore 
 Philosophy Four 
 Padre Ignacio 
 A Straight Deal 
 Red Men and White 
 The Jimmy John Boss 
 Members op the Family 
 U. S. Grant, a Biography 
 The Pentecost of Calamity 
 The Seven Ages of Washington 
 Journey in Search of Christmas 
 The Dragon of Wantley: His Tail 
 How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee 
 Indispensable Information for Infants; or, 
 Easy Entrance to Education
 
 Neighbors Henceforth 
 
 BY 
 
 OWEN WISTER 
 
 Of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 
 
 Membre correspondant de la Societe de Gens de Lettree 
 
 Honorary Fellow of the Royal Soeiety of Literature 
 
 12* to gotft 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1922 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Copyright, 1922, 
 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and printed. Published August, 1922. 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 DC 
 
 1L 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF M. C. W. 
 

 
 The plight of France, the deed of Germany, and 
 the international destiny of the United States, are 
 the main themes of this volume, which closes a series 
 of three, begun with The Pentecost of Calamity, 
 followed by A Straight Deal. 
 
 Philadelphia, 
 Decoration Day, 1922.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART FIRST 
 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OP THE HUN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Faces and a Scar 3 
 
 II. Victims Various 6 
 
 III. The Fragments that Remain — 1 11 
 
 IV. Life Flickering 22 
 
 V. An Inn of the Soul 25 
 
 VI. The Fragments that Remain — 2 42 
 
 VII. Some Peace Conferences 72 
 
 VIII. Le Petit Due 87 
 
 IX. Kansas on an Island 97 
 
 X. A Glimpse of the Poilu 109 
 
 XI. Transfusion from America 116 
 
 XII. Ludendorff's Pocket 125 
 
 XIII. The Great Shrine 136 
 
 XIV. The Towers in the Night 151 
 
 XV. Uplift 157 
 
 XVI. Chemin de fer de l'Est 174 
 
 XVII. Bar-le-Duc 190 
 
 XVIII. Along the Sacred Way 197 
 
 XIX. Where We Slept Well 217 
 
 XX. The Cook and the Doughboy 227 
 
 XXI. Last Lap to the Armistice 234 
 
 XXII. Verdun 267 
 
 ix
 
 X 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART SECOND 
 AFTER TWO YEARS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXIII. Old Acquaintance 281 
 
 XXIV. Over the Spilled Milk 295 
 
 XXV. By Their Fruits 313 
 
 XXVI. Militaristic? 348 
 
 XXVII. Idle? Well Off? 354 
 
 XXVIII. The Brain of One Dimension 397 
 
 XXIX. Can These Bones Live? 410 
 
 Appendix A — The Supreme Council Differ About 
 
 Upper Silesia 421 
 
 Appendix B— Foch Speaks His Mind 435
 
 PART FIRST 
 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE HUN
 
 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 FACES AND A SCAR 
 
 As we went along the straight road, I began to see 
 what was not there, while what was there dissolved 
 slowly away from my open eyes. The April night, 
 full of sounds and storm, had dropped upon the hills 
 one last thin veil of snow, and this still stretched its 
 gleamy film over their ridges. Below, it was gone 
 from the wide flat lands, where blossoms expanded 
 beneath the sun of the April day. These came by 
 like white clouds caught in the twigs of the fruit 
 trees. Along the road as we went, they showed above 
 the tops of the high French walls, they shone mistily 
 across the flat French distance. Among the taller 
 trees, in the heights of the poplars and the willows, 
 hung like a breath the faintly tinted web that be- 
 tokened sap stirring, life awakening, leaves invisible 
 but soon to come. Every early delicate hue of field 
 and garden and wood beamed through skein upon 
 skein of weaving exhalations. On either side the 
 constantly straight road, I watched between the 
 trunks of the poplars acres upon acres, where wet 
 new grass glinted, brooks ran full, and far-off tufts 
 of spring color, like puffs of smoke, seemed enmeshed 
 in the tangle of the copses. 
 
 3
 
 4 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 How unlike was this to England, the England I 
 had just seen! Yes, bnt one strange, deep likeness 
 there was. I had not walked for five minutes in Eng- 
 land after setting foot on shore — I had not walked 
 for two — before I was aware of the changed English 
 face. Once aware of it, it was something I should 
 never forget. In the trains, in the streets, in the 
 houses, in the churches — especially in the churches — 
 you could read that the English face had looked upon 
 something, and was changed. When they were talk- 
 ing, even when they were laughing, it did not quite go, 
 this change in look; and it always wholly returned. 
 Soldiers had it, and civilians, men and women; 
 not all the children, but even some of them. It 
 corresponded to nothing that they ever said. Their 
 talk was usual, cheerful, they referred to sad things 
 lightly, and they joked and enjoyed your joke. The 
 one thing that they never said was the thing which 
 their faces said for them. Did they know this? 
 Could I ask them? Never. People of old that saw 
 Medusa's head were turned to stone. I thought of 
 this myth and its marvellous symbol often in the first 
 davs; but it was not Medusa's head that had been 
 looked upon. The English were farther away from 
 being stone than ever I had seen them. Turn to old 
 photographs of Northerners and Southerners in our 
 Civil War, and in the faces of those dedicated boys, 
 and of their fathers and mothers, you will find the 
 counterpart of what I saw in the English face. Com- 
 pared with those of our Civil "War, the general Amer- 
 ican face of today is an empty countenance. Then, 
 on coming from England to France, the same thing 
 had been visible at once. Those who examined our 
 passports on the quay, those who opened our bag-
 
 FACES AND A SCAR 5 
 
 gage, the porters who then carried it, the woman 
 from whom I bought coffee and bread at the station, 
 and the woman at the bookstall on the platform — in 
 the faces of them all, whether they talked, smiled, or 
 were silent, was what I had seen in England, what 
 I had not seen at home. The Parisians had it, too, in 
 the hotels, the shops, the cafes. I ceased to see the 
 kilometre stones as we passed them on this April 
 forenoon, or the blossoms, or the fields ; my memory 
 showed me only the French faces, of women or of 
 men, belonging to every class. The look they wore 
 was like a sort of language which did not need to be 
 spoken, which needed no translation. It was a com- 
 mon language to both French and English, and they 
 all understood it. 
 
 Suddenly, in the green field by which we were pass- 
 ing on that long straight road, an object broke my 
 reverie. It was a charred, half-roasted aeroplane, 
 lying there like a great dead black bat. It was a 
 symbol, like Medusa's head. The Huns had never 
 been able to walk as near Paris as this, but they had 
 sailed here through the air, dropping flames and 
 death during four hideous years. To my fancy now, 
 as we went along that straight highway, the trees 
 with their blossoms, the hills with their snow, the flat 
 country veiled with the tender heralding hues of 
 spring, all nature, seemed to wear the look of the 
 English and French faces.
 
 II 
 
 VICTIMS VARIOUS 
 
 Again for a while I watched it, this avenue between 
 the high poplars, broad where we were, narrowing to 
 a line far ahead in the April haze. There was no 
 breeze. The air lay limp after the night's long tur- 
 bulence, but our speed brought a sharp wind against 
 the face. I watched the houses and villages. La 
 Chapelle-en-Serval came and was gone, and Pont- 
 arme ; after which we went through some lean woods. 
 These were empty, so were the fields, so was 
 everything. France was here — but where were the 
 French? That crumpled aeroplane, far behind us 
 now, gave the answer. It was rare to see man or 
 woman dotting the flat spaces. So little motion of 
 human beings there was, that each occurrence of it 
 caught the eye. Even the village streets stared 
 somewhat blankly because they were so nearly bare 
 of people. Paris streets had swarmed. Every pave- 
 ment had been a jungle of men and women. The 
 crowd seemed to obscure the very architecture. One 
 stood a long while waiting for a vacant seat to dine, 
 and the trains underground were congested thick 
 with passengers. There, in Paris, one had met 
 the aeroplane in various symbolic guises. By 
 the window in the bank where I got my money, stood 
 a young messenger with one eye sunk in blankness, 
 and black gloves upon his artificial hands. Walking 
 about in the room, or seated, were figures with 
 
 6
 
 VICTIMS VARIOUS 7 
 
 crutches, and empty sleeves, and limping mechanical 
 gaits. Nothing had seemed the matter with the 
 smiling fellow who answered my bell, took my clothes, 
 knocked on my door at the appointed hour, until his 
 charming cheerfulness and succulent pronunciation 
 led me one day to say : 
 
 "You're from the South, I can hear it." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur. From Toulouse. Monsieur 
 should make us a visit. It is not France here, we 
 are more amiable than these Parisians. Paris is not 
 amiable." 
 
 "You're very far from home." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, monsieur. One must do what one 
 can. Oh, I shall go back. ' ' 
 
 Then I learned of his three wounds and that one of 
 these was still a living pain. But as the days passed 
 this pain was growing less, he was going to be quite 
 well and strong. He told me, too, that once for 
 twenty-four hours he had been buried with some 
 comrades by the bursting of a shell. "We thought 
 that was the finish, but they dug us out in time. I 
 shall be able to do heavier work as soon as this gets 
 all right ' ' — and he touched his body lightly. If in his 
 valiant smiling spirit there was a sore spot, he never 
 revealed it. 
 
 In Paris, it needed but to fall into friendly talk like 
 this with almost any man at all, except the very old, 
 and you learned that he had paid his toll of blood. 
 He had paid it in nineteen-fourteen, or fifteen, or 
 sixteen, seventeen, eighteen — sometimes in several of 
 these years ; and often he had brothers who had paid 
 the final toll. Now and then his women had paid 
 women's toll, and not infrequently his house and 
 village, like his brothers, were come to dust. To you
 
 8 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 who read this, how can I impart what hearing it was 
 like, face to face with those who had lived what they 
 told? It can not be done. I can not make you hear 
 them any more that I can make you see that crumpled 
 aeroplane, lying like a scar on the clean fields. It 
 was the first broken refuse, the first dead ember of 
 war that I met; and all the mounds and miles of 
 extinction that I was presently to look at and remem- 
 ber for ever, have not obliterated this stark evil 
 image, this plague-spot upon the face of spring. 
 
 Senlis came and went. War signs were here more 
 plentiful, yet not enough to jog me back to the sights 
 of the road. We passed Villeneuve-sur-Verberie. 
 These names I heard, and for a moment saw the 
 places, but remember nothing of their aspect. I was 
 travelling forty-nine years away ; I was sailing up the 
 Rhine that day in 1870 when that war began ; I was 
 seeing Bismarck's locomotives puffing by, linked for 
 mobilization ; I was hearing that hysterical shout of 
 false alarm from a man in the skiff on the river : 
 
 "Die Franzosen sind zu Bingen!" 
 
 Thus this frightened German had raved as he stood 
 swinging his arms in the middle of the Rhine to warn 
 our steamer back. It had raised amongst the pas- 
 sengers a flutter and a suspense, all pleasure to me. 
 The events that followed upon this day during many 
 months had been all pleasure to me, because I under- 
 stood the significance of none of them: our boat's 
 unhindered voyage up the Rhine, near which, in that 
 war, no French ever came; our stay at Mainz; our 
 thwarted plan for Oberammergau ; our flight from 
 Munich to Lindau upon a long, crowded train of 
 travellers likewise seeking in haste a neutral country ; 
 our crossing of the lake to Romanshorn ; then Switz-
 
 VICTIMS VARIOUS 9 
 
 erland; and soon for me the boarding-school of 
 Hofwyl, near Berne. Of less importance to me then 
 than my studies and my home-sickness was the public 
 news. Older people spoke of Gravelotte and Sedan. 
 I did not then connect these names with Bismarck's 
 locomotives. Those were a picture, while names of 
 distant battles and surrenders had no reality for me. 
 Reality of the locomotive sort came next with another 
 set of pictures at that Hofwyl school. Our long stone 
 house wherein we both lived and studied faced west, 
 and the setting sun blinked upon it through a grove 
 of trees. Eastward at our back the open land sloped 
 slowly down for about a mile to a lake, itself about a 
 mile long and half as wide. Flanking our right was 
 the gymnasium in a big sort of granary, slightly in 
 advance of the front line of the house. In this I 
 know not how many French soldiers came to be 
 barracked. They had fled across the border, from 
 Belfort if I remember, into Switzerland, and here 
 they had been interned. They were drilled each day. 
 They used to be drawn up in front of the granary, and 
 we would go and watch them and hear them answer 
 to the roll-call. Their faces were grave, unhappy, 
 little washed, little shaved, their uniforms dingy, 
 their voices, as they responded, rather wild and 
 strange. They were a little piece of the rags of 
 Napoleon Ill's Empire. Bismarck's locomotives had 
 torn it and these lives to shreds — though this I took 
 in not then, but long after. What I then took in was 
 just the pictures, the daily scenes: the white snow, 
 the black trees, the red sparks of setting sun ; the long 
 gaunt lines of the schoolhouse and granary ; we boys 
 in our uniforms staring at the drill; the dingy 
 unhappy interned, their hairy faces, their strange
 
 10 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 voices, their winter breath; and then, one day, we 
 boys running to the east side of the house, where we 
 watched one of the interned French trying to escape. 
 He was a dot on the frozen lake, other dots were on 
 the land, and puffs of smoke behind him came from 
 the guns, as he struggled to get away — and he did not 
 succeed. You may say that Bismarck's locomotives 
 caught him, after all. 
 
 "Well, well. Thus near the beginning of my days 
 and thus again near their end, I had seen the symbols 
 of Germany's murdering, mangling plunge: puffing 
 engines, victorious then, the bones of a wrecked 
 aeroplane just now. A Germany truculent, but as 
 yet unpoisoned in 1870, a malign, putrescent Germany 
 this time. Was she now cured of her evil dream? 
 Was the world henceforth to be able to breathe 
 naturally ? I saw a stream and a broken bridge ; by 
 the side of this we crossed a make-shift bridge, got 
 out for a noon meal, and after it set forth back across 
 the river to walk in the streets of the town.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 1 
 
 How suddenly it came! What must the noise of 
 shells be? On the ninth day of the siege of Verdun 
 I have been told that almost every soldier was crying. 
 That is what noise can do. During four months 
 there — four months, one hundred and twenty change- 
 less days — ten thousand shells each day — eight-inch 
 shells and upward — fell upon the Verdun fortresses, 
 Vaux and Douamont. One hundred and eleven days 
 of this shattering noise were still ahead of those 
 French soldiers who were crying on the ninth day — 
 still ahead, that is, for such as lived it out. I stared 
 at the mute wreck which the shells had made in 
 Compiegne. Since November war had been silenced, 
 noise was dead, the deafening years that France had 
 heard, and through which she had been able to keep 
 her heart undaunted and her head clear, were behind 
 her, while before her was — what? In the death of 
 noise silence was born. This silence I had begun to 
 enter on the way from Paris ; here at Compiegne it 
 deepened. I felt it deepening as you feel the change 
 when the thermometer is falling. In the days that 
 were to follow I waked and slept and lived in this 
 huge silence that spread everywhere, cloaked the 
 country and the towns, enveloped trees and ruins and 
 people and houses and graves and trenches and 
 barbed wire, and was like an element. As fish swim 
 in the sea, so did we move in this silence. 
 
 11
 
 12 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Something, some intimation, had impelled my 
 friend and me to separate and walk apart. Each of 
 us saw Compiegne alone, and met again after the first 
 experience was over. We did not say much about it. 
 All the large joys, loves, griefs, horrors, amazements, 
 lie outside the realm of speech: the man who makes 
 words in their presence lives too close to himself for 
 true understanding or sharing. The hand of the 
 Hun had been laid upon Compiegne, and Compiegne 
 was withered. Its blight was not complete. All its 
 inhabitants were not dead or gone away, all the 
 houses were not gutted, life stirred in the streets, 
 goods and wares were for sale in some shop windows, 
 the French soldier, bright in his blue, starred the pre- 
 vailing darkness of civilian garments : — but then you 
 turned some corner and all this was ended. Ruin like 
 a barrier stopped you. Through gaping windows 
 you looked beyond to more gaping windows, it was 
 dangerous to climb and peer, signs warned you off, 
 and decency bade you avert your eyes. One turned 
 away from peeping through this keyhole at naked, 
 slaughtered France. 
 
 People at home have often asked : 
 
 "But when you had seen Compiegne, had you not 
 seen everything ! Is not one ruin just like another f ' ' 
 
 One ruin in a Sunday paper is like another and you 
 look at it spread upon your lap. Mile upon mile of 
 ruin in France, travelled over, paused at, dwelt on, 
 compared, its particular story listened to — this has 
 no monotony, this fills your knowledge fuller and ever 
 more full each day ; compared to Sunday papers, it is 
 like seeing Niagara, the Rocky Mountains, the Grand 
 Canon, after looking at a map of the United States. 
 
 Compiegne was now behind us, and to our right the
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 13 
 
 Oise, brimful, pouring swiftly along, as we went on 
 the road to the town of Noyon. That was twenty 
 kilometres ahead. The words in my diary of this 
 unearthly stretch are few and almost illegible, 
 scrawled at the finish, in Noyon. 
 
 Very abrupt in France are the transitions from 
 ground and dwellings untouched by shells to fields 
 that are all gashed and houses that are mere scorched 
 husks. The houses here were worse than the fields. 
 The comparison seems desecrating, yet I know of 
 none better than to say that every house along this 
 road was like a painted house in a play. As each 
 came into view you thought, "This one is all right." 
 In the next instant the illusion was blasted. Distant 
 walls and chimneys of pomp, suggesting grand pianos 
 and family portraits within, turned out as we passed 
 them close to be stark, roofless shelters of the void, 
 hollow squares enclosing charred beams, rank weeds, 
 and twisted iron. From haughtiest to humblest, all 
 were dead. 
 
 "Of 1914, that one," explained our chauffeur. It 
 had evidently been a residence of comfort. 
 
 How did he know the year when its ruin was 
 wrought? Had he been there 1 ? 
 
 "No, monsieur. One knows easily from the moss 
 and vines. Those have been growing already a long 
 while without any disturbance. ' ' 
 
 It was real yet unreal. The sense of the theatre 
 haunted the whole of these twenty unearthly kilo- 
 metres that first day between Compiegne and Noyon. 
 Later, as one's initiation deepened and grew steeped 
 in the terrific until the terrific became the usual,itwas 
 then that the usual itself began to look far off and 
 unreal. All the way to Noyon, the invariable repeti-
 
 14 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 tion of ruin failed to stop appearances from deceiving 
 me. A little farm would come in sight, its walls 
 looking so solid and the tall trees about it so serene, 
 that I would exclaim : 
 
 "At least these people have their home safe!" 
 
 A few seconds more and we were passing another 
 husk, and where were the people whose home the husk 
 had been? Yet still I continued to watch for an 
 exception along this road, all the way to Noyon. 
 
 Here the silence let down another veil between 
 us and the natural world. Rain was now falling. 
 Through it I saw what was neighboring to Noyon — 
 barbed wire, trenches under a hill topped by a ruined 
 wood, shell holes, dead trees, ruins of brick, gas-tank 
 ruins; and amid all this various death, the dingy 
 green forms of German prisoners, and the constant 
 sound of explosions in the fields. The prisoners 
 were at work all round Noyon, setting off bombs by 
 wire, and pillars of smoke rose slowly upward in the 
 rain. 
 
 "They are victims, too," I said to the chauffeur. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 Victims they were, and their plight was bad, 
 though it was as nothing beside the plight of France, 
 their victim. While their chance lasted they had 
 done to her all that I was seeing and to see, and they 
 would be doing it still, had their tide not turned. 
 
 They were at work in Noyon as well as around it. 
 Here were no shops, every house I saw was dead, 
 many fallen walls piled the streets high, there was no 
 passing, not even any walking, save in the few cleared 
 spaces. Lumps lay about, lumps made of houses 
 burst and spattered over their crushed gardens ; roofs 
 belonging nowhere, yet still almost whole, tilted like
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 15 
 
 kites tumbled from the air. Doorways stood alone, 
 leading to vacancy. Cellars yawned wide. Into 
 these fell the rain and in some of them people seemed 
 to be living. Walls still erect masked dislocated 
 interiors, and the placard Verifie was on several. 
 This meant that the interior had been visited and that 
 nothing there would fall upon you or explode, should 
 you choose it for a lodging. Older placards were 
 upon other walls, announcing Cave abri 50 personnes, 
 which meant that fifty could hide down in there when 
 bombs were falling upon Noyon. I had seen beauty 
 lying dead at Compiegne, arches, pillars, carved 
 stones. More was here. The church was a shambles 
 of murdered architecture. Black, cawing birds 
 sailed and slanted in and out of its windows. Its 
 tower stood, and its outer walls, but within its dis- 
 membered entrance everything had been struck by 
 the blow of hate and toppled in one mass of broken 
 aisle and choir and crucifix and tomb. Through the 
 shrivelled dial of its clock on the tower a shell had 
 made its way. They had done to it the worst they 
 could ; yet its beauty was not all killed. What of it 
 was left stood there, ancient, serene, sanctified by 
 centuries of human souls at prayer, still delivering 
 to Noyon its message of love divine. From its steps 
 I looked across at the wreck of a sweet old house, 
 beautiful even in its fragments ; above the shattered 
 wall of what had been the garden, a little fruit tree 
 lifted its head. Amid the aching stillness, the crum- 
 bling, the death, it stood up, alive and growing. Its 
 cluster of pink buds would be blossoms by tomorrow. 
 The sight of it, so fresh, so young, so futile, was very 
 pitiful. A verse from Exodus came to me unsought : 
 "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off
 
 16 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy 
 ground. ' ' 
 
 Between me and the little blossoming fruit tree, 
 three women veiled and in black walked into sight. 
 They stopped at the foot of the church steps. After 
 a short silence, two of them went on slowly, whilst the 
 third, who remained, fixed her grave eyes upon me. 
 
 I came down the steps with my hat in my hand. 
 
 ''Madame," I said, "this is my first day among all 
 this." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, one must get used to it. I was 
 from Noyon. I live at Nevers now. " 
 
 ' ' Nevers is a long way from Noyon, madame. ' ' 
 
 "Others have gone farther. I am here today to 
 look for mv house." 
 
 She turned away from the steps of the church. In 
 a little while, as I walked back to where our car was 
 waiting, I saw her with her companions in a street 
 impassable except by climbing over the stones of 
 toppled residences. The three black figures were 
 pointing out and consulting amid a waste of feature- 
 less debris, the rain streaming heavily down upon 
 them. 
 
 Throughout this day each aspect that April can 
 wear had its turn. Nothing of the snow veil, or the 
 gleam, or the hazy gentleness of the forenoon accom- 
 panied our journey from Noyon to Roye. The sky 
 bulged low with swollen, restless clouds. We passed 
 the kilometre stones in a pelting shower sometimes, 
 and sometimes in the grey of a light that betokened 
 further showers along the kilometres which lay 
 ahead. For a while our way was accompanied by the 
 noise of explosions and their smoke. Stooping 
 women were in the fields, their faces down, their arms
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 17 
 
 moving at some work. I thought they were sowing 
 seed, but the chauffeur told us that it was the shell 
 holes they were filling. These spotted the earth far 
 and near, and seemed thick to us on this first sight 
 of them; before the land could be fitly farmed they 
 had to be filled by those stooping women. 
 
 Somewhere along this road we saw for the first 
 time a war railway, a light narrow-gauge affair, 
 vacant and idle now, laid in haste upon no secure 
 ballast. Over its unsettled bed it tilted and curved 
 through this bit of country, its disused rails reddened 
 with rust. A year ago it had been full of business, 
 plying the Huns with means to deal this silence to 
 the slain earth. No trains were here now, and 
 nothing to load them with, had they been here. The 
 poplars bordering our road had been felled, we ran 
 along between their severed stumps, and here for the 
 first time we saw in some of the farms the murdered 
 fruit trees. There would be the house, shattered, 
 and the out-buildings, shattered, sunk in various 
 angles of wreck, and beyond these the symmetrically 
 amputated orchard, dead, on its knees, so to speak, as 
 if it had prayed its destroyers to spare the other 
 orchards' lives. Since this land was not to be the 
 invader's booty, as much of it as could be killed 
 should die. 
 
 Upon the walls and doors of Noyon we had read 
 the placards announcing shelter from bombs. These 
 were French, in the language of the victims. The 
 language of the invaders met us at some cross-roads 
 half-way to Roye. The single word zur was on a sign- 
 post, the rest broken off. Zur : To . The name 
 
 of the place was splintered away, and the place itself 
 was no more to be seen. Shell holes and dead trees
 
 18 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 lay between us and its stones. We might turn right 
 or left — shell holes and dead trees and the stones of 
 little places would be all that there was to see. Zur. 
 Three letters of the alphabet put together. The 
 wrecks of homes and fields were the Huns ' work, but 
 this was their speech. They had intended that 
 German should be spoken here in the future. 
 
 We read the next Hun words on a head-board over 
 a grave at the edge of Roye : 
 
 "Hier ruht in Gott Fahrer Ph. Rihr Mag. F. Kel. 
 188 Gef alien beim Vormarsch 30 Marz, 1918.' * 
 
 "Here rests in God" . . . 
 
 In what God, in whose God, was he reposing? 
 
 No man can say. It was neither he, nor such as 
 he, upon whose soul lay the guilt of all this. From 
 his cradle he had been schooled for it by those who 
 had drilled him, mind and spirit. The guilt was 
 theirs. This soldier, had he lived to see the Father- 
 land again, would have been with millions of other 
 Germans an uncertain quantity for the rest of us. 
 Would disaster have cured him, or would it have 
 merely made him wish to bide his time and come 
 again? He was a victim, too, like the living ones I 
 had seen as prisoners at Compiegne. His dust was 
 more tragic than that of the dead French or English 
 that slept in the battlefields of Picardy and Flanders. 
 Their countries rose to sacrifice, his country fell. 
 That is why Germany's tragedy, from the time I saw 
 it clear in the first months of the war, has seemed to 
 me always the greatest tragedy of all. 
 
 Just thirteen months ago this soldier had fallen at 
 an hour when it seemed as if he and his hordes were 
 at last to overrun and rule these shell-shocked fields. 
 In that case our turn was to come, our homes and
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 19 
 
 PI i 
 
 orchards were to look like this. We did not know it 
 then, we went to war not to defend them but to save 
 a cause. We later learned that " Paris in three 
 weeks, London in three months, New York in three 
 years,' ' had been the plan in full. 
 
 The very ground to which our road was leading us 
 today was sacred to the memory of our dead also, had 
 seen the stain of our long neutrality wiped away with 
 the grit of our onset, the blood of our dead, the tears 
 of our bereft. Montdidier was ahead, where our 1st 
 Division had been rushed this week a year ago, and 
 one month later it had taken Cantigny with a swift 
 and splendid sweep. 
 
 Through Roye our road twisted like an S, by an 
 extinct church on the left and on the right a half ruin, 
 wherein butchers were at work and whereon was 
 advertised horse meat of the first quality. Half 
 ruins and whole ruins surrounded a square, the Place 
 d'Armes, and over what was left of the door of a 
 more important ruin on this square was the sign of 
 the Hun : Stadt Kommandant. Along the seventeen 
 kilometres to Montdidier the ravages of war contin- 
 ued unchanged, and war's other leavings increased 
 and thickened. So far, trenches and excavations had 
 not been close to the road we had come. Line upon 
 line of them now furrowed the face of the land like 
 huge sentences scrawled across a huge page in some 
 ancient alphabet. Dug-outs lined the road, cellared 
 the higher banks in rows, like the suburban opera- 
 tions of contractors. Immense piles of obus never 
 fired, still alive, littered the bare and muddy fields. 
 From an aeroplane one could have looked down upon 
 these slabs and blocks of unexploded shells as if they 
 were the fragments of some dislocated town. A grey
 
 20 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 lattice-work of camouflage three metres high still 
 shielded the road, its material torn and hanging in 
 strips, but nrach of it as it had been in the days when 
 it concealed the passing troops and trains of muni- 
 tions and provisions. Squads of men were at work 
 removing and effacing all this. Camions lurched by, 
 or stood in the mud. Winter had but lately left this 
 region and the labor seemed but just to have begun ; 
 for all the change it had made as yet to the eye, war 
 and the Huns might have gone away last week. No 
 house seemed whole at Montdidier. Between the 
 houses and everywhere around them the ground 
 looked like a paste of mud irredeemable. You have 
 seen places where floods have swept all shapes to a 
 general shapelessness. The valley here was some- 
 thing like that. In the mud labored the squads of 
 men. small objects in the large obliteration. 
 
 We did not take the road through Cantigny, but 
 that on the west bank of the river, along a ridge, to 
 which we mounted as we left Montdidier. From this 
 high ground I was able presently to look across the 
 lower territory over which our 1st Division had made 
 its attack. Straw still covered the wet floors of the 
 dug-outs, their steps were slippery, telephone wires 
 stretched and dangled between them, they were still 
 concealed by the disguising bushes and the burlap 
 lattice-work of camouflage. The footprints of war 
 seemed very fresh. You could have picked up from 
 the floors and shelves of the dug-outs more tokens 
 than vou could have carried awav. 
 
 Quite different from Compiegne or Noyon or Rove 
 was the aspect of Moreuil; quite different, too, from 
 the smaller clusters of dwellings, the petit pays, the 
 assembled group of the French farm. Those had
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 21 
 
 been generally grey, built of brittle stone, and when 
 their wall? were struck they crumbled partly or en- 
 tirely, and their ancient beauty vanished never to 
 be made again. Moreuil was of brick and did not 
 fall when shells bored through it. Its gutted walls 
 enclosed nothing, they stood up like masks, or a bad 
 dream. They were of today, their like could easily 
 be built again. We looked down upon them from the 
 road along the ridge, with the sun shining upon their 
 spread of ruin, out of which stuck high into the air 
 one chimney that the shells had missed. Beside the 
 road a family had built a hovel of tar paper and 
 slats, and in the mud the children were laying a 
 brick porch in front of its door. Five thousand 
 people had lived in Moreuil, five hundred were able 
 to live there today ; in what and on what I did not see. 
 Soon after this the signs of war began to dwindle 
 away as we went along the valley; houses that were 
 whole increased in number; the town of Boves was 
 much less damaged than any in the fifty miles since 
 Compiegne. In Amiens, at a hotel I had known for 
 a long while, ended this day.
 
 IV 
 
 LIFE FLICKERING 
 
 Gaunt renovations, raw partitions of wood, newly 
 set up and still awaiting paint, met my sight. They 
 gave to this place, so familiar and once so upholstered 
 and cheerful, where I had eaten and slept in other 
 days, the appearance of a friend whom one is allowed 
 to see for the first time after a wasting and perilous 
 illness. 
 
 "Yes," said the landlord, "we were bombed, as 
 you see. We began again in January." 
 
 "But the cathedral?" 
 
 "We have it, we shall have it. Only hit seven 
 times. You will see." 
 
 "And the stork?" I now asked him. 
 
 "Ah, you have been here before, then?" 
 
 "Many times. And the last time, in July 1914, I 
 watched from my bedroom window the stork walking 
 with a seagull in his domain beneath; and I went 
 down into that domain of lawn and garden which the 
 wings of the hotel enclosed. But the stork turned 
 away from my advances." 
 
 "He is dead," said the landlord. "When the 
 bombs came, an English officer quartered here was 
 going on leave, and he offered to take him to a place 
 of safety. The stork went to London, where he died. ' ' 
 
 The hotel was chill as a cave, few guests seemed to 
 be lodging in it, and but a few of these were civilians. 
 Of travellers such as we there seemed to be none 
 except ourselves. The mere sight-seer was still 
 
 22
 
 LIFE FLICKERING 23 
 
 debarred. He would swarm later, when roads and 
 roofs and meals and all facilities were more ready 
 and less scant than they were today. 
 
 Daylight still lingered, the dinner hour was not 
 imminent, so I walked out of the cold hotel into the 
 cold, damp streets and turned my steps to the cathe- 
 dral. This town, larger than Compiegne, was like 
 Compiegne and like no other through which our 
 road had lain during this day of desolation, until our 
 fleeting sight of Boves. As I went along the streets, 
 a curious sensation of reassurance increased within 
 me, and I grew aware that this had begun in Boves. 
 There I had noticed the first houses which looked 
 like usual houses, with roofs and doors and windows 
 with people looking out of them, and I had seen 
 people walking about or crossing the street, like usual 
 people. Here was more of it. Shop windows had 
 usual things for sale in them, cheeses and books and 
 hats; people stood in the shop doors, women put 
 parcels into baskets, men bought newspapers and 
 struck matches to light cigarettes; I saw children, 
 dogs, and a cat recumbent, sleek, licking her fur as 
 if there had never been a bomb in the world. As a 
 man who has been deep in a dreadful dream where 
 nothing happens but the monstrous, faintly begins to 
 feel that it is not true, and then suddenly knows that 
 he is in his bed and safe, so I walked in Amiens, re- 
 leased from the haunting day by these natural sights. 
 The real world still existed. The haunting day 
 seemed not of this time, but something long ago: 
 those cities of dug-outs and tilted zigzag trenches, 
 those slabs of piled ammunition, those toppled clumps 
 of masonry, those stooping women over the shell 
 holes, might all have been a piece of legend, woven
 
 24 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 in some great stiff faded fabric hanging in some 
 castle where cold airs blow from turrets and cor- 
 ridors unseen. 
 
 "We began again in January." 
 
 The Hotel du Rhin had been bombed, its landlord's 
 business had been smashed and shattered, emptied 
 of all profit, guestless, even the pet bird obliterated; 
 but one year ago the destroyer had been shaking these 
 gates ; and here were we guests, fed, bedded, paying 
 bills. I rejected the sombre prophecy of a great 
 Belgian lady, made to one of our soldiers: "There 
 will be no recovery." These French would recover. 
 There was that cat, licking her comfortable fur. She, 
 too, was a mute parable. France was not dead, was 
 not going to die. Even amid the spread of the war- 
 desert were areas of life. Between Maubeuge and 
 Landrecies it was said that the Hun had not ravaged. 
 Other spots than this had been left alive, and the 
 dead places would be raised from the dead. Smoke 
 would come again some day out of that lone chimney 
 at Moreuil. Smoke would come again from the dead 
 chimneys of Lille. Machinery would clank again in 
 the dead factories and drowned mines. Wheat and 
 fruit would ripen again where I had seen the shell 
 holes. Later eyes than mine would never see those 
 stooping women. Later eyes than mine would see 
 the farmer back upon his farm, the exile restored to 
 his dwelling ; travellers coming after me might stand 
 on the steps of Noyon church and hear singing within. 
 I verily believe that nothing I saw in Amiens streets 
 on my way to the cathedral this evening gave me 
 more of reassurance and more brought me back 
 out of the world where I had been into a possible 
 world than that quiet cat, licking her fur !
 
 V 
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 
 
 I went along the street of the cat and the people 
 and the little shops where little purchases were being 
 made, bidding a new welcome to each new humble 
 sign that I saw of home life being lived. The very 
 humblest were the very best. I can remember stop- 
 ping to watch a stream of soapy water flowing from 
 some outlet ; I had never thought to feel thankful for 
 such a sight. Little in the world is more awful 
 than the first visit to familiar places after some 
 eternal change has passed over them, or over oneself. 
 I went on and reached a street so well remembered, 
 that for a moment time shut flat, and all my bygone 
 sauntering here became present ; it was unbelievable 
 that round the corner I should not meet those who 
 had walked there with me once. Then I turned the 
 corner and with this step was in the silence again. 
 My own personal memories vanished as they had 
 come, like ghosts. My own silences were swallowed 
 in this great silence of France. I had thought it 
 distant for a while, out there, out beyond Boves, out 
 among the barbed wire and the holes and the stooping 
 women. It was here. It filled like a presence the 
 narrower street I had entered. Sills and doors were 
 heavy with it. It set its weight upon the very paving- 
 stones. The small bustle of life behind me was merely 
 a hole in its vastness. I cannot remember what ruin 
 I passed in this street, what roofs or walls were 
 
 25
 
 26 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 bomb-broken, perhaps there were none ; I remember 
 the silence alone, its sweeping return upon me, the 
 hush in which it steeped my thoughts. 
 
 Were the life and motion in the other street nothing 
 but a raft from a great wreck, floating upon this 
 waste, never to reach shore, in a little while to be 
 engulfed? Did those people sell and buy their small 
 wares and cook their suppers merely as men with 
 sudden, mortal wounds sometimes go onward for a 
 while, unaware that they have been severed from 
 existence ? 
 
 The landlord 's word came back to me. 
 
 What had they begun again in January? The first 
 steps of a long climb back to health, or the last lap 
 before the null and the void? Was our whole era 
 mortally wounded? Had we all been severed from 
 existence, were we all on the last lap? Other days 
 and civilizations that were over long ago came into 
 my head ; great, crumbled, prone cities, whose names 
 conjure up the mounded desert, and pillars lying 
 about, and wide stone stairways with lions prowling 
 upon them. Were the yellow sands of Asia presently 
 to have their turn and to sweep over and bury us all? 
 
 I looked up; I had come in my slow walk to the 
 cathedral. 
 
 If thoughts can stop, the sight of it stopped mine. 
 So does a shutter thrown open in the morning pour 
 the room full of light. There is music, very little, 
 which to hear makes one feel that it happened of it- 
 self, that it came out of space like a wind. There are 
 lines of poetry, very few, that do not seem to have 
 been written, unless by the elements. No poetry that 
 I have read, no music that I have heard, so lift one 
 up into that region of marvelling which lies beyond
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 27 
 
 the powers of speech, as does this church of Amiens. 
 Its two great sisters of Reims and Chartres do this 
 also: no others in the world: no buildings made by 
 man at any time in Italy or Greece or anywhere so 
 strike self to nothing and leave only wordless won- 
 der, wordless awe, motionless delight. Out of East- 
 ern sands rise monuments as august, but they are un- 
 friendly. The only sights surpassing the befriending 
 glory of these churches are of the water and of the 
 earth and the air, and what nature does at morning 
 and evening. To be able to look at them unmoved 
 must be to have no soul at all. They are endless like 
 nature; one does not tire of them, and to return to 
 them is to find them greater than one's memory. 
 
 My thoughts began again, whilst that miracle in 
 stone shone down upon me and into me. How had 
 men made it? It looked as if beings from another 
 place had come through the sky, bearing it among 
 them, and had set it down here and gone away. It 
 was greater than the silence. It rose symmetric into 
 a realm of august tranquillity far above the voiceless, 
 shapeless hell which I had begun to enter at Com- 
 piegne. Then I heard myself saying aloud: 
 
 ". . . . magic casements opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas and fairy lands forlorn." 
 
 I looked about the square, the place was empty, 
 I had it to myself. Forlorn? Yes, forlorn indeed, 
 but not fairy lands. Noyon and Roye and Mont- 
 didier and Moreuil were not fairy lands. I thought 
 again of those in whose company I had gazed at these 
 magic casements in other years. I was glad that they 
 were gone, glad that none of them had lived to know 
 what men can do to this earth: villages dead and
 
 28 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 those who had lived in them, fields extinct and those 
 who had plowed in them, churches in dust and those 
 who had prayed in them, tombs burst open and the 
 bones that slept in them, toys in ashes and those who 
 had played with them. These casements had opened 
 on the foam of many mortal lives, on seven hundred 
 years of men. They were two centuries old when 
 Columbus was born. Men and women in how many 
 fashions of dress had knelt beneath the vast arches 
 within, while the stained light streamed down upon 
 their heads. In how many languages had "Our 
 Father who art in Heaven" been whispered here? 
 
 The words of one of those companions who once 
 had stood at this corner with me, looking up as I was 
 looking now, came back to me: 
 
 "You are so beautiful with the promise and the 
 consolation which you speak without words," she 
 had said, addressing the great church, "that you set 
 one praying before one enters you. Surely, just to 
 see you would open in every one the vault where his 
 childhood's prayers had been shut, no matter how 
 long it had been locked ! ' ' She walked away from me 
 and went into the church. 
 
 No vault was unlocked in me while I stood re- 
 membering this, yet none the less was I drawn by 
 memory and by the power of the great church. I 
 wished to go inside by that door where my friend 
 had entered, and sit down for a while and think 
 quietly of her, and of those others for whose death 
 I was glad, because they had not known what man 
 can do to this earth. 
 
 A soldier came out of the door and behind him a 
 verger, who locked it and departed. The church was 
 shut till morning.
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 29 
 
 Dusk was advancing but light was by no means 
 yet gone, it would be slow in going. I did not wish to 
 leave until I must ; I moved beneath the spell. The 
 power of the church seemed something which not the 
 spirit alone but even the body could feel. I stepped 
 slowly back from it to see as much of its majestic 
 length and height as I could. Then I grew aware of 
 the first figure that had come out of the door. I had 
 hardly noticed him while the official was locking it. 
 I had seen that he was a soldier with a broad hat and 
 had thought no more about him. He was an Amer- 
 ican, an officer. Something more than his uniform 
 betokened his race, something apart from whatever 
 features he might have, something young, ages and 
 generations younger than the official who had locked 
 the door. He was still standing near it, with his 
 back to me. He was too close to the church to be able 
 to see anything of it, except the door and the tem- 
 porary scaffolding surrounding it. He stood motion- 
 less, graceful, intent, and I wondered what it was 
 that he found to absorb him so deeply. 
 
 A young soldier from America, standing in antique 
 Picardy, staring curiously at the cathedral of 
 Amiens : the latest war-clad figure in the pageant of 
 wars which had wet every one of that cathedral's 
 seven centuries with blood: behind these seven, ere 
 ever its first stone had been laid, other centuries wet 
 with blood, back to the bringing of Christianity to 
 this antique Picardy, sixteen hundred years ago : and 
 then still back until the records die away and the 
 pageant of wars fades into the years unrecorded and 
 unknown. Koman blood, Norman blood, English 
 blood, Spanish blood, French blood, had drenched this 
 soil; and now, as if the veins of the Old World had
 
 30 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 been opened too often and too long, and were run- 
 ning dry, time had tapped fresh reservoirs, and had 
 drawn the blood of the New "World to drench this 
 ancient soil. 
 
 The young soldier stood so still that, had he not 
 raised his hand once and passed it over his forehead, 
 he might have been inanimate ; his form had the quiet- 
 ness of the cathedral itself. Did this American close 
 to that Gothic portal which had been a portal long 
 before Columbus was born know on what ground he 
 was standing? Had he ever learned the name by 
 which Amiens town was known to Julius Caesar when 
 he made it the centre of his wars against the Bel- 
 gians? Was he of the sort that cares about such 
 things ? Roman emperors had dwelt here, and after 
 them Peter the Hermit ; Geoffrey Chaucer may have 
 passed this way on his errands for his Plantagenet 
 king. This great church yas begun before St. 
 Louis, King of France, went on his first Crusade. 
 Did this latest crusader, this soldier from the New 
 World, who had left his own land and crossed three 
 thousand miles of sea to save Christian shrines and 
 homes from pagan desecration, know any of this? 
 Six hundred years ago, the invaders whose weapons 
 had been cloth yard shafts had come here. Again 
 and again Amiens had been wrenched by one violent 
 hand from another. The ancient glass of these magic 
 casements had been shattered in the French Revolu- 
 tion. They had looked down upon the Prussians, 
 entering victorious from Villers-Bretonneux in No- 
 vember 1870. They had seen the Prussians again in 
 August 1914. One year ago Prussia was reaching 
 very close to wrench off Amiens from France. But 
 France had it safe and America had helped France.
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 31 
 
 Was the boy thinking of this, was he saying some 
 sort of prayer as he stood facing this house of God! 
 I should never have known, for I would never have 
 trespassed upon the mood that held him so still ; but 
 he moved abruptly, wheeled from the door, and began 
 to walk away. In a few steps he stumbled and I saw 
 from his manner of walking that it was difficult for 
 him and cost him pain. 
 
 I approached him and asked, had he ever seen this 
 before? 
 
 "No," he answered without turning his head. 
 
 "Don't you find it very beautiful?" I inquired. 
 
 "I suppose I do." His voice was low, and gruff 
 and defiant. 
 
 "I care for it more every time I come back to it," 
 I said. "Just for its sake alone, I almost think I 
 would cross the ocean." 
 
 "You American?" Still he looked away from me 
 as I answered. 
 
 He remained silent ; only his intention changed. It 
 had been plain before this that he wished to go his 
 way, and without my company; but now he walked 
 with me. 
 
 "I am going round to see the west front," I ex- 
 plained. 
 
 He went along by my side, stumbling a second 
 time. 
 
 We walked very slowly, and, as he did not say a 
 word, I spoke of the famous carving. I mentioned 
 some of the groups which I remembered; Kings of 
 France, a figure of Christ, the apostles, the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead. Then we came to the west front 
 and there was no carving to see ; piles of sand bags 
 wholly concealed the glorious company of figures to
 
 32 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 keep these master-works of a lost art from the bombs 
 of the Huns. 
 
 "They're piled like that inside, too," said my 
 companion. "Where the choir is. The man said 
 the choir was a great thing." 
 
 "It's a great thing, indeed," I said. "Nothing 
 like it could happen today. Today nothing like any 
 of this could happen — and it happened only in France. 
 You will find nothing in England to stand with it, and 
 Germany made a gigantic failure at Cologne." I 
 could not be sure that he heard me, nor yet could I 
 stop. "Men are still trying to do what these old 
 builders did. They fail. They measure and study 
 and copy exactly, and they fail. They have tried to 
 reproduce the Day of Judgment group that is be- 
 hind those sand bags. They have built perfectly 
 correct Gothic churches in many modern towns and 
 every one of them is as cold and dead as a door- 
 nail." 
 
 The soldier was looking up at the towers. Now 
 and then he nodded as I continued my comments and 
 my facts. He was a captain and his age I could not 
 guess ; different ages seemed to meet in him. He was 
 tall, full six feet, his hands shapely and of powerful 
 mould, the nails large and smooth. The lines of his 
 body were boyish; the lines of nineteen, twenty, 
 perhaps, a year or two more at the most ; and his face 
 was boyish in shape; but in his voice a seasoned 
 maturity sounded; boyhood does not speak in such 
 tones. The scant words he had thus far vouchsafed 
 me were serried in their utterance, and matched by a 
 silence equally compact. Yet he was not being rude. 
 His manner conveyed some sort of wish for compan- 
 ionship. Something was going on beneath his taci-
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 33 
 
 turnity. He was holding himself in. I remembered 
 his stumbling, and thought that he had better sit down 
 on the steps, but I hung back from making the 
 suggestion. 
 
 He turned from the towers, and, for the first time, 
 looked full at me. His eyes burned with a sullen fire. 
 In his face I saw, too, what I had seen in the general 
 English and P^rench faces, and as yet in no face that 
 was American : this boy, also, had seen that which had 
 let him into a knowledge he would not get over, 
 though he might grow used to it : young his flesh was, 
 young his spirit would never be again. 
 
 "That is as dead as a door-nail too." 
 
 This declaration he accompanied with a flinging 
 gesture of his arm at the cathedral. 
 
 I looked at him, what he meant not yet quite dawn- 
 ing upon me. 
 
 "As for your Day of Judgment" — he snapped his 
 fingers at the piled sand bags — "that will never 
 happen at all. Never. Because only one person 
 would be judged that day. I 'm not afraid of any Day 
 of Judgment. Are you? Nobody need be afraid, 
 except God for making a world like this. So He '11 be 
 careful not to let it happen." 
 
 Again he looked at the cathedral. His voice was 
 changelessly quiet with something in it implacable. 
 
 "Dead as a door-nail," he repeated. "Just as 
 dead as any temple to Jupiter in ancient Rome. ' ' 
 
 "What? When people have been getting strength 
 and comfort from it since the thirteenth century?" 
 
 "What did these people know? : 
 
 'Do you remember who some of them were, and 
 t they did?" 
 
 what they did?" 
 
 I don't care who they were or what they did."
 
 34 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 " England, France, Europe, America, you and I, 
 everything we see, are partly the result of their 
 doings and their thoughts." 
 
 ' ' Sure they were grown up as to all that. Children 
 about religion, though. Swallowed the whole thing. 
 Got blessed in there by some guy with candles and 
 millinery and then came out and behaved worse than 
 I ever would. And I'm no saint." He paused a 
 moment, and took it up anew. "Why one of those 
 kings that they say built up this French nation used 
 to pray to leaden images in his hat. ' ' 
 
 "People need images still. Some always will. 
 "Where 's the harm ? It 's what 's back of the image. ' ' 
 
 He did not seem to have heard me. ' ' I swallowed 
 it all too, once. Never again. What's back of the 
 image ? Nothing. ' ' 
 
 Young people find much pleasure in assuring them- 
 selves that they are infidels, and still more pleasure 
 in assuring other people of this. The case before me 
 was not of that kind. No callow intellectual snobbism 
 was prompting this young soldier to show off for 
 my benefit. Showing off there was none. True war 
 was raging in his soul. Not from spiritual shallow- 
 ness, but from spiritual depth, did his eyes burn and 
 his voice quietly ring with bitterness. Each sentence 
 was evenly spoken and every word fell like a blow 
 dealt by implacable disillusion. I think that he had 
 never said any of it before ; that he might never have 
 said any of it at all, but for my crossing his path, and 
 his learning that I was a fellow-countryman at a 
 moment when the mighty power of the cathedral had 
 collided with whatever mighty anguish was within 
 him. I think, too, that he would have said it to no 
 one but an entire stranger.
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 35 
 
 Having begun, he did not stop. "If a man started 
 sinning the first day he was old enough to be able to 
 sin, and kept on every day of every year of his life 
 till he died, would he deserve eternal damnation V ' 
 This question he answered for himself. "Not even 
 the Kaiser deserves hell-without-end. The one who 
 ought to be punished — if there was any such thing as 
 'ought' in this game — is the one who made a world 
 with love and death m it; the one who could have 
 made a world where good health was contagious 
 instead of disease, and didn 't do it. I don 't think I 'd 
 look down on millions in suffering and tell them I'd 
 make it up to them some other time in some other 
 place. I'd get to work making it up to them sooner 
 than that — that is, if I was the kind of God they claim 
 He is. It's much easier for me to believe a devil made 
 this world — let you catch a sight of joy just to make 
 you know all the better what pain is. Of course I 
 don 't believe that either. ' ' 
 
 1 ' Then the world made itself 1 " I asked. 
 
 "Oh, I've been round and round all that. You 
 can 't think about it. You can 't think about space, or 
 the stars, or how anything began. If you try to pour 
 infinity into a finite brain, smash goes your brain. 
 But I have a reasoning power and I'm not going to 
 believe a thing my reasoning power denies. ' ' 
 
 I quoted to him from a great Frenchman: "The 
 heart has reasons which reason does not under- 
 stand. ' ' 
 
 He was dogged. "If the sweet-by-and-bye busi- 
 ness is good enough for you, it's not for me." 
 
 Of his own move he now walked to the steps and 
 sat down. "Friends are coming for me here," he 
 explained.
 
 36 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Of what blood was he, of what tradition? Only 
 New England conld produce just this, I thought ; yet 
 in his aspect the senses gleamed untamed. The 
 Greeks would not have imagined fauns in the woods, 
 had there not been Greeks whose features and whose 
 ways put this into their heads. Now and then in 
 these days, a face will make one think of this. The 
 ears of this boy, close set to his head, ran up to slight 
 points, his brows slanted down to each other, almost 
 meeting, and beneath them the wide set of his eyes 
 brought woodlands and myths into the mind, and 
 nymphs fleeting and hoping to be caught. I watched 
 him as he sat on the cathedral steps, brooding, a 
 nature-woven Pagan and Christian, like all the best 
 of our human texture. 
 
 ''Count me among the children as to this," I said, 
 and as he looked blank, "as to this church," I 
 explained, "that towers behind us with its tremen- 
 dous assertion. I do not need leaden images, and to 
 me that stands for the greatest thing in life. I, too, 
 have been round and round. It is what that stands for 
 that makes this world sensible instead of senseless to 
 me." 
 
 To this he seemed to pay no attention. He lounged 
 on the steps, looking at nothing, his body as motion- 
 less as his eyes. 
 
 "When the Lusitania happened," he said, "I was 
 about through school. But my father insisted I must 
 stay at home and go to college. I wouldn't go, 
 though ; I told father I was going to France. I was 
 with the French from August 1916 till we came in. 
 Then I transferred." He made one of his pauses 
 here. " So I have seen it. " 
 
 I said nothing.
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 37 
 
 "Yes. I have seen it," he resumed. His voice 
 sank and once more he said, "I've seen it." After a 
 little while, he added: "I am glad I didn't know 
 beforehand. I don't believe I'd have gone in." 
 
 ' ' I believe you would. ' ' 
 
 What had made him shake his father off and go, 
 what had plunged him into revolt when he came into 
 the serene presence of this church, was just what had 
 built this church seven hundred years ago ; what long 
 before Christ had made a great man say in Asia : "Do 
 not unto others what you would not have them do 
 unto you. ' ' The same light that lived in the heart of 
 the Oriental teacher, of the cathedral at Amiens, 
 lived in the heart of this boy from the New World. 
 His denials, his fury, and the horror that caused his 
 voice to sink came from the eternal religion in the 
 heart of man. How had it come there, why did it 
 persist? Logic gives no answer, nothing but a far- 
 fetched guess. Logic proves in three steps that a 
 brook cannot flow ; that all motion is impossible. Try 
 to make logic fit anything that moves, like life or 
 water, try to make it fit anything except what is sta- 
 tionary, like the multiplication-table, and you will 
 speedily reach falsehood. 
 
 "Why, I was innocent!" exclaimed the boy on the 
 steps. "America is innocent — except those who 
 saw it. ' ' 
 
 "I understand. I've seen its work today. You 
 saw it at work. But you mustn't be one of those 
 whose survival depends on never knowing man's full 
 wickedness and life's whole horror. Very few ever 
 do come to know it, and it would kill many of them 
 if they did. But you mustn't let it kill you." 
 
 He got up. "It's damp," he said, and began to 
 
 32707"
 
 38 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 walk a few steps one way, and back again, stumbling 
 occasionally. 
 
 ''What good have all their cathedrals done?" he 
 demanded. ''You say this one has been here since 
 the thirteenth century. How many years of peace 
 has it seen 1 ? How many years since Christ lived 
 have been years of peace f And there are your sand 
 bags piled up to keep your Christ and your apostles 
 and your Day of Judgment from being smashed to 
 powder by the worst and latest war of the lot. 
 Everything that heathen savages ever did has been 
 done again and more knowingly, and new things have 
 been done that savages didn't know how to do; more 
 kinds of killing, more kinds of victims, more kinds of 
 torture, more brains crazed, more tatters of human 
 flesh, more ashes of human bones, more holes where 
 houses and cradles were, than were ever in the world 
 before; war on land, war in the air, war under the 
 sea. Science is alive and kicking; but where 's your 
 'Peace on earth, good will to men'?" In these last 
 words he came near to losing the controlled level of 
 his voice. 
 
 ' ' Yes ; the worst war of the lot, ' ' I assented. ' ' All 
 your words are true but the last. Good will to men 
 is not dead. Never was it alive so much. Against 
 the worst war of the lot has been raised the greatest, 
 deepest, widest outcry that ever the world has heard. 
 No outcry used to be raised at all. Slaughter of the 
 defenceless, burning, pillaging, torturing, were held 
 the soldier's perquisite and duty, and priests blessed 
 his performance of it. No protest came from any- 
 where. Today these monstrous deeds break the rule. 
 When these very stones were laid, where was your 
 Red Cross, where your trained nurse, where your
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 39 
 
 dozens and scores of organizations for relief work! 
 What nation sent help to Belgium when the Duke of 
 Alva ground down the Netherlands? And so these 
 stones, these stones sacred to Christ, have seen all 
 that mercy happen in the name and for the sake of 
 Christ. Yes, today your Hun breaks the rule. 
 What rule? The rule of pity. What is it that is 
 new, what is it that has grown, slowly grown, through 
 the red and smoking centuries? Pity, mercy, care 
 for the weak, hospitals, homes for the old, homes for 
 the child, for the cripple, the deaf and blind, protec- 
 tion even for animals : Pity. The glimmer of light 
 that shone in those words 'do not unto others what 
 you would not have them do unto you' has come down 
 the ages, through Asia, through Greece, through 
 Rome, through Christ, who enlarged it, sometimes a 
 bare spark, but never wholly extinguished, until to- 
 day it glows in millions and millions of breasts. It 
 makes apostles of tenderness and healing out of 
 doctors whose reason denies God, yet who give their 
 lives in acting out the word of God. The simple- 
 minded — those whom you have called children — have 
 always needed and always will need revelation, 
 miracle, mythology, the not-true, the thing in that 
 cathedral which you decline ever to swallow again. 
 But you'll not need to swallow it. Use your spirit 
 as well as your reason. Tear off the mythology from 
 any belief — Greek, Asiatic, Latin, Christian — and 
 you will find beneath those very various rags some- 
 thing abiding, something noble, true, something that 
 all the beliefs have held in common : the mysterious, 
 nameless thing which the Greeks had their phrase 
 for, and the Latins had theirs, and the French have 
 theirs, the thing that makes what we Americans call
 
 40 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 a 'white man/ Let it go at that. Oh, I, too, have 
 been round and round — and years before ever you 
 began it ! No more than you, do I attempt to grapple 
 with space ; and I don't attempt to grapple with God. 
 I don't see why the conclusions of the head and those 
 of the heart should so often deny each other. I don't 
 see why reason should often so overwhelmingly 
 destroy belief, and emotion — the spirit — the heart — 
 often so overwhelmingly affirm it. But will you tell 
 me why we should accord more validity to the con- 
 clusions of the head than to those of the heart? I 
 believe that the head's reasoning fits stationary 
 things, while the heart's fits life. I believe that the 
 cathedral holds the truth. Look at it, inside and out. 
 Don't let the mythological rags which help children 
 to see the truth blind you to the truth. I believe that 
 Christianity is the latest and greatest sign of some- 
 thing greater even than itself; the same thing that 
 all preceding temples of any race and any age had 
 something of, only not so much as this cathedral 
 holds. All along from his infancy, man has built 
 these inns for the soul. After a while the soul moves 
 on to be rid of the rags of mythology which 
 have begun to stifle it. Truth says forever to man, 
 'I exist ; but dare to utter me, and I will turn to a lie 
 upon your lips. ' But today, you and I hold one thing 
 at least which both the head and the heart can unite 
 upon : Pity. Pity has come into the world and grown 
 great, while wickedness is no larger than at the 
 beginning ; it only has more tools to do its work with. 
 Why do we value good men most of all, miss them 
 most of all when they leave the world? Because the 
 heart loves goodness best and goodness comes from 
 somewhere. ' '
 
 AN INN OF THE SOUL 41 
 
 I stopped. I had been surprised into this. It was 
 almost as if it had said itself for me or in spite of me. 
 I now became aware that the boy had ceased walking 
 back and forth and was standing quite still, his 
 untamed eyes fixed upon me. 
 
 "I believe you have said something,' * he slowly 
 muttered. "If head and heart could get together on 
 anything " 
 
 He stared at the cathedral once again. "That 
 might make one serene, ' ' he added. 
 
 A car came with two young French officers, one of 
 whom hailed him in friendly English and quickly 
 gave him help as he tried to pull himself in. As they 
 started he said to me gruffly : 
 
 "I am glad we met." 
 
 Yes, we had met. He had not asked my name nor 
 I his. Neither knew where the other lived. We 
 were without clue or context to each other. It was 
 not that we expressly forbore from the usual ques- 
 tions, but that from first to last we never came to the 
 surface where usual questions are exchanged.
 
 VI 
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN — 2 
 
 Wasted beyond hope of repair would have been our 
 next day, but for some members of the British Army. 
 These came to our help when we were floundering like 
 a ship without a rudder or compass at what seemed 
 to me then, and still seems to me as I look back, the 
 uncharted edge of the world. Our chauffeur had 
 known his way and the lay of the land through which 
 we had come so far. In the cold little room with its 
 frozen piano at the Hotel du Ehin he followed my 
 finger as I ran it over the route I had laid out for us ; 
 and he assented intelligently, with readiness, even 
 with eagerness, when I asked him at each point could 
 we do this, and this ; would the whole journey be too 
 long for one day, if we started early? Not at all, he 
 answered. I cast up the sum of the various distances 
 for him, I consulted with him about lunch — in short, I 
 collaborated every step and every hour with him. 
 
 I had to choose, steering my proposed course 
 closely by the map and by what I had learned in Paris 
 from army officers. The chauffeur saw, heard, rati- 
 fied each one of my points with that lucid, compre- 
 hending diction which is native to France and envied 
 by the rest of us. How should I know beforehand 
 that beneath that fluent courtesy he was a forlorn 
 imbecile I 
 
 Our start was prompt. The sky threatened, but 
 
 42
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 43 
 
 not yet imminently. Thank fortune I took with me my 
 maps. Former journeys had made me familiar with 
 the fact that taking the right turn as one goes through 
 the French country is not at all the puzzle which even 
 a village of ten or a dozen clustering cottages can 
 present. In these little knots one is frequently 
 tangled and emerges in a wrong direction. But I was 
 not worried yet as we made our way out of Amiens. 
 I was not even yet worried by our chauffeur's stop- 
 ping two or three times while we were still in the 
 town to inquire the road. What I had forgotten was 
 the fact, made equally familiar by former journeys, 
 that any French peasant who knows the road farther 
 than ten kilometres beyond his manure pile is a 
 prodigy of travelled experience. To be sure, the 
 townsfolk of Amiens were not quite peasants — but 
 the town of Doullens was our first point, and Doullens 
 was distant twenty-seven kilometres. This stretch 
 proved too wide for the knowledge of such townsfolk 
 of Amiens as pointed the way to our chauffeur. 
 
 My map was spread out. So I had learned to keep 
 it, not alone against going wrong, but to herald 
 approaching little places as well. I looked out for 
 Poulainville. It didn't come. I supposed that we 
 had passed it. I wondered if we should see Coisy. 
 We didn 't. I concluded it lay too far to the right to 
 be seen. But I was rather surprised at getting no 
 sight of Villers-Bocage. Presently our road struck 
 me as being narrower than the road to Doullens 
 looked on the map. I spoke a word to our chauffeur. 
 He reassured me with true French competence. I 
 believed him abjectly, but, when I read upon a corner 
 wall the name Contay and there was no Contay on 
 the map of the road behind us or before us, nothing
 
 44 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 at all like that all the way to Doullens, I spoke 
 another word to the chauffeur. You who know the 
 history of the war, know well many reasons for my 
 wishing to see Doullens. Near that place the Huns 
 had knowingly bombed a hospital full of wounded 
 Canadians and their nurses. Papers upon the 
 aviator captured afterwards proved this : the hospital 
 was marked conspicuously upon these with a cross : 
 so his bombs were accurately dropped upon the sick- 
 beds and turned them to death-beds. But this was 
 not my chief reason. I had one, and it would have 
 been enough without the others. Here at this place 
 Doullens, in a garden, General Pershing had said 
 some momentous words at the close of a momentous 
 conclave. That was a spot I wished to see. This 
 time the chauffeur was less successful with his 
 reassuring French competence. He reiterated that 
 we were going quite the right way, quite the best 
 possible way, but I held to it that we were not going 
 the way to Doullens. 
 
 "Oh, no, monsieur," said the chauffeur, in a 
 surprise as perfect as if the word Doullens had never 
 been uttered between us. "But we are going to 
 Arras much straighter than one goes by way of 
 Doullens. The road by Doullens is destroyed, 
 monsieur. That is well known. ' ' 
 
 Then, when had it become well known to him? 
 And why had he never told me so till now? But why 
 ask him such a question? Why ask a Frenchman 
 why he is French ? Or why, for that matter, ask why 
 the good qualities should be dealt out scatteringly 
 among the nations, and nobody hold all the trumps ? 
 
 "Go on," I requested him resignedly; "go on to 
 Arras."
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 45 
 
 After all, if no road went to Doullens at present, at 
 present one couldn't go there. Without it our day 
 would still be crowded with the deepest interest. I 
 settled back into calm — partial calm. Certainly we 
 were headed towards Arras upon a way straighter 
 than if we had curved to it westward through 
 Doullens. My calm was but partial, because upon 
 the map our present road looked a slight thing, a 
 narrow line of red, while a broad important red stripe 
 represented the road to Doullens. How singular to 
 indicate a destroyed highway thus! But a rag of 
 faith in our chauffeur was still left me. 
 
 We went through some more little places, or what 
 had been little places once, and before long my rag 
 of faith began to tear. In the chauffeur's back I 
 seemed to discover a less assured expression. The 
 appearance of our road was growing less and less the 
 sort of thing that keeps up a man's heart, our speed 
 was growing more and more cautious, and the bumps 
 had ceased to be occasional. Rain began to fall, mud 
 began to deepen, stones and holes became the floor 
 of this thoroughfare. We crawled up a hill and 
 through a village street, evidently of some grace and 
 symmetry once, now battered featureless, and at 
 perhaps the end of a mile reached a ridge, went on 
 for a few wallowing yards, and came to a halt. You 
 might have been at anchor on the top of a wave of 
 mud struck still, in a mud ocean struck still. What 
 wonder? We were at the Sucrerie beyond Mailly- 
 Maillet, Beaumont Hamel was at our right, scarce a 
 mile off. A waste of motionless, featureless undula- 
 tions lay ahead, and in these our road died away, sank 
 to nothing. 
 As well as I can remember, the chauffeur sat mute
 
 46 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and stationary, like the obliterated landscape. Big 
 heaps of shell stood about. Barbed wire lay every- 
 where, ragged or rolled into rusty coils. It straggled 
 amid deep mud, ruins, and stones. The rain was 
 now pouring. A crumpled single-track railway 
 crossed what had been the road. A camion stood 
 near by. Some English soldiers were guarding some 
 German prisoners. These worked stolidly, gathering 
 the shells. It was now eleven o'clock, we had been 
 travelling slowly and more slow, and had made about 
 thirty kilometres, instead of sixty or seventy, when 
 help from the British Army came to us at this point 
 for the first time this day. 
 
 I looked out of our car, and my look brought a 
 young officer up to it. 
 
 ' 'We were trying to get to Arras," I said. 
 
 "You have come too far. You must go back a bit 
 and turn west at Hedauville, and go round by Acheux. 
 This road used to go to Arras, but it's quite gone 
 wrong itself, you see." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do see! How long will it take us by 
 Acheux?" 
 
 He considered for a moment. "You might do it in 
 two hours and a half." 
 
 At this my heart sank indeed. Two hours and a 
 half to Arras, and it was eleven already ! We were 
 to have been at Lille by twelve-thirty, at Lille we were 
 to have lunched, and Lille was twenty-five or thirty 
 miles beyond Arras. I saw my whole plan of the 
 day fall to nothing. We were to lose not Doullens 
 alone, but Arras, Vimy Ridge, Lens, Lille, and the 
 whole returning part as well, Douai, Arteux, Cam- 
 brai, every precious point that I had chosen for this 
 day of pilgrimage.
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 47 
 
 ''Where do you come from?" asked the young 
 officer. 
 
 " Amiens.' ' 
 
 "You should have gone by Doullens. Why didn't 
 you?" 
 
 "We were going, but they told our chauffeur that 
 was all torn up still." 
 
 "Well, I know that's not true, because I happen to 
 have rebuilt it myself. ' ' 
 
 What was there to do but laugh ? I looked at the 
 mud and I looked at my map. Lille had been the 
 point where food was sure. In every direction about 
 us here the only thing we could be sure of was ruins. 
 Yesterday, when there was no need for it, we had 
 provisions with us; today our cheese and crackers 
 and chocolate were reposing in our rooms at the Hotel 
 du Rhin. We might decide to go without refresh- 
 ment and push on into space, but how about the 
 chauffeur? After all, his fault had been to believe 
 the word of his fellow-countrymen in preference to 
 my map and me. Well, we must turn round, anyhow ; 
 that was the first thing to do. Our plight had 
 gathered a little group of starers and listeners. Our 
 chauffeur couldn't budge the stuck car. A young 
 German prisoner sprang forward to help push it so 
 that it might be backed and turned. He was natural, 
 friendly, anxious to be of use. He looked less than 
 twenty. Many of his comrades seemed as young. 
 Many had amiable, fresh, and even handsome faces. 
 Our young German, who pushed us out of our stick- 
 ing-place so willingly and capably, spoke English. 
 He added to our information about the country and 
 the state of the roads. Go back to Amiens? Not if 
 desperation could prevent. If we could not see what
 
 48 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 we had set out to see, let us at least try to see some- 
 thing else. I discovered that I had with me a few 
 forgotten pieces of chocolate, nothing to keep our- 
 selves and the chauffeur going all day, but enough to 
 put off emptiness when this should begin. Again I 
 looked at my map and there found inspiration : Albert 
 was not far off — not far, that is, in ordinary times. 
 Yes, Albert was accessible. The young officer gave 
 directions to us; our collapsed expedition had ap- 
 pealed to him, and he entered into our anxiety to save 
 some fragments of our broken day. He did not 
 address our chauffeur at all; he had taken the 
 measure of this moral paralytic and as the hours 
 wore on this measure was repeatedly verified. In the 
 various moments of stress through which we were 
 destined still to pass, this chauffeur displayed the 
 enterprise of a stale poultice. 
 
 We thanked the member of the British Army who 
 had appeared to us in the nick of time — the first nick 
 of our time — and our car slowly waded out of that 
 huge pie of mud, away from the ridge, the camion, 
 the prisoners and the soldiers, and down that sluggish 
 rise up which we had so vainly toiled. 
 
 Back we went into an alarmingly small lane which 
 tried but did not upset our faith in the British officer. 
 This led us to a biggish road (bon pave, said the 
 map) and so quite soon to Albert. 
 
 To see this place, known to all the world by its 
 Virgin that hung from the shattered church tower so 
 long in mid-air, was to save something at least to 
 show for our day. Were we to save anything more T 
 It did not look so just then. The sky was black, the 
 rain poured thick, the wind shook our car as it stood. 
 Outside lay dismantled Albert, dumb and prone. 

 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 49 
 
 Bleak streams of water spouted from holes and slants 
 of blind fragments. We had been told to expect no 
 food here. We could see no sign of life, only ruins 
 and mud ; but through the violence of the wind again 
 the great silence of France was perceptible. I first 
 became aware of it here, and then remembered its 
 presence all along our road since leaving Amiens. 
 We had re-entered it but a little way outside the town. 
 A few soldiers appeared. To one who passed near I 
 said, ''Was there a crumb of food anywhere within 
 reach?" And now stepped in the British Army and 
 saved us and our day the second time. At my words, 
 "a crumb of food," the face of the soldier changed 
 from indifference to brotherhood. 
 
 ''Come with us," he said, "we're just going to 
 mess." 
 
 He called another soldier and to his care committed 
 our car and our lump of a chauffeur. We walked 
 along with him through the ravaged street. 
 
 He conducted us through puddles and across fallen 
 walls in the pelting rain to a little house built out of 
 ruins by German prisoners ; a little hollow of shelter 
 and comfort, set in the midst of the haggard debris. 
 To step into such a box of snugness from such a wild 
 and disordered outside once again took one into that 
 same unearthly region of marvel, or of dream, 
 through which our stunned minds had been moving 
 yesterday: gaunt, shrivelled, wasted France — and 
 then, suddenly, in the heart of it, this warm little hole 
 full of England! 
 
 Inside the hole were three of our guide's comrades : 
 Tommies all, and every one so friendly, so human, so 
 simply and plainly glad to make us welcome and share 
 with us whatever they had! They had a fireplace
 
 50 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and a fire ; none before this had we seen in France. 
 One of the Tommies was a Scotch boy, I think, and 
 one the very marrow of English England; blond, 
 blue-eyed, inimitably and unfathomably humorous. 
 I never learned, but I suspected him to be city-bred. 
 So developed a philosophy, so mature a sophistica- 
 tion, such a readiness of both words and wit, could 
 hardly have ripened in the hedges. He made himself 
 the spokesman for the party. 
 
 We seldom measure how cold we are until we have 
 come from chill into a place of warmth. Our hosts 
 poured out Scotch whisky liberally for us, and I took 
 a long, stiff, reviving drink of it. 
 
 The fire burned, civilizing the atmosphere; books 
 were there, a few ; and a few pictures, newspaper and 
 other, tempered the walls. A piano was also present, 
 escaped partially alive from the Huns. Behind the 
 room opened a tiny kitchen from which our food was 
 now carried in. Over the table at which we sat hung 
 an empty brass shell case. This was the Tommies ' 
 dinner bell. Meat and potatoes were served, and tea 
 in cups of great size. Cheese there was, and sugar 
 for the tea instead of the usual saccharine. 
 
 The blond Tommy talked along, his comrades 
 evidently liking to listen to him as much as we did. 
 He relished it, too, without a particle of vainglory, 
 but simply because his thoughts came of themselves 
 and surprised and delighted him. He had attained a 
 philosophy. No school books had helped him to this. 
 If education had fallen to his lot, I think he could have 
 made his mark. Perhaps he would make it anyhow. 
 I doubt his being over twenty-five. Life, as it had 
 come along, had day by day written copiously and 
 clearly upon his alert mind; and this war, this
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 51 
 
 gigantic adventure, through which he had come alive, 
 had evidently set free in him every power of observa- 
 tion and reflection that he possessed. 
 
 ''She hung on through a good bit of it," he said, 
 "but she went at last." 
 
 It was of the Virgin that he spoke. Pictures of her 
 have taught her appearance to us all; the upright 
 figure with the unusual stretching aloft of her child ; 
 and then, after the bomb had struck her, the hori- 
 zontal form in the air at right angles to the tower. 
 
 Albert had been dragged from hand to hand and 
 dragged back. It was when they had let it go for the 
 last time that the Huns smashed it to pieces, as they 
 smashed every French thing that they had time to 
 break and which they had meant to keep. Albert had 
 numbered thirteen thousand inhabitants. Of these 
 three hundred now lived here, in cellars. 
 
 The Tommy had been four years in the war and 
 four times at Albert. Against whatever he had been 
 dashed to his temporary hurt by the tides of destruc- 
 tion, he had not sunk amid the back and forth of their 
 churning ; he had floated out like a cork, buoyant and 
 sound. 
 
 "What would you do to the Kaiser?" he asked us. 
 * ' Or would you let him go ? " 
 
 We had reached the Kaiser, inevitably. The 
 Kaiser, in the spring of 1919, was reached more often 
 than he is reached today. The voices of the world 
 were then still busy propounding various dooms for 
 him ; and various dooms were forthwith propounded 
 at our lunch table. Everyone had his idea as to what 
 would be good and fitting for the Kaiser. None were 
 barbarous, as I remember, but all were what you
 
 52 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 would call thorough. The Tommy was clever enough 
 to hit my own with his first shot. 
 
 "I have my plan for him," I said. 
 
 "You would have 'im 'anged in front of 'is palace 
 at Potsdam." 
 
 "Right," I answered. 
 
 "Right it would be. But don't ye know not one of 
 'em '11 ever do a thing to 'im?" 
 
 "Well," I said, "things have been done to people." 
 
 1 ' They '11 do nothing to 'im. ' ' 
 
 "They didn't let Napoleon go scot-free." 
 
 "Ow," said the Tommy, with a look that no words 
 can reproduce, " 'ee wasn't related to any of 'em." 
 
 This unexpected generalization was presently fol- 
 lowed by another. It was after they had been telling 
 me the history of Albert, as known to themselves 
 since 1914, the destitution of its people, and the 
 obliteration of the very sites of where their homes 
 had stood, that I told him about the lady at Noyon, the 
 lady who came back from Nevers, and whom I had 
 last seen searching for her house. This set going at 
 once the blond Tommy's philosophizing. 
 
 "I wouldn't come back," he stated. 
 
 "You mean to find your house?" I asked him. 
 
 ' ' I wouldn 't do that. The French are sentimental. 
 They say we English 'ave no sentiment. I think we 
 'ave just as much as the French. But " 
 
 "But you don't mention it?" I ventured to put in. 
 
 All the Tommies gave a barely visible nod, and he 
 continued : 
 
 "We'd not come back to our 'ouse, with it looking 
 like that. We'd keep away from it, an' live some- 
 where else." 
 
 It was not for me to comment or philosophize any
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 53 
 
 more than I had dared to do in that single remark 
 which I had interpolated. It had fared well, and I 
 would not risk spoiling it by another which might 
 fare ill. I longed for the leisure of a day or two in 
 which to exchange as many confidences — private, 
 public, and international — with these Tommies as 
 they would permit. Apart from their desire to help 
 us out they were really glad to see us. What wonder? 
 We made a break in their gruesome task at Albert. 
 This task was disinterment. Upon the hill and over 
 the hill lay the dead, not by the hundred, but by many 
 thousands. 
 
 "It 'elps their folks at 'ome a lot to have 'em cared 
 for," the Tommy explained. 
 
 "Are you able to know them all?" I asked. 
 
 "About 'arf of 'em can be identified," he said. 
 
 These British soldiers did not do the actual dig- 
 ging, they were too few. They were in charge of 
 some forty "Chinks," we learned from them. And 
 among these "Chinks" they had found three women 
 in disguise. 
 
 The blond Tommy made a final generalization to 
 me. Our meal was ended, our chauffeur waitmg 
 somewhere for us with the car, our plan of pilgrimage 
 laid out for us, and the Tommy and I climbing in the 
 rain together over some heaps that had been houses. 
 I spoke to him of the pitiful destruction of old archi- 
 tecture in France which no modern builder would 
 ever make again. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "the French 'ave a great idea of 
 the beautiful. And a very poor one of sanitytion. ' ' 
 
 I wish I were to know his career henceforth, but 
 that is not likely. He stood in need of but few books. 
 His brain was awake and open and the war had
 
 54 NEIGHBOKS HENCEFORTH 
 
 educated it to a point not commonly reached upon the 
 benches of our schools. 
 
 Between Albert and Bapaume, an appalling stage 
 of eighteen kilometres, the strokes of war had 
 scourged the face of the earth to a blind pulp. On 
 either side the road the land was a mere featureless 
 confluence of bruises and welts. Close at hand, near 
 enough for the eye to see and count each different 
 kind of rubbish and scar, and seam, and pock-mark, 
 one noted rusty cans, rusty wire, rusty shards of 
 metal, holes and mounds, graves alone, and by twos 
 and threes, arranged and unarranged, scattered and 
 continuous, their pale crosses sticking up along the 
 road and outward from it until their slim, incessant 
 pattern faded into a distance, where lay pieces of 
 tanks, and the dead trees pointed crookedly up like 
 jagged fingers of bone. From time to time came by 
 the little towns — Becordel, Pozieres, Le Sars, lying 
 upon the dead land like dead leaves. Far away upon 
 each side of us the welts and bruises blurred indis- 
 tinguishably, merging into a wide, blank, strange- 
 colored, mangy waste. Upon this tremendous, deso- 
 lation the rain descended from a sombre sky. I 
 thought of certain bad lands in our West. Their 
 aspect, with its hues suggesting some sickness of the 
 soil, some sterility brought on by a curse, was like 
 this lost look of the earth between Albert and 
 Bapaume. But beneath the resemblance was a dif- 
 ference that went to the bottom of things. The 
 Western bad lands were of nature's doing, boiled or 
 baked, and so cooked to their strange chemical look 
 when our continent was shaping and before man was 
 there. These bad lands of France had once waved 
 with grain, rustled with leaves, smelt of fruit
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 55 
 
 blossoms and gardens. Their present leprosy had 
 been dealt them by the hand of man. This explained 
 suddenly to me the secret of the French silence, why 
 it held all motion and all noise in a hollow that was 
 like a great, cold, dead hand. In the overhanging 
 silence of our bad lands there is that which may well 
 fill the perceiving spirit with solemnity, even some- 
 times possibly with awe; but that silence speaks of 
 the mystery of the universe, while this French silence 
 spoke of the mystery of evil. 
 
 Through the continuing tempest we came to 
 Bapaume, another town dashed to empty fragments. 
 It was smaller than Albert, numbering thirty-five 
 hundred in its days of prosperity; two hundred of 
 them were then living here, as the three hundred of 
 Albert were living, in cellars. Twice in the grasp of 
 the Huns, like Albert, they had given it the same fate, 
 squeezing it to death when they found that they had 
 to drop it from their grasp. The crushed beams of 
 machinery toppled like trees leaning together after 
 a hurricane. Not a house stood whole. Disabled 
 tanks sprawled, dripping, along the streets. The rain 
 fell now so furiously that we were glad to descry 
 another shelter. It held no comforts like that of the 
 Tommies at Albert, but no rain came through the 
 corrugated arch of iron which formed its roof, and 
 beneath this we sat dry in the company of some 
 French workmen. The wind reverberated through 
 torn sheets of metal while we huddled round a brazier 
 with them and they told us of themselves. They 
 were friendly, and in their own lucid French way, 
 philosophic. They were at work upon some wooden 
 barracks to furnish better lodging, I suppose, for 
 those who were now eating and sleeping in cellars.
 
 56 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 They spoke, as I say, lucidly and quietly about their 
 country, but not happily. It was not what had 
 befallen her in the war, but her present state and 
 her future, and what was befalling her in the peace, 
 over which they shook their dishevelled, thoughtful 
 heads. 
 
 "France is ill-organized," said one. 
 
 "Look, monsieur," said another. "In the matter 
 of tobacco. This is a part of our supplies which they 
 bring us to keep us going. Three ounces in three 
 weeks!" He made a gesture. That had been all the 
 smoking supplied to him. He fed a little charcoal to 
 the brazier with his thin, discolored fingers. 
 
 In the matter of tobacco my companion was better 
 organized than France, and he left with them all that 
 he had brought for the day. We stopped with them 
 a little while longer, talking of France and of them- 
 selves, while our chauffeur finished repairing a punc- 
 ture. "We left them looking after us from their iron 
 hut. 
 
 Devastation encompassed us, we had been in its 
 midst for many hours, we were to be there for many 
 more. Never did it abate, never did we pass a spot 
 which it had not blighted, never a house which was 
 not a ruin, nor a field unswept by death. Death lay 
 upon the surface, death lay beneath. There is an 
 awful line spoken in "Lear" : The worst is not while 
 we can say, "This is the worst." Between Albert and 
 Bapaume we had said, "this is the worst." Now, 
 during the nineteen kilometres between Bapaume and 
 Peronne, we said it again. The strokes of annihila- 
 tion to our eyes seemed here to cut deeper : more little 
 places — Beaulencourt, La Transloy, Raucourt — lay 
 like dead leaves along the way, the pale crosses 

 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 57 
 
 stretched outward each side beyond sight, little disv 
 tinct groups of them making a sort of thin mist, it 
 which one could fancy that the spirits of the dead 
 were hovering. Strewed also over the earth as far as 
 one could see were the old broken shells, the old wire, 
 the cans, a ceaseless layer of rusty, littered refuse. 
 Northward and eastward this spread on farther than 
 we could see or were going to see, beyond Cambrai, 
 and Le Cateau and Ypres, away over the frontier, 
 sheeting whole counties and departments with this 
 extinct deposit of war. 
 
 It was between Bapaume and Peronne that we first 
 saw shell holes in their fullest, thickest mass. We 
 stood upon the edge of wide spaces, acres upon acres, 
 which once had been smooth, healthy fields, where 
 now not one blade of grass was to be seen. As 
 pestilence can pit and discolor a human face, until 
 it is rough with holes like a colander, so this land 
 was pitted. The fertile surface wherein seeds and 
 roots can flourish was gone, baked, charred, cooked 
 \o an ashen compound, into which the bombs by 
 .bursting had plowed up and kneaded the sterile, 
 chalky under-soil. There it lay, like some mass of 
 horrible contagion. Had you tried to cross it, every 
 ^tep you made would have been from edge to edge 
 )f the holes. They touched each other, broke into 
 each other. Some were wide and deep, some looked 
 as if one might jump across them. Into their slop 
 and slime the rain poured steadily. Sometimes one 
 could look across and see where they ended, and 
 sometimes one could not. Had one tried to make 
 a way over them I do not think one would have ar- 
 rived. Where they were, life had been — pastures, 
 groves, crops, cattle walking and grazing, the voices
 
 58 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 of grandchildren playing, the voices of grandmothers 
 calling to them. I looked upon the ghost of a land. 
 As it spread out under the dark sky I did not think 
 that the storm made it worse. In the light of the sun 
 it would be no better. It did not seem as if summer 
 or winter could make any difference to it. It looked 
 as if the four seasons which we know would never 
 pay their visits to it again, but that a changeless sea- 
 son of its own was always here, beneath whose light- 
 less day it would stretch in all the years to come. 
 
 As at Noyon, so at Peronne were the returning 
 dwellers to be seen, clinging to their old places, seek- 
 ing out their hearths, unearthing possessions which 
 they had buried before they took flight. Like Albert 
 and Bapaume, the Huns battered it down when they 
 could not keep it as their booty. The message which 
 the destroyers had left behind them still placarded 
 the ruined front of the town-hall — a board nailed up, 
 with these parting words of advice to the homeless 
 French of Peronne: 
 
 Nicht argern nur wundem — 
 
 Not anger but wonder. 
 
 How could there be either anger or wonder after 
 four years' experience of their acts? 
 
 Other messages in other places whence they were 
 flying to save their skins had been left behind — mes- 
 sages without words : in Soissons the hidden bombs 
 had killed many returning people in 1917. In 1918, 
 south of Cambrai, when the destroyers were fleeing 
 before the British, they had concealed one of these 
 bombs and above it in plain sight had nailed a live 
 kitten. They were right in their guess. When some 
 British Tommies saw and heard the kitten, they 
 rushed to help it and were blown to atoms.
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 59 
 
 "How you must hate us," said a captured Prussian 
 officer to a British sailor on a ship, and was assured 
 that there was no hate. Surprised, he repeated his 
 remark, and received the same answer. 
 
 "It is impossible that you should not hate us," he 
 heavily insisted, "when we have done you so much 
 damage. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, no," said the sailor, "we don't 'ate yer. We 
 just looks at you like scum or vomit or some other 
 narsty mess to be swabbed up." 
 
 Through this region of the Somme, this grave of 
 human flesh and of homes and towns, all lying silent 
 together, we continued upon our way. Marquaix, 
 Roisel, Hargicourt, each alike was quiet and dismem- 
 bered; just a broken spot along the road, with the 
 pale, thin crosses and the crooked skeleton trees and 
 the jagged bits of houses sticking up among the 
 mounds and shell holes, mile after mile. At some 
 point during this stage of our journey, the sun shone 
 a little and I saw that its light cheered nothing. It 
 showed more plainly the mists made by the crosses 
 and the distant clots of barbed wire. You have seen 
 some autumn hillside where the brambles dried by 
 frost spread upon the open land like rusty clouds; 
 thus, far off, the barbed wire blurred the slopes. At 
 Hargicourt, though my map showed the way, we 
 halted at the sight of a living man to ask him the road 
 to Bellicourt. He was an American, a "Y" man, and 
 answered us right. He was seeing after the welfare 
 of several hundred "Chinks," he told us. 
 
 We were very glad to see Bellicourt, to pause and 
 get out of the car and climb up and down by the steep 
 entrance of that canal tunnel. We were treading the 
 exact earth of the Hindenburg Line. Seven months
 
 60 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 ago almost to a day — September 29th — October 1st, 
 1918, — our second corps, the 27th and 30th Divisions, 
 had so battled here, together with the Australians, 
 as to win a word of high praise from the British 
 General under whom they served. The rain that had 
 sluiced us at Hargicourt was now holding up. We 
 made our way about in the mud through which our 
 men had struggled. Here were still the shell craters 
 and the labyrinth of trenches. We looked down the 
 abrupt slope to the tunnel wherein the Huns had so 
 elaborately and for so long made their electric-lighted 
 nest, and out of which we had helped to eject them 
 on those gallant days. No church was here in which 
 to give thanks for our participation in the capture of 
 this position and to think upon my dead and living 
 countrymen who fought over this desperate ground. 
 I gave my thanks wordlessly, in the open air. In my 
 mind I saw the cathedral of Amiens, lofty, tranquil, 
 pensive, living; and I tore away a piece of a poster 
 which must have been pasted up at Bellicourt soon 
 after its re-taking by the Allies. It requested the 
 men to deal with the people round about consider- 
 ately, like men, not like Prussians. It was wet then 
 from the rain and much stained. Today it is stiff. 
 I put it away with a little bullet from a garden at 
 Peronne, whence the householder returned from exile 
 was digging his silver, his china, the small treasures 
 of domesticity that he had buried. 
 
 Along the thirteen kilometres of road to St. Quen- 
 tin there was sometimes more sunlight, as I remem- 
 ber it, but never a change in the gloomy scene. We 
 skirted one shell crater not yet filled in, wide and 
 jagged and deep like a quarry; it was the largest 
 cavity we had seen so far, and a road had been made
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 61 
 
 around it. Not far off to our right lay the remains 
 of a little place with a name whose beauty tinkles like 
 a silver bell : Bellinglise. All France is musical with 
 names; names sonorous that chant like legends, or 
 gay, that trip like the dances of old jongleurs; names 
 full of overtones, where the vowels and syllables fall 
 into cadences so melodious, that to read them aloud 
 is like a song. Bellinglise ! The mere syllables drew 
 a poem from Alan Seeger. That is all I know of 
 Bellinglise, except that its wreck lay there by the 
 Hindenburg Line. 
 
 In a way St. Quentin was the worst sight of all 
 among the ruined towns which we had thus far 
 passed. There was much more of it to be ruined than 
 at Albert or Peronne, and the whole of it seemed to be 
 destroyed. It lay not prone upon the ground, it stood 
 up, it presented as one drew near to it a vertical as- 
 pect ; there was the illusion of its being mostly safe 
 and sound. But above it gaped the hulk of the cathe- 
 dral, splintered, shattered, sky showing through its 
 holes ; and once we were among the streets we saw the 
 truth. Here again in this town came the sense of 
 scenery painted for a play of disaster. Walls that 
 looked steady and inhabited from a short distance, 
 turned sham at close quarters, like wings or the back 
 drop on a stage. In the many streets that we went 
 through never a house did we pass that was not gut- 
 ted : behind the mask of each front, ceilings slumped 
 to floors, stairs sagged to cellars, beams blackened 
 and gnawed by fire stuck through holes in tilted roofs, 
 mirrors and bureaus, unscathed, perched alone upon 
 ledges of landing over gulfs of broken plaster. 
 
 By the time that we reached here, we had become 
 judges of ruins. We had learned to name their kind
 
 62 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 at sight, and approximately to gauge their maturity. 
 These vintages of destruction fell into a number of 
 classes. There was the farm or the village which 
 had happened to be in the way where a battle was 
 going on. It may have fallen at the hands of its 
 friends as readily as at those of the enemy; but 
 whether hit by French, British, or German shells, its 
 pushing down would be lateral, from the missiles 
 passing horizontally through it. There was the dyna- 
 mited dwelling, the work of mere disappointed greed 
 and malice. Its walls might often still be upright, or 
 but a little caving in, or bulging out. No shell holes 
 would be in such walls, no lateral rents. The earth- 
 quake would be up and down, within the walls, and it 
 would be the floors and ceilings and crushed things 
 between that marked this class. There was the dwell- 
 ing that had been mined. This somewhat resembled 
 the dynamited sort. The difference would be seen 
 chiefly in the clots of soil which had been heaved into 
 the air and had fallen upon the top of beams or 
 lodged in high crevices. There was the dwelling that 
 had been burned by the pastilles invented by the skil- 
 ful German chemist, Otswald. In these there would 
 be no shaking down or up, no slanting, no sign of 
 lateral or vertical shock. Everything would be sim- 
 ply and quietly gone that fire could burn, leaving the 
 stones or the melted metal. One entire village had 
 been left behind thus by the retreating Huns. The 
 presence of plants and weeds growing about upon 
 various elevations of a ruin marked it as being of 
 the earlier war days. 
 
 Despite the state of St. Quentin, plenty of people 
 were to be met in the streets. I suppose that these, 
 too, were living in cellars. Of one of them we in-
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 63 
 
 quired the way. I do not see now what else we could 
 have done. My map could not show us how to thread 
 our way clean through from one side of the town to 
 the other and strike the right turning. It could and 
 did show us our general direction, more or less par- 
 allel to the river, and near enough to be in sight of it 
 at first, I imagined ; and this I explained to the chauf- 
 feur. We were to keep southwest, I said, and we 
 should cross a railroad in about two kilometres. But 
 I made no objection when he stopped and asked of an 
 inhabitant the right road to Jussy, I merely remem- 
 bered Doullens uneasily. We were told at once, with- 
 out pause to meditate, the right way to Jussy, and I 
 could see by the chauffeur's back that this word from 
 a fellow Frenchman meant more to him than anything 
 I and my map could say. We crossed the railroad 
 remarkably soon, it seemed to me, quite within the 
 city limits, and I saw nothing of the river. A good 
 way out in the country, after nothing was as I ex- 
 pected it to be, I forced the reluctant chauffeur to 
 stop, while I called to a man driving a wagon with 
 two wheels, how far were we from Jussy? He did 
 not seem to know the name. He was from Origny, 
 four kilometres onward. Origny? I sought my 
 map. There was no such place on the road to Jussy. 
 Origny? I found it. We had been set on the highway 
 to Guise. It was as if, being at Chicago, you had 
 asked the way to Omaha and had been carefully 
 headed for Pittsburgh. 
 
 1 ' Henceforth, " I detonated to the chauffeur, "you 
 will do exactly as I say and nothing that anybody 
 else says. To the seventy-nine kilometres that we had 
 still to go, you have added about twenty-eight more. 
 Turn round. Go straight back."
 
 64 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 I spread the map upon my knees and there I kept it. 
 
 "Left," I said to him as we reached the rim of St. 
 Qnentin. 
 
 "Right," I presently ordered; and in dne time we 
 came to Jussy. 
 
 Here, with imperishable instinct, he was taking the 
 wrong turn, but I hailed him. 
 
 "Right," I commanded; "and cross the railroad, 
 and go to Ham. ' ' 
 
 He bleated something about Chauny. A sign 
 pointed thither by the road he had tried to take. 
 
 "Do what I say and do it at once," I returned. 
 "Do you want to take us round by Noyon and Roye 
 that we saw yesterday, and add twenty or thirty kilo- 
 metres more when hours are growing as precious as 
 diamonds ? ' ' 
 
 The sun was now showing itself more often than 
 during the stages over which we had so far travelled, 
 but we had fallen seriously behind time; it was a 
 westering sun that shone, and our journey was be- 
 come a race with the ebbing day. At the points where 
 we had been especially told to stop, Ham, Nesle, 
 Chaulnes, Villers-Bretonneux, there could be no stop- 
 ping. We must rest content with a glance at each as 
 we passed through it with the careful and abated 
 pace which bad stretches of road enforced upon us ; 
 it was doubtful if the light would last to our journey's 
 end. This seemed so uncertain that I resolved to 
 forego even the attempt to see Villers-Bretonneux, 
 and decided upon what looked upon the map like a 
 shorter cut to Amiens by Rosieres. 
 
 Perhaps through our lateness we gained another 
 knowledge of the desolation. "We saw the day leave 
 it, as we made the best speed we could over the dis-
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 65 
 
 ordered kilometres. Furthermore, many parts of our 
 road now lay along the line of rail over which fast, 
 expensive trains used to run direct from Calais to 
 Bale and Lucerne and the Alps. Thus, having seen 
 the tatters of towns and houses, we had a good view 
 of this uprooted railroad, alongside of which we fre- 
 quently drove, and over which we frequently crossed. 
 I retain in mind particularly one blown-up spot at 
 which there seemed to have been important and large 
 machinery and but few houses. The machinery had 
 been spilled and splashed over the railway station and 
 the houses and the railroad itself. All lay lumped 
 and stirred together, like a gigantic petrified stew. 
 Sidings stuck forth from beneath heaps of cranks and 
 wheels, vats lay bottom side up between detached 
 doors and bushes and pieces of chimney, and one 
 steam whistle severed at the neck had evidently flown 
 through the air and now sat lonely upon a truck which 
 had been dashed from the rails. 
 
 Ham we passed, and were glad to put it behind us. 
 Its name rang with memories ; it was strange to be 
 glad that we had passed it, instead of sorry that we 
 could not stop. Yet, even so, there was the silence 
 with us always ; and here also was the river with the 
 name that must for ever be an awful name to many, 
 the river Somme. Nesle followed Ham fairly soon. 
 We made those nine kilometres evenly, and again I 
 was glad to count them off. I was watching the day- 
 light rather than what more it showed us of destruc- 
 tion, and I was watching the road. On my knees lay 
 the map open, and the chauffeur had at length been 
 reduced to believing what I said. I had by now de- 
 livered a number of directions to him, all of which 
 had come true. At every cross-roads, or fork, or
 
 66 
 
 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 turn, he would submissively slow down and listen, and 
 then obey me as I barked to him, ''Right" or "Left" 
 or ' ' Straight on. ' ' The light waned and I looked at it 
 and at my watch and at the map wherever I could 
 see the kilometres of devastation which lay ahead of 
 us still. I could read which turns we were to take, 
 but the time was coming very soon when I should be 
 able to read them no longer. I wondered what we 
 should all do in the dark. Many ridges and descents 
 and roads unknown lay between us and Amiens. "We 
 had nothing with us in the way of food or covering, 
 and no desert could promise less of either than this 
 silent land of the Somme. The last sight that we saw 
 clearly was the motionless sadness of Chaulnes. The 
 grey dusk was coming down upon its fragments. We 
 could make them out, thin shapes rising from a blur 
 of mounds and undergrowth, and behind and among 
 them, grey, stark trees, all dead. More trees rose 
 beyond, a wood of them, crooked, splintered, and 
 dead. No sight that day had conveyed so much the 
 immovable chill of extinction. 
 
 We left grey, quiet Chaulnes behind us, and came 
 to a fork which might be so important that I made the 
 chauffeur stop. Coming towards us along a smooth- 
 looking way for which I yearned, was a camion. In 
 my hesitation, my faith wavered, and I asked the 
 driver how to go to Amiens. To the right, he an- 
 swered, and was gone. It was wrong. The way he 
 had come, to the left, was the one. 
 
 Dark was now treading on our heels. We crossed 
 without due circumspection a single railroad track 
 that jutted rather high and abrupt, bounced with a 
 forlorn inward clink of snapping, and stood still. 
 Various urgings and motions made by the chauffeur
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT EEMAIN 67 
 
 brought no response from the impassive car. He got 
 down and opened it. Something was broken. He 
 told me its French name. Was it fataH I asked him, 
 and he assured me that in time he could mend it. I 
 did not in the least believe him; why should I? It is 
 better in such cases to assume the worst and see what 
 else can be done. My friend and I walked about 
 while the figure of the stooping chauffeur grew more 
 dim in the departing light. We did not seem to be 
 anywhere, there did not seem to be anything to do. 
 We had come to grief exactly beside a little estaminet, 
 dark and closed, the glass gone from its window and 
 blind boards there instead. It stood where the road 
 and the railway crossed each other. I paced several 
 times in front of its silent door and pictured us all 
 breaking into it presently when the night should have 
 completely fallen and the chauffeur completely failed 
 to restore the engine to life. Even if it should prove 
 entirely empty, the floor of it would be larger to sleep 
 in than the car, and smaller than the wide world. 
 What difference would it make, anyhow, such a small 
 mishap in the presence of such great calamity? Then 
 I heard a sound inside, and spoke to the sound ap- 
 pealingly and reassuringly. The door was opened 
 with caution and there stood a woman. Her face was 
 pleasant and it was with a pleasant and gentle voice 
 that she greeted me. I could not tell her age, she had 
 seen war: Young and old who have gazed under- 
 standing^ upon the full countenance of war become 
 of like age. A gash, recent and not half healed, 
 crossed her forehead. She glanced at us and our car, 
 took in the mishap, and bade us enter with words of 
 very sweet apology : 
 "You see how we are installed."
 
 68 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 The light of one dull lamp was quite enough to 
 disclose the state of this home. I suppose that there 
 had been a fire in something, for she must have 
 cooked somewhere, but I saw none. The room was 
 damp and cold. Beside the boarded window which I 
 had seen in front were others with neither boards nor 
 glass in them, open holes into the night. Still, the 
 place had a roof, and it was the first edifice of any- 
 kind which we had during many hours an opportunity 
 to see that was not a total wreck. 
 
 "We have just come back to it," she said. 
 
 Who "we" were I did not ask her, but presently 
 learned without any asking. She and her husband 
 had come back from Normandy where they had been 
 for a year in refuge. She had lost everything. She 
 told us of her fortunes simply and sweetly and every 
 syllable was full of perfect, unforced courage. They 
 would get on ; the estaminet was on the road where 
 people passed and they would be passing more and 
 more as times revived. While she told us of her 
 prospects, heavy coughing broke out somewhere. 
 
 "Your husband?" I asked her. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I hope that he is not ill?" 
 
 "But not at all, monsieur. It is nothing. He 
 went out with friends today, and there it is. It's but 
 that." 
 
 "I hope he doesn't do it often?" 
 
 "Oh, no!" she assured me with a gay smile as I 
 looked at the gash in her forehead. 
 
 Directly he coughed violently and she hastened to 
 him in some hole behind the room. Some turn that 
 I now made disclosed to me that what I had taken 
 for a huddle of bedding lying across some article of
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT REMAIN 69 
 
 furniture was a perambulator with a baby asleep 
 in it. 
 
 "He'll be better now," said the mother, coming 
 back to us from the father. Then she showed her 
 placid child to us. 
 
 She had a loaf of coarse bread and some butter 
 which made our dinner ; she wanted but ' ' six sous ' ' 
 for it. We took the chauffeur 's share outside to him, 
 where he labored at the engine. It was now entirely 
 dark. She had a bed and we could have stayed there, 
 but as Ave were considering this the chauffeur came 
 in to ask for water and told us that the car would go. 
 She had water there in a bucket which she gave him. 
 No water was near the estaminet, the nearest was at 
 about a kilometre's distance, whence she fetched it 
 each day. We gave her some francs for the water, 
 and some others in the name of the child in the per- 
 ambulator. She did not wish to take them. She pro- 
 tested. There was nothing in her face or voice of 
 hard luck. She seemed strangely refined for that 
 estaminet, her smile rode over her adversity, she was 
 a French woman, perfectly game in the true French 
 way. 
 
 Our misadventures in wrong roads might have dis- 
 couraged my asking any more directions from the 
 local-minded natives, had there been any other choice 
 save to go blindly on. The camion driver had sent us 
 off the broad plain way into a perfect nest of local 
 lanes which my map showed now by the light of the 
 smoky lamp. We were close to a little place called 
 Harbonnieres, in sight of it, really, had there been 
 anything now to see except the darkness. But 
 whether to go forward or back, and which turns to 
 take if we did either one or the other, who of us could
 
 70 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 say? Least of all that chauffeur. To go blindly on 
 with him and a mended car did not appeal to me, and 
 so once more I inquired the way of a native. 
 
 "Go through the pays," she said (the pays was 
 the little village of Harbonnieres) "and at the church 
 turn to the right, and go two kilometres, and turn 
 to the left on the grande route to Amiens." Today 
 I know that it is from the women, not the men, that 
 you will be directed right. 
 
 Thus we left her, and her estaminet, and her sleep- 
 ing baby, and her husband who had spent the day 
 with friends, while she fetched the water from Har- 
 bonnieres. 
 
 There was no map any more. Its work was done. 
 We sat back in the car and heard its noise as we went 
 along. We could see nothing of the land, but when 
 objects came close we could make out their general 
 shapes. We went through the dark ruins of village 
 after village. Here and there some window would 
 dimly shine and pass. Along the road we met a two- 
 wheeled cart now and then, and sometimes some 
 soldiers. We did not know Villers-Bretonneux when 
 we came to it, or any other place, but we knew when 
 we had passed out of the slaughtered region. Once 
 more the signs of natural existence looked strange. 
 Soon after these began we entered Amiens, and at a 
 quarter past ten we got out at the Hotel du Rhin. 
 
 This day did not merely double the knowledge 
 which had begun at Compiegne yesterday; it changed 
 what I knew from what had been like a plane into 
 something that was like a cube. In its depths were 
 the French and the British soul, shining like the 
 battlements of light against the powers of darkness. 
 Its surface was the stricken fields of France, fields
 
 THE FRAGMENTS THAT EEMAIN 71 
 
 of life five years ago, fields of the great silence now : 
 The fallen shapes of towns, the disembowelled soil, 
 the shells and the wire where the wheat had been, the 
 crosses everywhere to the horizon, the exiled French 
 groping for their cellars, the strange languages and 
 races swarming upon the French earth, our jaunty 
 doughboys, the British Tommies, the German prison- 
 ers, and the Chinese coolies digging up the rotting 
 dead; amid this, the tranquil, unharmed cathedral 
 at Amiens, and far away across more distances of the 
 great silence, the battered cathedral at Reims, both 
 rising high above this wide, sad grave of men and 
 things.
 
 VII 
 
 SOME PEACE CONFEKENCES 
 
 I had gone out of the beaten way to listen to a comic 
 opera, an old comic opera that had been young in the 
 days of my own youth. I had dined early and sought 
 the Trianon Lyrique in time for a good seat in the 
 second row, and for all the preliminaries. I like to 
 see the musicians file in one by one from the hole 
 under the stage, and take their places, and turn up 
 the lights over their desks, and spread out their 
 sheets of music, and put their respective instruments 
 to their chins or their lips or between their knees, and 
 get in tune and begin tootling over little scraps of 
 what is coming, until the whole hive of fiddles and 
 flutes and curving tubes is buzzing. Well, they 
 hadn't appeared when I sat down ; nor had the public. 
 A few early birds like myself, quiet French birds with 
 very quiet plumage, dotted the spaces. It was a 
 "family theatre," the ouvreuse reminded me, where 
 innocence could come with its father and mother, and 
 sustain no harm. I gave the ouvreuse a whole franc 
 for telling me this and showing me my seat and trying 
 to take charge of my overcoat. I felt suddenly re- 
 laxed and happy to have escaped from the present 
 into this sanctuary of the past, safe from the noises 
 of the restless hour, far from the discords of peace. 
 The Trianon Lyrique stood in a back-water, a little 
 bay of true Paris, untroubled by the chop-sea of sol- 
 diers, envoys, correspondents, negotiators, diplomats, 
 
 72
 
 SOME PEACE CONFERENCES 73 
 
 experts, intriguers, prime ministers, philanthropists, 
 and flags and rags of all nations, which the hurri- 
 canes of negotiation had driven to toss and beat upon 
 the wider spaces of the city. Thus I sat waiting 
 placidly, and held a little conference, a true Peace 
 Conference, with myself and my memories. These 
 jostled and needed arranging. 
 
 Amiens and the Somme lay behind me, with the re- 
 mainder of my pilgrimage to desolation still ahead. 
 Between them was this Parisian parenthesis. At 
 dinner the last night at Amiens, an officer, a major 
 in the British service, had sat with us and told us 
 that he had seen women flying from village to village 
 with dead babies and household chattels huddled 
 under their arms ; and had seen a child whose hands 
 the Huns had compelled its own father to cut off. 
 I was glad to have the Paris parenthesis, to see the 
 shops, the streets, the living life, and to hear the 
 home voices of our soldiers. These were everywhere 
 in the streets and shops of Paris in April and May, 
 1919 ; Paris with a jungle of captured German guns, 
 thickly lacing the Place de la Concorde, bordering 
 the wide way from it to the Arc de Triomphe ; Paris 
 with American cars and American soldier chauffeurs 
 clotting the space in front of the transfigured Hotel 
 de Crillon, waiting the pleasure of the envoys, ex- 
 perts, philanthropists, and secretaries who sat within 
 and seethed without ; and Paris, this chop-sea of spy- 
 ing, distrusting sharks swum hither from all waters, 
 afloat with the American soldier. You could look 
 nowhere and not see him. He swarmed above the 
 ground on the tops of omnibuses, on the ground in 
 shops and along the Rue de Rivoli, and underground 
 in the trains of the Metro. The sharks swam in
 
 74 
 
 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 waters congenial ; not he. I have heard a verse about 
 him: 
 
 Although he was on pleasure bent, 
 
 He had no frugal mind; 
 He did not care how much he spent, 
 
 He was not in his element, 
 And he was very innocent, 
 
 And very much too kind. 
 
 Whatever rioting he made it was a drop in the 
 bucket of his decency. Saint he never pretended to 
 be, though he was commendably nearer to it before 
 than after the loosening influence of the Armistice. 
 Yet no matter how he spent his Paris nights, he was 
 a clean, irrelevant creature for Paris to entertain; 
 a spirit how uncooked amid this spiced stew of the 
 jaded Old World ! Uprooted by a convulsion, not of 
 nature but of human nature, and flung into a soil and 
 climate where nothing like him grew, he stuck out 
 strangely from the general mess ; and his figure will 
 remain with me, buoyant, youthful, detached, the 
 most far-fetched apparition I have ever seen thrust 
 into a human picture. 
 
 He felt this. He knew it. Those of him who had 
 come over too late to kill Huns, felt it doubly. Gen- 
 erally he hated the French, generally he wanted to 
 go home, and generally — whenever I rubbed shoul- 
 ders with him in streets or shops or trains long 
 enough for any conversation — I reasoned with him. 
 Two sentences from an enlisted man at Fort Ogle- 
 thorpe sum up what our army felt. He was a young 
 master-carpenter who had left his work, his wife, 
 and two children. 
 
 "You'll be anxious to get back?"
 
 SOME PEACE CONFERENCES 75 
 
 "Not till it's over. Then home as quick as I can 
 get." 
 
 That is why they went: to see it through, to kill 
 Huns, to stop the world crime; not for the sake of 
 any academic generalizations about democracy. Our 
 own danger had not dawned upon them. 
 
 I did not want our soldiers to go home hating the 
 French. Without the light that France has thrown 
 round the world, how dim the world would be ! But 
 nothing of this would go far to placate the sore and 
 home-sick doughboy. It would be "highbrow stuff " 
 to him. He had his reasons for hating the French, 
 and they were good ones, too. The flaws in the 
 French character were the very flaws to displease 
 him. The French set too little store by the mechan- 
 ical conveniences of life, such as plumbing and elec- 
 tric lights ; he set too much. He had too little respect 
 for thrift and tradition; the French had too much. 
 He could be gay and sociable, evening after evening, 
 exclusively in men's company. The French astonish- 
 ment at this estranged him whenever he happened to 
 find it out. He continually washed and shaved him- 
 self clean ; he spent his money lavishly. These were 
 less frequent habits in the land whence he had helped 
 to expel the Huns. And now these French, after 
 flinging their arms round him while the Huns were 
 walking on to Paris, were asking him when he was 
 going home. He made his English plain, too plain 
 for print sometimes. As if he wanted to stay in their 
 damned, dirty, stingy country of robbers! These 
 small-change frogs called Americans "dollar-chas- 
 ers." Why the whole of Europe was chasing dollars 
 with its tongue hanging out of its mouth. Only, 
 when it caught one it held on. When an American
 
 76 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "treated," they called him vulgar. Well, no frog 
 was guilty of that vulgarity, anyhow. 
 
 The doughboy needed no official voices, French or 
 English, to tell him what he had done. He might 
 be foolish and boast, or he might not ; but quite inde- 
 pendent of recognition from on high, or tinkling sym- 
 bols pinned on his chest, he knew in his heart that 
 in the darkest hour of 1918, he had tipped the scales 
 to victory; that without his presence upon the fields 
 allotted to him, the British could not have made their 
 magnificent advance over the fields allotted to them ; 
 that without his presence in France, the Huns would 
 still be present in France. He knew all this because 
 our American mind, if raw, is clear and just. And 
 now they were anxious to get rid of him, which was 
 natural ; and letting him know it, which was not tres 
 gentil. "Tray jontee" was the phrase employed in 
 this connection by one ironic doughboy, who, being 
 obviously a charmer, had also made substantial con- 
 quests among the French idioms. "Stinking" was 
 the word given it by another doughboy, plainer 
 spoken. 
 
 "How many words of French do you know?" 
 This was my usual device for entering upon talk 
 with them. 
 
 "About six," was their not unusual answer. They 
 would turn at my question, and look at me with an 
 American's grin for a brother American. 
 
 Sometimes in shops I computed, at their own re- 
 quest, the sum of their purchases, and the change 
 properly due. The doughboy who had said "stink- 
 ing" had walked out of a photograph shop with me 
 and opened his heart to me along under the arcades 
 of the Rue de Rivoli. Concerning the French, he
 
 SOME PEACE CONFERENCES 77 
 
 knew his mind in his American way, down to the 
 ground. 
 
 "Do you think," he demanded, "if they had come 
 over and saved New York and Bridgeport and New 
 Haven for us, we'd be showing them the door like 
 they 're showing it to us f " 
 
 "They saved New York and Bridgeport without 
 coming over, ' ' I answered. 
 
 "So they've told me more than once, since the 
 Armistice. I'll call it a good guess. Maybe they did. 
 But they saved us in their own country, kind of un- 
 consciously. On the side, as it were. There's a dif- 
 ference, don't you think? About three thousand 
 miles' difference, according to the lowest figure I 
 can make it." 
 
 "You must make allowances " I began, rather 
 
 feebly ; for I saw his side of it full as well as he did. 
 
 "Allowances! I've allowed all the allowances my 
 mind will allow me to allow. Good night ! If they 
 were sitting around in New Jersey and Connecticut 
 after an armistice fixed up at Hoboken, do you think 
 we'd be trying to push 'em into the Atlantic, or do 
 you think we'd be setting up the drinks?" 
 
 'We're different," I said. I was still feeble. 
 '"Well, I guess we are different. And if it comes to 
 politeness, give me the American brand yesterday, 
 today, and for ever. Too much dictionary about the 
 French article and not enough goods delivered. All 
 froth and no kick to it. Tray biang apray voo mais 
 wee certaynmong meel pardong meel remaircimong. 
 Oh, hell ! And say — if your house was afire, and you 
 pretty nearly all in fighting it, and your neighbor saw 
 it and came across the fields and jumped in and 
 helped put it out, you'd be likely to send him a bill 

 
 78 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 for a pitcher he'd broken and some corn he'd trod 
 down, wouldn 't yon % ' ' 
 
 "Come and eat lunch with me," I said. "It's one 
 o 'clock. ' ' 
 
 He stood pondering. In the course of our talk we 
 had reached and gone some distance along the Rue 
 Boissy d'Anglas, in the direction of my hotel. 
 
 "I guess I can eat something now." As he came 
 out with this, he looked me in the eyes with a con- 
 fessing smile. 
 
 "Too much joy last night?" I asked, smiling also. 
 
 "Yep." 
 
 "No breakfast yet?" 
 
 "No." He gave an expressive shudder. 
 
 At the cafe I chose (where he tried his best to pay 
 for something) I laid before him the French case. I 
 preached to him the good old doctrine of bear and 
 forbear. I was growing practiced; he listened. He 
 was another perfect instance of the American mind, 
 clear and just, once the facts are laid before it hon- 
 estly. I did not completely bring him round, but he 
 was going to reach conclusions after we had parted 
 which would be more lenient than those he held when 
 we met. 
 
 "All the same," he said, "once I get back to Dan- 
 bury — never again!" That was his final word. 
 
 Certain things I withheld from him as I did from 
 all of them: worse things that few of them knew. 
 These needed much bear and forbear — more than I 
 was up to at times myself. This weather-cock busi- 
 ness was not confined to the classes with whom the 
 soldiers mixed. There was a change of wind higher 
 up. The warm blasts which had greeted our entrance 
 into the war and our landing upon French soil had
 
 SOME PEACE CONFERENCES 79 
 
 begun instantly to veer and chill after the Armistice. 
 We Americans were no longer Mayflowers and La- 
 fayettes come back to our dear old home. Upon the 
 laurels which they had piled somewhat too thick 
 around our brows when first we stepped ashore, more 
 mud was being cast as each elapsing month pushed 
 Chateau-Thierry farther back into the safe past. 
 From certain quarters of authority the word had 
 gone forth to tone down our contribution to victory 
 now that the trick was done. A little adroit French 
 phrase had been picked out and passed round from 
 inner circles outward : we had given the Allies a coup 
 d'epaule. "Leg up" is the English for that. Papa 
 Joffre, who staunchly insisted that "leg up" fell 
 somewhat short of describing our part at Chateau- 
 Thierry and Champagne and St. Mihiel and the Ar- 
 gonne, and two million men come three thousand 
 miles, and successful fighting that extended from 
 early summer to the 11th of November — Papa Joffre, 
 who stuck out for it that this represented something 
 more than a "leg up," had been officially "canned," 
 as our doughboys would have put it. I reflected upon 
 this, and upon the fact that the French, with the same 
 breath that they called us a "leg up," were anxious 
 that we should bind ourselves to come over and boost 
 them again, if ever the Germans again started up. 
 I had discerned in some persons a subtle disap- 
 pointment at our proving ourselves not too proud to 
 fight; it compelled them to seek something else to 
 fling. I had noticed that certain English jeers at our 
 neutrality had shifted to jealousy of our participa- 
 tion; a cold glaze had filled certain English eyes at 
 the barest reference to our battles. To a friend of 
 mine one English lady had complained that just as
 
 80 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 the Allies were on the threshold of winning we had 
 come over and robbed them of the full glory of 
 victory. Were such undercurrents to direct the great 
 stream of History 1 Or would the brag upon our part 
 die away beside the vast fight and suffering of France 
 and England, and their sneers vanish in the realiza- 
 tion that in joining them we had wrenched ourselves 
 from one of the deepest-rooted articles of our faith, 
 and asked nothing? 
 
 Meanwhile, these countries were teaching full as 
 much of forbearance to me as they could learn from 
 mine. At moments it came hard, but I held to it, even 
 when I heard that we had come to make the world 
 safe for hypocrisy; reaction inevitable and petulant 
 must be met philosophically. Only, not all of our 
 doughboys were philosophers ; my next effort at per- 
 suasion was not crowned with visible success. 
 
 It began in the Metro. A crowd filled the car, and 
 I was glad to feel pretty sure that the remarks which 
 some of my fellow-countrymen were making fell upon 
 ears that did not understand them. The noise of the 
 train in the tunnel led me to move nearer to hear the 
 whole instead of parts of what was being said, as the 
 chief word which reached me was, as usual, "frogs." 
 But as I made my way, over my shoulder came the 
 muttered phrase, "ces sales Americains." Some 
 Frenchman was present who did at any rate under- 
 stand what frogs meant and he was returning the 
 compliment; and not much league of nations was 
 occurring here. 
 
 It was four doughboys comparing recent Parisian 
 experiences together quite placidly, and planning ex- 
 periences to come. They were not complaining, as I 
 had supposed at first; indeed, their adventures had
 
 if 
 
 SOME PEACE CONFERENCES 81 
 
 been wholly to their satisfaction, and to these they 
 referred with a frankness based upon the assumption 
 that nobody else knew English. 
 
 "Made me think of one night in Tucson, " said one. 
 
 "Naw, they're not the same," said another. 
 "Mexican girls can really love you." 
 
 "Oh, say, boys," said a third, "he's learned what 
 true love is ! " And they all laughed joyously. 
 
 "Say, we got to change at Concorde!" exclaimed 
 the second, with sudden alarm. 
 
 "Well, tell us something we don't know," said Tuc- 
 son. "More about true love." 
 
 'Well, we don't want to pass Concorde." 
 ; I'll not let you," said I. "I'm changing there 
 myself." 
 
 In Paris it seemed invariably to startle them 
 slightly when anybody who wasn't a doughboy wasn't 
 French. 
 
 "Is the hotel St. Xavier still the best in Tucson ?" 
 I inquired. 
 
 They began to grin, especially a tall one, and one 
 with black hair. Tucson was short and slim, with a 
 merry eye. 
 
 "I expect," I pursued, "that the right man could 
 find true love in Deming, Lordsburg, Benson, Mari- 
 copa, Phoenix and Tempe, even Yuma, just as well 
 as in Tucson." 
 
 My "even Yuma," was an enormous success; they 
 drove their elbows into each other, although two of 
 them had blushed deeply at being overheard. By the 
 time we were getting out at Concorde, blushes had 
 been recovered from, they had learned that I had 
 ridden over Arizona and New Mexico before they 
 were born, and I had learned that the hotel St. Xavier
 
 82 
 
 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 was no longer the best in Tucson. When I asked 
 young Tucson if the big wild cat I had seen in Mari- 
 copa in 1910 was still there, he began, I think, to feel 
 as if I must be something in the way of a long-lost 
 uncle ; he had seen that cat when he was a boy. 
 
 "Mr. Williams owned it," said he. "Acrosst over 
 the track. We lived on Salt River then. Excuse me, 
 sir, but I 'd never take you for an American. ' ' 
 
 "I'll try to excuse you. I should always know 
 you were one. Let me congratulate you on your 
 division's athletic fame." 
 
 "We fought some too, sir." 
 
 1 ' Oh, all good Americans are proud of that. Where 
 are you getting out?" 
 
 "Marbcef. Gosh, I wish I could get out of this 
 country. ' ' 
 
 "Marbcef 's mine." It was not, I had been getting 
 out at Alma, but his exclamation had put the mis- 
 sionary spirit in me. Time happened to be nothing, 
 and we had begun well. 
 
 "Why call them frogs?" I asked. 
 
 "Do you like them?" This was Black Hair, after 
 we had come up from below and were walking along. 
 
 "I like them very much." 
 
 They were silent. 
 
 "I guess we don't, sir," said Tucson, after a few 
 steps by my side. 
 
 "I can give very good reasons for liking them," 
 said I. 
 
 One of the two in front of us turned around. 
 
 "We have very good reasons for not," said he. 
 This was Tall One. 
 
 Somehow it was slightly portentous. They all 
 stopped and faced me, and there stood the five of us
 
 SOME PEACE CONFERENCES 83 
 
 in an argument on the wide walk of the Champs Ely- 
 sees. They appealed, they confided, as to a friend, 
 but every face had grown hard as a flint ; they took up 
 their tale in cold anger and grew hot over it at the 
 end. 
 
 "You know the St. Mihiel country?" This was 
 Black Hair. 
 
 "Not yet." 
 
 "Well, that's where our big lack comes in." 
 
 ' ' You know we were there last September 1 ' ' This 
 was Tall One. 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "Well, that's where we didn't pay for the privi- 
 lege, ' ' said Tall One. 
 
 "Privilege of fighting for France," said Black 
 Hair. 
 
 "We '11 fight for Germany next time. We know the 
 Germans now. They're the folks to treat a man 
 well." 
 
 "Very well," amplified Tucson. "Very, very 
 well. And they're clean. Why, look here. About St. 
 Mihiel. We had orders to dig in at a place there. 
 Second day." 
 
 "Never mind the day. We were just starting to 
 dig in." 
 
 "Lots of companies were advancing," continued 
 Tucson, "the shells were coming our way right 
 then.", 
 
 ' ' German shells, you understand. Coming heavy, ' ' 
 said Black Hair. 
 
 "When up runs the farmer," said Tucson, "and 
 says to our captain we can't go on till we've paid 
 for his land. Then some argument, and then some 
 excitement, but our captain talks quiet."
 
 84 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "Our captain he's a gentleman." This was the 
 fourth, who had been a solemn listener until now. 
 
 "Yes. A gentleman," affirmed Tall One. "When 
 you meet a commissioned officer you don't always 
 meet a gentleman." 
 
 "Even so!" said Fourth One, still solemn. 
 
 "Well, and so the farmer got more excited and the 
 captain got more quiet, and away goes the farmer 
 and back he comes with a French officer. 'You must 
 pay, ' says the officer. We all heard him. ' ' 
 
 "Even so!" said the fourth. "Yea, yea." 
 
 "Shut up, Elmer, for God's sake." 
 
 "The gentleman don't mind. He's been a sport. 
 Yea, yea." And Fourth One suddenly gave a youp 
 that must have come from the cattle range. I now 
 perceived that either his last night was not finished 
 or his next was already begun. 
 
 "Consider yourselves, consider my grey hairs, 
 consider the Champs Elysees," I begged him. 
 
 For a moment their eyes grew merry, and then 
 hardened, and Tall One took it up. 
 
 ' ' The Frenchman told the captain we must pay the 
 farmer for spoiling his land. The shells were coming 
 livelier all the time, so the captain told us to keep 
 digging and I guess he told the French captain it 
 was his busy day. Anyhow Froggy said 'biang, 
 biang,' and he pulled out a paper." 
 
 "He pulls out a paper," said Fourth One. 
 
 "Wrote on it and handed it to the captain," said 
 Black Hair. "Wanted the captain to sign that we'd 
 pay for the land afterwards." 
 
 "How about that, sir?" said Tucson. 
 "But the captain," said Tall One, "handed that 
 paper back to the French officer/ 
 
 ))
 
 SOME PEACE CONFERENCES 85 
 
 " He handed it back. Yea, yea!" 
 
 "And he told him," Tall One continued, taking no 
 notice, "that he had no orders to sign anything; he 
 was here to push Huns off the land, not to pay for it. 
 'If you give me any trouble,' he said " 
 
 ' * Frog had threatened to bring his men over. They 
 were digging in themselves," said Black Hair. 
 
 "The captain told him to bring his men over and 
 they'd get more good manners shot into them in a 
 fraction of a second than they might otherwise ac- 
 quire in a lifetime," said Tucson. They finished 
 their tale in short turns, almost talking at once. 
 
 "The French officer said " 
 
 "We didn't get it all, but he and his men were 
 going to come over " 
 
 "To make us pay or quit digging." 
 
 "He and the farmer went away over to where the 
 French were digging, but they never came back." 
 
 "Come back yourself, sir, to God's country. Now 
 that the Armistice is signed these French will be glad 
 to tell you good-bye. ' ' 
 
 Tucson said that, and now I took my turn. 
 
 "That French officer," I began, "had paid that 
 farmer for the injury to the land his own soldiers 
 were doing." 
 
 Their eyes never left my face. This was a good 
 sign, but a bad one went with it. They never once 
 asked me a question. I must have talked three or 
 four minutes steadily to them as we stood in the 
 Champs Elysees, explaining to them the predicament 
 of the French peasants and the method of meeting 
 it which I understood that the French Government 
 had been forced to adopt, and then I came to an end 
 with dead silence for an answer.
 
 86 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 " Better go back to God's country, sir," repeated 
 Tucson, smiling. 
 
 "Even so," said Fourth One. 
 
 We parted, amicably disagreeing. No arguments, 
 only time and reflection, and perhaps not even these, 
 would change their minds. 
 
 Waiting in the Trianon Lyrique with my overcoat 
 on — heavens, how cold that theatre was ! — I thought 
 over these talks with our doughboys and took out my 
 notes of them. Should I cut them out at home? 
 Should I cut out the coup d'epaule and everything 
 else disagreeable? If I did, would home believe the 
 agreeable things I should tell? With the cause of 
 France hung our own, and our future welfare, and 
 our enlightened participation in the welfare of the 
 world. 

 
 VIII 
 
 LE PETIT DUC 
 
 The drop-curtain and decorations of the Trianon 
 Lyrique well befitted a " family theatre"; innocence 
 with its father and mother could gaze at these also 
 without injury. I blessed them. They ministered 
 to my Peace Conference, perhaps they caused it: 
 Aurora in her chariot, golden rays her background, 
 winged boys her companions, festooning garlands at 
 either hand, the head of Pegasus below, like a trophy 
 of the chase, and that drop-curtain — really a dividing 
 curtain — quiet with colors like a faded oriental rug 
 that had been used and walked on and not cleaned 
 lately. I blessed it as I would a rest-cure, my reason- 
 ing rose serene out of the chop-sea in which I, too, 
 had been tossing. The French audience gathered, 
 French undisguised, not on exhibition for the benefit 
 of Americans any more than the opera, quiet domes- 
 tic parties, out for an evening's highly economical 
 entertainment. I was enjoying the sight of them 
 when the seat next mine was filled by a spectator 
 more exotic in that dingy atmosphere than even my- 
 self. A woman, a lady — she made me an exactly 
 right bow for disturbing me; a lady plainly by her 
 expression, by her lines, by the way she sat, and by 
 her perfectly admirable and perfectly quiet clothes. 
 "We began at once to study each other in that imper- 
 ceptible way which is invariably perceived by both 
 parties. She was handsome. All of forty-five (you 
 
 87
 
 88 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 will be disappointed), probably nearer fifty. She had 
 style and missed elegance. Obviously forcible. 
 Somebody. A look of giving orders and having it 
 done. Too much so. Had probably been in war- 
 work. Yes, probably the head of something she sup- 
 ported with a large bank account. I would bet she 
 had secretaries. Oh, yes; one of the chop-sea phil- 
 anthropists with a mission. Philanthropists are un- 
 mistakable even when they are ladies. I had seen her 
 type down-stairs and up at the Hotel de Crillon but 
 nothing equal to her. American. New York? I felt 
 so. Why did she make me angry? The fiddlers were 
 coming out of the hole now. And here she was, by 
 herself. Of course she was American. And if any 
 man presumed and spoke to her — why he'd get it! 
 In my mind was no such presumption. Silence was 
 what I had come here for, and isolation. 
 
 "We might as well chat," she said to me, in Eng- 
 lish. "Don't you think so?" Deep, assured, entirely 
 civilized voice. Eyebrows too heavy. 
 
 "I'll say anything you like," I responded amiably. 
 
 "You'll say nothing I don't." 
 
 "I was sure that you appreciated me," I mur- 
 mured. 
 
 She turned this over before she was quite satisfied 
 with it; then she inquired, "Have you been here 
 long?" 
 
 I took out my watch. "Sixteen minutes, I think." 
 
 "You know perfectly well that I mean, have you 
 been in Paris long?" 
 
 "Perfectly well. My coming is quite recent." 
 From the gentleness of my voice any old friend would 
 have known that I was going to be detestable. 
 
 "I wonder if I know your name?" she said next.
 
 LE PETIT DUC 89 
 
 "Quite unlikely. I'm not from New York." 
 
 This she also turned over. "I can't seem to place 
 you." 
 
 "Ah, don't try!" 
 
 "I came here to get away from — well, from all that 
 you are probably mistaking for the true France," she 
 now explained to me. 
 
 "So did I!" I exclaimed. "Well, that is spoiled 
 for both of us. We must just console each other." 
 
 "I am apt to hear of people," she stated, con- 
 sidering me. "You're certainly not Red Cross. You 
 can't be in the Reconstruction? OrNeuilly? I know 
 them all there. You're surely not a member of Con- 
 gress? One can tell them as far as one can see 
 them." 
 
 ' ' Really and truly I 'm not a spy. Give me up ! " 
 
 "Well, it makes no difference. I hope you have 
 realized that Paris is by no means France?" 
 
 Of course I had. I had realized that about forty 
 years ago. Why couldn't she perceive that I knew 
 something about France myself? How had I found 
 my way here, far from the areas of Paris got up for 
 strangers, and the spangled shows sung and danced 
 for Americans? Her importance blocked her obser- 
 vation. She took herself for granted too much, and 
 me too little. You will not think highly of me. I 
 fell apart, and my lower nature spoke for me, sep- 
 arately. If I was to have no isolation she should 
 have no satisfaction. 
 
 "Do tell me about that," I said. 
 
 "You see," she forcibly expounded, "Paris, 
 through being a great centre, draws and develops all 
 the worst elements." 
 
 " Oh, I see. Like New York. ' '
 
 90 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "And Americans live here for months perfectly 
 ignorant of the true France. I hope you intend to 
 visit the devastated regions before you go home?" 
 
 "Should I find true France there?" 
 
 "It's everywhere, of course, in a way. But in 
 provincial France — where the devastated regions are, 
 you understand — you get straight at it, while here 
 you have to sift it out, and that takes familiarity with 
 the language. ' ' 
 
 " I '11 certainly go, if I can. ' ' 
 
 "It requires authorization, of course." She 
 stopped and considered me again. ' ' One obtains that 
 in various ways. American ignorance of Europe is 
 simply appalling." 
 
 "Worse than theirs of us?" I inquired. 
 
 "There is much less of us to know. Our impor- 
 tance is great, but it's simple. Knowing Europe 
 would be of incalculable advantage to us. Europe is 
 very complicated. Each nation has things it does 
 better than we do them, and we're so ignorant we 
 don't know it. And then, life here! Why life here 
 compared to American life is like a wedding-cake 
 compared to dry toast." 
 
 That last was rather good. Why did I know that 
 she had tried it on others before she bestowed it on 
 
 me? 
 
 "The doctors pronounce too much wedding-cake 
 
 indigestible, ' ' I said. 
 
 She looked at me suddenly. "I wonder if you're 
 writing for The Saturday Evening Post?" 
 
 "How are you ever going to instruct me if you 
 keep on guessing so hard?" 
 
 But she now said, "Ssh. People may want to 
 listen." And she settled herself.
 
 LE PETIT DUC 91 
 
 I was very glad to listen to the slender, sprightly 
 overture, in which each tune was an old friend. 
 
 "That is the true France," she informed me when 
 it was over. "But only the surface. Americans 
 suppose it is the whole. Do you know what the war 
 has cost France?" 
 
 She couldn't tell me then, because the curtain had 
 divided and they were singing the opening chorus. 
 But she would tell me between the acts. She was 
 only half listening to the opera. She was busy over 
 me. Whatever her mission was, I had become a part 
 of it while she had the chance. I realized that she 
 was a mine of explosive information, that her zealous 
 days were spent in some large, good work, that she 
 hooked everybody, every likely person, every passing 
 listener of the slightest promise. Thus she scattered 
 the seed of her cause. It so filled her that no place 
 was unpropitious, no time untimely, each new contact 
 caused her statistics to burst out of her. Would she 
 bring herself in? I wondered. The act went on. 
 The little bride was torn from the little bridegroom 
 directly after their wedding ceremony, and hurried 
 away to a convent, while he was forced to continue 
 his education with his two tutors. All in the costume 
 of a bygone Watteau age, to graceful bygone melodies 
 and rhythms. 
 
 "Paris cherishes these little gems," she informed 
 me as the curtain closed. ' ' They are extinct with us, 
 because the audience that used to understand them is 
 extinct. They demand on the part of their hearers 
 the rudiments of both education and civilization. 
 They would be Greek to Hebrew Broadway. Not 
 even Big Bertha stopped the theatres. The actors
 
 92 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 showed that they were as true sons of France as the 
 foilus." 
 
 She was going to hammer me with facts like a pile- 
 driver ; that I saw in a flash. It would go on through 
 the whole intermission; and intermissions in Paris 
 are long. When they have bought seats for the 
 theatre, the economic French put out the lamps and 
 the fire at home, and feel entitled to lodging at the 
 play until near midnight. That was another good 
 sentence about Greek to Hebrew Broadway. 
 
 "I have read about the brave patriotism of the 
 French actors," I said. 
 
 You could seldom tell whether she was listening to 
 you or not. Whatever she had been in her youth, she 
 now belonged to that class of important people who 
 hear nothing you say except what happens to strike 
 the keynote of their own preoccupation. 
 
 " Everything is needed here," she now declared. 
 1 1 Everywhere you turn, need is what you see." 
 
 I sat tight. It was coming. She had got it ready 
 like concentrated essence of beef, or a hypodermic 
 charge of serum. 
 
 1 ' The French children have been five years without 
 school. We must get the school teachers back to 
 them. Only think what a loss of five school years 
 would mean to the generation of American voters 
 that is growing up. ' ' 
 
 "It would be a loss you couldn't see with the naked 
 eye," I said. "You have not been following Ameri- 
 can education as closely as French." 
 
 I know she didn't listen to that. 
 
 "France has lost one entire fifth of her taxes. 
 Twenty per cent, of her taxes were paid by the 
 devastated regions. : 
 
 5>
 
 LE PETIT DUC 93 
 
 "Yes, I have read about that, too. Lens, Lille, the 
 coal, the manufacturing section. Yes, I have read 
 that." 
 
 "Books without travel are bricks without straw," 
 she said. 
 
 That was an awfully good one ! I doubt if it was 
 her own. She probably collected lines like this and 
 salted her public speeches with them. I had now 
 become sure that she addressed audiences. I hoped 
 the audiences were not wounded soldiers in bed. 
 
 "The whole region north of the Aisne was scien- 
 tifically destroyed, ' ' she continued. ' ' Before the war 
 France normally spent two billions a year on con- 
 struction. Twenty billions are needed now to put her 
 buildings back where they were. And who is to do 
 this? Of French males between the ages of 18 and 
 34, 57 per cent, are dead. They can barely cope with 
 the deblayage. The farmers that survive are willing 
 to live in holes to carry on, but what are they to do 
 without agricultural machinery?" 
 
 She paused. I sat battered and dumb. Had I 
 known the answer I could not have given it. But she 
 did not want it. Her pause was for rhetoric, not for 
 information or for breath. Her breath never failed. 
 It was like an endless chain of prayer. 
 
 "What is necessary to a nation?" she now de- 
 manded directly of me. 
 
 "Why — I should say " but my mind stopped. 
 
 "What, I mean to say, does any nation have to 
 have, or lapse into barbarism?" 
 
 I wondered if I could last through this intermission 
 without turning upon her. I decided that I could 
 certainly not bear the next. Perhaps I was being 
 punished for the activity of my lower nature at the
 
 94 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 outset of my talk. But of this I am by no means 
 certain. I believe that she was one of those who are 
 so driven by the steam of the facts they have amassed, 
 that they plow ahead, telling you what they know, 
 wholly indifferent to whether you know it or not. 
 
 ' 'Is not a nation like an individual? If you and I 
 to retain our position among civilized people, not only 
 require a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, 
 food in our stomachs, but must also have health and 
 strength and education and money to support art, 
 literature, science, and to pay our way in an increas- 
 ingly expensive and competitive world — is it not plain 
 what France needs ! Do you know that tuberculosis 
 is unfitting men and women to be parents, and is 
 waiting for the new born 1 ? The percentage of tuber- 
 culosis in France " 
 
 My mind ceased to retain any more. In the whirl 
 of statistics which continued, I sat like a man over- 
 taken upon a mountain by thick snow, until the open- 
 ing of the curtain came to my relief. Truly, if you are 
 in a mood to be let alone, keep well away from persons 
 with a mission, women especially. The music was 
 not able to distract me. I prepared some remarks 
 for her benefit, and rehearsed them all through the 
 act. 
 
 * 'With everything that you have said, ' ' I was going 
 to tell her, "I perfectly agree. Most of it I knew 
 already. I am seeing France exactly as you advised. 
 Tomorrow I go to Chateau-Thierry and Reims, later 
 to Verdun, under the kind and courteous auspices of 
 our officers at 37, Rue de Bassano. So far, I have 
 been under the equally kind auspices of the Brit- 
 ish, at 30, Avenue Marceau. At 5, Rue Francois 
 Premier, the courteous French officers were ready to
 
 LE PETIT DUC 95 
 
 place their services at my disposal and take me to all 
 places in their jurisdiction. I have been urged to 
 accept a week in Germany, beginning at Coblenz ; and 
 General Pershing of his own accord has personally 
 bidden me to ask him for anything that he can cause 
 to be done for me, and it shall be done." 
 
 But I said none of it. It would have come from 
 my lower nature, although it would have all been true. 
 
 After all, the formidable lady who had loaded me so 
 heavily with advice and instruction was not thinking 
 of herself, but of her cause. I had wondered if she 
 would bring herself in, would dilate upon her own 
 exploits in benevolence ; but she never did. And her 
 facts and figures were all too true. But I could not, 
 I really could not, trust my lower nature through 
 another intermission. 
 
 "I am going to bid you good-night," I said, as the 
 curtain closed again. 
 
 It was a blow, I could see that. ' ' Oh, stay it out ! ' ' 
 she said. "We can talk some more." 
 
 "Awfully sorry. It has been ever so interesting 
 and helpful. I have an early start tomorrow — and 
 the third act isn't much." 
 
 "You leave Paris tomorrow!" She thought 
 rapidly and produced this final, compact parcel of 
 tuition : 
 
 "You must make allowances for Paris. If you find 
 the hotels and the taxi-drivers and the police officials 
 when you go for your card of identification, rude, 
 remember the four years they have been through. 
 Think how it must exasperate their nerves to be 
 unable to settle down now, to be still overwhelmed 
 with strangers like this. Do make allowances. ' ' 
 : I've been doing nothing else!" I returned, 
 
 <«-
 
 96 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 levelling each word straight at her. "And I have 
 been beseeching our soldiers to do nothing else. 
 French manners have always been better outside 
 Paris, as American manners are outside New York. 
 And now the hotels and taxis and police officials here 
 are simply beyond belief — democracy at its dregs." 
 
 Directly I spoke of our soldiers, she fixed me with 
 concentrated scrutiny, every word that had followed 
 missing her entirely. 
 
 "I know!" she cried. "You're on some vice 
 mission." 
 
 "We 're finding it up-hill work, ' ' retorted my lower 
 self. ' ' Young Frenchmen hold chastity a provincial- 
 ism they've got beyond, young Americans hold it a 
 virtue they haven 't reached. Que voulez-vous ? ' ' 
 
 She probably took in but little of that, such was her 
 satisfaction in having finally placed me; and with 
 that I had risen from my seat and was gone. Once 
 again a few days later I came face to face with her as 
 we went up together in the elevator at the Hotel de 
 Crillon, but she did not know me from Adam. It was 
 a great relief.
 
 IX 
 
 KANSAS ON AN ISLAND 
 
 Not yet were my conversations over for this day. 
 I emerged from the Trianon Lyrique upon pools of 
 water spread in so many places that my short walk to 
 the Metro station was materially lengthened through 
 avoiding them. The floods of rain which had evi- 
 dently been pouring down while I was being given 
 French lessons, had left the air bleaker and damper 
 even than when I had entered the theatre. In the 
 almost empty train I smiled at myself for so resent- 
 ing the French lessons. But it is only superior 
 persons who don't mind being told what they ought 
 to know, and very superior persons indeed who don't 
 mind being told what they know already. The right- 
 minded reader will say that I should be ashamed of 
 my conduct to this instructive female. So I should 
 — and am not. The lady had really added to my 
 knowledge ; be that said for her. She had given me 
 figures and summaries that I had not known before, 
 which I later found to be accurate, and which made a 
 solid frame, so to speak, for the picture of devasta- 
 tion upon which I had been gazing during my pilgrim- 
 age. Albert, Bapaume, Peronne, which I had seen, 
 and the withered soil, and all the rest, were the 
 visible, physical destruction that spelt the twenty per 
 cent, destruction of taxes. The lady was another 
 figure in the iridescent horde that ran and twinkled 
 over the surface of Paris ; a winged ant, busied upon 
 
 97
 
 98 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 errands of good; and with all her too-bristling 
 energy, she fitted in well with what I had said to the 
 gloomy, beclouded boy at the cathedral of Amiens. 
 
 From the Metro I ascended to the surface of the 
 earth at the Place du Havre. It was between times : 
 the small French cafes and the shops were long 
 closed, the theatres not yet out, and the St. Lazare 
 station had mostly ceased to suck in or to disgorge 
 travellers. In this lull of the hurrying ants, taxis and 
 omnibuses were few, and wide wet expanses of as- 
 phalt visible ; and there, on one of those islands that 
 make a refuge for street crossers during the crowded 
 hours, stood a tall American soldier. My plans had 
 been for a little diary and a great deal of bed, but I 
 changed them, and walked over to the island. 
 
 "Can you guess my nationality in this light f" 
 said I. 
 
 His teeth were visible during the smile that began 
 his answer. 
 
 "There are parts of Paris that are livelier than 
 this, ' ' I continued. 
 
 "I'm from Kansas, but I've found that out," he 
 returned. ' ' Oh, yes ; there 's a heap doing here when 
 a fellow feels like doing it." 
 
 ' ' Don 't you ever feel like that I ' ' 
 
 "Oh, yes, sometimes. I've been around this city 
 some. It's worth seeing, day and night." 
 
 "It certainly is," I agreed. 
 
 "I guess this isn't your first visit," said he. 
 
 "I came here when I was twelve and I've been 
 lucky enough to come again, more than once. I lived 
 here once for more than a year. Of course I trav- 
 elled, too, during that time." 
 
 ; Been in other parts of Europe, too?" he asked. 
 
 <<-
 
 KANSAS ON AN ISLAND 99 
 
 "Several. But I'm American, you know, first, 
 last, and all the time. ,, 
 
 He was thoughtful for a moment. ' ' Travel would 
 make me more American all the time. ' ' 
 
 "Then you're as anxious to get home as all the 
 others are?" 
 
 "Oh, I'll be glad to get home. But there's some 
 been over here longer than I have, and it's only fair 
 their turn should come first." 
 
 He shifted forth and back slowly from one foot to 
 another, his head two or three inches taller than mine. 
 
 "If I am keeping you " I said. 
 
 "Oh, no, I'm on duty here for a while yet." 
 
 He was of the American Military Police, and he 
 stood here during certain of the night hours for the 
 benefit of such American soldiers as might need 
 either direction or discipline. Here was Kansas 
 upon an island in the Place du Havre, policing New 
 Jersey and Michigan and California and all the rest 
 of us ! Never throughout this whole journey did my 
 mind adjust itself to this stirring of America into the 
 sour broth of Europe. 
 
 "I often wonder how my own town would rub its 
 eyes if it saw a French soldier policing French 
 soldiers in the middle of the street." 
 
 "Well," he answered judicially, "I know my town 
 would quit after the first rub or two, and start jacking 
 up the prices, same as the French have. You from 
 New York?" 
 
 "Oh, no. New York never rubs its eyes at any- 
 thing. I 'm from Philadelphia. ' ' 
 
 "H'm. Newton is my town. Newton, Kansas." 
 
 Nothing could be plainer in the tone of this an- 
 nouncement than his quiet and permanent satisfac-
 
 100 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 tion with Newton, Kansas. If the staple product of 
 that town was Americans like this, I hoped that its 
 population would double each year. In his observ- 
 ant, poised self-reliance, he justified our whole 
 theory. And all of six-foot-one. 
 
 "So you think jacking up the prices is not a 
 monopoly of the French?" I asked. 
 
 "It's human nature," he stated. Patience and 
 toleration pervaded his voice. 
 
 "Where we were lately " 
 
 He was interrupted. A night-faring doughboy had 
 come up, and asked him some question. He walked a 
 few steps with the inquirer to the other side of the 
 island, and there evidently gave him some detailed 
 directions, pointing once or twice with a slow and 
 most graceful gesture. But this had not diverted his 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Where we were lately," he resumed — "have 
 you ever tasted French champagne made for our 
 express benefit?" 
 
 "I don't think so. Not over here in France, any- 
 how. ' ' 
 
 "Well, don't you do it." He gave me this piece 
 of advice after a hair's breadth of hesitation and a 
 puzzled glance, for which I could not account. "I 
 haven't had a very wide experience in champagne 
 myself, ' ' he continued. i ' But you knew this was put 
 up for Americans just after your first swallow of it. 
 No, I'm wrong: just before." Again I caught the 
 gleam of his teeth as he smiled before he proceeded. 
 "They had the two flags crossed on the label. Ours 
 and theirs, you understand, most affectionate. Some 
 Portuguese were there, too. Well, when a Portuguese 
 called for a bottle, they charged him seven francs.
 
 KANSAS ON AN ISLAND 101 
 
 Americans were charged thirty-five. The captain 
 closed np the shop when he found that out. Down 
 came the price to the Portuguese level.' ' 
 
 "The French are different from us," I said. 
 
 1 ' Different ! Yes, we all have found that out. The 
 captain was going to drain a cesspool and put it in 
 some other place more sanitary. The French farmer 
 was very hot at the captain and claimed ten thousand 
 francs damages for his manure pile. The French are 
 certainly different, and they think we are certainly 
 different, and I think that the less we see of each 
 other the better we 're liable to like each other. The 
 Lafayette affair was a good while ago, and I'm not as 
 grateful to him as I was before I met his posterity." 
 
 "But you certainly think the two nations should be 
 friends ! " I exclaimed in a pressing manner. ' ' They 
 don't expect you to pay the first price they ask. 
 They're used to bargaining. It's part of the game 
 with them. ' ' 
 
 "We play poker in Kansas, but we're not used to 
 playing it for a hen's egg with old ladies in caps. 
 Oh, I know! We slapped our money down first go 
 and it was bigger money than they'd ever seen, and 
 they hadn't been seeing much anyhow for four years. 
 We all go down when temptation's strong enough, 
 and I don 't hold that against them. ' ' 
 
 "Why hold anything against them?" 
 
 He reflected. "I don't know as I do. Not more 'n 
 I hold against everybody — including myself!" He 
 gave a joyous chuckle at this. 
 
 A couple of American soldiers passed near with a 
 couple of girls. The girls were keeping very close 
 indeed to the soldiers. The young men did not have 
 the look of being entirely captivated by the com-
 
 102 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 panions whom they had secured — or who had secured 
 them. My Kansas friend followed them for a 
 moment with his eye, which then once more rested, 
 oddly interrogative, upon me. 
 
 "Let me tell you," I said, "something you may not 
 have thought of — though you have thought of more 
 things than any enlisted man I 've yet talked to — and 
 I've done quite a little preaching to them in this 
 city." 
 
 A change, as of resignation, passed over his figure ; 
 it seemed to settle. 
 
 "Well, preaching can be good," he said. "I'll 
 stay." 
 
 "Here's my sermon to you. I've given it to a lot 
 of others — and they've listened. For hundreds of 
 years these French have had to be fighting their 
 neighbors and paying taxes to meet it. We've had 
 no neighbors to fight. We've only had five wars 
 before this, and free farms for everybody, genera- 
 tion after generation. No such thing in France. 
 They've had to look close at their pennies, while 
 we've been throwing gold pieces to western bar-tend- 
 ers for a drink — and never missing it. But that's 
 not all. The fathers of these same French who are 
 overcharging you saw the Prussians overrun their 
 homes, and rout their armies, and capture their 
 emperor, and make them pay the bill. It was a big 
 bill. Your father never knew the experience of 
 having to dive down into his jeans to help pay an 
 indemnity to a foreign conqueror. That was less 
 than fifty years ago. The old ladies in caps you 
 mention were young wives then, and they saw their 
 men go to the front, and didn't always see them come 
 back. And they had to save and save their coppers
 
 KANSAS ON AN ISLAND 103 
 
 and their poor little pieces of silver to meet that huge 
 bill of Germany's. That's what they were doing 
 while we were spreading westward to free farms at 
 our ease. If our fathers had known the bitter experi- 
 ence of these French, don't you think it likely they 
 would have taught their children to close their hands 
 over coin rather than to open them, and don't you 
 think the children would be interested in charging as 
 high for an egg as anybody was fool enough to be 
 willing to pay ? ' ' 
 
 He had watched me very steadily while I spoke, 
 and, as seemed his custom, waited before answering. 
 
 "You have pointed out another way to look at it. 
 History is something I don't know much about. I 
 don't know, if I had known, that I'd have put their 
 history alongside of ours and drawn conclusions that 
 way. Yes, sir, I shouldn't wonder if that was so." 
 He indulged himself with a moment of rumination. 
 "I'll mention that. I have talked to some of the boys 
 who are sore at the prices." 
 
 "In 1780 the French were sore at ours," said I. 
 "You spoke about Lafayette just now?" 
 
 "Well, I learned about him at school. Couldn't tell 
 you the story of his life, though." 
 
 "Neither could I. There were several well-known 
 Frenchmen came over to help us. Eochambeau, and a 
 young fellow named de Fersen. He wrote home about 
 us, and he said — well, it will sound quite familiar 
 to you. He said almost exactly these words: 'They 
 fleece us pitilessly, the price of everything is exorbit- 
 ant.' And then he went on to say that in our 
 dealings with the French we treated them more like 
 enemies than friends. That our cupidity was un- 
 equalled ; money was our god. There was more that
 
 104 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 he said. He had met some very fine people, quite a 
 number of them, but he thought the people in general 
 were a set of robbers. Now, you see, this young 
 Frenchman had come over to help Washington win 
 the war." 
 
 "Do you mind saying those first words over 
 again?" said Kansas. 
 
 "About fleecing us?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " 'They fleece us pitilessly, the price of everything 
 is exorbitant. ' " 
 
 "Thank you, I'll tell that to the boys. It sounds 
 natural. ' ' 
 
 His duty had caused him to turn and inspect the 
 Place du Havre, lest his services or his authority 
 should be needed. More people were beginning to 
 pass and cross, a more crowded hour had just set in. 
 He found nothing, however, to divert his attention. 
 He turned back to me and took it up. 
 
 "But I don't need any points for myself. Before 
 I came over here I was a year on the Mexican border. 
 The El Paso barbers didn't sit down on any prices 
 for us soldiers. Nobody did, barber or grocer or 
 tobacco shop or anybody. Let a soldier walk in any 
 place and the prices went up like — like putting your 
 thermometer out in that Rio Grande sun. Well, if 
 my own people do that to me, my own people," he 
 repeated with emphasis, "what call have I to blame 
 these French? Blame them for that, I mean. For 
 I do say that no American that I ever saw to know 
 would charge his rescuers rent for the trenches they 
 rescued him in." 
 
 1 i They charged themselves, ' ' I said. 
 
 "I don't call that an answer," he retorted.
 
 KANSAS ON AN ISLAND 105 
 
 "Land holdings here are often so small that a 
 trench cuts a big slice of what was available for crops. 
 The farmer had to raise food for France. France 
 paid him damages to help him carry on." 
 
 "And we got shot to help France carry on." 
 
 "I don't say it wasn't clumsy." 
 
 "Clumsy!" he chuckled. "I've another word 
 for it." 
 
 "Listen! German propaganda twisted another fact 
 so as to hurt France with us. The heavy timber 
 and iron field revetments and all the tools and 
 material to build them cost money. It's like fixtures 
 in a house. Any regiment moving into a trench that 
 another regiment was vacating signed rough inven- 
 tories of trench stores they were taking over. No 
 money passed between English regiments, it was 
 more for discipline, but money did pass between us 
 and the French. That was made to look like rent by 
 German propaganda. ' ' 
 
 "All right. Any more?" 
 
 "Yes. Wait for all the facts before you jump. 
 English regiments have drunk from French wells. 
 The next regiments that marched by found the pump 
 handles wrenched off and had to pay for water. It 
 didn't look well to thirsty men. But French wells 
 are often shallow. They would have been drained 
 dry, and it was all the water the peasants had. ' ' 
 
 "Say, brother, you know these French more than 
 I have had a chance to. What do you make of 
 them?" 
 
 "Look at this splendid city of theirs," I replied. 
 "Look at the fight they put up." 
 
 "Yes, that's all so. Yes. But say, take the way 
 they lie. Why, they don't lie on the American plan
 
 106 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 at all. We don't lie just to be pleasant. Got to have 
 a stronger reason. And morals. Why, decent girls 
 are not allowed to go for a walk with a young man. 
 Why, boys come back from the leave areas and tell 
 me that French parents were astonished that their 
 daughters could be trusted alone with us. ' ' 
 
 "Europe is different," I said. "But we might 
 learn a lot of good things from the French. ' ' 
 
 1 'Well, give me America. I Ve heard what you say 
 several times. A man stood here the other night, 
 and told me what a splendid thing it was going to be 
 for America to be filled with young men bringing 
 home such a heap of knowledge they never could have 
 got at home. Well, America will not be filled. 
 Those who have seen the leave areas are going to 
 think France is a better country than those who never 
 saw any of it but the war regions. Of course that's 
 so. But you have got to be educated before you can 
 get education — the foreign kind that he meant. 
 About the only education that most of the boys will 
 take home is more varieties of 
 
 He stopped himself short, and for the third time I 
 was aware of his interrogative glance at me. I had 
 known what he was about to say well enough. He 
 had decided, for some reason that his glance repre- 
 sented but did not disclose, not to say it. I decided 
 to say it. While I was meditating just how, for I 
 wished to be neither pharisaical on the one hand 
 nor coarse on the other, meditation was spared me 
 and a spontaneous way provided. Paris was coming 
 alive again for its midnight existence. The theatres 
 were out, late suburban trains were ready in St. 
 Lazare, the Metro exits were spouting passengers 
 into the Place du Havre. The number of our dough-
 
 KANSAS ON AN ISLAND 107 
 
 boys on pleasure bent increased, they were passing by 
 in couples and fours, the bloom of the New World 
 still rich and unworn upon their young faces, and 
 about their buoyant figures — and hanging upon their 
 arms with practised clutch, the Old World in a skirt. 
 No bloom left there, without or within. Female, but 
 feminine no longer. The tragic moulting of a 
 wounded bird of prey. 
 
 1 'See them!" I murmured aloud, after one couple 
 that had crossed close on the island and gone upon 
 their way. 
 
 "What's that?" inquired the member of the 
 military police. 
 
 "Did you notice him?" I asked. "Did you notice 
 her?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "I would have no sermon for him," I continued. 
 "None for any of them. They're human. And 
 away from home. But I'd like to say, 'Won't you 
 stop a minute? Won't you just stop and look at her 
 for one minute?' " 
 
 "They couldn't see them," returned the soldier — 
 "not before morning. I've been blind myself at this 
 time of night. ' ' He looked me up and down with a 
 new eye, and it was in a new voice that he said: 
 "Why, I figured you were one of those social-evil 
 guys taking longer than usual to reach your point." 
 I knew you were long-suffering," I returned; 
 
 but I didn 't know how long. ' ' 
 
 Oh, they mean well, they mean well. Better than 
 they get treated. But you know history — natural 
 history, too." 
 
 I took out my watch. "I intended to be in bed an 
 hour ago," I said. 
 
 i <
 
 108 NEIGHBOKS HENCEFOKTH 
 
 He held out his hand. "Come round again when 
 I'm here." 
 
 Yes, decidedly I wished great increase to the popu- 
 lation of Newton, Kansas, were he of its daily breed. 
 If the plain people were everywhere such as he, faith 
 in them would be more than justified. Like the 
 blond Tommy at Albert, he had also his philosophy, 
 attained and steady: less highly wrought than the 
 Tommy's, because Kansas is less highly wrought 
 than London. But it would serve. France did not 
 appeal to him. He had been made in America. 
 That set limits to his grasp of Europe. These 
 both barred his benefiting and shielded his suf- 
 fering from the complexities of the ancient Latin 
 race. He would have use neither for their exquisite 
 mental subtlety, nor their exquisite moral duplicity. 
 I hoped that he might go home as soon as was fair 
 to our Allies ; I hoped that all our doughboys might. 
 He was shrewdly correct in his judgment that most of 
 them would extend the area of their permanent 
 knowledge by but little except chromatic sensuality. 
 In the seething, iridescent ant-hill that Paris was in 
 the spring of 1919, they were truly out of the picture, 
 and home was the right place for them. Their work 
 was over. They had fought a good fight when neces- 
 sary, they had been charming with children, and 
 respectful to decent women between whiles. In my 
 opinion the New World had no apologies whatever to 
 offer the Old. Such were some of my thoughts as I 
 went to bed and, as I recalled the slight jar dealt me 
 at the end of each conversation that I had held this 
 night, the last strand of coherence which crossed my 
 mind before sleep overtook me was, ' ' Can I be getting 
 to look like a philanthropist?"
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE POILU 
 
 Very much do I wish that it had come in my way 
 to see and to speak with the French poilu at length 
 and at leisure, as it had been my luck to do with the 
 British Tommy and the American doughboy. More 
 talk with the Tommy would have enabled me to say 
 with a measure of certainty more about him and his 
 wonderful character: that hour at Albert left me 
 with the never-to-be-granted wish that I might then 
 and there have had days in his friendly company 
 under conditions so favoring to intimacy. A 
 glimpse, even slighter, of the poilu which I had upon 
 the morning after my confidences exchanged with my 
 fellow-countryman in the Place du Havre, also left 
 me regretful that it was so brief. Something I had 
 taken with me and something I had gathered of 
 understanding about the American soldier ; and in the 
 same way, something, though less, of the British; of 
 the French but very little at first-hand, and even this 
 to be set down here with diffidence; of the Italian, 
 nothing whatever at first-hand. Of him I can only 
 repeat what everybody knows — that he is of the land 
 which from centuries before Julius Cassar down 
 through Dante, Columbus, Michelangelo, Palestrina, 
 Galileo, to Marconi, has produced more genius 
 than any other two countries of the world put 
 together; that his race continues a noble, beautiful, 
 
 109
 
 110 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 adequate race ; that he fought with fierce and gallant 
 bravery on the steep sides of mountains ; and that his 
 country is doing better today than some of her Allies. 
 From politicians and newspapers it is that hindrance 
 to true international understanding chiefly comes — 
 the politician can utter a few public sentences that 
 will estrange two peoples, one editor can write a 
 paragraph which will have the same effect. 
 
 The poilu that I saw for a while this next morning 
 got into our car soon after it had passed the Eastern 
 Railway station and out of the Pantin gate. He 
 stood by the roadside, made us a sign, and asked for 
 a lift as far as Claye. Claye, interesting because the 
 Huns got as close to Paris as this in 1914, was not 
 very far, little more than half-way to Meaux, and this 
 afforded but a brief chance to lead the poilu to any 
 opening of his nature. Could I have said to him, 
 1 'How beautiful is the corner of your village where 
 the old bridge crosses the river!" or any other word 
 of intimate admiration for his petit pays, his inch of 
 France, where grew his ancestral roots, that would 
 have gone at once all the way to his heart. A 
 Frenchman's patriotism is very concrete. He loves 
 with passion his own place, his own acre, his little 
 spadeful of France. He wishes to live and if possible 
 to die on the actual piece of earth which has been 
 tilled by his forefathers, tilled by himself, whereon 
 centuries of his kin have quickened, lived, and passed. 
 We Americans do not fold our tents like the Arab and 
 as silently steal away, but we are the latest version 
 of the nomad. We transfer our never-rooted lives 
 from Fort Worth to Spokane, or from Albany to San 
 Diego, about as readily as we cross the street. We 
 have emptied the word "home" of all its hoarded
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE POILU 111 
 
 meaning and sanctity. Against whatever benefits 
 this may bring, it has wrought incalculable harm to 
 the national soul. I had been no nearer the poilu's 
 country than the line between Lyons and Modane — 
 he was from near Grenoble — and the best I could do 
 by way of establishing some bond between us was 
 to praise the renown of Grenoble as a seat of learn- 
 ing and exclaim: 
 
 "How beautiful are the mountains of Dauphine!" 
 
 "Then monsieur knows them?" he responded at 
 once — and became less shy, or reserved, or respectful, 
 or whatever it was that his own nature and the 
 presence of an American captain who was with us 
 caused this enlisted man to be. He was going back 
 to them, his mountains. In all the little that he said, 
 the emotion of return brooded behind his words. He 
 was existing to go back; that was it. Going back and 
 going on — these were his two vital motives. We have 
 only one of them — going on. The soldier on the 
 island might yearn for Newton, Kansas; the other 
 fellow, the one from Danbury, had said that once back 
 there, ' ' never again. ' ' But if the one could better his 
 lot by moving from Newton to the apple country of 
 Oregon, and the other by leaving Danbury for the 
 plum belt in California, or the oil belt in Texas, or any 
 other belt where material profit beckoned, why the 
 betting is at least ninety-nine to one that the lure of 
 betterment would snap the tie of home and that they 
 would go in a minute. Not so was it with this 
 Frenchman. To him his petit pays was forever 
 better than any betterment. 
 
 "Then monsieur knows them?" 
 
 In those four wistful words was not only a longing 
 for the sight of his mountains, but a love of their
 
 112 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 looks. You will remember the words of the Tommy 
 at Albert: "The French 'ave a great idea of the 
 beautiful, and a very poor one of sanitytion. ' ' Kan- 
 sas on the island could not have said just that. He 
 was not ripe enough for that particular kind of gener- 
 alization. He was quite capable of appraising and 
 loathing the villainous plumbing and the villainous 
 absence of plumbing in France ; but there he stopped. 
 Westminster Abbey — or a thousand other sights — 
 had made ready the Tommy's natural ready eye to see 
 the excellences of French architecture. No West- 
 minster Abbeys are in Kansas so far. Once a chauf- 
 feur, whom I had engaged at Reims for a long jour- 
 ney and informed that we should sleep at Orleans the 
 next night, said immediately : 
 
 ' ' Then I shall see if their statue of Joan of Arc is 
 as good a one as ours. ' ' 
 
 Imagine a chauffeur whom you were engaging in 
 Philadelphia to go to Chicago, saying immediately : 
 
 "Then I shall see if St. Gaudens' Lincoln beats 
 our statue in Fairmount Park. ' ' 
 
 A sense of beauty and of art, and a daily-bread use 
 of beauty and art — that is one gift of the European 
 continent to its plain people, which Kansas cannot 
 give, nor Massachusetts, nor any state in our New 
 World. In talking with any Frenchman, high or low, 
 it will help our understanding of him to remember 
 this. It will partially, though not totally, explain 
 that fourth dimension of his character which answers 
 to nothing in ours. Art, symmetry, has a hand 
 in almost all he thinks and does, including his 
 immoralities. 
 
 The poilu, then, was not like Kansas on the island, 
 nor yet was he like the Tommy at Albert, who had
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE POILU 113 
 
 said that he believed he had sentiment, but that this 
 would take the shape of keeping him away from, 
 rather than taking him back to, a home in ruins. 
 There he was of closer kin to Kansas than to the 
 poilu. His home near Grenoble was not in ruins, but 
 had it been so, this would have made no difference to 
 him, I am perfectly sure ; no more than it had made 
 to the lady who had come back from Nevers to see if 
 she could find her house beneath the rubbish piles of 
 Noyon; nor to the woman with the gash who had 
 returned to a half annihilated estaminet in a wholly 
 annihilated region, and had given me a loaf of bread, 
 and had talked cheerfully of her future. Going bach 
 and going on: in her also these had been the two vital 
 motives. Through these I connected her with the 
 Noyon lady, with this poilu, and with one other who 
 had been a poilu. The cheerful and communicative 
 valet at my hotel in Paris, he who had been buried for 
 a day and three times wounded, who told me that I 
 should visit the South where they were more amiable 
 than in Paris — he was looking forward to taking up 
 heavier work at Toulouse, his home, as soon as he 
 should be well enough. Going back and going on! 
 It was the unspoken watchword of the people of 
 France. 
 
 The poilu was a grave personality, of few words, 
 unlike the valet from Toulouse, who was of many 
 words. Both were peasants, and both somewhere 
 along in their thirties, I should say. I don't know 
 whether their taciturnity and loquacity were individ- 
 ual or of race, and it matters nothing. Various races 
 inhabit the different parts of France, some silent, 
 some not at all so, some more open-handed, some 
 less ; and they vary in their dialects as widely as they
 
 114 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 do in their characteristics — as widely as a citizen of 
 Vermont from a citizen of Louisiana. It is the traits 
 they all hold in common that mean France, that have 
 built her thought, her art, her literature, her law, her 
 religion ; it is these, too, which have made her spring 
 from the ashes of herself under which she with the 
 rest of the world believed she was expiring, and be- 
 come, far more truly than the Prussian who coined 
 the phrase, a figure in shining armor ; and it is these 
 traits finally which, in the great emergency of peace, 
 will prevent the hideous wound which Germany dealt 
 her from being a mortal wound. Through their spir- 
 itual passion for the earth of France, backed by their 
 power of infinite thrift, her people will save her, 
 unless prevented by the tragedy of errors which 
 began with the Armistice and has been played by the 
 Allies ever since. 
 
 At his little place near Grenoble, the poilu had car- 
 ried on some sort of trade in leather before he took 
 up arms, and this he was planning to resume. In his 
 blood flowed the whole education of his forefathers' 
 deep-rooted and coherent past, and to this had been 
 added the education of the war. I told him what of 
 his wounded land I had been visiting, and what of it 
 I was now upon my way to visit. All his response 
 was, "Oui, monsieur," but this was no mere dull 
 assent. It was part of the same pattern conveyed by 
 the quiet words of the lady at Noyon, "Others have 
 gone further": understanding acceptance of irrep- 
 arable loss and outrage, understanding resolve that 
 the dead past must not kill the living present, or the 
 future. Such was, in its depths, the French state of 
 spirit as I found it and felt it everywhere ; a state as 
 noble and adequate for the emergency of peace as
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE POILU 115 
 
 their state of spirit in war-time had been noble and 
 adequate for that emergency. 
 
 At Claye we drew up for the poilu to get out ; and 
 there he thanked us and went his way, leaving me 
 with increased perception of his race. The threads 
 of this perception, gathered — some of them — forty 
 years ago and along the years since, but gathered 
 never so attentively as now in the stress of what had 
 befallen the world and what the world was going to 
 do about it, these threads spun a rich texture of 
 reassurance. In that damp street leading to the 
 cathedral at Amiens, my none too cock-sure opti- 
 mism had been chilled to the bone. So had it been 
 chilled at times along the roads of desolation, and 
 was to be again, along more such roads. But always 
 it was to be warmed up by the rich texture of reas- 
 surance. The twin supports of our civilization were 
 England and France, and neither was likely to fall. 
 You could kill Frenchmen by the million, French 
 houses by the hundred thousand, French fields by the 
 square mile, you could disintegrate machinery and 
 drown mines and amputate orchards; France her- 
 self you could not kill : not at any rate by the atroci- 
 ties of war, and probably not even by the imbecili- 
 ties of peace. Reassurance spun a vision of many 
 poilus returning all over France to their little trades 
 in leather, their little tillage of the vine, to all their 
 little, careful industries; and many women resur- 
 recting the little commerce of their estaminets, turn- 
 ing their deft, courageous hands to many kinds of 
 resurrection; and everybody practising that mas- 
 terly thrift which leads to well-being, just as surely 
 as our American wastefulness leads away from it.
 
 XI 
 
 TRANSFUSION FROM AMERICA 
 
 I regretted that Claye should have come so soon 
 and cut me off from further contact with the poilu; 
 and yet perhaps I had got as much of him as there 
 was, at least for my purposes of observation. His 
 more personal opinions and adventures, had he dur- 
 ing the course of the day become moved to impart 
 them, might or might not have been worth hearing. 
 On the other hand, the coming hours would have 
 been more than likely to shut him up tight. We were 
 headed for the fields where our own soldiers had 
 revealed their quality, and by so doing had also 
 revealed to Foch that he now held in his hand every- 
 thing which he needed for victory. The cup of the 
 Allies' vitality, drained horribly and repeatedly, and 
 repeatedly filled during the years that we were not 
 there, when we did come had been filled the last few 
 inches that it lacked, had been filled, indeed, over 
 the brim. It could have been re-filled, too, as often 
 as needed. America, by the time of the Germans' 
 Aisne offensive, was at last prepared. After those 
 unforgettable months of extravagant and heart- 
 breaking delay and incompetence, America was ready 
 to pour millions after millions into Europe. She 
 was ready to erupt armies on a scale more gigantic 
 than history had ever witnessed. It smote the Prus- 
 sian like the tolling of a knell. He did his best to lie 
 to his duped and docile Germany, to belittle our 
 
 116
 
 TRANSFUSION FROM AMERICA 117 
 
 preparation. But in his heart he knew better, and 
 upon his hopes the lights burned blue and went out. 
 More, I believe, than the good blows we struck, did 
 the knowledge that we were there deaden the Hun 
 and quicken the Allies. Our apparition at the Marne 
 was like an instant change of weather. The French 
 moral came up visibly, like a parched crop beneath 
 the rain. 
 
 " Where are you going?" asked the jaded poilus 
 of our jaunty doughboys, as they passed each other, 
 the ones coming back exhausted, to rest, the others 
 going forward, fresh and untested, to fight. 
 
 ''We're going to stop the Huns," was the cheerful 
 reply. 
 
 "You're going to hell," retorted the poilus. 
 
 Do any of them remember it now, I wonder, and 
 the day on which they said it? Orders for the evacua- 
 tion of Paris were printed and ready. 
 
 Yes, we were on our way eastward through Meaux, 
 and up the Marne, and across the Marne at Trilport, 
 and so through La Ferte-sous-Jouarre to Chateau- 
 Thierry. Name after name vibrated for me with 
 memories both personal and patriotic. Personal, be- 
 cause I had seen this river and these fields and woods 
 at the last moment of their and my unsuspecting 
 innocence. I had enjoyed them in the company of 
 two beloved friends, both dead before the war ended. 
 On July 1st, 1914, we had passed through this exact 
 region, loving its fertile tranquillity. On that day we 
 had seen Reims, Laon, Soissons ; and looked through 
 beautiful gates of country places, sequestered, em- 
 bowered; had laughed as we went along the roads 
 at certain names on sign-posts right and left — Lizy,
 
 118 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Billy, Charly, Missy, Silly; had laughed more at 
 going to the wrong La Ferte in search of the Hotel 
 de l'Epee — La Ferte Milon; — and had after some 
 thirty or forty kilometres of further tranquil loveli- 
 ness, successfully found a delicious omelet and a 
 desirable bed at the Hotel de l'Epee in the right La 
 Ferte. Much ruin now scarred La Ferte-sous-Juarre. 
 We did not pass the Hotel de l'Epee. Some one 
 during the war sent me a photograph of the street, 
 showing the hotel portal and a swollen dead horse 
 lying in front of it. 
 
 We were nearing now the very site and ground 
 of the second battle of the Marne, where the New 
 World saved the Old World and where at the first 
 battle of the Marne, September 6th-12th, 1914, the 
 Old World had saved the New. On May the 27th, 
 1918, the mailed fist was lifted for what proved its 
 last blow. In March it came near to striking Amiens 
 down. On a day during those weeks when the Hun 
 was sweeping westward, the British soldiers had 
 been told by their general that they were fighting 
 with their backs to the wall. Russia had gone to 
 the perdition that she is still in. 
 
 "It is a very black hour," said a lady to me at 
 dinner in Boston, during that time. 
 
 "The darkest hour is before the dawn," was all 
 that I could find to reply. 
 
 Hope was very faint all over the Allied World. 
 News spread daily at which the heart stood still. 
 
 We came to that point where you do not speak of 
 what you and all whom you meet are thinking. I 
 remember trying to turn my mind away from what 
 June seemed likely to bring us. One shrank from 
 the thought of June; and through June the deadly
 
 TRANSFUSION FROM AMERICA 119 
 
 footsteps stalked nearer and nearer. Indeed, hope 
 was very faint. The eye of the Hun was looking at 
 Paris. Our general gave Foch every man he could. 
 The 3rd Division, new-trained to war, was brought 
 in haste to the Marne. Part of it, the motorized 
 machine-gun battalion, able to make greater haste, 
 came first. On June 4th, at the bridgehead oppo- 
 site Chateau-Thierry, it was< successful. A French 
 ingenieur had blown up the first part of the bridge, 
 but the Germans could still cross, and our boys fin- 
 ished the work. From Montdidier the 2nd Division 
 followed, transported by every quick vehicle avail- 
 able to help block the Paris road. It made good. 
 On June 3rd it took Bouresches from the enemy and 
 held his best Guards off, on June 26th Belleau Wood 
 followed. In their race for honor those glorious 
 Marines, with the equally glorious brigade of Regu- 
 lars under General Lewis, struck the word "stop" 
 from their dictionary, fighting forward ceaselessly 
 until July 10th. Before this 2nd Division was re- 
 lieved it had taken Vaux. Half of our Second Corps 
 was brought from the British area, and two of the 
 five divisions were added to those already standing 
 between the enemy and Paris. 
 
 We at home were too far away to feel clearly the 
 significance of these bright preludes during June, 
 and our hope did not yet revive. The dark hour 
 still spread over us. But all the while our troops 
 were pouring thicker and thicker into Europe, and 
 those in command there knew what this meant; knew 
 that they had an endless stream of young blood to 
 use — young blood which, if untried, was also untired. 
 That was the great fundamental magic of the touch 
 our hand laid upon the Allies ; the touch of freshness
 
 120 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 upon weariness. In mid-July parts of the 42nd Di- 
 vision, facing the Germans east of Reims, blocked 
 them there, while four companies of the 28th Divi- 
 sion on the right flank of this offensive opposed the 
 on-coming invaders. Look at the map of the Marne 
 between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans. That is 
 where the invaders succeeded in crossing the river — 
 a farthest fling or splash of the tide rising to engulf 
 Paris, a sort of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg. Just 
 east of Chateau-Thierry, the very first name on the 
 south bank of the stream is Chierry. From this 
 little spot run a finger up the river and round its 
 bend there to Mezy, and then beyond, opposite Jaul- 
 gonne. Between these three little places it was that 
 the 3rd Division held the south bank of the Marne. 
 The ponderous power of the advancing Hun was 
 pressed and driven against this line; — his infantry 
 in formidable number, supported by artillery and 
 screened by smoke. Here one regiment of that 3rd 
 Division, though flanked on both wings by Huns who 
 had got over, stopped them in front. These Ameri- 
 cans met attacks from three directions, tangled up 
 two German divisions, and took six hundred pris- 
 oners. This was a day that had to be saved; they 
 saved it with their sweat, with their blood, with their 
 death. Then in the weeks following, our soldiers 
 turned to spirits of wild battle, flung clothes off, 
 gleamed among the hills, attacked, pursued, beat flat 
 the Huns like rattlesnakes. "The Terribles" is the 
 name that a French officer gave our 32nd Division, 
 as he watched it taking Juvigny. 
 
 This Aisne offensive, launched by the Germans 
 on the 27th of May, by mid- July bulged deeply into 
 the invaded ground. It was the third pocket dug
 
 TRANSFUSION FROM AMERICA 121 
 
 in the Allies ' front by Ludendorff that spring. First 
 had come the centre pocket of the Somme, dug to 
 Amiens in March and April; next the right flank 
 pocket of the Lys, dng to the north in April, towards 
 Calais ; and now this last, the beginning of the end, 
 at the Marne, dug towards Paris. The change came 
 between July 15th, when the 42nd, 28th, and 3rd 
 Divisions were engaged, and July 20th. After that 
 while the 3rd Division was pushing the enemy away 
 from the Marne, and he was falling back beyond the 
 Chateau-Thierry-Soissons road before the attack of 
 the 1st Corps; and while the 42nd Division was 
 fighting through the Foret-de-Fere on its way to the 
 Ourcq ; — in fact, during the last ten days of July and 
 first days of August that saw these divisions of ours 
 help the French crowd the enemy back from their 
 bulge, back from the Marne to the Vesle and the 
 Aisne, the change before the dawn grew into the 
 dawn itself. 
 
 In celebrating, and most fitly celebrating our own 
 part in this, let us take great care lest we forget that 
 we did not do it alone. It is such forgetting that has 
 done us injury in the hearts of the English and 
 French. Books have been written, mere vulgar yelps 
 of brag, from which you might think that we alone 
 had been there at that second battle of the Marne. 
 The French had six or seven divisions to our five 
 during the fifteen days when the Hun armies of von 
 Mudra and von Boehm were squeezed out of their 
 Marne pocket. 
 
 For me, July the 18th will always seem the day 
 when the change passed like a spell over our coun- 
 try. That is the day, too, when, as I see it, the 
 decisive operation in moral surgery took place. In
 
 122 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 January, in a great hospital near Washington, I had 
 sat listening to wounded officers in bed tell of that 
 day, and of the night of rain preceding it. Some of 
 them would never be whole again, and they knew it. 
 All were young and none complained. Two enlisted 
 men complained to me out of all that I saw — and 
 these two had never been to France. 
 
 "We have friends in Chicago," said one of the 
 officers, jokingly of himself and a comrade in the 
 next bed. "We are going to get two street corners. 
 I'm to sell papers, and he'll sell shoestrings and 
 pencils. ' ' 
 
 As we played cards, or in other ways killed time, 
 they told me of the road they came through the 
 Foret-de-Villers-Cotterets ; of the great rain and 
 thunder; of the mud; of the five parallel tides of 
 traffic going one way or the other along the road ; of 
 the heavy trucks lurching and sticking in the slanted, 
 mushy sides of the road; of the vast silence before 
 the guns opened, when the rain had ceased and its 
 drops from the leaves sounded in the forest. 
 
 In company with chosen French divisions and the 
 splendid Black Watch (for in those first days of our 
 initiation it was not yet known by any one how well 
 we were going to fight) our 1st and 2nd Divisions 
 were picked out for the work of the Soissons drive. 
 Then through the five days that we know, the 1st 
 Division went on, not to hell, but through it, to the 
 heights above Soissons and the village of Berzy-le- 
 Sec, which it took. The 2nd Division, quick at its 
 work, in two days was in front of Tigny. Together 
 they had captured 7,000 prisoners and more than 100 
 pieces of artillery. Meanwhile, our 26th Division, 
 with the 167th French Division, formed a pivot be-
 
 TEANSFUSION FROM AMERICA 123 
 
 tween Chateau-Thierry and Bouresches, until the 
 crooked had been made straight in the battle-line 
 farther towards Soissons. Then they became the 
 marching right flank of a greatly stretched-out move- 
 ment, pivoting near Vauxbain, by Soissons, and by 
 the month's end the Huns had been pushed back, and 
 their bulge chopped short. 
 
 And what of the poilus who had said that word 
 about going to hell? They never said it again. At 
 the critical moment, when hope was sinking very low, 
 when Parisians were to be told to pack up and fly, 
 the New World appeared at hope's bedside, and gave 
 to the patient its strong, young, healthy blood. The 
 transfusion was successful. Hope 's ebbing life came 
 back and again flowed strong and steadfast. So 
 immediate was the rebound to convalescence, that 
 the patient has sometimes forgotten how danger- 
 ous the illness was. 
 
 The good deed of our American divisions will glow 
 through the pages of history, and our children in the 
 years to come will say the names of Chateau-Thierry, 
 Soissons, Reims, as we were saying them in our 
 streets through those summer days of 1918. 
 
 Here is the tale of the "Event," of the transfu- 
 sion, told from the mouths of Frenchmen. They 
 called our coming in the "Event" in those days. On 
 the 4th of June while darkness still spread over 
 our world, Clemenceau thus spoke the grim truth 
 aloud: "Exhaustion has set in, enormous with in- 
 credible losses for the English army, and formidable 
 and perilous for the French. Our available forces 
 are spent, but the Americans are coming in for the 
 deciding stroke. ... It remains for the living to 
 carry out the splendid work of the dead." On the
 
 124 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 8th of August General Petain said to his troops: 
 " The invader falls back. His moral totters. Yester- 
 day I told you, 'Abnegation, patience, yonr comrades 
 are coming.' I tell you today, 'Doggedness, bold- 
 ness, and you will force victory.' " Between these 
 two dates the comrades had come, the " Event" had 
 happened, the great transfusion had taken place. 
 Throughout that month of August, transfusion con- 
 tinued; each day 13,000 more Americans set foot 
 upon French soil, and by autumn we numbered al- 
 most two million.
 
 XII 
 
 ludendorff 's pocket 
 
 At La Ferte-sous-Jouarre we left the river, not 
 to see it again until dusk, when we came to it at 
 Dormans through Ville-en-Tardenois from Reims. 
 This was a day between rivers : the Marne, the Ourcq, 
 the Vesle, the Aisne. They have been flowing 
 through great events these many centuries. Great 
 events have been added to them ; soldiers ' feet from 
 Michigan and Pennsylvania and all our states have 
 trodden earth where Charles the Bold and Louis the 
 Eleventh and Joan of Arc walked once. As we went 
 to Belleau Wood I forgot to look at anything for a 
 while. Pride in our Marines who wrenched it from 
 the pick of the German troops, and reminiscence, and 
 surmise, all made such a blend in my thoughts that 
 I recall nothing clearly of what was said, or how 
 the villages looked, or the fields, until we came to 
 Belleau Wood. 
 
 Here we got out and walked the ground over, and 
 listened to the words of the young captain who had 
 been detailed at 37, Eue de Bassano to be our escort. 
 He had fought here himself, and he showed us the 
 positions and told us the course of the action. Fol- 
 lowing where his finger pointed, I looked across a 
 valley from the ridge we stood on to another ridge, 
 where he was saying the enemy had been at a certain 
 stage. We were at the edge of some not very thick 
 groves which stretched along it; below were mead- 
 
 125
 
 126 NEIGHBOBS HENCEFOBTH 
 
 ows, green, and a small brook, and beyond these, 
 up the opposite ridge, more thin groves; and the 
 sun was shining pleasantly. 
 
 "It makes me think of the Huntington Valley a 
 little, ' ' I mused, half aloud. 
 
 "So it does," said the young officer. 
 
 "Then you have seen that country near Philadel- 
 phia V 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Blue flowers were growing about among the 
 thickets where we explored. War had been raging 
 when they last grew here. Spring was now coming 
 fast, had made visible advance since that first day 
 when we had passed the roasted aeroplane in the 
 field and first entered the great silence. But neither 
 spring nor the hand of man had done much yet to 
 cover or remove the traces of war. Among the blue 
 flowers minenwerfer baskets were lying. They were 
 empty of their missiles, and most of the hands that 
 had hurled them were knobs and knuckles of bone 
 now. The dead lay about here so thick in Belleau 
 Wood that they could not be buried. Bits of rotted 
 leather jutted out or lay flat among the flowers, and 
 cartridges unused, quite plentifully, and pieces of 
 firearms. Now and then our officer would pick up 
 one of these objects out of the scrap-basket of the 
 battle, and identify it for us as being American or 
 German. He had had his turn in hospital, and once 
 had gone twenty-eight days without removing his 
 clothes. As we peered and stooped through the 
 thickets, human bones among the new flowers and 
 the old last year's matted leaves would stir and twitch 
 like dead branches, disturbed by our tread. In a 
 pair of old shoes in one muddy place, the bony feet
 
 LUDENDORFF'S POCKET 127 
 
 still stuck, German feet ; our captain knew them by 
 the make of the shoe. 
 
 "It's the young generation at home who ought to 
 know about all this," I exclaimed. "Can the old 
 profit by its meaning? They're trying to forget the 
 war, and Belgium, and everything, already. Just 
 as most adult Germans will die under the influence 
 of forty years of Prussian poison, believing Germany 
 was invaded and fought a war of defence, so most 
 Americans over forty will die drilled in the myth 
 that the United States is a law unto itself, like a 
 comet in space, and can live in a weather of its own 
 unaffected by the storms in the rest of the world. 
 That's an idea which will send us shortly to a back 
 seat, if we don't get rid of it. At least," I concluded, 
 "I can tell the boys at St. Paul's School something 
 about this devastated region." 
 
 "Are you a St. Paul's boy?" said the captain. 
 "I went there too." 
 
 Though I had heard his name, of course, when he 
 had been introduced to us in the Rue de Bassano, 
 this had not then suggested his identity. I asked it 
 now. His father had come from my town, he had 
 gone to my school, I knew most members of his 
 family, one of my particular friends was his favorite 
 aunt. None of these things had made us known to 
 each other. We old St. Paul's boys met first beside 
 a couple of German feet sticking in the mud, in Bel- 
 leau Wood, in the land of the Marne, and the Ourcq, 
 and the Vesle, and the Aisne ; not so far from where 
 Joan of Arc crowned the Dauphin in 1429; not so 
 far from where a synod compelled Abelard to burn 
 his books in 1121 ; not so far, either, from where they 
 had chased Attila and his Huns away in 451. His
 
 128 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Pennsylvania feet had been chasing another Attila 
 and his Hnns away in 1918 ; and here were the feet 
 of a Hun that hadn't been able to run off. 
 
 And so to Chateau-Thierry down the hill, and up 
 the hill through Verdilly, Epieds, Beauvardes, graz- 
 ing the Foret de Fere, through which our 26th Divi- 
 sion, not a year ago, had fought its way to the Ourcq. 
 By that time, July 24th to 27th, those boys had 
 learned the trick of bird-nesting for machine guns. 
 
 "Kamerad!" 
 
 Thus had a German non-com addressed the cap- 
 tain in a wood, just after killing most of his men, 
 and just before perceiving that he himself was going 
 to be sent after them. 
 
 "I thought 'Kamerad' was too easy to say then," 
 explained our captain. By that remark we under- 
 stood the fate of the non-com. 
 
 It is said that our men after Seicheprey, where 
 first they took German prisoners, behaved to them 
 much as they might behave to curiosities, to wild 
 things caught alive when hunting, almost as some- 
 thing to play with. Later, they saw some of their 
 own comrades whom the Germans had captured and 
 sent back with mutilations made in Germany ex- 
 pressly for America. After that they did not play 
 with their prisoners. 
 
 Soon after the Foret de Fere, we came to Fere-en 
 Tardenois, and I began to mark my map with a cross 
 against each place that was in ruins. Today pat- 
 terns of crosses wind over it, east and west and north 
 and south, tracing the kilometres of ruin that we saw 
 beneath the great silence. Once amid all this, and 
 only once that I remember, a train of trucks stand- 
 ing by some litter left by battles, served as a sign
 
 LUDENDORFF'S POCKET 129 
 
 that we were not the only living beings who surveyed 
 this valley of extinction. Smoke rose quietly from 
 the engine, a little stream that must have been the 
 Ourcq, or some tributary, flowed placidly near by. 
 
 I was curious about Laon, and anxious to see that 
 cathedral with my own eyes. Had it suffered? Did 
 it still exist? Soissons had suffered greatly. Our 
 papers had referred to that, but about Laon I had 
 never seen a word in them. It lay north beyond the 
 Chemin des Dames, on a high ridge, above its steep 
 town, visible from a great way off, very defenceless. 
 It had been a Hun headquarters. Fierce fighting 
 had gone on not far from it in the days of the Chemin 
 des Dames, and the Hindenburg Line, when the Huns 
 were retiring. Indeed, fighting had never ceased in 
 this neighborhood. 
 
 Laon was a gem among cathedrals, a little master- 
 piece by itself, touched by the hand of Italy, with a 
 Virgilian charm and grace shining among its ex- 
 quisite aisles. We went on therefore to Laon, after 
 seeing Soissons and the Chemin des Dames near 
 Malmaison. The town was intact, and so, save for 
 one now well-known injury, was the beautiful church. 
 How had it come to escape? 
 
 Before Laon was hurt, save for the one tower, the 
 Germans striding southwestward from Charleroi 
 during the late days of August 1914, took it, and it 
 remained theirs, and became a headquarters. Natu- 
 rally they spared it. Within the new map of a 
 Greater Germany, representing that empire after 
 a German peace, Laon was included. In the fall of 
 1918 the Germans had to abandon the city, and their 
 leave-taking was hasty. They had insufficient time 
 to blow it up, as they had blown up Peronne and its
 
 130 NEIGHBOKS HENCEFORTH 
 
 fellow- victims, and thus retard France's commercial 
 recuperation by one more piece of wanton and scien- 
 tific destruction. But they left agents behind, and 
 bombs and mines, and unluckily for German hopes, 
 the French came into Laon and found the agents 
 with the bombs not as yet set off. On the 13th of 
 October, General Mangin, who through the three pre- 
 ceding days had been crashing forward to the north, 
 first across the Aisne at (Euilly, and next across 
 the Chemin des Dames and the dominating table- 
 land of Craonne into actual sight of Laon, entered 
 that town at half-past three in the afternoon. He 
 was borne up its steep hill by a crowd, not of traitors 
 or agents, but of Frenchmen, the tears of joy on their 
 cheeks, the strains of the Marsellaise upon their lips. 
 The tri-color had been floating from the cathedral 
 since eleven. After four years of exile, the great 
 church with its clustering town at its feet had come 
 back to its own. 
 
 We descended its hill and soon were again out of 
 the zone of life and within the zone of death. 
 Through the forenoon, our journey had been along a 
 part of the bottom and west seam of the pocket which 
 Ludendorff had begun on the 27th of May, 1918, 
 to dig to the Marne, with the mirage of Paris in his 
 eyes. Now for a while we followed the east seam 
 of the pocket. The high plain of Craonne through 
 centuries of war had been a key unlocking doors 
 of communication between adjacent territories of 
 France. Here, after he had been pushed back in 
 1914 at the first battle of the Marne, the German had 
 created his Siegfried position. Deep dips in the land 
 and the wooded undulations had been wrought into 
 a bulwark dense with underground communications
 
 LUDENDORFF'S POCKET 131 
 
 and thick-planted guns. And here the Crown Prince 
 with his two armies of von Boehm and von Below 
 had started his share of the enterprise at one in the 
 morning with all the shells and gases and poisons 
 that German invention had placed at his disposal. 
 At one o 'clock that morning of May 27th, had begun 
 that bad news which we had to read for so many 
 days. It was only eleven months ago. On the map 
 I looked at the names of the places that were coming 
 on our road, or that lay near to it on one side or the 
 other: Juvincourt on the little river Miette — we 
 should presently cross between it and La Ville-aux- 
 Bois. We went through Corbeny : Craonne was just 
 off to our right. At eleven-twenty that morning 
 eleven months ago, the delighted Kaiser had arrived 
 at a convenient high place, close to where we were 
 now, to watch in the splendid sunny weather the 
 armies of his boys Fritz and William, and all his 
 other armies, battering their way southward, even 
 across the Aisne, digging the pocket which was to 
 reach the Marne. 
 
 "William," he telegraphed to William's mother, 
 "has today attacked the British and French. . . . 
 Fritz was one of the first to reach the Aisne. . . . 
 God has granted us a splendid victory and will help 
 further.' ' 
 
 1 * My soul is torn, ' ' he had written his Cousin Aus- 
 tria early in the war, "but everything must be deliv- 
 ered to fire and blood, men, women, children, and the 
 old must be killed, not a tree nor a house must be 
 left standing." 
 
 He had written that to Francis Joseph at a time 
 when the general American mind still disbelieved 
 that such things as it was reading daily in the news-
 
 132 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 papers could be. On August 16th, 1914, as Foch with 
 the 9th Army was facing the advance upon Rethel 
 by von Hausen and his army, a German cyclist upset 
 himself in the street of Gue d'Ossus. Immediately, 
 recorded an officer of the 178th Saxon Regiment, in 
 his diary: 
 
 "We burned the village and drove the inhabitants 
 into the flames." 
 
 As we went over the seven kilometres from Cor- 
 beny to Berry-au-Bac, the land changed from being 
 a skeleton into being the dust of skeletons. It lay 
 dead, chalk- white, blasted and stark; not a blade of 
 grass, nothing but extinction. Along the west seam 
 of the pocket we had seen many poppies. These red 
 flowers hid the truth that was behind them: human 
 flesh ; then crows in black swarms ; then red poppies 
 — this had been the rotation of war-crops on the 
 Aisne. Here along the east seam we saw not even 
 poppies, but only the white sterile chalk. Over this 
 ground on May 27th, 1918, the German offensive had 
 broken like a flood from a dam. It had rolled down 
 from the highland and reached the Aisne, artillery 
 following infantry. Nothing had withstood it. The 
 German officers whistled as they walked with their 
 canes in their hands. During the afternoon it had 
 been the same on the west side. Three French battal- 
 ions had been surrounded and engulfed in the Foret 
 de Pinon. Carrier pigeons brought the last message 
 from them, sent about two o 'clock the next morning : 
 
 "The three last men of the three battalions have 
 just surrendered.' ' 
 
 Whilst these had been holding out, the flood poured 
 on: five divisions against one French, the 61st; ten 
 against the 22nd; six against the 21st; from the
 
 LUDENDORFF'S POCKET 133 
 
 Kaiser's post to Berry-au-Bac, eight against two. 
 That is the way it came. The outnumbered French 
 and the tired English, still unrested from their ex- 
 haustion of the earlier weeks, gave way hour after 
 hour. They lost not the Aisne only, they were pushed 
 beyond the Vesle this first day. The next was like 
 it. Fismes went. The Germans came up on the 
 wide land of Tardenois. Soissons burned and went 
 down. Fere-en-Tardenois followed it. By the 30th 
 the Germans had dug to the Marne at Jaulgonne. 
 Here our 2nd Division came into it. Over all France 
 wires trembled with messages. Our Americans at 
 their Jonchery munition depot did not keep the holi- 
 day on Decoration Day for which they had made 
 ready; men who had gone to Chaumont to celebrate 
 it were called back. A message to Jonchery set 
 them making ready instead for a train of trucks 
 hastening here from Dijon. These arrived and were 
 loaded all through the night. The electric lights 
 shone upon the warehouses and by their gleam the 
 shells were lifted into the trucks backed up close to 
 the warehouses. Then some fifty started west in 
 a long winding train on the road to Meaux. 
 
 Bad news still darkened our world ; not many could 
 have then perceived the dangerous thing that Luden- 
 dorff was doing, hypnotically lured by the mirage of 
 Paris. In digging his pocket he had gone in through 
 a gate, so to speak, and the gate-posts were still 
 standing, and not in his possession. To the west was 
 the Foret-de-Villers-Cotterets, to the east, the Mon- 
 tagne de Reims. He tried desperately, a little later, 
 to envelop these by two offensives. Both failed. 
 Then the squeezing out began. But before that had 
 set in, and before any of us here could know about
 
 134 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and understand the significance of those gate-posts, 
 we heard of peasants flying ; of towns abandoned ; of 
 more Germans on the Marne below Chateau-Thierry 
 and Verneuil. It was on June the 4th that the force 
 of the flood at length had spent itself. The Kaiser 
 never sent any more telegrams like that he had sent 
 on the 27th of May. For ourselves, as I remember it, 
 the news of the victory at the bridge of Chateau- 
 Thierry on that 4th of June was the brightest we 
 had heard for a long while — and not so very bright at 
 that: only a spark in the night, but a spark struck 
 by that splendid action of the 7th Machine Gun Bat- 
 talion of our 3rd Division, which arrived after 
 twenty-four hours on the road and thirty- six with- 
 out sleep, and made the name Chateau-Thierry as 
 immortal for us as Concord and Lexington. Clemen- 
 ceau spoke on that day: 
 
 "Our available forces are spent, but the Ameri- 
 cans are coming in for the deciding stroke. ... It 
 remains for the living to carry out the splendid work 
 of the dead." 
 
 The dead! Almost as thick and deep along this 
 road from Laon to Reims as along our road in the 
 terrible land of the Somme, must the dead have been 
 heaped. It was written all over the face of the region. 
 It was to be read not alone through the sight of a 
 great cemetery which we saw to our right; to look 
 at the mere earth itself was enough. The earth here 
 had died in torment. I can evoke the vision of its 
 twisted corpse today. White, dislocated, crumbled, 
 distorted, it was fearful to see, even for us who had 
 seen so much. I stared up at a sort of hill. I had 
 passed this very way on the 1st of July, 1914. I 
 could no more have recognized the spot than you
 
 LUDENDORFF'S POCKET 135 
 
 could recognize a dead man who had been lying out 
 in the open for a year. Him you have to identify 
 by something he wore or carried ; a ring, a knife, or 
 his teeth. Well, I suppose that I could have stood 
 here, studied the canal, or the river, or the relation 
 of one to the other, and then asked : " Is it possible 
 this can be Berry-au-Bac?" Of the town there was 
 nothing left at all. Of the charming country all along 
 this way, the quiet fields, the groups of trees I re- 
 membered, nothing was left. This ancient doorway 
 between the Ardennes and the Isle de France was a 
 shrivelled, gaping mouth. The pastures, once so 
 calm, were flung up into shapes white and wild, like 
 a herd of screaming ghosts petrified to silence sud- 
 denly as they crouched and gesticulated. The hill 
 at which I stared may have been there before, or it 
 may have been heaved up by the mine explosion 
 that engulfed many lives here and left a crater which 
 looked more like the work of natural convulsion than 
 the handicraft of man. White clay now seemed to 
 form the substance of this hill, steep, brittle, rough, 
 corrugated by violence, like every foot of the sur- 
 rounding country. Nothing was growing there then, 
 and it is one of the regions where nothing is growing 
 yet. Beneath its surface, among the dust and bones, 
 lie the bulb roots of death, the unexploded shells. 
 These are sown in all the battle-grounds of France. 
 Until they are gone, no farmer ploughing his field 
 can be sure that he will reach the end of any furrow 
 alive. 
 
 After Berry-au-Bac we went on through the waste 
 that continued for eight miles or so, and ceased 
 shortly before we came to Reims.
 
 XIII 
 
 THE GREAT SHRINE 
 
 On this May evening of 1919, we had to thread 
 our way through Kehns as through a labyrinth where 
 all roads but one led to nothing. A wrong turn right 
 or left in this place, where more than one hundred 
 thousand had lived five years ago, would have 
 brought us to a stop among the stony heaps of their 
 houses. The streets into which these houses had 
 been flung and piled were slits in the silence. In 
 that other German war, the war of 1870, Reims had 
 been made the seat of a German governor-general, 
 and had paid many heavy tolls to its invaders. I 
 looked upon the toll it had paid now, as slowly and 
 carefully we made our way to the cathedral. For 
 this sight I was ready — as ready, that is, as many 
 pictures and descriptions can make one. We all 
 know the particular spite that was hurled at this 
 monument, and why it was so hurled. We know the 
 denial of its bombardment by the ninety-three Ger- 
 man professors. They signed a denial of this and 
 the other crimes committed by Germany up to that 
 time. These professors had the choice of doing this, 
 or of losing their positions and having their careers 
 broken and their daily bread cut off. They were at 
 the mercy of one man's word, their emperor's. We 
 pay a high price, a very high price, for democracy; 
 but it is not quite so high as that which Germany 
 
 136
 
 THE GREAT SHRINE 137 
 
 paid for her magnificent material order and well- 
 being. 
 
 When the Germans found that their purely wanton 
 destruction of what was France's holiest building 
 had turned against them many hearts that had hith- 
 erto been neutral or in doubt, they did what they 
 always do in such cases. It happened several times 
 during the war that the effect of their actions upon 
 the outside world had not been anticipated by them 
 and took them by surprise. Their education had 
 never led them to suspect that their own standards 
 were behind those of the civilized world. Therefore 
 their battering of the great church of Reims, which 
 struck the civilized world as being what Attila might 
 have done when he put Reims to fire and sword in the 
 5th Century, had to be justified in haste. We know 
 the pretext that they put forward a trifle too late. 
 It was explained as a military necessity. It was 
 pretended that the French were using the cathedral 
 to signal from. It was overlooked that they used 
 aeroplanes for this. We know, too, the self-contra- 
 dicting remarks of German officers upon which this 
 excuse was based. We know the kind of shell that 
 was found embedded in the walls — needlessly heavy 
 for the alleged purpose. The world knows today that 
 the Germans meant to pound the cathedral of Reims 
 to dust if they could, because it had been, since Joan 
 of Arc had the Dauphin crowned there in 1429, the 
 central shrine, the place of prayer, pilgrimage and 
 patriotism, the spot of all most sacred and dear to 
 France : her Independence Hall, her Mount Vernon, 
 her Liberty Bell, made holy, not through one century 
 like ours, but through seven. It had seen the same 
 seven centuries that Amiens had seen, often drenched
 
 138 NEIGHBOKS HENCEFORTH 
 
 with blood. From 1328 to 1830, almost every King 
 of France had been crowned here. Its great bell, 
 weighing more than eleven tons, had been ringing 
 for festivals and rites before the existence of our 
 continent was known. At my last visit, the figure 
 of Joan of Arc had sat on her horse in front of the 
 church. I looked for her, but the gallant statue was 
 gone and its place was vacant. She had been taken 
 for safety elsewhere. 
 
 No, they had not smashed Reims to dust. It was 
 here to be seen, and would be seen for long years to 
 come. It would be proudly standing when those who 
 had aimed at its fall were dust themselves. It was 
 a wreck, its roof was gone, its eyes, the glorious win- 
 dows of stained glass, were blind; you could see 
 through into its broken interior, you could note upon 
 its western front the ravage of flame and shell: the 
 carving, the maimed and incinerated army of saints 
 and kings that had been one of the glories of the 
 world, bore witness to the intention and the effort of 
 the Hun. 
 
 In the third chapter of his account of Germany, 
 the chapter entitled From Kant to Hegel, Heinrich 
 Heine made a prophecy, and this is a part of it : 
 
 "But the most frightful of all will be the philoso- 
 phers of materialism. . . . The philosophy of mate- 
 rialism will be terrible in that it taps the elemental 
 force of the earth, conjures the latent powers of 
 tradition, those of the entire Germanic pantheism, 
 in which it arouses that lust of war that we find 
 among the ancient Germans, the lust of combat . . . 
 for combat's sake. 
 
 "To a certain extent Christianity has mollified 
 this brutal battle lust of the Germans ; to destroy it,
 
 THE GREAT SHRINE 139 
 
 it has not availed. When the Cross, that talisman 
 which holds it now in curb, comes to break, then 
 the ancient warriors' ferocity will surge afresh, that 
 mad Berserker frenzy which the Norse minstrels are 
 today still singing. Then — and the day will come, 
 alas ! — the old war gods will get up from their fabled 
 tombs and rub the dust of centuries from their eyes. 
 Thor will stand erect in his might and with his giant 
 hammer will smash the gothic cathedrals. . . . When 
 you hear the tumult and the shouting, be on your 
 guard, dear neighbors of France. . . ." 
 
 Soon after the bombing of Reims cathedral, this 
 passage began to be remembered and quoted. The 
 rest of the prophecy is equally remarkable, and I add 
 it here. Heine continues : 
 
 "Do not smile at this advice even though it is given 
 by a dreamer ... do not smile at a fantastic poet 
 who expects the same revolution in the world of facts 
 that has occurred in the intellectual world. Thought 
 precedes action as lightning does thunder. Thunder 
 in Germany is quite German: it is not very lively, 
 but comes rolling slowly. But come it will ; and when 
 you hear a crash like no crash ever heard before in 
 the history of the world, then you will know that the 
 German thunder has culminated at last. At this 
 noise eagles will fall dead from the high air and the 
 lions in their remotest African deserts will cringe and 
 slink away into their royal lairs." 
 
 At about that time Richard Wagner, the last Norse 
 minstrel, was singing, not yet of mad Berserker 
 frenzy, but of the Flying Dutchman, having been led 
 to this partly by certain other pages written by 
 Heinrich Heine. People then alive lived to see this 
 same minstrel singing a triumphal march to that
 
 140 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 conqueror of France in 1870, that Hohenzollern whom 
 Bismarck then made Emperor of Germany; the 
 minstrel was also writing a coarse extravaganza, a 
 Berserker insult to prostrate France, entitled A Ca- 
 pitulation; he had also reached the middle of his 
 opera Siegfried, in which the old gods were brought 
 out of their fabled tombs and sang to us on the stage. 
 Wotan, Brunhilde, Siegfried, were names given by 
 Hindenburg and his Berserkers to certain of their 
 defence lines of 1914-18, when the philosophers of 
 materialism had completed their work, when the talis- 
 man of Christianity had broken and no longer curbed 
 the ancient German battle lust, when the creed of 
 blood and iron had been systematically and scien- 
 tifically substituted for the creed of the Cross, and 
 when German children had been during forty years 
 educated backward to be Berserkers. When Thor in 
 1914 smashed Reims with his giant hammer, Henry 
 Heine had been fifty-eight years in his grave, Richard 
 Wagner had been in his for thirty-one. Heine had 
 made his prophecy seventy-nine years before the 
 event. fi 
 
 With Heine and Wagner and Hindenburg in mind, 
 I looked at the smashed glories of Reims. What, I 
 wondered, did those remarkably righteous persons, 
 who were already assuring us that Germany was a 
 tender and misrepresented creature, make of these 
 facts? I thought of another poet also, an American, 
 Louise Driscoll by name, who sang her noble lament 
 over the cathedral: 
 
 Men planned and wrought 
 And set fair towers against a flower-blue sky. 
 There is no power in the world like thought, 
 And beauty wrought with prayer can never die.
 
 THE GREAT SHRINE 141 
 
 What's lost with Reims? 
 'Tis Germany — a land we used to know 
 A pleasant land of songs and fairy tales . . . 
 Where did they go? 
 
 What's lost with Reims? 
 
 The soul of a great people, blind, betrayed. 
 
 No roaring guns tore flesh from flesh and made 
 
 A desert of their gardens, yet we see 
 
 The desert of the world in Germany ! 
 
 Theodore Botrel, the poet of the poilus, wrote a 
 sort of Litany of the ruins : 
 
 Jeune bon Dieu, dans la creche 
 Rajeunis ton eternite, 
 Toi, dont la tendre loi ne preche 
 Que 1 'amour et la charite. 
 
 Doux Roi du plus doux des Royaumes 
 C'est toi que nous invoquons, 
 Et non les vieux dieux des Guillaumes, 
 Des Attilas et des Nerons. 
 
 Par Louvain, par Senlis croulantes, 
 Et par Reims qui, pres de mourir, 
 Tends vers toi ses tours suppliantes 
 Comme les moignons d'un martyr; 
 
 Par notre farouche Endurance; 
 Par nos otages en exil ; 
 Jeune bon Dieu, rends la France 
 Justice et Gloire ! Ainsi soit il !* 
 
 * "God merciful and young in thy manger make young again 
 thine eternity, Thou whose tender law doth preach but love and 
 charity. Gentle King of Kingdom gentlest, Thee it is we invoke, not 
 the old gods of Kaisers, Attilas, and Neros. By crumbling Louvain 
 and Senlis, and by Reims, who dying lifts to Thee her suppliant 
 towers like a martyr's stumps, by our endurance fierce and exiled 
 hostages, God merciful and young give France justice and glory. 
 Amen."
 
 142 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "They are evacuating Reims," wrote a young 
 Frenchman, a boy of twenty-three, to his godmother 
 on the 7th of April, 1917; "it is very, very sad to 
 see. Tonight ten conflagrations were throwing whirl- 
 winds of reddened smoke two hundred metres high, 
 and the profiles of the two solemn towers were cast 
 darkly against the flaming heavens. Sad vehicles 
 defiled beneath me, generally automobiles; women 
 and children, little boys in their black aprons as if 
 they were coming from school ; furniture. The town 
 burned in a sort of calm, as in submission to an 
 inevitable and foreseen phenomenon. And the 
 towers, with a look of eternity, of indestructibility, 
 seemed to watch. And all this on a fine night, placidly 
 lustrous beneath the Pascal moon." 
 
 "There is no power in the world like thought 
 And beauty wrought with prayer can never die." 
 
 That is what the towers saw ; Thor could not smash 
 it. It was in the soul and mind of that boy as he 
 wrote to his godmother, nine days before his death 
 on the battlefield. He wrote other letters, there is 
 a little volume of them, letters to his father and 
 mother, to certain other elders, and to intimate com- 
 rades of his own young generation. With his soul 
 and mind he was a piece of that France essential to 
 us and civilization, the ultimate France of the spirit 
 that should keep our respect and affection. He was 
 the modern consequence of the ancient cathedral. 
 The same race had built them both. He was a piece 
 of beauty wrought with prayer — that form of prayer 
 which is constant, noble impulse translated constantly 
 into noble action; and as I think somehow of him 
 and Reims as belonging spiritually to each other, I
 
 THE GREAT SHRINE 143 
 
 place here not in the order of their writing some 
 few sentences from his letters because they are full 
 of that thing which Thor with his hammer cannot 
 smash. 
 
 He is speaking of two fellow-soldiers : 
 
 "If you could only see the strange life we lead, 
 six yards underground. ... D is a peasant. X has 
 not the dashing patriotism of D, but he has his recti- 
 tude and loyalty and courage. He supplements D's 
 intellectual patriotism with the dignity of a free 
 man, who declines to accept the trespassing of an 
 outsider upon his own concerns. He likes to be 
 master in his house and he is master of himself. He 
 does not like fighting but goes to it whole-souled from 
 self-respect. He has supremely the sense of honor. 
 He is the peasant aristocrat.' ' 
 
 The boy was a student of medicine with four terms 
 to his credit when he entered upon his first term of 
 military service. This the outbreak of the war cut 
 short. He got leave to go to the front in the ranks, 
 and not as a hospital aid. He fought from Charleroi 
 to the Marne, where he was wounded. He writes of 
 himself : 
 
 "Don't imagine that any thought of winning dis- 
 tinction entered my mind when I took the step I was 
 predestined to take. Once more, the place of a 
 Frenchman twenty-two years old is under fire, or 
 with those who are going there. As it was in 1870 
 and has been for ever, our business is to boot the 
 enemy out of France. I took my part at the Marne. 
 My place now is with those who carry on. It's the 
 task of my generation. You '11 say doctors are needed 
 as much behind as at the front. I don't want to be 
 that kind, nor the kind in the hospital trains; some
 
 144 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 of us are needed in it. I couldn't shake hands with 
 G. or N., or look at my friends in the eye. I'm ill at 
 ease among fathers some of whom have sons at the 
 front. ... I want to escape any danger purely to 
 learn how better to face the next. The living must 
 be worthy of the dead, our life mustn't give their 
 deaths the lie. One has done nothing so long as 
 anything 's left to be done. . . . 
 
 "We must win. There's no question of knowing 
 if we can or can not, or if we shall succeed or shall 
 not. We must, that's all. It is the man who shall 
 have willed victory who will vanquish. This deter- 
 mination, deep, unconquerable, intimate, this will to 
 vanquish, each of us must have it, no matter what 
 his place and duty. . . . But this will to vanquish 
 that I should like to root in every French heart, hi 
 order to be useful must stick to defined aims, else it 
 will be merely a vague and vain aspiration. . . . 
 Work, that is' the word. Work, that is what the 
 enemy has been doing since 1871; it is against his 
 work that our dash and our fine courage are bruising 
 themselves. France isn't working hard enough." 
 
 He writes from hospital to a friend: 
 
 "The German is alien to our mentality ... his 
 materialism (he calls it Deutschland fiber alles) 
 stamps everything, stifles every noble generous in- 
 stinct, everything that antiquity, the Renaissance, 
 our 17th and 18th Centuries planted in us of altruis- 
 tic, humane, disciplined impulses, the whole higher 
 moral level that distinguishes us from the ancestral 
 brute . . . have you any time for reading? I'm 
 going- to send you your favorite Musset anyhow. 
 You'll always find a minute to read over the May 
 Night. It's not very war-like, but beauty in no mat-
 
 THE GREAT SHRINE 145 
 
 ter what form is a tonic for the soul and lifts the 
 heart. ..." 
 
 He writes his mother : 
 
 "I'll keep your letter as my guide through the 
 unforeseen, and try to show myself worthy of what 
 you think of me, and to become worthy of what I 
 would exact from myself. . . . For the triumph of 
 justice and right (though these may be merely illu- 
 sions) and for the chastisement of the greatest col- 
 lective crime of history, many tears, many drops of 
 blood must fall . . . the generation of 1914-15-16 will 
 have won moral grandeur, the thing for which it is 
 worth while to live life. . . . 
 
 "What a beautiful walk I took yesterday! I fol- 
 lowed an infinity of different paths and thus greatly 
 heightened the effect of emerging upon a straight 
 road that cuts through the moist and mystic heart 
 of the forest to a new horizon. ... I'm sure that to 
 enrich one's inner life one must intensify one's ex- 
 ternal life. You must, so to speak, gather sensations 
 to nourish thought during those hours when external 
 sensations fail. I don't suppose you know how a 
 dynamo works f Very simply. For one day a power- 
 ful steam-engine spins the dynamo and thus generates 
 the electricity which is stored. Next day it may be 
 the other way round, if you choose. The stored 
 electric energy can run the steam-engine. Very well. 
 It 's quite the same with the dynamo we carry within. 
 If we desire that it shall in our dark hours illuminate 
 our life, we must store up light when the sun shines. 
 T doubt if I could have seen any beauty in the land- 
 scape yesterday if I had never been in Switzerland. 
 I'm deeply sure this applies to everything, and espe- 
 cially to the things of the heart. But if I start on
 
 146 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 that I'll never stop. . . . Fool that I am! I was 
 going to forget to tell you that in two days, very 
 likely, they will discharge me from the infirmary and 
 let me go back to the trenches. . . . The joy of 
 meditation, of philosophizing, is a terrible siren who 
 breaks careers and parches strength. She must be 
 merely an episode. Otherwise the man is lost. . . ." 
 
 In hospital, where he has time for much reading 
 and re-reading — Shakespeare, Plutarch, Voltaire, La 
 Fontaine, the Bible, make but a portion of it — he 
 writes his intimate friend: 
 
 "Dismiss your idea that war is over for me. My 
 cure will take long, but the war longer still. I've 
 sent you Stendhal. I read U Amour in order to talk 
 it over with a young Irish girl (but alas ! those things, 
 when one is doing them one doesn't discuss them, and 
 when one discusses them one doesn't do them, oh, 
 thrice alas!). When shall we be able after having 
 sacrificed to Mars to return to the temple of Venus 1 
 When can we resume, dear old Maurice, our good 
 confidences, our dreamings by the Marne, all our 
 friendship of yesteryear? ... As to my foot, doc- 
 tors disagree. Some counsel another operation, 
 others disbelieve in it. I wish I could at least rejoin 
 my headquarters ... or else be in the zone of the 
 armies. Think of having to make war here at Vichy ! 
 It's a heart-break. ... At any rate I've been of 
 some use here, day and night now, these eight months. 
 For eight days I had charge of 120 patients, all by 
 myself. . . . There's my life. I blush for it. . . ." 
 
 To his father he writes : 
 
 "I don't know what monstrous aberration of mod- 
 esty, what imbecile timidity causes one to open his 
 heart to strangers only. ... A son ought to treat his
 
 THE GREAT SHRINE 147 
 
 father as something different from a preceptor. . . . 
 Many feel a devoted love for him . . . respect, grati- 
 tude; few, I believe, think of making their father 
 their friend. Why? False shyness, and then, chil- 
 dren have no such notion . . . they seek pleasure 
 comrades rather than thought comrades. On the 
 other hand, if the notion of such a friendship some- 
 times makes a father wistful, it isn't for him to begin, 
 he would have to trespass on youth's privacy; such 
 a friendship isn't possible unless it springs of its 
 own accord from the wishes of the child. Dear 
 father, I ask you to be my friend. We are so abso- 
 lutely made to get on together. Between us, right 
 in the family circle, simple and united, nevertheless 
 twenty centuries of convention, of fashion, of con- 
 trolling tradition, had piled obstacles between two 
 hearts and their natural expansion. We've never 
 talked openly as two young people sometimes talk 
 together, shrouded in the dimness of a room or in 
 the inviting quietness of a beautiful night. At such 
 a time trust is stirred and intimacy follows it. One 
 is surprised the next morning, sometimes, at what 
 one has been moved by certain influences to reveal 
 to a companion. That's because next morning the 
 iee has formed again, the ice that for a moment was 
 broken, melted by the warm breath of friendship, 
 and the conventional chill re-assumes its rights. . . . 
 And since it is to my stay in hospital that I owe this 
 inspiration about a change in our relations, I bless 
 my illness. ..." (Here for three pages as wonderful 
 as ever came from the pen and the heart of a son 
 just twenty-three, he tells his father of what he has 
 read — from Shakespeare to Anatole France, from 
 Montaigne to Loti — during these months in hospital,
 
 148 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 lie tells him of his thoughts, of his character and 
 what it has lacked and how he hopes it has developed, 
 and then he continues) : 
 
 4 'And so I mean, dear father, to open an immense 
 conversation with you, guards down, in which I'll 
 make a clean breast to you of my dreams and my 
 enthusiasms. I'll reveal my aspirations, my moral 
 and my worldly ambitions, my still halting concep- 
 tions about the huge questions I've not yet thought 
 enough about. We '11 talk of men and acquaintances, 
 of life and death, of God and women, or rather, of 
 the gods and Woman, of art and politics, of history 
 and the wooded slopes of the Vosges, of medicine 
 and war, of everything within the domain of thought. 
 You'll correct my inaccuracies, I'll revive your illu- 
 sions. I'll gain weight, you'll regain youth, and so 
 you '11 really be my father. ..." 
 
 This French boy was not quite twenty-one when 
 he entered the war at its outbreak. During three 
 years he seems to have been in almost every part of 
 it, the Somme, the Marne, Champagne, the Argonne, 
 and to have seen almost all the sights of war and felt 
 almost all its sensations, except despondency. If 
 ever he felt that he never allows it to appear. 
 
 To the father of a comrade killed at Douaumont 
 and dearly loved, he writes, after two pages : 
 
 "Listen, sir, this letter is too painful for you to 
 read. I'll cut it short. But I must all the same tell 
 you that the sacrifice of your son is not wasted. My 
 first feeling was of discouragement, of disgust at 
 the folly of slaughter which froths over the earth. 
 But soon, as often before, the lesson of sacrifice rose 
 out of it for me. We need the Scriptures no longer, 
 the story of Christ teaches nothing actually, now:
 
 THE GEEAT SHRINE 149 
 
 to learn the beauty and to understand the neces- 
 sity of immolation we need but look around us. Such 
 examples as Andre has given put the flabby and the 
 timid to shame and uplift and strengthen the brave. 
 . . . The battle goes forward . . . and those not yet 
 fallen must look ahead and still ahead, until their 
 turn shall come. ..." 
 
 On New Year 's Eve of the year that his turn was 
 to come, he gave a supper. 
 
 "My party was a grand success. I had sixteen 
 guests, and later two who arrived at 11.30. . . . They 
 proved charming and greatly enlivened the dawn of 
 the present year with their songs and monologues. 
 . . . Pate de fois gras, roast fowls, green peas, salad, 
 hot chocolate, plum-pudding, a litre of white wine 
 apiece, decent champagne, coffee, cigars. I was able 
 to get some rum — not so easy! — just enough for 
 lighting the plum-pudding. A little before midnight 
 I had the lights put out. Then as the clock struck 
 twelve, the pudding was brought in, garlanded with 
 blue flame, while corks popped and greetings were 
 exchanged. The Marseillaise started by itself. Very 
 characteristic. If any one at any other time had 
 started the national song, the poilus would have 
 booed him down; but they felt a certain solemnity 
 in the moment, in spite of everything, and sang the 
 hymn out freely and joyfully. . . . This morning I 
 got to bed satisfied at having done something for 
 cheerfulness and merriment. . . . That's an impera- 
 tive human obligation in war-time. . . ." 
 
 Within four months the turn came for this boy. 
 He was warned not to keep so near some comrades 
 he stood ready to care for should they be hit. Bul- 
 lets were falling thick. "No fear," said he, "bullets
 
 150 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 are used to me." A few steps more and he fell with- 
 out a sound or a sigh, shot through the heart. 
 
 Not quite twenty-one when he wrote his first war 
 letters, not yet twenty-four when he wrote the last, 
 he had explored the realms of duty, of thought, of 
 emotion and of action very far. He was a piece of 
 the true France, and his spirit came from the same 
 world whence, seven centuries before him, had pro- 
 ceeded the cathedral of Reims. That world is a place 
 which the hammer of Thor cannot smash.
 
 XIV 
 
 THE TOWERS IN THE NIGHT 
 
 As at Amiens, so now at Reims, day was sinking 
 while I gazed up at the towers of the cathedral. In 
 the square below the towers were poilus, standing 
 and moving. I looked at these soldiers of France, 
 over whose spirits the breath of war had passed. 
 What had it done to them? Any one could answer 
 that question who had seen the poilu as I had seen 
 him often, and had seen him last in July 1914. In 
 those other days he had been a very different figure. 
 His clothes hung upon him without dignity, his walk 
 and bearing slouched, his face had been trivial, the 
 whole man seemed to fall short of manhood. Today 
 these poilus were grave, upstanding, their carriage 
 erect, giving forth a sense of power and accomplish- 
 ment in full measure. In truth they were a visible 
 part of the majesty of France. Tourgueneff said 
 once: "War makes more men than it kills." The 
 breath of war had blasted the cathedral and had 
 blown the boy away to lie under one of the crosses 
 that scattered the land of France like fallen stars. 
 Yet, as from that first immolation upon the Cross, 
 so from these others, as the boy wrote to the bereaved 
 father of his friend, spiritual resurrection had come. 
 These poilus walking beneath the towers, now, had 
 been ready: and the readiness is all. The martyred 
 cathedral of Reims still stretched its towers to God, 
 
 151
 
 152 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and they were still suppliant. Why? The boy had 
 written: "Do not weep for us, but continue us." 
 Continuing was what confronted the poilus, France, 
 and our whole civilization. Sometimes continuing 
 comes very hard. We rise to meet death, but meet- 
 ing life is a longer act. When exaltation has per- 
 formed its task and sunk away, what then remains to 
 carry us through, if we still live ? Some things there 
 were that Thor had smashed with his hammer: 
 homes, hearts, bodies. These broken things needed 
 the supplication of those towers. They that were to 
 continue must seek help in whatever house of what- 
 ever God their spirits knew. Some would pray in 
 churches, some without words under the sky, some 
 would pray through action, through sacrifice, like the 
 boy who saw the sacred worth of immolation. All 
 would be answered. But voids there would be when 
 no answer seemed to come. For broken, unhappy 
 men in these voids, I could fancy that Reims stretched 
 its suppliant towers to God. 
 
 Like that at Amiens, I had known this cathedral 
 well. To come upon it as it was now, with my mem- 
 ory of it as it had been, unprepared, would have 
 overwhelmed me. But the expected sight was so 
 full of unexpected grandeur, that the pain of its 
 disfigurement was lost in new admiration. It stood 
 up like a sort of proclamation of faith. More than 
 ever it seemed living; too great to notice what had 
 been done to it; above all temporal suffering; the 
 France of seven hundred years, and the France of 
 the years to come. 
 
 Day grew more dim. In its waning light I looked 
 across the square to see what was left of the little 
 inn, the Lion d'Or, where I had eaten and drunk
 
 THE TOWERS IN THE NIGHT 153 
 
 and laughed so many times. From my bedroom 
 windows there, I had always taken a good-night 
 look at the cathedral before blowing out the candle. 
 Down in its court had grown a vine, trained to make 
 a screening arbor, and my last supper here, June 
 30th, 1914, had been curtained by its leaves. No 
 windows faced the cathedral any more. No court 
 was there and no vine. The Lion d'Or was down on 
 the ground, and where it had been were pieces of 
 plaster and heaps of stones. 
 
 The tide of dusk rose a little higher. We got 
 back into our car and began our return southwest 
 through the brooding silence of the ruins. There 
 were no hours left in which to include the one thing 
 more that I should have liked to do this day — swing 
 south by the Montague de Reims and thence east- 
 ward, forty kilometres, across the Champagne from 
 Pompelle to Massiges. Then we should have gone 
 over those denuded clay-white plains upon which 
 Ludendorff on the 15th of July had launched that 
 other attempt to retrieve the peril of his Marne 
 pocket. He had enveloped the eastern gate-post no 
 more than the west. He never attained the old Ro- 
 man road in front of the French lines. General 
 Gouraud stopped him. The Montagne de Reims 
 remained safe and Chalons-on-the-Marne was not 
 reached. Still the Marne pocket was left as it had 
 been dug, defenceless on both sides, a very dangerous 
 success, won beneath the misleading hypnotism that 
 the mirage of Paris cast over his mind. By after- 
 noon of that 15th of July, Ludendorff and his em- 
 peror saw from Blanc Mont that they had failed. 
 West of Reims von Mudra did better on that day, 
 pushing eleven French and three American divi-
 
 154 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 sions back, and extending the pockets; while still 
 more to the west von Boehm was winning the south 
 bank of the Marne between Dormans and Chateau- 
 Thierry. But upon the day following, the tempest 
 of thunder and rain in which they came within ten 
 miles of Epernay, was a bad omen for them. They 
 crawled forward on the 16th of July here and there, 
 but the crawling back began also. They gnawed 
 vainly at the flanks of the Montague de Reims, and 
 along their whole line of eighty kilometres ran a 
 slackening of their impetus. July 17th saw the 
 quiver of the horde on the turn, and by the next 
 dawn, in the thunder and rain of Villers-Cotterets, 
 our second battle of the Marne story began. 
 
 Our road southwest from Reims took us close to 
 the edge of part of that ground where they had 
 gnawed at the east side of their pocket. We could 
 have seen Marfaux had there been more light on the 
 way to Ville-en-Tardenois. But light was going now, 
 visibly each few moments. Had the day been with 
 us still, we should have seen clearly just the same 
 sights as those of the morning hours, desolate fields, 
 desolate houses, emptiness. As it was, the sharp 
 edges of this perpetual spectacle began to dissolve 
 in the quiet gloom. Cruel shapes grew gentle in the 
 vagueness, standing fragments softened, smaller 
 fragments melted away; until discernment of our 
 road and what lay to its left and right, ended, and 
 one merely felt the presence of whatever objects 
 we passed. 
 
 Reims was present, too, in this voiceless obscurity, 
 casting over France its ceaseless influence. As 
 Amiens stood by the Somme so Reims stood by the 
 Vesle, and these two great guardians were stretch-
 
 THE TOWERS IN THE NIGHT 155 
 
 ing their suppliant towers unseen in the night. "Do- 
 not weep for us, but continue us. ' ' 
 
 Dormans came. We had already descended from 
 the higher land of Tardenois, and crossed the Marne 
 at Bas-Verneuil. Along the river we felt the trees 
 passing, and here and there passed little lights, with 
 wide blank spaces between them. The ground over 
 which our cautious speed was now increasing had 
 been the uttermost goal of the Hun, it was the out- 
 side limit of his onset from the Chemin des Dames ; 
 here, as if he had struck some surface, he rebounded, 
 and his backward steps to the place whence he had 
 come, began. He counted, during the height of his 
 fierce advance, 209 divisions against those 192 that 
 had met him. France gave 103 of these, England 
 58, ourselves 17, Belgium 12, Italy spared 2 from her 
 own desperate struggle with Austria. While these 
 were contending, even in the days of gloom that so 
 filled the weeks of this spring, leaflets of ill news 
 were floating down upon Germany from the sky. 
 They told those who picked them up that six hun- 
 dred thousand Americans, young, strong, fired with 
 zeal, were now landed in France and ready. They 
 came through the air with French aviators, who dealt 
 them out like packs of cards foretelling misfor- 
 tune. These leaflets sailed in little balloons devised 
 in England; their messages of truth, well chosen 
 to strike chill, were written at Crewe House by 
 Sir Campbell Stuart. They fluttered down, and the 
 mailed fist was never able to seize them all before 
 they had done their work, undeceiving its dupes and 
 weakening the beats of their discouraged hearts. 
 When our 4th of July came, it was no longer six 
 hundred thousand of us, but more than a million,
 
 156 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 that were present in France, with more arriving 
 each day ; and this, too, was wafted down upon Ger- 
 many from the little balloons. 
 
 Our speed increased as we went along the valley 
 with the sense of the great trees at our side and 
 overhead. We ran out of them into darkness that 
 continued, but across which some distant light would 
 shine, then the nearer darkness would again shroud 
 us. 
 
 "That was Jaulgonne," said our captain once in 
 the silence, as a far light showed and sank behind. 
 
 Below Chateau-Thierry we crossed the river again, 
 our road improving as we dived forward into the 
 endless gulf of the night. No one came by, but lights 
 single or by twos and threes shone from time to time 
 across succeeding distances. After Meaux our pace 
 quickened still more and presently seemed to double 
 itself along the empty road. Sometimes upon a rise 
 the upward slant of our head-lamps would reveal 
 tall tops of trees between whose steady avenues we 
 were rushing, and sometimes our flying light would 
 glare for a second upon a kilometre stone ; but when 
 I thought of the towers, they seemed as near as ever. 
 It was as if the silence were filled with their quiet 
 presence, this silence that brooded over the night 
 as it had dominated the day. After a while the lights 
 of Paris began, and at eleven we got out at the hotel.
 
 XV 
 
 UPLIFT 
 
 I was tired, but also I was wakeful. Deeper than 
 before, deeper even than at Amiens, I seemed to 
 see into and comprehend France. My thoughts 
 turned also to the living, whose flesh and bones were 
 crushed, who had known the wild raptures of the 
 blood, the calm rapture of exaltation, and who now 
 were knowing the empty stages, where rapture and 
 exaltation are not. Upon sticks and crutches, if not 
 still unhealed in bed, they were facing, not death, 
 but life. I had seen them at home, and in England, 
 and now here. "Do not weep for us, but continue 
 us." The boy who was dead had wanted no tears 
 for the dead, but he would have pitied these living. 
 They had to continue upon their sticks and crutches, 
 dragging themselves somehow across the desert 
 stages where there is no exaltation. I trusted that 
 in most of them that thing was alive which Thor 
 cannot smash. Without it, it were far better that 
 they were wholly dead. Those of them that had the 
 habit, or the occasional mood, of prayer, pagan or 
 Christian, or a blend of both, which is the most 
 honest and most human kind, were doomed, like all 
 of us, to pray sometimes to emptiness. Neither the 
 deepest grief nor the bitterest remorse equals in its 
 desolating chill the sensation of unanswered prayer. 
 The vision came to me of these maimed survivors, 
 
 157
 
 158 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 these fragments of men, the halt and the blind, all 
 over the world, a vast horde, crawling painfully 
 about, like insects that have fallen upon the table 
 from a burning lamp. 
 
 Does war make more men than it kills? I wished 
 that I had thought of putting this question to the 
 Tommies at Albert, or to the military policeman 
 from Kansas. Some kind of answer I should cer- 
 tainly have received, though nothing like so mature 
 an answer as would have come from a poilu's more 
 subtle and intellectualized Latin intelligence. I went 
 back the few steps from the hotel entrance to the 
 Place du Havre; Kansas was not upon his island, 
 nor anywhere else to be seen tonight. Returning, I 
 sat down in the adjacent cafe, ordered a bock and a 
 brioche, and opened my map upon the table. 
 
 Some tables away in the almost empty place sat a 
 creature whom I was sorry to see, for I feared that 
 he would see me and come over. He did not live in 
 my hotel, but evidently somewhere in the neighbor- 
 hood, and sometimes frequented its reading-room 
 and hall. Taking me for a brother American he 
 more than once had attempted to invade my privacy 
 for longer stretches of time than the natural rights 
 of man justified, or my view of my own rights would 
 allow. I had hitherto managed not to swallow any 
 large dose of him. He was no brother of mine. 
 Kansas on the island was a brother, and many of 
 our doughboys, and many more people still : but not 
 this kind. It takes all sorts of people to make a 
 world, and all sorts of people to make a United 
 States; and I exceedingly regret that it does so. I 
 felt in my bones that this American belonged to the 
 numerous and noisy tribe of conscientious objectors
 
 UPLIFT 159 
 
 to common-sense. Hundreds of these had come over 
 to Europe to teach Europe how to suck eggs. 
 
 His face and clothes were exactly alike, if you 
 understand what I mean. He was the sort of per- 
 son who at home hands the plate on Sundays in the 
 sort of church where the minister improvises prayers 
 which last an hour, reads aloud passages from The 
 Literary Digest, and misquotes Longfellow. The ris- 
 ing and departure of two Frenchmen exposed me to 
 his full gaze, and I saw this fix itself upon me across 
 the intervening table where their glasses stood. Oh, 
 yes, he was coming ! 
 
 "Well, now, who'd have thought a man like you 
 would be sitting up here this late ! ' ' With this greet- 
 ing, he seated himself opposite me, and smiled. He 
 had a vaguely lustrous eye, and his teeth were too 
 long, and slanted outward. 
 
 I pulled out my cigar-case and was stretching it 
 over to him, but he lifted his wide, limp hand against 
 it. I had a box of cigarettes, and these I offered 
 him. 
 
 "Thank you, I never use tobacco." 
 
 I tapped my glass of beer. 
 
 "Have one," I suggested, and signalled to a 
 waiter. 
 
 "I never use alcohol in any form, thank you," he 
 said. 
 
 The waiter came. 
 
 "Bring this gentleman a cup of coffee. I hope you 
 will keep me company in that 1 ' ' 
 
 1 ' Thank you, I have had all the refreshment I ever 
 take before retiring." 
 
 "At least let me order you a toothpick!" I ex- 
 claimed.
 
 160 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 " Sometimes I think you must be quite a joker," 
 said my man. "Well, now, I think you're right to 
 joke. I've seen sights in France — well, now, there's 
 times when a joke helps some." 
 
 "Yes," I assented, wondering if I had misjudged 
 him. "Yes, indeed. How long were you at the 
 front?" 
 
 "I was not exactly at the front. But I have 
 served. My viewpoint is that in all walks we can find 
 some way to serve. And I have seen sights and 
 sights." 
 
 "Were you too old for the front?" 
 
 "No. Not too old. Not too old in years, that is, 
 you understand. But at Fort Oglethorpe, they found 
 my heart was not what it should be for my age. I am 
 twenty-nine years and seven months now. Unmar- 
 ried. My uncle in the Surgeon General 's office wrote 
 them about my heart, because he knew more about it 
 than those medical reserve doctors did. But I was 
 determined to serve if I was strong enough. I was 
 going to get over here somehow." 
 
 "Couldn't you find any chances for service at 
 home?" 
 
 "Ah, but I wanted to be in the thick of it ! I'm no 
 stay-at-home. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, I see." 
 
 "And will you tell me what life is without 
 service?" he demanded, slightly chanting the words. 
 
 "Lots of fun," I answered. "Especially when 
 you're under thirty." 
 
 "Now you're joking again. So my uncle got me a 
 position in an uplift mission." 
 
 "How very interesting! Which one? The tuber- 
 culosis caravan? or the pediatric unit?"
 
 UPLIFT 161 
 
 "Peddy — I don't think I have heard that men- 
 tioned." 
 
 "A number of Americans are going about in 
 camions from place to place, showing the French how 
 to have and rear children." 
 
 He cast down his eyes immediately, and was silent. 
 
 "Pediatric is the name for that unit," I explained. 
 "It comes from the Greek. It is a perfectly nice 
 word. Even a lady uplifter can use it without any 
 risk. ' ' 
 
 "My viewpoint," he now resumed, "is, that we 
 should all avoid certain language. The unavoidable 
 use of it by doctors does their tone no good. And 
 between tone and action the distance is very short. 
 Did you go to any of our training camps ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Did you hear the language of the young men? 
 But you would get no slant on that, because they 
 would be careful before you. " 
 
 "Won't you tell me some of the sights you have 
 seen?" I asked. 
 
 "Well, now, you don't have to go far. This great 
 French city right now is full of evil. ' ' 
 
 "Isn't your city in America?" 
 
 "I never got a slant on our cities, though I have 
 sensed them, visiting. Father intends to buy a new 
 home in Little Eock. Have you noticed the man out 
 there?" 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "There is a military policeman out there some 
 nights. He makes no attempt, no attempt at all, to 
 use his authority." 
 
 "Why, I thought he did." 
 
 "No attempt. He allows young soldiers to walk
 
 162 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 right by him, when anybody could see they intended 
 to practise immorality. If a person like you spoke 
 to him and got his reaction, some good might come 
 of it." 
 
 1 ' Well, I don 't know about that. Do you mean that 
 you spoke to him?" 
 
 "I did, sir. I felt it my duty, even if I was no 
 longer officially connected with uplift." 
 
 "You spoke to him about stopping " 
 
 ' ' I certainly did. ' ' 
 
 "Jimminy Christmas! And what 'reaction' did 
 you get?" 
 
 "I will not soil my tongue with repeating the 
 language that he used. But a man with a viewpoint 
 like his is a disgrace to our democratic army. ' ' 
 
 "You're not now officially connected with uplift, 
 as you express it?" 
 
 "Well, not just now. But when I was, I used to 
 come out between vaudeville acts and speak to our 
 boys about social purity and kindred topics of a 
 serious nature. It was against my principles to issue 
 cigarettes to them." 
 
 "Do you mean those cigarettes that people in 
 America had bought for them and that were sold to 
 them instead?" 
 
 "That was a mistake," he replied. 
 
 "A mistake! Yes. Quite." 
 
 "The gift cigarettes were unpacked along with 
 other cigarettes that we had bought to sell the 
 soldiers at cost. The two lots got mixed up. That 
 was all. And so when the soldiers opened packages 
 they had paid for, and found slips inside printed, 
 telling they were the gifts of some society at home, 
 why their reaction was based on a mistake. We tried
 
 UPLIFT 163 
 
 to give them the right slant, but somehow they never 
 got it. My uncle " 
 
 ' 'What more sights have you seen?" 
 
 ' ' There is immorality and intoxication everywhere 
 you " 
 
 ' ' Yes, I know, I know. But everybody isn 't drunk. 
 And you seem to me to have immorality rather prom- 
 inently on your mind. Believe me there is not much 
 true ' service ' in making a military policeman angry. 
 You have no idea how easily I can guess the names he 
 called you. Having to bear these patiently isn 't very 
 strenuous service, is it? And, to be quite frank with 
 you, I think service ought to cost a man something — 
 his energy, his brains, effective exercise of skill, or 
 good will, something like that — for many hours each 
 day, and given freely for nothing. You needn't wait 
 for your uncle to get you another job. Jobs lie thick 
 here all around you. ' ' 
 
 Had my deliberate testing him succeeded or failed? 
 Would he not, if he were a self -known hypocrite, have 
 got up by now and gone away? During my probing 
 words I had watched in vain for that special look, the 
 glare of mingled injury and vindictiveness, which 
 flashes across the face of the hypocrite found out. If 
 he had that sensitive spot, my probe had not reached 
 it yet. 
 
 "I would feel indebted to you," he said with 
 unction, "if you would mention some job I could do 
 here, without overstraining my heart, that is. I am 
 a stranger here." 
 
 I bethought me for an instant. I could give him 
 some addresses where good workers were welcome — 
 but could he be any sort of a good worker ? France 
 was afflicted with too many like him, come over from
 
 164 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 America for the "uplift" as he and they called it, but 
 which was no true uplift at all, was merely a mask, 
 concealing to others — and to themselves at least par- 
 tially — the subtle disguises of a central and impreg- 
 nable egotism. Swarms of these psychologically 
 diseased people were pervading poor, sad, scarred 
 France with their intrusive "missions," and these 
 brought really valuable missions of relief into 
 disrepute. 
 
 "Charity begins at home," said I lightly, but 
 watching him close. "Don't stay over here. There 
 are many hundred wounded soldiers in the Walter 
 Reed hospital, near Washington. You could be of 
 help to some of them every day, by reading aloud to 
 them. ' ' 
 
 He immediately spread out his hand against this 
 suggestion. "I cannot bear the sight of human 
 suffering, ' ' he said. ' ' I find it too afflicting. ' ' 
 
 A psychologic doctor would have been quite satis- 
 fied with those two statements. Added to what had 
 gone before, they were enough to rip the veil away 
 and disclose the true nature of this case. But it in- 
 terested me to go fishing for some more "reactions." 
 
 "Well," I said, "the Armistice saved much addi- 
 tional human suffering. I suppose that we should 
 rejoice that it came." 
 
 "I certainly rejoice," he stated. 
 
 "And yet, do you know," I continued, "sometimes 
 I do not wholly rejoice. Sometimes I ask myself, 
 may it not have been premature?" 
 
 He sat erect. "Premature? When it stopped the 
 war?" 
 
 "Yes, if it stopped it too soon for the wholesome 
 instruction of Germany."
 
 UPLIFT 165 
 
 At the word ''Germany" I thought that I dis- 
 cerned some fleeting change in his face. But he said : 
 
 "Would you instruct any one, even your enemies, 
 by means of war 1 ?" 
 
 "Certainly, if there was no other way." 
 
 "Then you are quite against universal disarma- 
 ment?" 
 
 "Universal? How do you know that everybody 
 will come into that game, or keep the rules of the 
 game if they do come in? Don't forget the Scrap 
 of Paper! Don't caress yourself with the thought 
 it will be the last Scrap that the world ever sees!" 
 
 "I am sorry to hear you speak like this," he said. 
 "I never allow myself to be cynical." 
 
 "Just as much as we insure against tire," I pur- 
 sued, "we must insure against war. Never in mak- 
 ing our national plans and preparations can we 
 reckon without the possible chance of war." 
 I can't bear to hear you say that," he said. 
 Oh, there are compensations," I replied, very 
 lightly and deliberately. "War makes more men 
 than it kills. ' ' 
 
 He threw both his flabby hands above his head. 
 
 "You have no idea what a horror I have of war!" 
 he intoned. 
 
 "I'm quite sure that you have!" 
 
 This slipped out before I could stop it; but he 
 missed it. His vague, lustrous eyes were filled with 
 his chronic preoccupation. 
 
 "But please don't imagine," I amplified, "that you 
 own the copyright of horror of war. That is no 
 monopoly of yours. It is shared by a good many 
 millions of us who would like war to become impos- 
 sible, and yet who would make war at any moment in 
 
 if
 
 166 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 the name of righteousness and to defend the liberty of 
 the human soul." 
 
 "I have thought it out clear," he intoned. "I 
 know where I stand. The most sacred thing in the 
 whole world is human life. Therefore anything that 
 takes human life is pure evil." 
 
 "You're a Christian, I presume," I said. 
 
 "It is certainly my effort to be one," he replied. 
 
 "Then what do you make out of the Crucifixion !" 
 I asked. ' 1 '"• 
 
 I knew quite well how he must have dealt with 
 that, or would now deal with it, if my sudden ques- 
 tion had never till now presented itself to him. He 
 would push it quickly out of his mind, as he pushed 
 out every fact of history or nature or human nature 
 that caused the clockwork of his toy idealism to 
 slip a cog. But I was not prepared for the ingenuity 
 with which his subconscious self would instantly 
 protect itself. 
 
 "I cannot discuss with you the Founder of my 
 Religion." 
 
 "No, you can't," I murmured, lost for a moment 
 in admiration, which he took for defeat. I had 
 pushed him pretty close. He was not a self-known 
 hypocrite. But his under-self had felt the approach 
 of my probe to the spot it was hiding, and its resent- 
 ment had peeped through in a hard flash from his 
 eye and a brush of color that had already faded out 
 of his cheeks. In his eye was now a reproof at my 
 irreverent introduction of the Crucifixion. Well, I 
 would try for one "reaction" more. 
 
 I tapped upon my map, which lay spread upon the 
 table. 
 
 "By the way," I said, "there is service that you
 
 UPLIFT 167 
 
 can do. Of course you've seen all this?" And I 
 swept my hand in a general way from Amiens and 
 Picardy eastward and south across Soissons and 
 Reims to the edge of the Argonne, which was as much 
 of the devastated regions as this particular map 
 included. 
 
 He leaned over and looked at the map, and then 
 he shook his head. 
 
 "I have been able to travel very little," he said. 
 "My duties have been confining." 
 
 "Then you have not seen anything of the devas- 
 tated regions?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Go and see them. There is your chance for 
 service." 
 
 "I have no permit," he said. "It requires 
 influence." 
 
 "You forget your uncle. I'm seeing them, and I 
 have no uncle. All I did was to explain to the proper 
 people that I wanted to visit the devastated regions 
 in order to see with my own eyes what the Germans 
 had done to France, and then go home and report 
 it to Americans." 
 
 "I have no wish to report it," he replied coldly. 
 "I do not consider that any true service." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "It has been too much reported already." 
 
 "You're mistaken. It cannot be too much re- 
 ported." 
 
 May I inquire your reason for such an opinion?" 
 'Because there is a pernicious spirit at home 
 which masquerades as Christianity. It preaches the 
 doctrine of forgiving and forgetting what the Ger- 
 mans have done to France and Belgium. Of course 
 
 if
 
 168 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 nothing could please or could profit the Germans 
 quite so well as that the world in general and Amer- 
 ica in particular should forget what they did, and 
 believe that they would never do it again. ' ' 
 
 By the changes in his face I could read that in 
 this final attempt my success was going to be per- 
 fect. When I had spoken of a pernicious spirit as 
 " masquerading as Christianity," the same hard 
 gleam which I had detected once before again flashed 
 in his eye. By the time, however, that I had 
 finished speaking, he had schooled himself for the 
 moment. It might have been a preacher that now 
 addressed me in accents reproachful yet mild. 
 
 "Do you not think," he said, "that we should for- 
 give our enemies'?" 
 
 "I'm afraid you'll have to put that question a little 
 plainer before I can answer it, ' ' said I. 
 
 "Could anything be more plain than the words 
 themselves? Are we not told in the Bible to love 
 our enemies and do good to them that hate us ? " 
 
 "We are. I don't, however, remember that we're 
 anywhere told to forgive other people's enemies." 
 
 His control held. He was still the benevolent, 
 Christian preacher of the Gospel of Peace. 
 
 "How does this strike you?" I asked him. "The 
 United States standing up with its hands spread 
 out in the attitude of blessing, and saying to Ger- 
 many : 'I forgive you for carrying away French wives 
 and daughters to slavery and prostitution ; I forgive 
 you for throwing poison gas into the hospital and 
 streets of the French town of Mezieres in the last 
 few minutes before the Armistice was signed, and 
 thus killing the defenceless French whose town 
 you were leaving in haste.' Does that sort of for-
 
 UPLIFT 169 
 
 giveness strike you as costing the forgiver very 
 much?" 
 
 He took instant and adroit advantage of my phrase. 
 
 "Need forgiveness cost us anything ?" he asked, 
 raising one of his tell-tale hands. "Did it cost the 
 father much to forgive his prodigal son in the para- 
 ble? I admit that we should hate the sin, but let 
 us not hate the sinner. Kemember the prodigal son, 
 and how freely he was forgiven!" 
 
 "Aren't you omitting a rather important part of 
 that parable?" said I. "The prodigal son said, 'I 
 will arise and go to my father, and will say unto 
 him, Father I have sinned against heaven and before 
 thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' 
 Has Germany said anything like that?" 
 
 It may have been from his talks to soldiers about 
 social purity between the acts of vaudeville enter- 
 tainments, or it may have been from other previous 
 experiences, that he had learned his various uses of 
 adroitness. Wherever he had been, he was certainly 
 skilful ; and his skill was, of course, seconded at every 
 turn by that under-self in him who was hiding the 
 spot he wished to remain unknown both to himself 
 and to all the rest of the world. My facts about 
 French wives and poison gas at Mezieres he did not 
 take up ; he pushed them out of his mind automati- 
 cally, because they interfered with his psychological 
 clockwork. That mechanism was constructed to ring 
 melodious bells and thus drown the noises of reality 
 whenever they threatened to disturb his artificial 
 and perfectly sterile idealism. 
 
 "Both sides have been guilty of much that you and 
 I would condemn," he now said, intoning slightly 
 again.
 
 170 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "If you mean that men in hot blood commit acts 
 they would be ashamed of when they were cool," 
 said I, "that is not what I am talking about. I am 
 talking about a plan of atrocity worked out by the 
 German Staff in advance, the proofs of which you can 
 see for yourself if you visit the devastated regions." 
 
 He smiled. "There has been so much exaggera- 
 tion." 
 
 "Exaggeration? I don't know what you call Lord 
 Bryce's report. Or the French report of Monsieur 
 Bedier." 
 
 "But they were enemies of Germany," the up- 
 lifter reminded me. 
 
 "Have you read their reports!" 
 
 He paused. That was in order to look as if he 
 had read them, and was now being judicial about 
 their contents. I doubted his ever having heard 
 Bedier 's name before ; but he could hardly have es- 
 caped hearing something about the investigation of 
 German atrocities in Belgium conducted under the 
 auspices of Lord Bryce. Our papers had spoken of 
 it, and the facts presented in the pamphlets had been 
 upon many lips. He would be well aware that these 
 facts, like the sights in the devastated regions, would 
 be disturbing to his psychological clockwork. There- 
 fore, to avoid the trouble of putting them out of his 
 mind, he would never let them come into it. 
 
 "Lord Bryce," he began in a weighty and dispas- 
 sionate manner, " is an eminent man. He is an honest 
 man. We are all convinced of his sincerity. ' ' 
 
 "Quite so," said I. 
 
 "But we must not forget that Lord Bryce may 
 have been deceived. He was not on the spot. He 
 did not see those alleged deeds committed with his
 
 UPLIFT 171 
 
 own eyes. How could he be sure that the witnesses 
 were telling the truth?" 
 
 ''Don't you think that with his long career in Par- 
 liament and in public life that he would have become 
 fairly expert in such matters, pretty careful to sift 
 what was laid before him?" 
 
 "My dear sir, mature judges have been deceived 
 before. Who of us is infallible?" 
 
 "But there was the Supplemental Report, contain- 
 ing photographs of letters written, and diaries — all 
 in the handwriting of Germans, who recorded not 
 only the atrocities they saw others commit, but the 
 atrocities they committed themselves. They were 
 photographs, remember, with the dates, and the 
 names of the writers, their rank, and the regiments 
 to which they belonged. ' ' 
 
 He smiled again. "Can you and I be sure that 
 these photographs were not forgeries?" 
 
 It was growing late. No one was left in the cafe 
 but ourselves and the waiters. These were noisily 
 lifting chairs from the floor and piling them upside 
 down upon the empty tables, casting upon us the 
 while looks of increasing inhospitality. I decided 
 that I must bring him to a boil. So long as he re- 
 mained tepid — and he knew the strategic value of a 
 moderate temperature very shrewdly — he could not 
 be surprised into that final "reaction" which would 
 complete the quod erat demonstrandum of his case. 
 To surprise him circumspection was needed, and 
 therefore I began my approach from quite a safe 
 distance. 
 
 "Of course I cannot prove to you that those photo- 
 graphs of letters in Lord Bryce's Supplemental Re- 
 port were authentic documents. To do that I should
 
 172 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 have to show you the letters in the presence of those 
 who had written them, and have the men state under 
 oath that it was their own handwriting. But on the 
 other hand, how can you prove to me that they were 
 not genuine ? ' ' 
 
 "I admit freely that I can not. Therefore I hold 
 my opinion in reserve. That is what I so wish you 
 would do about all these matters. " 
 
 He did not know how nearly this remark brought 
 me to a boil. But I continued to stalk him. 
 
 "Have you heard anything about Shantung?" I 
 inquired. "Hints reach me that it is giving them 
 trouble at the Peace Conference." I spoke softly. 
 
 "Oh, no," he replied. "I am not near enough to 
 anybody there." 
 
 "I've never been to Japan," I said, "or to China 
 either. China must be still a very strange place. Is 
 it Canton or Shanghai that's the capital?" 
 
 "Why, Peking is the capital." 
 
 1 ' You 've seen it ! How I envy you ! " I spoke more 
 softly still. 
 
 "No. I have had no opportunity to visit China." 
 
 "Then, how do you know that Peking is the capi- 
 tal?" This I almost whispered. A sudden change 
 had come into his look, but he was too late. 
 
 "You have never seen Peking with your own 
 eyes," I pursued. "You can not know that it is 
 really the capital of China. You have taken the word 
 of maps and geographies for it. How do you know 
 that they are not forgeries? Should you not hold 
 your opinion in reserve?" 
 
 He rose abruptly. * ' I will bid you good-night, ' ' he 
 said. "I thought I was talking to a man who lived 
 on the higher plane. : 
 
 >>
 
 UPLIFT 173 
 
 He was gone at once. More slowly, I folded my 
 map and slid it back into its cover, and left the cafe 
 to the piles of chairs and the impatient waiters. I 
 had brought him to a boil, the lid he so tightly kept 
 upon his under-self had come off, and up from the 
 bottom had bubbled the key-word that unlocked him. 
 This case of diseased psychology was demonstrated. 
 
 France was filled with "uplifters" such as he, con- 
 scientious objectors to common-sense, all living upon 
 the "higher plane." So, unluckily, is America.
 
 XVI 
 
 CHEMIN DE FEE DE i/eST 
 
 Early the next morning after my talk with the 
 nplifter, I entered the Gare de l'Est. Above the 
 stream of travellers' on their way to the platforms of 
 the Eastern railroad in Paris, beacons a white dial, 
 a meeting-place for many. Swarms of our dough- 
 boys surrounded it ; French passengers were lost in 
 this crowd. To these American soldiers returning 
 from their permissions, the sight of themselves here, 
 and the sound of their own voices was nothing out 
 of the way, but it was like a dream to me. I had 
 sped past the dial so often in other days, that now 
 to come upon this flood of the New World in khaki 
 beneath it, literally submerging the Old World, made 
 me stare. 
 
 The New World flooded my train, part of which 
 was going to Metz, and part to Strasbourg. After 
 some five hours it would divide at a junction which 
 lay to the southeast of the St. MDiiel country, the next 
 step of our pilgrimage. All the way we should run 
 just within, or just along, the edge of battle-grounds 
 as ancient as Caesar and as recent as Foch ; through 
 Meaux and La Ferte-sous-Jouarre on the Marne, 
 whence the Hun had been beaten back in Septem- 
 ber, 1914; through Chateau-Thierry; through Mezy, 
 where on July 15th, 1918, the 38th Eegiment of our 
 3rd Division with a platoon of the 30th had won its 
 name, "The Rock of the Marne." All the more be- 
 cause we had passed some of these places yesterday, 
 
 174
 
 CHEMIN DE FER DE L'EST 175 
 
 either in daylight or in dark, I was glad that they 
 were to come by again, and I should have liked to 
 get out and walk and linger over all that ground 
 where our soldiers had stopped Ludendorff. Right 
 down the time-table of our Strasbourg express, name 
 after name sounded the overtones of historic asso- 
 ciation: Jaulgonne and Dormans rang with Ameri- 
 can dash ; Epernay bubbled with memories of golden 
 wine; farther up the valley we should follow the 
 Marne and be running to the south of Blanc Mont 
 and Suippes, and the Main de Massiges, that Cham- 
 pagne country where Gouraud had splendidly halted 
 Ludendorff. Then, with Chalons-sur-Marne behind 
 us, our train would run on eastward below 
 Ste. Menehould, below the Argonne, beyond the 
 Marne, the Meuse, the Moselle, and so after 
 dividing reach its two destinations over rails 
 now once again wholly upon French soil. The 
 last time that I had travelled on this Chemin de Fer 
 de l'Est, my course had been from Strasbourg as far 
 as Avricourt across land of the Kaiser's, descended 
 to him from his grandfather, who had torn it from 
 the map of France after the Bismarck victory in 
 1871. After forty-seven years Alsace and Lorraine 
 were French once more, and America had helped to 
 bring this about. I thought of the crowds beneath 
 the clock and of the trains drawn up by the platforms 
 during the years before we came in, the black years 
 of Verdun, and the mutiny of 1917. Those trains 
 had carried soldiers daily up the Marne valley, grave 
 soldiers in blue, going to Ste. Menehould, the Ar- 
 gonne, Vaux, and Douaumont, many of them destined 
 never to see the clock again. 
 To-day it was our soldiers who crowded the train.
 
 176 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 They were returning to their regiments at various 
 places, each fresh (or stale) from his "permission" 
 in Paris, and the scene recalled to me in a way cer- 
 tain trains at home between New York and Boston, 
 when our boys are going back to their various New 
 England schools after the Christmas holidays. As 
 I walked slowly beside the long train, its open win- 
 dows hummed with the sound of voices jocund and 
 youthful. No more than the school-boys converse 
 about Caesar and his Gallic war, did these doughboys 
 make references to the historic interest of the jour- 
 ney before them. Bits of their talk reached me from 
 the windows, and it was all what you would naturally 
 expect and some that you would naturally not repeat. 
 Dearlv should I have liked to join them and hear 
 something of their Parisian adventures and impres- 
 sions, their murmur sounded so buoyant, so charm- 
 ing to my elderly ears. Thus certainly did Caesar's 
 legionaries, and possiblv even Attila's, gaily converse 
 between slaughters, without anv more suspicion that 
 their deeds were destined heavily to bore the school- 
 boys of today than these vivacious fellows from the 
 Hudson and the Mississippi, whom the train of the 
 Chemin de Fer de PEst would presently be rushing 
 over Caesar's and Attila's ground, were aware that 
 their deeds, too, would heavily bore the school-boys 
 of the future. They in their turn had made history, 
 and farther from home that ever Caesar or Attila 
 had been able to get. The train was not starting yet, 
 and I continued to walk along it, looking at this new 
 vision of America in the Old World. Some tales of 
 ill behavior on the part of our men had reached 
 me, to be sure, and of certain harsh and even cruel 
 punishments, which a young soldier friend has since
 
 CHEMIN DE FER DE L'EST 177 
 
 told me he believed on the whole, timely, in spite of 
 their widely published excess. I can quite believe it. 
 Upon thousands of lusty youths, far from home, let 
 loose from military discipline upon a great metropo- 
 lis, a firm hand needs to be kept. But ill behavior 
 was not the prevailing characteristic of our boys, 
 and a picture of them has been drawn by a French- 
 man, Andre Chevrillon, whose delightful pages, en- 
 titled "The Americans at Brest," give what I fancy 
 represents the impression which France will retain 
 of us when incidental memories of roughness and 
 discord have died away. In the first days of their 
 home-coming our soldiers, just like those I had met 
 in Paris streets, cherished some resentments, chiefly 
 connected with high prices ; but two years later, the 
 officers and enlisted men whom I happened to tell 
 that I was going back to take another look at France, 
 never failed to exclaim, with light in their eyes, that 
 they wished they were going too. And quite often 
 they would add, that if I should visit such and such 
 a place, would I look up a certain house where they 
 had been billeted, or a certain corner where they 
 had been wounded, or some other thing, some hill 
 or wood or street or bank or stream that was now 
 become a magnet in their memories, drawing their 
 spirits back to France, the country of their great 
 adventure. That is what Time does for us all. 
 
 Not every window of this long train was filled with 
 a doughboy, nor was every car dedicated to them. 
 At certain windows French travellers stood and 
 stared out with that particular glare, which we all 
 assume in European trains, to discourage everybody 
 else from entering our compartment to take a seat. 
 But these glares did not worry me. Our young cap-
 
 178 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 tain whom we had begun to see at 37, Rue de Bas- 
 sano, and begun to know at Belleau Wood, had us 
 still in his charge and had taken every care of us in 
 the matter of tickets and reserved seats in this early- 
 starting and thickly-peopled train. Our car was of 
 German make, allotted to France after the Armistice, 
 and of better build, more solid and handsome in every 
 respect than French cars. After we had attained 
 full speed it was a cautious rate, never above thirty- 
 five miles an hour. Owing to the dilapidations of 
 road-beds during four years of fighting, all trains 
 ran slower, those between Paris and Strasbourg now 
 taking from twelve to thirteen hours instead of seven 
 or eight. Over this line three expresses now ran 
 daily ; in 1914 there had been nine or ten. The great 
 through expresses to Constantinople, Carlsbad, and 
 Berlin, for instance, had of course all been abolished. 
 About twenty express trains were now running in 
 the whole of France. 
 
 Special trains were arranged for our doughboys 
 between their various important camps and the dif- 
 ferent leave areas, but these could not wholly relieve 
 the regular trains of their burden. From certain 
 of the best expresses the enlisted man was excluded 
 by order — and this most naturally was a challenge 
 to his young spirit ; he got aboard them whenever he 
 could dodge our military police, and exerted his en- 
 tire guile to stay in them without being discovered 
 and turned out before the journey's end. 
 
 Soon after we had reached the Marne, I made a 
 progress of exploration through the congested cor- 
 ridors of almost all the cars. I squeezed my way 
 through knots of doughboys blocking the passage, 
 leaning, smoking, loquacious, thinking little of other
 
 CHEMIN DE FER DE L'EST 179 
 
 passengers, few of them intentionally ruae, most of 
 them merely young and rough and in high spirits. 
 As I worked along back and forth through the long 
 train, and realized that trains all over France, every 
 day in the week, were running to and from the leave 
 areas bursting with young America, I felt more in- 
 dulgent than ever to the French impatience with us. 
 I could have put the case better now to the discon- 
 tented soldiers with whom I had reasoned in Paris 
 streets and shops. 
 
 The wide-awake fellow from Danbury had said: 
 
 "Do you think if they had come over and saved 
 New York and Bridgeport and New Haven for us, 
 we'd be showing them the door like they're showing 
 it to us?" 
 
 "Yes," I should certainly now have replied. "I 
 think we should be showing them the door, and less 
 civilly. Would you find it easy to say to them every 
 time they swarmed into your train, trod on your 
 instep, shoved their elbows into your ribs, and filled 
 your face with tobacco smoke, 'Keep it up, dear 
 saviour of my country. How can I ever forget that 
 nine months ago you fought at MezyT " 
 
 Lovely in the quiet rain was this valley of many 
 wars, seeming to grow greener as the drops continued 
 to fall gently upon it. It was as if May each hour were 
 turning higher the lights of spring, and spring were 
 visibly feathering the trees along the Marne. We 
 passed the tower of Meaux, the fields sloping up to 
 woods, the steeper banks, the levels by the winding 
 river. To our right at first, then after Trilport to 
 our left, it curved constantly across our way, and 
 sometimes we lost it in the sudden darkness of a 
 tunnel to emerge upon it again in the sudden light.
 
 180 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 We soon passed into the zone of ruin. Not the least 
 gruesome sight here were solitary houses, off on the 
 hillsides, gutted within, with grey walls standing 
 roofless, and black window-holes like eyes that 
 watched you though they were blind : mile after mile 
 of this among the ploughed and sown slants of culti- 
 vated soil, that chequered the sloping boundaries of 
 the valley. The land here had been less wrecked 
 than the buildings and was coming to life again, but 
 they were not. And out there beyond sight across 
 the river to the north, if you followed those little 
 roads up the hills, you would come into the plain of 
 Tardenois and be swallowed at once in the wide- 
 stretching desolation of the Ourcq and the Aisne 
 and the Vesle, and could go on to your right or your 
 left or in front, and look at Reims, Soissons, Coucy- 
 le-Chateau, St. Quentin, and so to Ypres, and never 
 take one step that was not upon the grave of some- 
 thing. „ 
 
 At Epernay we made a considerable pause, and 
 I got out, and on the platform beheld the manufac- 
 ture of some international hate. A boy of about eigh- 
 teen had rolled the customary two-story edifice of 
 trays on wheels along beside the cars. Bread, or- 
 anges, champagne, with other food and drink, filled 
 the trays, and the doughboys were stretching their 
 arms out of the windows toward these refreshments. 
 I didn't catch what prices the boy had asked for his 
 wares, but I came in time to hear the loud results. 
 Some of the soldiers had jumped down and sur- 
 rounded him and his rolling booth, and stood with 
 the buns and the bottles they had picked out, curs- 
 ing him for a robber and a cheat. On him was evi- 
 dently pouring their accumulated resentment for
 
 CHEMIN DE FEE DE L'EST 181 
 
 many over-charges. He stood dazed and sulky amid 
 the storm of language, speaking not a word of Eng- 
 lish, but perfectly able to understand that he was 
 being called obscene and filthy names for what was 
 no fault of his. He hadn't made the prices, they had 
 been set by the proprietor of the buffet in the station. 
 And he was so much younger than the soldiers ! 
 
 "Say," shouted one of them, "you ought to be 
 glad for our buying your stuff." 
 
 And another from the window, pointing to some 
 eatable : 
 
 "Say, Eain-in-the-face, how much is that?" 
 
 I couldn't help laughing at this and at several 
 more of their violent remarks; but I was ashamed 
 of them, and of myself, too, for not protesting. How 
 often had this boy been forced to receive similar in- 
 sults, what sentiments toward America was he going 
 to retain and spread, how many such scenes had been 
 enacted throughout France ? And if this was excep- 
 tional and I had chanced upon a spot of blackguards 
 in khaki, would such spots stain all the decenter 
 rest of us in the French memory? 
 
 Of such spots I had heard elsewhere. Every day 
 to some soldiers quartered in the north, a lady of 
 the neighborhood sent good things from her kitchen 
 garden, and, constant in her appreciation of our com- 
 ing over, had made these soldiers welcome to the 
 pleasant grounds of her estate. This did not stop 
 some of them from loud and unfavorable opinions 
 of the French, expressed continually in a trolley car 
 that ran through the district. There they sat talk- 
 ing one day, and there sat the lady too ; and an army 
 surgeon, who could bear it no longer, rebuked them 
 and was told to mind his business. But he reported
 
 182 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 the scandal to the commanding officer, and there was 
 no more of it. Which was France going to remem- 
 ber, the army surgeon or the "roughnecks"? It 
 was not only enlisted men, it was officers as well, 
 whose words and conduct spotted American reputa- 
 tion. As when, for instance, a certain general accom- 
 panied a film machine and a certain benevolent 
 organization to a certain hospital, and there ordered 
 out the convalescent men and staged a moving pic- 
 ture which "featured" himself. Assuming his pos- 
 ture, he ordered the patients to race and pick up 
 little gifts flung to them by the benevolent organiza- 
 tion. When the photograph was finished the little 
 gifts were taken back from the convalescents, and 
 the general with his benevolent apparatus marched 
 on to a new place and had more films made. Or 
 again, for instance, when a certain officer issued an 
 order that "The -th regiment will de-French and 
 de-louse at , and embark on the -th." These ex- 
 amples — more could be given — should suffice to re- 
 mind any American, inclined to complain of French 
 shortcomings, that the boot is not always on the 
 same leg. That the conduct of our enlisted men was 
 on the whole more creditable than that of their com- 
 missioned officers is something that I have heard 
 too often from commissioned officers themselves not 
 to believe. Some of the unfit were weeded out, but 
 the Armistice came too soon for this process to be 
 complete. Quite naturally, much more impregnable 
 conceit was to be found among the middle-aged vege- 
 table officers of our regular army than in those who 
 had come from successful responsibility in civil life. 
 While discussing our army with me, a French gen- 
 eral said:
 
 CHEMIN DE FER DE L'EST 183 
 
 "When an American officer told me that I need 
 not tell him anything, I knew that I had a bad soldier 
 to deal with. When an American officer asked me 
 to tell him what to do, I knew that he would prove 
 a good soldier." He went on to explain with illus- 
 trations how admirable he had found the Americans, 
 how quick to seize a point. ' ' Make them understand 
 a thing once," he said, "and you need feel no more 
 anxiety. They would carry it out. ' ' ^ 
 
 Among our doughboys the spot at Epernay is the 
 only one that I saw, and this makes me sure that the 
 French are sincere and not merely polite when they 
 express admiration of us, as they do today: our 
 general tone must have been wonderfully decent. 
 Two years later, when a lady who lived on a great 
 estate in the eastern part of the country was speak- 
 ing to me of the war as it was after we had come in, 
 and of the Americans who had during some months 
 in 1918 occupied part of her ancient house and part 
 of her land, she had such cordial words to say that 
 I exclaimed: 
 
 "Well, I hope that you are not telling this to me 
 just because I am an American! I hope that our 
 boys did conduct themselves pretty well on the 
 whole?" ti:*- % 
 
 1 1 But they were charming ! We shall never forget 
 them : so gay, so athletic, and some of them so good 
 looking! And they always thanked us for the little 
 that we could do for them." Then she smiled and 
 shrugged her shoulders. "Some little Americans 
 are running about in our village today ; but that was 
 quite likely the fault of our own lasses." 
 
 "You are very indulgent," I replied; "and from 
 the chronicles of chivalry it would appear that wan-
 
 184 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 dering warriors have always been apt to leave their 
 portraits behind them." 
 
 It was none the less new to think of: our dough- 
 boys home by the Hudson and the Mississippi, or 
 sleeping in their graves by the Marne and the Meuse, 
 and little Americans strewed about in Lorraine, and 
 Dauphine, and Anjou. 
 
 Nobody ever seemed to get out of this train ; they 
 seemed only to get in. They had an excellent oppor- 
 tunity to leave us at Chalons-sur-Marne, and one 
 other at Vitry-le-Frangois, but these they neglected 
 and stuck to their seats closer than brothers, while 
 the corridors remained congested with standing pas- 
 sengers. Everyone was apparently bound at least 
 as far as we were, and when an emissary in uniform 
 from the restaurant car pushed his way past the 
 door of our compartment, announcing — 
 
 " Dejeuner deuxieme! Deuxieme service de- 
 jeuner!" — 
 
 I felt my approbation of the French system in- 
 crease. The steward's announcement may well be 
 translated into the rubric that I once heard a black 
 waiter upon the Michigan Central poetically chant- 
 ing through my Pullman: 
 
 "Second call 
 In the breakfast hall!" 
 
 We rose and manoeuvred towards the distant food, 
 our minds at rest. At home, with the number of 
 passengers upon our train, and but one restaurant 
 car, attaining a meal would have proved a struggle 
 to which we very likely might have preferred starva- 
 tion. In France there is no standing for thirty or 
 sixty miles at the door of the dining-car, or lurching
 
 CHEMIN DE FER DE L'EST 185 
 
 about in its vestibule, till your turn conies. Before 
 you get into your train, you stop at the steps, where 
 the steward gives you a ticket for the service you 
 prefer, unless you are late, when you may have to 
 take what you can get. Sometimes there are three 
 services, each lasting about an hour. Once you pos- 
 sess your ticket, your cares are over, you sit quiet 
 until your "service" is called, and then you go and 
 find a seat ready for you at a table which has been 
 cleanly re-set. To all this our vigilant captain had 
 attended. While we comfortably ate, drinking good 
 white wine with it, the landscape flattened and wid- 
 ened, marshes passed, and spreads of water, in which 
 many stunted willows stood in lines or clumps like 
 children wading. Behind this untroubled scene of 
 spring, lay always the country of ruins and graves, 
 Massiges, Ste. Menehould, the Argonne. 
 
 East and west every day travelled our doughboys 
 on this Chemin de Fer de l'Est, upon which I shall 
 never travel again without affectionately thinking of 
 them. Like the Chemin de Fer du Nord and no other 
 of the great French railways, its main lines and 
 branches crossed and pervaded the upheaved regions 
 of the war, and upon both I have made many jour- 
 neys to the land of silence. Over most of their miles 
 of track nothing was running in May 1919, their 
 rusty rails stretched through emptiness, or were torn 
 up. Whilst I have been travelling in their cars, I 
 have thought often of those trains that during the 
 years of strife had taken soldiers of France and 
 England, not to the land of silence, but to the land 
 of bombs and gas and flames. My own safe jour- 
 neys can never be forgotten, and pictures of various 
 fellow-travellers remain vivid in my memory, espe-
 
 186 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 cially those of the Chemin de Fer de l'Est, of which 
 my impressions are more copious. Once along the 
 Meuse, I was going to a small village to find, if I 
 could, the grave of an American boy. I had the com- 
 partment to myself until at our second stop the door 
 opened and in got a rosy French girl whose eyes 
 sparkled upon a young Frenchman as rosy. They 
 sat opposite each other by their window, I sat at 
 mine. Unless it was the better to gaze at each other 
 I couldn't imagine then, and can't now, why they 
 were not sitting on the same seat, for really, such 
 honeymooning I have never beheld by daylight, and 
 I am sixty-one years old. Not to be in the way, I 
 looked out of my window with the utmost delicacy, 
 and repeated verses from the "Song of Solomon." 
 But at a sharp slap I jumped round. 
 
 "Isn't she wicked?" he asked me, gay spirits and 
 tenderness blending in his tones. 
 
 "Yes, indeed!" I exclaimed. His cheek was red 
 from her hand. 
 
 "What was the use in looking out of the window? 
 
 They went on quite regardless of me, until the 
 train slowed for a station. Then he gave her such 
 a kiss that she protested. 
 
 "But the monsieur doesn't mind us," he assured 
 her, and both their glances appealed to me, hers 
 saying, "You see I can't stop him!" and his, "You 
 understand!" 
 
 We halted and she got out. At the open door a 
 little baby was lifted up to her, evidently by its grand- 
 parents. She took it from them, while he waved 
 ardent good-byes to her and the family group. 
 
 "Then you're not getting out with her?" I ex- 
 claimed to him in surprise and sympathy.
 
 CHEMIN DE FER DE L'EST 187 
 
 He was not, he had to go to his work at another 
 place. He had been taking her for a little holiday. 
 Soon I had left the train, and was walking by a 
 broken wall among crosses, reading the names of 
 the dead and of the battles where they had fallen. 
 
 The Chemin de Fer de l'Est has furnished my 
 memory with many pictures. That harsh scene of 
 our doughboys and the French lad at Epernay has 
 been softened by time and reflection, and also by a 
 sprightly performance, in which I played a slight 
 part. We had got into a Paris express at Bar-le- 
 Duc, and according to my wont I began after a time 
 to wander along the corridors to see what I could 
 see. Disappointment was my first "reaction" (that 
 uplifter has poisoned my vocabulary with his cant- 
 ing jargon), I found neither honeymooners nor 
 doughboys, but only the average population of any 
 French express train. As I was standing in the 
 corridor of a second-class car, looking out of the 
 window and thinking I would give up my search 
 for local color and go back to my own car, the door 
 of the lavatory opened and three doughboys came 
 out. Why three at once in a lavatory? And why only 
 three on the whole train? And why had I not seen 
 them when I was exploring? I wanted to ask them 
 how long they had been in there, but this seemed 
 too leading a question for an entire stranger. They 
 stopped beside me and stood watching the scenery 
 with what struck me as an interest more lively than 
 it justified ; flat fields, marshes and stretches of water 
 with willows, should hardly absorb three doughboys, 
 unless they were all landscape painters. Nothing 
 was said by any of us for a while, until at last one 
 of them addressed me with a certain hesitation :
 
 J > 
 
 188 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "Do yon speak English?" 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "Could you tell us how soon we get to Chalons? 
 
 "Well," I answered, "at a guess, I should say 
 in about forty-five minutes." 
 
 Why did they all laugh? 
 
 This I did not inquire^ but asked : 
 
 "Are you getting out at Chalons?" at which they 
 laughed still more. 
 
 "Oh, no," one said. "We've got three days' per- 
 mission for Paris, but we're not allowed to ride on 
 this fast through train. Our police will pull us off 
 at Chalons if they see us. They nearly caught us at 
 the last stop. ' ' 
 
 "I'll not tell," said I. Then we were all merry 
 together. 
 
 "Have you ever been in the States?" asked one. 
 
 "God bless your heart, I've been there for two 
 hundred years!" Then we fraternized more than 
 ever. 
 
 "The French military police are all right," they 
 fold me. "It's ours that make the trouble for us." 
 
 Presently I returned to my compartment, and there 
 found that I had given wrong information to those 
 three confiding boys. We were due at Chalons at 
 six, thirty minutes sooner than I had told them, and 
 it was now five minutes to six. I hastened back to 
 them with this news, at which they immediately 
 rushed tumbling into the lavatory. 
 
 "If the police comes," said one, "tell him there's 
 a lady in here." And they locked the door. The 
 little indicator by the handle turned to "occupied." 
 I should think it was ! 
 
 I stood guard. We reached Chalons at six and left
 
 CHEMIN DE FER DE L'EST 189 
 
 it at six-twenty-two. No police came, but one pas- 
 senger tried the door three times, and I shall never 
 forget his face. As the train began to move out of 
 the station, I felt that I had done my duty, and re- 
 turned to our compartment, and narrated the circum- 
 stances to my companions. Just as I was finishing, 
 the three boys came by, looked in, and on seeing me 
 they all laughed joyously. 
 
 "We made the riffle!" cried one. 
 
 On the whole I think that the Chemin de Fer de 
 l'Est is my favorite railway in France.
 
 XVII 
 
 BAK-LE-DUC 
 
 If, in the silence of that wounded land which I 
 had come to see, one visited a town not wholly dead 
 and empty, those living there were making the best 
 of it, were meeting life, with such a spirit and aspect 
 that their effort was simply never visible. One had 
 come to know so well the seal which the war had set 
 upon all faces, that attention noted it no longer, but 
 took it for granted, unaware, and looked at other 
 things. At the time I was immersed in my journeys, 
 the sorrow of it prevailed in my imagination ; today, 
 as I think back, it is the pride in human nature which 
 can so splendidly meet distress as these French were 
 doing that dwells chiefly in memory. Never was 
 such horror dealt to any people, never have any 
 people so indomitably faced it, not at the moment 
 of stress alone, but in the forlorn prolongation of 
 its aftermath. Here at this little town of Bar-le-Duc, 
 though noon was gone and we had watched ruins since 
 early morning, the work of bombs still was visible. 
 Far behind us on the Marne — a hundred miles, I 
 suppose — we had passed the wrecks of way-stations, 
 such as Dormans, and here also the station roof was 
 shattered, walls had jagged holes in them, and in the 
 platform itself was a descent to some hiding-place, 
 where the railway people had gone during hours 
 when the Huns were sailing overhead. 
 
 The town had suffered in no degree comparable 
 to such places as Albert, through which the tides of 
 
 190
 
 BAR-LE-DUC 191 
 
 obliteration had raged back and forth. Bar-le-Duc 
 stood on the outer rim of a storm-centre and, saved 
 from the worst, had not been put out of existence, 
 but retained all its features whole — streets, houses, 
 statues, churches, park; and its shops were open, 
 with iron crosses and other still rather fresh relics 
 for sale. After getting away from the ruins at the 
 station, you might not have seen anything to remind 
 you that war had paid this place a visit, but for those 
 painted words upon so many dwellings: "Shelter," 
 "Cellar," "Vaulted Cellar." These, which I had 
 first noticed at Noyon, and met continually since in 
 many towns, showed that war had flown here through 
 the air. It was the starting point of what came to 
 be known as the Sacred Road, over which rolled the 
 endless chain of camions that during so many months 
 brought supplies to Verdun. This road had been 
 a creation of General Petain's resourceful mind; 
 without it Verdun could not have stood, with it he 
 was able to make good his quiet, great word, * ' They 
 shall not pass." The main line of the Eastern railway 
 is connected at Bar-le-Duc with Verdun by a branch, 
 a feeble affair with but a single track in 1914; and 
 one cannot help thinking that the French Govern- 
 ment, had it been the German Government, would 
 have been careful to make it solid and ready for war 
 emergencies, long in advance of the event. 
 
 In the streets and by the station, some of our offi- 
 cers and men in khaki made visible the presence of 
 America, and the rule of the military police was, 
 as we found one afternoon, still rigorous. As we 
 strolled along the Boulevard de la Rochelle, the time 
 of day suggested tea to our captain and beer to me, 
 so we sat ourselves at a table on the pavement in
 
 192 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 front of the Cafe de Commerce. We could hardly 
 have touched our chairs when out flew the lady who 
 commanded the cafe while her husband was in the 
 army. We must come inside, she declared; it was 
 not allowed for an officer in uniform to be seen drink- 
 ing in public. 
 
 "But, madame," protested our captain, almost 
 piteously. ' ' Since it is only tea that I ask for 1 ' ' 
 
 "No, no, no, monsieur le Capitaine, it won't do at 
 all. I cannot serve you here, not even tea. If it was 
 only your American police, they are so kind! I 
 would not fear them, but our French police, it is 
 they that are the bad ones, ah yes ! You must not 
 stay here. Enter, I pray you." 
 
 We entered, and retired meekly far back into the 
 corner, where my friends had their tea and I my 
 beer. At another table sat two healthy little boys, 
 one in knickerbockers, each sedately having his glass 
 of beer too. 
 
 Upon the wall above our table still hung the procla- 
 mation of the Armistice, its words tingling with joy 
 and patriotism. 
 
 Mairie de Bar-le-Duc 
 Mes chers Concitoyens 
 Le Jour de gloire est arrive! 
 
 Vive 1 'Alsace-Lorraine ! 
 Vive la France! Vive la Republique! 
 Vivent a jamais nos Allies! 
 
 le Maire, 
 
 J. Moulin. 
 
 En Mairie a Bar-le-Duc, 11 November, 1918. 
 
 The eleventh of November, 1918 ! The brightness 
 of that day, not yet six months ago, was even now
 
 BAR-LE-DUC 193 
 
 beginning to darken. Some minds already saw that 
 the work of the politicians was going to undo much 
 of the soldiers' work, and that the "new heaven and 
 new earth," announced to mankind by the Prime 
 Minister of Great Britain, were of the same substance 
 as the rest of his abundant phrases. Here in Bar-le- 
 Duc an American officer perceived and spoke the 
 truth about the allotting of Shantung, torn from 
 China by Germany, to Japan. 
 
 "Japan," he said, "sat into the game and never 
 spoke till she knew her time for a bluff had come. 
 Then she told them that if they didn 't pass the stolen 
 goods on to her, she wouldn't join their League of 
 Nations. They passed the goods all right, but that 
 puts ridicule on the League of Nations." 
 
 "Our doughboys," said I, "seem as anxious to 
 leave France as Mr. Wilson was to come to it." 
 With military correctness he ignored this refer- 
 ence to his commander-in-chief. "The French are 
 equally anxious to move back into their houses, which 
 we are occupying ; in Verdun a Frenchman is living 
 in the tunnel of the citadel, waiting for Americans 
 to get out of the only habitable room left in his 
 bombed house." 
 
 "I've been urging some of our boys," said I, "not 
 to be too hard on the French." 
 
 "It's the howlers who tell of French prices," he 
 said. "In a town in Oklahoma where I was, prices 
 were just as bad. Personally I have met more gen- 
 erosity here than at home. In this town there is a 
 manufacturer whose sheds I have been using as a 
 garage. He had to remove all his stuff to make room 
 for me. I wanted to pay him, but he refused to 
 accept a cent. He said, 'You came over and saved
 
 194 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 us. It's very little for me to do.* Keep up your 
 talk to the complainers," he added. "It's astonish- 
 ing how few understand that we must make allow- 
 ances for other people's ways." 
 
 One of the "ways" of Bar-le-Duc is renowned, 
 and no allowances have to be made for it. I allude 
 to a sort of currant preserve; and when my second 
 glass of beer was finished, I asked the lady of the 
 cafe for some, but she had none. In response to 
 my expression of genuine woe, she told me how to 
 find my way to the factory where the delicacy was 
 made. 
 
 It was not at all far away, I was soon ringing the 
 bell. 
 
 They had none. 
 
 "No, m'sieur. None since four months." 
 
 "Madame, mademoiselle!" I cried, "don't say 
 that to me." 
 
 "Alas, monsieur, not one since four months." 
 
 "Madame, mademoiselle, I have come expressly 
 six thousand kilometres. Pensez y, madame!" 
 
 "Ah, m'sieur, it is you Americans who have them 
 all eaten. You are such sweet tooths." 
 
 "Oh, madame, now I shall go home six thousand 
 kilometres, blushing for the greediness of my com- 
 patriots." 
 
 "Eh, m'sieur, it is not a mortal sin, the greediness ! 
 But see, when we have sugar again, we shall be able 
 to make your currants." 
 
 "Ah!" I exclaimed. "It is the absence of sugar, 
 not the presence of Americans." 
 
 "It is the sugar, monsieur. But without doubt the 
 Americans quickly discover what is good." 
 
 Currants might be wanting in Bar-le-Duc, but the
 
 BAR-LE-DUC 195 
 
 French spirit was here, smiling, joking, going on 
 with existence undaunted. The commerce of the 
 place was killed, not the courage that would bring 
 it again to life. 
 
 The town lies enclosed by hills quite near together, 
 and to the south it has climbed part way up their 
 sides; so that one-half the population looks down 
 from among its plentiful trees upon the roofs steeply 
 mingling in the bottom of the cup. It is only a little 
 cupful of France, but into it great tradition has been 
 stirred. The statues of two marshals, born here, 
 rise in their separate squares, and on the pedestal 
 of one, Exelmans, stand the words that Napoleon 
 spoke to him: "One cannot be braver than thou." 
 I came upon this after crossing a bridge with a little, 
 ancient tower upon it. The bridge was small, the 
 river narrow, but a marshal of Napoleon had walked 
 there, and long before his day, the Dukes of Bar. 
 The little river ran between a vista of poplars, be- 
 neath arches of stone; and though the houses along 
 the quays by the poplars were not fine dwellings, old 
 French masons had proportioned their lines, and 
 French grace filled this formal avenue made by the 
 river upon which their windows faced. Yes; Bar- 
 le-Duc has more than currants to give its inhabitants. 
 Over the entrance to its shady little park is the 
 admirable text: "Plus penser que dire" — "More 
 thought than speech"; and a notice within the gate 
 reminds one that, "this park being common prop- 
 erty, is placed under the safeguard of the towns- 
 folk." The back of the Hotel de Ville forms one 
 corner of these lawns and walks, stone steps lead 
 down from it to them, and its walls rise above them, 
 not high, but proportioned by old French masons,
 
 196 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and stained with the seasoned hues of time. On 
 each side of the stone steps couches a lion with a 
 conversational expression; one lion seems slightly 
 to be pouting, as if he would say: "Lunch was not 
 what I had a right to expect;" the other smiles 
 sleepily, and he would certainly say: "Lunch came 
 up to my ideas." The sky was blue as I sat on a 
 bench near these decorous beasts, water trickled 
 down the carvings of a fountain into a slumberous 
 basin, flowers framed the borders of the lawns and 
 daisies starred their sod. The tops of trees new- 
 leaved rose like green islands in the sea of steep 
 roofs, and loveliness hung quietly over the town. 
 It is by no means a town of the first rank in beauty 
 or interest, but its present is mellowed with the glow 
 of messages from the past. Did our doughboys, when 
 they had eaten up the currants of Bar-le-Duc, find 
 any of this nourishment for the mind and spirit, or 
 had wise Kansas, on his island, been right when he 
 said that unless you brought education with you to 
 France, France would teach you nothing except riper 
 modes of sensuality? I wondered if the stone arches 
 over the river, its gracious avenue of poplars, the 
 little old tower on the bridge, the marshal of Napo- 
 leon, the wise legend over the garden-gate, "Plus 
 penser que dire," had not perhaps left a memory 
 and a yearning here and there in the American mind ; 
 if perhaps some of our soldiers, after getting back to 
 their own thriving, well-drained, well-lighted towns 
 of the West, might not sometimes miss that inward 
 illumination which shone here as in every old town 
 of France, and which even the most improved light- 
 arid-power plant cannot provide.
 
 XVIII 
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 
 
 These French and these sights of France that I 
 was seeing, hour after hour, and day after day, would 
 sometimes string to its highest tautness every nerve 
 of attention, and sometimes slack and stupefy me 
 into those trances wherein I seemed for a while to 
 notice nothing of the world external ; the only thing 
 that they never did was to stale my interest in this 
 spectacle of gigantic ruin: not a mile of it, as it 
 unfolded through those four hundred miles that I 
 travelled right and left within it, ever grew dull 
 through sameness. If this seem strange, if any one 
 who has merely been told about the ravage, wonder 
 how a panorama of changeless wreck, of houses, 
 farms, churches, villages, and forests chewed up and 
 spit out by the jaws of war, can fail to weary in the 
 end, it is because the visible unrolling of all this 
 nourished and enlarged, not knowledge alone, but 
 also emotion. The variety was within, and never 
 died. No battle was like another nor any individual 
 story of man or woman : so that into one 's streaming 
 thoughts came constantly the words, "This, too, the 
 Germans did," or "This, too, France suffered," and 
 absorption grew under it as does the scholar's who 
 pursues a chosen path, or as something new fills 
 every moment the over-sheltered body that has gone 
 for breath to the mountains or the ocean. Such a 
 breath of pity and awe blew here, that into the stream 
 
 197
 
 198 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 of thought often came also the words, "Who, after 
 seeing this, can ever be the same again?" 
 
 Our first few miles out of Bar-le-Duc are nearly 
 a blank, scarce more than a general green and love- 
 liness of spring present upon changing slopes, no 
 clearer memory than this, because the nerves of 
 attention had slacked and I was thinking of Nau- 
 heim, not of La Voie Sacree. I had strolled about 
 the German resort in May and June, 1914, admiring 
 the order, the system, the thoroughness, the thought- 
 ful care of detail, the plan wrought out to success. 
 During one of these walks a Zeppelin had sailed over 
 us, and this apparition suggested that Germany 
 would devote the same care to planning war as she 
 did to planning peace. 
 
 "It is mute likely," said I to my companion, "that 
 in their "War Office a"t Berlin they have blue prints 
 and specifications of every bridge, tunnel, signal- 
 tower, and siding of the Pennsylvania Railroad." 
 
 In less than four weeks, Ferdinand the Archduke 
 had been assassinated at Serajevo ; in less than eight, 
 more Americans than we were beginning to suspect 
 the care which Germany devoted to planning war. 
 One evening of that first winter, after the French at 
 the Marne and the British at Ypres had blocked 
 German -plans, and 468 miles of fortified trench ran 
 across France from the Channel to Switzerland, I 
 was sitting at dinner next the president of the Penn- 
 sylvania Railroad, and I repeated to him my remark 
 at Nauheim. 
 
 "Whv that's not so far from the truth," he said. 
 Then I learned a tale of German thoroughness, new 
 and typical. 
 
 As far back as 1903, there was usually an engineer-
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 199 
 
 ing attache at the German Embassy in Washington. 
 To him or his emissaries the Pennsylvania railroad 
 was accustomed to furnish free transportation as well 
 as information about mechanical appliances and im- 
 provements, including all the blue prints that they 
 asked for. But Germany did not return the compli- 
 ment. In March 1904, when the Pennsylvania's 
 chief signal engineer came home from a sort of 
 roving commission to visit and study certain Euro- 
 pean railway systems, he made in his report parti- 
 cular mention of the courteous treatment accorded 
 his committee by all railroad officials with whom he 
 came in contact in England and Scotland ; but about 
 Berlin he was entirely silent. This was because 
 in Berlin he had found the door shut, and was told 
 that the Kaiser had the key. In consequence of this 
 experience, the president in 1905 officially declined a 
 request to furnish free transportation to an engineer 
 then arriving from Germany. Later, in the days 
 when frightfulness was spreading flames and human 
 lamentations wider and ever wider through defence- 
 less villages and miles of horror, the railroad whose 
 blue prints Berlin had secured was led to do what 
 it could to make safe the yards and system of its 
 tracks on Long Island, in case But fright- 
 fulness in uniform did not step ashore over here ; it 
 merely sent vessels to the bottom along our coast 
 just after our Secretary of War had come back from 
 Europe and told us that the war was 3,000 miles 
 away. In August 1914, the British fleet became our 
 wall of safety, and behind this we dwelt unscathed. 
 I was brought back from these memories by our cap- 
 tain, who showed me two ' ' pill boxes ' ' bordering the 
 road, little squat turrets, solid, with peep slits for
 
 200 NEIGHBOES HENCEFOKTH 
 
 • w.. 
 
 guns, and fantastically painted. Nothing but a bomb 
 falling straight upon their roofs could smash them, 
 and their roofs were colored according to the laws 
 of optical illusion to escape the eye of the aviator. 
 Some of these contrivances suggested large fat toad- 
 stools, others the machines on dinner tables for grind- 
 ing pepper. From their insides, men could train guns 
 as from a compass upon all points and be almost 
 safe. After we had left this lonely couple behind us, 
 the scars of war thickened rapidly, trenches, barbed 
 wire, roofless walls; and the silence was here, wait- 
 ing for us, even though some of the trenches were 
 already being filled, some of the barbed wire already 
 rolled up from the liberated fields. 
 
 Do you know the extent of these fields of France 
 which frightfulness in uniform laid low according 
 to its careful plan? To read the cold figures is one 
 thing, to feel what they mean is quite another: the 
 dead decimals and integers do contain, but they also 
 entomb, the story; they need translating into life. 
 Of farmland, seed and harvest land, 1,757,000 hec- 
 tares were devastated, and if to this be added the 
 land that was in pasture and forest, the total is 
 3,800,000 hectares. A hectare is 2.471 acres — nearly 
 two acres and a half; and so, in terms of acres, the 
 devastation covers 9 million 389 thousand, 800 acres ; 
 and as 640 acres make one square mile, 14 thousand 
 and 670 square miles of France were devastated. 
 This exceeds the area of certain of our smaller states, 
 but it would not cover quite half of Maine, not quite 
 a third of Pennsylvania ; and when you come to some 
 of our Western States, in their vastness, it would 
 be well-nigh swallowed up — Texas alone is some forty 
 thousand square miles larger than the whole of
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 201 
 
 Franco. But what if we had been devastated, not 
 in this same actual amount, but in the same propor- 
 tion to our total, as France was? To lose one leg 
 is a 25 per cent, loss for a dog, a 50 per cent, loss for 
 a man: the whole area of France is 204 thousand 
 and 92 square miles, and its devastated region is 
 between one-thirteenth and one-fourteenth of the 
 whole. The area of the United States is three mil- 
 lion square miles, we are more than fourteen times 
 as large as France, and if one-fourteenth of our soil 
 had been devastated, it would cover more than two 
 hundred thousand square miles — the whole area of 
 Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, 
 Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, 
 Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and some of 
 Ohio. I select the northern and eastern part of our 
 country for my comparison, not only because it is 
 geographically the same portion of France which has 
 suffered, but also because it is economically parallel, 
 the great coal, steel, wool, and other centres of in- 
 dustry being preponderantly situated in the north 
 and east of France, as they are in New England and 
 the Middle States. 
 
 I have been at pains to understate the matter in 
 my own multiplications and divisions, by disregard- 
 ing certain decimals which would have somewhat in- 
 creased my final figures, although not enough to go 
 beyond Ohio. Unless these calculations err, a man 
 could start in a car at Vanceboro, Maine, and go 
 through Bangor, Portland, Worcester, Springfield, 
 Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo to 
 Pittsburgh, and not reach the western limit of devas- 
 tation. He could wind to the north and the south of 
 this route, and pass Manchester, Lawrence, Lowell,
 
 202 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 Fall River, Bridgeport, Trenton, Bethlehem, Reading, 
 and Scranton, finding all these towns totally or par- 
 tially destroyed, their great manufacturing plants 
 not only silent, but deliberately paralyzed by the 
 removal of their machinery and the flooding of their 
 mines. Not alone these larger places whose names I 
 have set down, and others of the same kind that I 
 have left unmentioned, but also every isolated dwell- 
 ing and farm and village between them would be 
 wrecked, just as Lille, Lens, St. Quentin, Chauny, 
 St. Gobain, Coucy-le-Chateau, Soissons, Reims, and 
 Verdun, and the homes and hamlets between were 
 wrecked. Four thousand and twenty-two villages 
 and towns were destroyed in France, and of these, 
 every one east of the front in 1917 was scientifically 
 blown up, in obedience to the principle laid down by 
 the rule of the German Staff before the war began— 
 that the enemy be spiritually and commercially 
 crushed. The attempt at spiritual crushing is visible, 
 for instance, in the cathedral of St. Quentin, where 
 ninety holes were systematically cut in its support- 
 ing pillars to receive dynamite. It was never placed 
 there. The pillars stand, supporting still a noble 
 church which is only half in ruins. In their 1918 
 retreat, the Huns had not expected the Allies to reach 
 St. Quentin quite so quickly, and hence (as at Laon), 
 they were surprised like burglars at work drilling a 
 safe, and had to flee. 
 
 The attempt at commercial crushing is visible, for 
 instance, at Lens. Before the war, these mines pro- 
 duced annually four million tons of coal, eight hun- 
 dred thousand of coke, thirty thousand of tar ; their 
 employees lived in eight thousand houses. When 
 the war was done and the French came back, of these
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 203 
 
 eight thousand houses, sixty that could be repaired 
 were left. When the Huns came to Lens in 1914, 
 they stopped the pumps in the mines and measured 
 the rising water each day. It did not rise fast enough 
 to please them, so they broke the jackets of cast iron 
 which encased the shafts, and through the holes 
 blasted in them, the water from the wet surrounding 
 stratum of soil poured in to speed the general drown- 
 ing. Fifty millions of cubic metres of water flooded 
 the mines. The machinery was smashed, or removed 
 to Germany. Lens was reduced to a sort of ash heap. 
 The Huns when they came, set fire at once to the 
 plant where the naphtha and tar were made, because 
 the sight of the flames made fireworks for their 
 diversion. They watched them at a safe distance, 
 laughing. Ten years after the Armistice, the mines 
 of Lens may be again whole and completely at work 
 — in 1928 — perhaps. Lens is merely one of the in- 
 dustrial centres which was destroyed in order to 
 crush France commercially. Of homes, where men 
 and women and children lived, three hundred and 
 four thousand were totally obliterated, and two hun- 
 dred and ninety thousand practically — by cannon, or 
 by fire, or by mines. This we may call a mixture of 
 spiritual and commercial crushing. This devastated 
 area, though it was but a fourteenth part of the whole 
 of France, paid nevertheless nearly one-fifth (18.5%) 
 of the whole taxes, even as New England and the 
 Middle States, because of their denser population 
 and more concentrated area of manufacture, pay 
 more of the taxes than such areas as Texas, New 
 Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California and 
 much of the South. 
 Besides poison gas and like inventions for the
 
 204 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 killing of men, German ingenuity created devices for 
 the killing of things — the incendiary fire engine, for 
 example, which rolled methodically through village 
 streets, setting fire to houses instead of putting them 
 out ; or the pastilles of the chemist Dr. Otswald, con- 
 veniently portable, and so skilfully compounded that 
 one, if lighted and left in a hall or dining-room, would 
 suffice to reduce the dwelling to cinders. They had, 
 too, a machine for tearing up railroads as you went. 
 This was hitched behind the tender of a locomotive, 
 and as the engine puffed along, it rooted up the 
 sleepers and rails behind it. Of the main lines in 
 France, 1,500 miles were destroyed, and 1,490 miles 
 of local and branch lines — 2,990 miles in all. The 
 total mileage of railways in France is 31,992 — more 
 than one-tenth was wrecked. If one-tenth of our 
 railway mileage were wrecked, it would be 25,682: 
 that very nearly equals the whole of the Boston and 
 Maine, the New York and New Haven, the New York 
 Central, and the Pennsylvania systems; it comes to 
 more than double the whole Southern Pacific. 
 
 Upon our journey in the wind and the rain from 
 Amiens, through the battle lands of the Somme, the 
 road to Arras beyond Mailly-Maillet, near Beaumont 
 Hamel hill, had perished in a world of featureless 
 mud and ghost-like splinters of trees. That was but 
 one case. Throughout this devastated fourteenth 
 part of France, country and town alike were locked 
 away from the living world by the obliteration of 
 the thoroughfares. The traveller threaded his way 
 through broken landscape and broken village, easily 
 blocked, often obliged to turn back, if he was not 
 well guided. So we had found it beyond Amiens, 
 so next near Soissons and Reims, so now, where
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 205 
 
 flowed the waters of the Meuse and the Moselle. The 
 Sacred Way, the great highroad over which sup- 
 plies had gone to Verdun during its fearful siege, 
 was still one of the few open channels. From this 
 we had turned off, not many miles out of Bar-le-Duc, 
 and as we penetrated deeper into the destroyed coun- 
 try amid the thickening vestiges of violence, the won- 
 der returned as to how this region was now sup- 
 plied, how did food or anything at all reach those 
 who lived here f The answer was simple — the silence 
 was the answer. Almost no one did live here now. 
 Like the lady who had come back from Nevers to 
 look for her house at Noyon, and the brave wife with 
 the gash in her forehead at the estaminet, most of 
 those whose homes these ruins once had been had 
 taken refuge in other parts of France, the old, the 
 women, the children; and very few of them had as 
 yet returned. Their return was beginning ; they, too, 
 like all France, were determined to come back and 
 to go on, and the signs of their determination were 
 the small patches of ground, cleared already of 
 barbed wire and shells, lying like scattered aprons 
 amid the rough bristling wreck of the land. Thirty- 
 two thousand, nine hundred and fifty-eight miles of 
 French roads had been destroyed, and six hundred 
 and forty-eight miles of canals. Four million and a 
 half people had lived in the devastated fourteenth 
 of France — one-tenth of the whole population. Their 
 live-stock had been taken, thirteen hundred thou- 
 sand head ; twenty thousand, five hundred and thirty- 
 nine of their manufactories had been levelled to the 
 ground, or gutted of their machinery, and of them- 
 selves, two million and seven hundred and thirty-two 
 thousand had been driven out of their homes ; while
 
 206 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 the remainder, nearly two million, had during four 
 years been forced to pay war levies, and to work 
 half starved beneath the hand of the invader, which 
 often held the lash ; or else they had known exile and 
 prison. 
 
 Is it wonderful that devastated France was silent? 
 It seemed, as one went onward and onward through 
 the barbed wire and the trenches and the empty 
 walls, as if nothing would ever be able to break this 
 silence. Our American artillery, during four hours 
 of the brief battle of St. Mihiel, had fired more than 
 one million shells. The rusting fragments of those 
 shells were now to be gathered up by the peasant 
 whose pastures or fields they littered. If one million 
 shells were scattered in four hours at one place, what 
 was the number that, during four years, had torn the 
 ground in all places'? The question cannot be an- 
 swered, but to ask it is enough. And the barbed 
 wire? — those skeins of fierce strings that stretched 
 tight across such uncounted acres, making thick webs, 
 enmeshing hills and valleys. The amount of this 
 has been computed — there were three hundred and 
 ten million square metres of it (a metre is more than 
 a yard). Of trenches to be filled up, there were two 
 hundred and seventy-seven million cubic metres. 
 
 We passed the town of St. Mihiel without stop- 
 ping, and left these assembled ruins behind us to 
 come to others and again others, both assembled and 
 solitary. If we looked up a hill, its side was pocketed 
 with shelter holes, if we looked down at a plain it was 
 drilled with dug-outs, ditched with trenches, blurred 
 with barbed wire — worried out of all semblance to 
 serene nature; and if we went through a wood, its 
 trees were naked shreds. Germans, French, and
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 207 
 
 Americans had fought hereabouts. The flames and 
 rage of conflict had been less blinding, perhaps, than 
 in the days of the Somme in 1916, but quietness had 
 departed hence in September 1914. Two Crown 
 Princes of the Huns, William and Rupprecht, had set 
 on Verdun during the first battle of the Marne. Their 
 success might have made that battle a failure. They 
 failed. Soon they began again, and by the end of 
 the month, St. Mihiel was German territory. It made 
 the bottom of a pocket not unlike the one which Lu- 
 dendorff dug to the Marne. The Germans stayed 
 in it until we drove them out exactly four years 
 later; but they were seldom left in perfect peace, 
 either along the north or the south edge of their 
 pocket. We were going now along its south edge, 
 following the road to Pont-a-Mousson, following it 
 too quickly ; for here were the Bois Brule, and Apre- 
 mont, Flirey, Limey, presently each in turn to brush 
 our very sides, each brooding with tales and mem- 
 ories, each deserving to be stopped at and listened 
 to with reverence for the dead and the surviving, 
 while not far away, to our left, were the Mont Sec and 
 Seicheprey. We could not stop, we could not listen 
 to any wayside tales, though it seemed as if the earth 
 and the torn trees themselves were waiting to tell 
 them. At Brule Wood, right on the south seam of 
 the pocket, fifty yards and no more separated the 
 German trenches and the French lines, and so it was 
 for months : scarce ever a day without flames, explo- 
 sions, death — a man must not speak, must not smoke, 
 could not sleep — and eight days of such a life were 
 generally the limit that human nerves could stand: 
 each spent battalion had to go away and rest, and be 
 replaced by a fresh one. Once, in April 1915, after
 
 208 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 three days of fierce fighting for a trench, it was taken 
 and new men sent to keep it. Upon these the Ger- 
 mans suddenly fell and threw them into fright and 
 flight. The trench was going to be lost. This was 
 seen by an officer who had helped to capture it. He 
 was resting with his men, but he called upon them to 
 go back, and back they went with him. They took the 
 trench again from the Germans ; but it cost time and 
 struggle and so many lives that the exhausted living 
 faltered among the corpses. In this moment of 
 suspense the officer saw defeat approaching and — let 
 his name be told once more — Adjutant Jacques Peri- 
 card looked around in desperation at his wounded and 
 fallen men, and cried : 
 
 1 ' Debout, les morts ! ' ' 
 
 And they rose and went on. So was one trench 
 retaken at Bois Brule. 
 
 How many tales of death and life and the soul of 
 man should we know, could the ground or trees in 
 those fourteen thousand, six hundred and seventy 
 square miles of devastated France whisper them? 
 And what traveller who has once felt that great 
 silence which we entered first at Compiegne will ever 
 wholly forget it? 
 
 From Brule Wood we came at once to the nothing 
 which had once been Apremont — no house left in it, 
 holes and heaps where the church had stood ; and a 
 few steps off, a symbol of Germany, solid and sub- 
 stantial, a shelter of concrete. This thick thing wore 
 an ornament on its wall, a German gun, well carved. 
 Symbols of Germany were everywhere, always thick 
 built, dominating; thick statues, thick monuments, 
 thick tombstones, heavily lettered. Just here by 
 crumbled Apremont was a whole Hun village quar-
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 209 
 
 ried deep in the hillside, full of elaborate comfort 
 and relics of efficiency ; the slopes terraced, plants on 
 the sills, carved woodwork, stolen tapestry ; little nice 
 things, all stolen from the neighboring piles of rub- 
 bish which had been French homes once. This was 
 just here by the road. Just such another was there 
 across the valley on the opposite seam of the pocket — 
 Les Eparges. In that snug burrow of the Huns was a 
 system of electric lights, an officers ' club, an elevator, 
 a narrow-gauge railway; — and more little, nice 
 things, stolen from crumbled Fresnes and crumbled 
 St. Eemy, Hannonville, Vigneulles, all lying shapeless 
 in the plain below, symbols of Germany too; — but 
 over in Germany, no such symbols ; not a shell hole, 
 not a trench, not a scar ; not a church tower fallen, not 
 a single stone of a single home displaced ; every pic- 
 ture safe on the wall, every chair safe in the room, 
 every silver spoon safe in the drawer. In France 
 were four thousand destroyed villages, twenty thou- 
 sand destroyed factories, five hundred thousand 
 homes in dust. Of little, nice things, pictures, silver, 
 home tokens and treasures, personal property, in 
 short, the Germans had destroyed or stolen twenty- 
 one billion francs ' worth ; beside the barbed wire and 
 the trenches, there were forty-two million cubic 
 metres of rubbish to be got rid of by a country that 
 had one million, three hundred and eighty-five thou- 
 sand men killed outright in action — workers who 
 never would rebuild any more than many of the two 
 million and a half of wounded. About three and a 
 half per cent, of the whole French population were 
 killed. Had a proportionate loss been ours, our dead 
 would have numbered every man of the 2,084,000 who 
 got to France, and more than 1,000,000 more at home.
 
 210 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Thus France had her maimed country to rebuild with 
 her maimed hands. 
 
 In 1916, true to the system and the thoughtful care 
 of detail of Germany, some German composed a 
 manual of 482 pages for the benefit of the German 
 Army. It was issued under the auspices of the 
 Quartermaster Department. It tabulated the de- 
 structions accomplished so far, and the further 
 destructions contemplated. It was based on that 
 part of the Hun doctrine which forms the supplement 
 to atrocity to non-combatants in order to win quickly 
 — commercial destruction of the enemy in order to 
 make gold from blood and iron. French industry 
 was to be put out of business, because, for instance, 
 " French railroads, in consequence of the destruction 
 of car shops, will have to equip themselves in Ger- 
 many"; by the destruction of looms, because, "re- 
 suming operation will be very difficult, and an enor- 
 mous market for German products will be thus 
 created." The sugar industry "must disappear 
 from the world market for two or three years ' ' ; and 
 it is pointed out that "mines are paralyzed for years 
 by the dismantling of the machinery and the flooding 
 of the pits." 
 
 Armed with this book, and with the other tools 
 needful, the German soldiers paid their visits to the 
 various mines and factories in this fourteenth of 
 French territory, and left behind them, destroyed 
 with Germany's thoughtful care of detail, 55% of 
 the total national coal-producing capacity, 94% of 
 the wool manufacturing, 90 of the linen, 90 of the 
 mineral, 83 of the smelters, 70 of the sugar mills, 
 60 of the cotton mills, 45 of the electric power — 
 I will not continue the list; is this not enough to
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 211 
 
 suggest why the devastation of this particular four- 
 teenth part of France should deprive the country of 
 almost one-fifth of its taxes'? Many of the destroyed 
 industries which I have named will show more clearly 
 to the reader the economic parallel between this 
 region and our New England and Middle States. In 
 1870 Germany overran France, and in 1871 she de- 
 manded an indemnity after her victory. Not an inch 
 of Germany had been hurt then, any more than now. 
 It was France that was hurt, France that was beaten, 
 and France that paid. The Germans occupied her 
 soil and her cities until every last cent was paid. 
 They withdrew by instalments, according as they re- 
 ceived instalments of the indemnity. This time, 
 though France is hurt and France is victorious, she 
 sees reparations that were promised her by treaty 
 incessantly cut down, postponed, excused. Too many 
 people both in talk and in books use indemnity and 
 reparation as meaning the same thing. They are 
 quite different ; uninjured Germany made France pay 
 an indemnity in 1871, devastated France demands 
 reparation from Germany. 
 
 Our wheels beyond Apremont rolled eastward upon 
 and across the front line of battle. We had no time 
 to look at any ruins^ but time was not needed to see 
 that they were close at hand, sometimes near enough 
 almost to be touched, sometimes up a hill or down a 
 hill; Bouconville village like a mouth with but few 
 teeth ; and next, a sullen glimpse of barbed wire and 
 distance stretching to sombre hills; and after this, 
 the shattered tower of Beaumont Church, sticking up 
 against the sky with ruins encumbering its feet. 
 Xivray, where the French right made contact with 
 our 1st Division's left on the night of September
 
 212 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 LI, 1918, was scarce two miles off, and Seicheprey was 
 nearer still. We should have liked to stand in Seiche- 
 prey, upon the ground won in the spring of 1918 from 
 the Germans by our 26th Division, known as the 
 Yankee. That was our first little independent fight, 
 the beginning of the Yankee Division's renown. We 
 were sorry not to visit the spot. Beyond it not very 
 far was the Mont Sec, a sullen hump rising out of 
 the plain. There, too, we should have liked to climb — 
 into its elaborate tunnels, upon its fortified top, 
 whence the Germans during four years had watched 
 the plain. In the shape of a smoke screen, the cur- 
 tain fell upon their long, safe watch. We should have 
 liked to stare down at the land where, behind the 
 smoke screen, our 1st Division advanced twelve 
 miles from Xivray north into the heart of the pocket, 
 and met near Vigneulles the Yankee Division coming 
 south from Les Eparges ; so that the Germans were 
 stitched into their pocket before they could get out 
 of it as they were planning to do ; and the pocket be- 
 came ours, and we put them into it — 16,000 prisoners, 
 and 443 guns, with other useful chattels, and very 
 little loss to ourselves. It was all quickly done — over 
 in 48 hours — and then we pushed our line west of the 
 Moselle farther than had been laid down. Our divi- 
 sions fought harder and longer soon after this in the 
 Argonne ; but their action at St. Mihiel accomplished 
 what Foch asked of them, performed it smoothly and 
 speedily ; and what was done here was the doing of 
 an American army, commanded by an American 
 general, its individuality attained and asserted, not 
 without some friction and delay. Four French and 
 fifteen American divisions constituted the force as- 
 sembled here, and from Beaumont east to the Moselle
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 213 
 
 at Pont-a-Mousson, our road ran where many Ameri- 
 can feet must have trod :— f eet of the Rainbow Divi- 
 sion, of Wood's Own, of the Second, of the Red 
 Diamond, of the Alamo— all along this way through 
 Flirey (a total wreck) and Limey, another, and 
 between ceaseless holes and graves and fragments of 
 many things. A railway bridge was one of the larger 
 fragments somewhere near Flirey, toppled and 
 slanting helpless ; no trains ran here, or for a great 
 distance to our west. To our east we came upon 
 one at Pont-a-Mousson, steaming and crowded with 
 passengers from Paris. It was on its way along the 
 Moselle down to Metz. Its open rails were like the 
 open road we had come, a single working channel of 
 communication, lonely among countless channels that 
 were stopped. Of tunnels and bridges the Germans 
 had destroyed 3,603. 
 
 In Pont-a-Mousson, bruised by shells, is a square, 
 the Place Duroc, beautiful and French, with its 
 arcade in cracks but not in ruins — though by the ninth 
 month of the war Pont-a-Mousson had been bom- 
 barded one hundred and ten times. Here indeed I 
 longed to pause amid the surviving charm before 
 plunging into more desolation, but time forbade it. 
 This was the east limit of our drive. We turned, 
 re-crossed the Moselle, and bore toward Thiaucourt. 
 We were all the while within the battle-ground of our 
 first American Army's first exploit. We passed 
 between pale, broken trees, and concrete caves, and 
 many crosses where the dead lay; and everywhere 
 here, since 1914, blood had flowed, German and 
 French, long before our divisions came. Sometimes 
 we got out to walk the ground and listen to our young 
 captain, who had fought here. The places had names
 
 214 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 — The Widow's Wood, called so by the Germans, and 
 another the Priest's Wood, named by the French; 
 and within its dead and tragic trees was a spring 
 where both sides came by turns for water, no man 
 shooting while his enemy drank. Sometimes we 
 returned into sight of the sullen, distant hump of the 
 Mont Sec, rising over open miles of loneliness, some- 
 times woods shut us in, and now and then we passed 
 more shattered houses ; but whatever it was, earth or 
 building, it had always the look of a witness who has 
 seen something which has blinded it to all other 
 sights, so that, no matter what else may pass before 
 it, it will for ever see only this. Our divisions had 
 swept across here, the 82nd, the 90th, the 5th, the 
 89th, the 2nd, as they pushed the Germans out of the 
 pocket. This work done, they were fresh still and 
 ready, without any rest, for more; but their high 
 spirits had left no echo behind, and the ground over 
 which their fierce gay steps had gone bore no trace of 
 their gaiety. The Somme had been more terrible to 
 the eye, and so had Berry-au-Bac ; greater sadness I 
 had not yet seen than in this region about Thiaucourt, 
 and in the Woevre plain beyond that ruined town. 
 
 Thiaucourt, St. Benqit, Woel, Joncourt, St. Hilaire, 
 Fresnes-en-Woevre, Etain — these are the names 
 which plot our course from Pont-a-Mousson west and 
 north towards our night's lodging. All along the 
 way, we were skirting at no great distance the bound- 
 ary of the St. Mihiel advance, where the line, for the 
 time being, had been stabilized. At Fresnes we were 
 upon this line ; when we reached Etain we had passed 
 beyond it to the north, and I understood more about 
 the ' ' operations in the Woevre district. ' ' There was 
 much water because there had been much rain. It
 
 ALONG THE SACRED WAY 215 
 
 lay to one side or the other, in irregular ponds reflect- 
 ing the afternoon sky, or in round pools which were 
 shell holes, or in oozing trenches, with barbed wire 
 posts sticking and leaning out of the ooze. Water 
 and plain stretched away to right and left ; far to the 
 left Les feparges was dimly visible, sullen like the 
 Mont Sec, a ridge which had become a gulf of mud; 
 where half a hill slid down, where planks were laid 
 five times and sank, where men wounded and not 
 wounded went down and could not be saved. As the 
 light grew grey and more grey, its veil softened the 
 sharp edge of the ruins. The tower of the church 
 at Etain was the last ruin that we saw clearly. Etain 
 had been bombarded for thirteen hours one day in 
 August 1914, and again on the day following. Many 
 people were burned in its flames or buried in its 
 ruins. The last message sent by a girl who stayed at 
 her telephone post informing Verdun every fifteen 
 minutes how the destruction progressed, was: "A 
 bomb has just fallen in the office." 
 
 As we had watched them soften and dissolve in the 
 twilight of preceding journeys, again this afternoon 
 the forms of all ragged objects in the wide wet plain 
 of Woevre melted into the enveiling grey of dusk. 
 Whether these towns had been wrecked by French 
 or American or German shells, all were the victims 
 of German invasion. Latest, as always, to remain 
 distinct were the dead trees. Their skeletons stuck 
 out of the level dimness like crooked fingers scratch- 
 ing the horizon. These woods had been lacerated by 
 shells ; others all the way from the war zone across 
 France to the Pyrenees had been levelled by the axe 
 to keep the war going. To meet our heavy needs, 
 more were chopped down when our soldiers came.
 
 216 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Until the war, the thrift of France had kept her grow- 
 ing forests ahead of her use of their timber. Had she 
 wasted them, as we wasted ours during the 19th Cen- 
 tury, an American forester has said that the Allies 
 might have lost the war. Some will recover in from 
 ten to twenty years, it will take others thirty years, 
 and France meanwhile must rebuild as best she can. 
 Just to our west and left, lay the forest out of which 
 the Germans had come down upon Verdun in Feb- 
 ruary 1916. Beyond it, a little south of Spincourt, 
 we turned west from the main road, reached a village 
 corner, passed through the sound of American voices, 
 and soon after came to a stop. Here was our night's 
 lodging. It was long since we had left what the 
 French call La Voie Sacree, but our course had been 
 never once away from ground where privation and 
 grief and courage lived, and many thousands had 
 died. Every road that we had travelled was a sacred 
 way.
 
 XIX 
 
 WHERE WE SLEPT WELL 
 
 It was like a scene in a play: once again reality 
 suggested this image. In the early stages of our 
 journey, when devastation was a sight novel to our 
 American eyes, the rearing splinters of homes, the 
 walls and windoAvs without insides, had seemed like 
 the unreal aspect of what meets one behind the cur- 
 tain. That was over long ago. It never looked to 
 us like stageland now, we knew it well as war land, 
 real, mangled, dumb, its hollows thick with unheard 
 sorrow and the crowded, unseen dead. From this 
 deeply familiar actuality through which we had been 
 moving but a few minutes ago, we walked up some 
 steps and entered upon the serene welcome of candles 
 lighting a hall and pleasant stairs. An American 
 captain, whose voice came from the South, greeted us 
 at the hall-door, and behind him shone the candles. 
 They were tall, like those in a church, and so arranged 
 as to make almost beautiful the almost plain interior 
 of this house. They were few in number, and stood 
 at various levels, one or two here in the hall below, 
 one or two upon the newels of the banisters which 
 framed the right-angled ascent of the stairs in two 
 short flights to a gallery above, and one or two along 
 the gallery, upon which several doors opened. They 
 gave light enough to see, yet left the agreeable mys- 
 tery of limits and corners not quite visible, of hos- 
 
 217
 
 218 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 pitable nooks beyond, which might extend to many 
 secluded wings and passages. Had this Southern 
 captain, perhaps, learned his art of candlelight in 
 some plantation house, into whose old, ample rooms 
 not electricity, or gas, or even oil, had intruded? I 
 never asked him ; but if ever he sees this page, he will 
 know how much more I thought than I said about our 
 nights beneath this roof, where he was master for a 
 while. 
 
 "If only we might stay here for a week!" I 
 thought. The candles and the quiet were so good 
 after shell holes, and barbed wire, and ruins, and 
 dead trees. 
 
 The seeing eye, the shaping hand, and a military 
 sense of order had filled this bare house with objects 
 collected from war and arranged with skill. Merely 
 to study the contents of its rooms and what hung on 
 its walls would have taught one as much as many 
 lectures. To look at them while the captain or his 
 lieutenant talked about them was better than any 
 lecture. Whoever made the collection was able to 
 draw upon a rich territory, and had not wasted his 
 chance. This farm lay in the Woevre plain, and 
 battles had been fierce on every side but its north. 
 The Meuse was not far off one way, the Moselle an- 
 other, Verdun was some twelve miles southwest of it ; 
 distilling itself from various marshes in the Woevre 
 where blood must have flowed, the little river Loison 
 slid through its domain. The village near by, where 
 we heard American voices, had been occupied by 
 Germans since 1914, never disturbed until the end. 
 They had left their mark — various marks — and from 
 their bill-posters forbidding this and that and the 
 other, a humorous selection had been made, and these
 
 WHERE WE SLEPT WELL 219 
 
 now helped to decorate the walls and edify the guests. 
 How many of these guests were edified by the 
 veritable museum of war which surrounded them, is 
 something I have often wondered. Taken over by 
 our army soon after November 11, 1918, (I surmise) 
 this French farmhouse became the resting-place for 
 travellers privileged as guests of the American army 
 to visit this part of the devastated region which was 
 allotted to our care. For their benefit the wonderful 
 museum and relief maps had been arranged, and for 
 their welcome the tall candles burned in this hall. 
 They certainly gave it the look of a scene set equally 
 well for mystery, or crime, or comedy. 
 
 Any one who has had to drink water made sanitary 
 by chlorine will not forget its flavor. This water is 
 the only circumstance which I would have had differ- 
 ent at our meal ; and, knowing the South, I am sure 
 that our host, had the regulations permitted him, 
 would have decanted for our refreshment nothing of 
 the sort. What we ate I cannot remember, but only 
 that it was good enough to turn conversation upon the 
 cook. She had four service stripes, the captain said. 
 Three, but soon to get a fourth, his lieutenant cor- 
 rected ; and for a moment I, in my ignorance, imag- 
 ined wildly that she had been in the trenches and gone 
 over the top. But she had merely boiled, roasted, 
 stewed, and otherwise concocted their meals during a 
 period equivalent to the stripes — and I am inclined to 
 think that they were afraid of her. These commis- 
 sioned officers with decorations for bravery smiled 
 about their cook ; but to me it looked remarkably like 
 the smile of men in the proximity of a powerful per- 
 sonality. Candor bids me confess that the few words 
 which I exchanged with her may have helped this
 
 220 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 opinion. I went out to see her, to make her compli- 
 ments on an omelet. Upon my standing at the 
 threshold of her kitchen, she turned and contem- 
 plated me. She was wide, she was thick, she was 
 round, she had a shining forest of black hair, a thick 
 throat, an eye of domination, and a moustache. I 
 imagined that my opinion of her omelet would 
 warm the influence that proceeded from her. It did 
 not. Her reply was civil — but I didn 't stay. If they 
 weren't afraid of her, an army commission must 
 toughen you. Any civilian would have given it up as 
 I did. 
 
 The captain and the lieutenant talked of the war in 
 general, and of incidents in particular ; a very pleas- 
 ant meal. And if they did not stand in awe of their 
 cook, I know that they were afraid of the lady of the 
 house. She was not here now, of course ; but since 
 their occupation of her premises, she had paid her 
 house visits enough to make a formidable impression 
 upon the captain. 
 
 ' ' She 's crazy, ' ' he told me. 
 
 "From the war!" I asked, prepared to hear some- 
 thing painful. 
 
 "I think her state of mind antedates that, but it 
 may have been emphasized by it. They tell me that 
 at the dinners she used to give, she put all the old 
 people close together at one end of this table and all 
 the young away far off at the other, so that the young 
 ones shouldn't hear her jokes." 
 
 "I suppose," said I, "that as they grew older she 
 moved them up. ' ' 
 
 "Well, from what they say about her jokes," re- 
 turned the captain, "I'm not sure that I am old 
 enough to be moved up for quite a while yet."
 
 WHERE WE SLEPT WELL 221 
 
 ' ' I wish that I could have met her, ' ' I sighed ; ' ' she 
 would not have respected my youth." 
 
 ''Last time she came in here," said the captain, 
 1 ' she saw one of her old family portraits on the wall. 
 Heaved a log right through it. She didn't like it 
 because German officers had been looking at it four 
 years." 
 
 Like many men from the South, this captain main- 
 tained a certain gravity of bearing rarely practised 
 by Northerners, who often plunge into a jocosity 
 somewhat premature. His stiffness had been aug- 
 mented by almost daily experience with the American 
 congressman whom he had to make welcome. To find 
 that we were not politicians was a visible relief to 
 him; on this first evening he steadily unbent. He 
 told us that the British, New Zealanders, and Ameri- 
 cans had exchanged whisky at the front. 
 
 "A better exchange than personalities," said I. 
 
 Some men of our Bloody Hand Division had given 
 rise to merriment unintentionally at times when 
 laughter was scarce. This division was not wholly 
 organized at the time of its landing in April 1918, and 
 it was broken up and brigaded with the French. Six 
 hundred were killed, two thousand wounded. The 
 survivors seemed to be enjoying France. They had 
 met with a social success beyond any which they knew 
 at home. 
 
 "Those darkies are having the time of their lives 
 now," said the captain ; " they have known less agree- 
 able days. One of their regiments was with the 4th 
 French Army at Wesserling. Some soldiers built a 
 fire with the purpose of boiling a kettle. They set 
 four unexploded shells upright, laid the fuel between 
 them, set the kettle on top of them, and lighting the
 
 222 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 fire, sat down to watch the kettle boil. One of them 
 was sent for by his commanding officer, and was away 
 for a few minutes. Upon returning to the spot, he 
 found no kettle, no fire, no comrades, and a large hole 
 in the October mud. Immediately he rushed back, 
 and cried out to the officer : 
 
 " 'Cap'n, dat coffee he done blow up!' 
 " Yes," he continued, "when they get home, they'll 
 never need to stop talking. A couple of them got 
 more fighting than they approved of over on the west 
 edge of the Argonne, and they were running away. 
 They reached one of the long straight roads bordered 
 with poplars and marked with the distance, and along 
 this they ran on and on. At length one said : 
 
 " 'Say, dis hyeh is de longest graveyahd I ever 
 saw.' 
 "And his better-informed mate corrected him: 
 " 'Them's not gravestones, them's kilommetees.' 
 The captain gave us, by his use of one happy word, 
 an indelible picture of the survivors of the Bloody 
 Hand Division, elated by social success in France. 
 
 "When the darkies mount guard," said he, "they 
 don't walk; they syncopate." 
 
 A wood fire burned in the room where we sat after 
 supper until an early bed-time. An upright piano 
 was there and open, with a look of having also merited 
 service stripes. I asked, did it belong to the house? 
 It did, and had been there during the four years of 
 German occupation. 
 "Then," said I, "when they had to get out and you 
 
 came in, did you find the piano ?" I did not 
 
 complete my sentence. 
 
 They nodded. "We had to scrub it out." 
 
 I told them the remark of a major in charge of the
 
 WHERE WE SLEPT WELL 223 
 
 interned Germans at Fort Oglethorpe, in whose 
 company I had visited the internment camp at that 
 place during the preceding fall. We had spent more 
 than an hour in going over its various parts ; where 
 they ate, where they slept, where they took the air, 
 where their possessions were stored. They were 
 made much more comfortable than our own people 
 who were being trained to fight them over-seas. At 
 the end of our inspection, I asked the major: 
 
 "Have you made any generalization about these 
 Germans? They are of every station from ragged 
 bomb-throwers to New York merchants and Prussian 
 Junkers. There is even the leader of a famous sym- 
 phony orchestra here. Have you been able to 
 observe any one trait which they have in common ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes," replied the major. "One and all, their 
 personal habits are filthy beyond my willingness to 
 describe." 
 
 This caused our captain no surprise : he had seen 
 the piano. I told him that it had fallen to my lot to 
 read certain confiscated and impounded letters, writ- 
 ten by the conductor of the famous symphony orches- 
 tra. These had led the court to give him his choice 
 of submitting to internment without more ado — or of 
 being prosecuted under the White Slave Act. They 
 contained passages which would stain any decent lips. 
 
 As my years have increased, bed-time has grown 
 less unwelcome than once it used to be — but I could 
 have listened all night to this captain and his lieu- 
 tenant. Perhaps it is as well for the reader that I can 
 remember distinctly but one of the curiosities of 
 warfare which they showed us; otherwise I might 
 have been tempted to describe every object in that 
 museum. You have sometimes, no doubt, walked
 
 224 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 behind the counters of chemists' shops into the pre- 
 cincts where they keep their jars and bottles and 
 retorts. If so, you may have derived an impression 
 of cylinders and cones and tubes of various unearthly 
 shapes, standing on shelves or the floor. That is in a 
 way what the museum looked like, only the unearthly 
 shapes were not of glass, but metal. Shells and 
 bombs of many varieties had been gathered here, and 
 some of the engines that projected them — such as 
 could be got conveniently inside a house : so that you 
 saw the instruments which had blasted the salient of 
 St. Mihiel and the plain of Woevre into that welter 
 of dead fields, dead houses, and dead men, through 
 which our journey upon this day had been. There 
 they stood. Some were German, some French, some 
 American. These glistened, those were dark. Some 
 tapered to sharp points. Others were round. One 
 specimen was not larger than a baseball. One was 
 thicker than a big man and as high as my shoulder. 
 Smaller shells stood on exhibit like flower vases when 
 you are looking for wedding presents. I touched 
 them here and there, while the lieutenant explained 
 their natures and uses, how far they could fly, how big 
 a hole they could dig, how many bodies at once they 
 could behead and disembowel. Their assemblage ex- 
 haled a silence — these bombs that could deafen — but 
 a silence perfectly different from that which hung 
 over devastated France. The lieutenant put one 
 little brass bulb into my hand, and asked, could I 
 guess what it was? How could I? He took it, 
 seemed to press and turn it, and perhaps touched 
 some mechanism at its top, and it split apart in halves 
 with saw teeth. Its insides were not simple enough 
 for me to be able to describe them clearly. It was a
 
 WHERE WE SLEPT WELL 225 
 
 mechanical carrier pigeon; German, I think. In its 
 brass guts a message could nestle and fly from a gun 
 safe to its destination ; and I believe that it had some 
 sort of fuse of special construction which popped or 
 spat or flickered or otherwise indicated its identity- 
 after it had alighted at the proper address. Bombs, 
 belts, guns, grenades — altogether an interesting, sin- 
 ister company, with gas-masks among it like faces 
 left behind, staring glassily. 
 
 Less sombre were the maps in another room, artil- 
 lery fire contour maps, and relief maps of terrain. 
 Upon the ridges and hollows of these you could look 
 as from an aeroplane upon the Woevre or the Ar- 
 gonne, and follow where our divisions had climbed 
 down, or climbed through. There was the Meuse 
 running, and the Moselle, and the little Aire trickling 
 along the bristly rises of the Argonne, and Varennes 
 and Cheppy and Grand Pre and Mouzon and Sedan, 
 that we were to see, with Thiaucourt and the Bois 
 Brule and all the rest which we had seen. Thus, with 
 the point of a pencil touching here the Mont Sec and 
 there Les Eparges or Vigneulles, one could clearly 
 follow the pivoting of our 1st and 26th Divisions on 
 those two September days when they stitched the 
 Germans into the St. Mihiel pocket. 
 
 Not by going over the actual hills and valleys of 
 any battle, nor yet from study of their miniature on a 
 map, can one completely grasp the detail and the total 
 of what happened. Both are needed — first the real 
 country and after it the map. Thus it results that I 
 could very nearly explain St. Mihiel and the Meuse- 
 Argonne, because I went over their ground and fol- 
 lowed later a pencil point over those relief maps in 
 the house where we slept well : whereas about Belleau
 
 226 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Wood, over which we only walked, I am quite vague, 
 although it was a much simpler action. The reader 
 need not dread any attempt of mine to explain to him 
 either St. Mihiel or the Meuse-Argonne. Let him 
 study, with its subjoined maps, the report of General 
 Pershing. 
 
 While, through relief maps and tales of darkies and 
 coffee-pots, we were enlarging our knowledge and 
 equipping our intelligence, the doughboys were danc- 
 ing. I doubt if they went to bed as early as we did. 
 The captain had sent them all off to the neighboring 
 village of Billy-sous-Mangiennes. I don't know how 
 many of these Billys there are in France, or in which 
 of them our doughboys put their American arms 
 about French waists to the accompaniment of music, 
 and after the music had ceased. The captain told us 
 that wherever they went they got up a dance.
 
 XX 
 
 THE COOK AND THE DOUGHBOY 
 
 1 ' Splendid day. The first one in France. ' ' 
 
 I find that the hour at which I wrote this in my 
 diary up in my bedroom was six-thirty the next 
 morning. Eave-martins were flying in and out of the 
 big windows, a chirping of neighboring birds filled 
 the air, and upon looking out I saw many in the trees 
 and farmyards at their May morning's work. There 
 was a glitter from the sun that made the young leaves 
 glisten, and a glimpse of wet meadows beyond the 
 enclosure, sparkling with little pools. It was strange 
 to see in the midst of this, just by the house, a 
 wrecked aeroplane ; this glared out of the serenity of 
 everything else. I do not think that it had fallen 
 here, but that they had brought it as an out-door part 
 of the collection. 
 
 Voices in the house were audible through the seams 
 in the bare plank floors, or through many large 
 windows, all of them open ; and as I strolled about in 
 a free exploration of the second floor, a voice beneath 
 came up to me, and I stood still. 
 
 ''Bon jour." The words were quite correct, but 
 their pronunciation had been born very far away 
 from France indeed, although French experience was 
 audible in it ; I did not need to see him through the 
 floor to know that he was a doughboy. 
 
 "Bon jour," some one answered him. I did not 
 
 227
 
 228 NEIGHBORS HENCEFOETH 
 
 need to see her either. That was the cook. Her 
 voice went with her eye and the Olympic amplitude of 
 her bosom : not harsh, by no means soprano, and with 
 many lazy overtones of command. He seemed to be 
 walking about. 
 
 " Comment te trouves-tu ce matin?" she inquired. 
 
 "0 tray bien, mairsee." 
 
 What was comical was his perfectly correct speech 
 and his khaki French. 
 
 "As tu bien danse avec la demoiselle?" the cook's 
 deep voice went on musically. 
 
 "0 je ne say pah." 
 
 "T'es amuse, hem?" 
 
 "0 wee, wee." 
 
 One deep melodious chuckle now came up through 
 the floor. That was the cook. It now struck me that 
 she was addressing him in the idiom of the second 
 person singular ; also that in his tone there was some- 
 thing — I couldn't be sure whether it was sheepish, or 
 a lack of ease, or merely impatience, and if he were 
 entirely conscious of it himself. 
 
 1 1 Quand on est jeune, f aut bien s 'amuser. ' ' (When 
 one is young one must have a good time.) As he did 
 not reply to this, she pursued: "La sagesse attendra, 
 hein? Faut pas gaspiller tes vingt ans." (Time 
 enough to settle down later, eh? Mustn't waste your 
 youth on that.) 
 
 His reply was to begin whistling a tune as he moved 
 about the room. She seemed to be stationary, prob- 
 ably by her fire ; for I now heard some rattle of pans 
 or lids before her next remark: 
 
 " Et la demoiselle ? Elle t 'a trouve gentil ? ' ' 
 
 "Ah, comment es-ker-je say slah?" he now broke 
 out.
 
 THE COOK AND THE DOUGHBOY 229 
 
 Was there to be no more of this dialogue? Alas, 
 there was not! His spurt of damaged temper and 
 equally damaged grammar proved to be his parting 
 remark, and I heard his steps go out of the kitchen. 
 Like all international conversations, there was so 
 much more in it than the mere words ! But I doubt 
 if that particular cook and that particular doughboy 
 ever held talks together for very long at a time, and 
 I think it likely that most of their conferences termi- 
 nated abruptly, on his side at any rate. She could not 
 have ruffled Kansas so easily, and Kansas (if he pos- 
 sessed fluency in French) would have been able to 
 return her fire — but then he was out of the common. 
 There is no play of the intellect which the general 
 American mind comprehends less, and resents more, 
 than veiled irony. We are just civilized enough to 
 feel it vaguely, and not enough to deal with it lightly. 
 It needed but little imagination to see in my mind's 
 eye that cook and doughboy, she old and massive over 
 her breakfast pots and pans, he young and defence- 
 less beneath the lazy indulgence of her phrases. No 
 conversation that I had heard in France, nothing that 
 was told me, threw so much light upon how the 
 peasants — especially the women — must have come in 
 time to regard these vigorous children so fresh from 
 the Western world. 
 
 I went back to my room, where presently he came, 
 bringing some hot water and my boots. The boots, 
 after yesterday in the mud, had needed a good deal of 
 his attention. He was a shock-headed boy, very 
 blond, from Arkansas. There were two of them who 
 looked after us, the other being from Louisiana. 
 This latter told me, with a sort of disdain, that he 
 understood what they said in French pretty well. I
 
 230 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 did not need to ask this question of the boy from 
 Arkansas ; what I had heard through the floor sufficed 
 to show him already apt in the language beyond many 
 a college graduate. His appearance suggested that 
 his fluency had been attained through the tutoring of 
 various romantic experiences. His body was slim, 
 he Avas light in his walk, and almost certainly he knew 
 how to dance in a manner that would please. I was 
 tempted to ask him how he liked the cook, but I 
 abstained. His way of replying to questions dis- 
 couraged asking them. 
 
 He went out, leaving my boots and hot water ; and 
 while I shaved, I heard in memory the cook's ironic 
 intonations and comprehended everything that her 
 tawny voice had said without words. She was much 
 more than herself; she was her race, her continuous 
 history, ancient France, where Caesar had been, and 
 Roland, and Diana of Poitiers; France, whose bask- 
 ing shores the Latin and Greek Mediterranean ca- 
 ressed. In her syllables and between them, laughed 
 quietly the long-memoried Mediterranean which had 
 known the Argonauts, and Salamis, and the keels of 
 Cleopatra, and had heard old Triton blow his 
 wreathed horn. The spirit of the peasant cook con- 
 tained all that, while the boy contained not much 
 except the Declaration of Independence. She had 
 addressed him with the intimate ''thou," instead of 
 "you," because her age confronted his youth like 
 some antique sibyl gazing from a grove at a faun, 
 smiling at his physical charm, and bored with his 
 emptiness. At her birth she was older than he would 
 be at his death. What the ancient Mediterranean, 
 speaking through her person, said to him was really 
 this:
 
 THE COOK AND THE DOUGHBOY 231 
 
 "You are engaging and attractive because you are 
 young. I like you, but I like you at a distance. You 
 have explored and peopled a continent, but you have 
 not yet explored and peopled Time. Intellect and 
 Art know nothing of you ; you have not approached 
 near enough to them to be visible. We can see your 
 sky-scrapers, your Olympus not yet. Your material 
 science creates in you the illusion that there is a 
 short cut to education, to reflection, to maturity. 
 There are no short cuts to anything except perdition. 
 You think that to build many churches is to have 
 much religion. You hold meetings, even your women 
 hold meetings, I am told, where resolutions are 
 passed and laws are made, and by these paper toya 
 you imagine that you have caused reality. Such 
 things do not cause reality, they merely express it. 
 
 "Never suppose that I am not dazzled by the flame 
 of promise which burns in you with such energy. 
 See to it that it be not put out by the poison which 
 our fatigued old world pours into your still clean and 
 lusty veins. I hope, and sometimes believe, that a 
 great past will be yours in time to come, because I 
 have seen and can never forget what you have done 
 for me, and the reason that made you do it. You are 
 fierce in battle; I love that. You are good to chil- 
 dren; that, too, I love. Grateful I am, but am no 
 mistress for the lover who has but one thing to say, 
 no companion for one whose future is his chief 
 tradition. 
 
 ' ' Go home to your new world, handsome and vigor- 
 ous young barbarian! You still imagine that there 
 are answers to everything, that you have found most 
 of them, and are going to find all. Remain in your 
 intellectually virgin world until your mental and
 
 232 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 moral adventures shall have brought you into that 
 place which lies beyond discouragement, and when in 
 your ripeness you can smile at all things, even at 
 yourself, without being paralyzed. Remain there 
 until you have learned that there is no answer to any 
 of the great questions for ever asked by man ; that the 
 game is not worth the candle, but that we play it to be 
 worth a candle ourselves — and that to be able to make 
 interesting love, one must be complicated. 
 
 "I see and praise your restless intelligence, upon 
 which Time has not yet chiselled a single line of 
 grace. I enjoy your gaiety, which proceeds from a 
 soul beneath whose surface Adversity has not yet 
 begun to dig the first approach to depth. But alas, I 
 can not long be sympathetic in the company of one 
 who, no matter how capable, is still psychologically 
 illiterate and spiritually inexperienced: such is the 
 price which you pay for your youth, and be assured 
 that youth is worth this price, and more. Be less sure 
 that the quick and great success which you have had, 
 is a blessing. Ease may tarnish the beginning of our 
 days ; it polishes their end. 
 
 "You are still merely a work of nature. A civil- 
 ized man is a work of nature too, but he is also a 
 highly wrought work of art. Come back in a thou- 
 sand years and let me see you, and then, strong and 
 handsome boy, perhaps you will be ready for me." 
 
 Thus, in the voice of the cook, spoke the old Medi- 
 terranean, the mellow, subtle, cynical, sensual sibyl. 
 The cook herself heard none of these words, because 
 they didn't sound in her brain, but echoed in her 
 unconscious blood, and she knew little more about 
 them than any telephone knows. 
 
 What if young blond Arkansas had been able to
 
 THE COOK AND THE DOUGHBOY 233 
 
 hear them, instead of only vaguely and angrily to feel 
 them? Instead of ineffectively flying out at her with 
 his "Ah, que sais-je," what adequate reply would he 
 have found? 
 
 By the time that I had read the inner meaning of 
 their colloquy, my shaving and toilet were finished, 
 and I went down to breakfast.
 
 XXI 
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 
 
 Winding in many curves upon the map which I 
 carried at our journey's end as I had carried it since 
 the beginning, the crosses plot our road through the 
 Meuse-Argonne country. Each cross is set against 
 the name of some town or village, where another 
 broken church tower reared like a bony, up-stretched 
 arm ; or walls of broken homes stood waist-high and 
 knee-high amid gaping cellars ; or where the town had 
 been struck out wholly, dashed into utter invisibility, 
 and you could not have known it from the ground, 
 save for the sign-post bearing its name and sticking 
 in its dust. Like this were Hautcourt and Malan- 
 court — just names on a board — and Fleury by the for- 
 lorn wayside between Vaux and Douaumont. Others 
 there were ; but of these slain towns, of whose very 
 bones not one remained, I shall name no more. He 
 who did not see, and never now can see, France flayed 
 and raw as she lay before healing had set in, may 
 try to conjure into his fancy the look of it: stretch 
 after stretch of riddled earth, horizon after horizon 
 ragged with stark trees, emptiness strewn with dis- 
 tortion, walls, towers, standing like limbs whose 
 bodies have been hacked away, and short sign-posts 
 like headstones over the graves of places dead and 
 buried. He who did not see this may try to imagine 
 it — and will fail ; he who has seen it may try to forget 
 it — and will fail: somewhere in him that sight and 
 that silence will live as long as he lives himself. 
 
 234
 
 LAST LAP TO AEMISTICE 235 
 
 Of this particular piece of the war country General 
 Pershing writes : 
 
 "The Meuse-Argonne front had been practically 
 stabilized in September 1914, and, except for minor 
 fluctuations during the German attacks on Verdun in 
 1916 and the French counter offensive in August 
 1917, remained unchanged until the American ad- 
 vance in 1918. The net result of the four years' 
 struggle on this ground was a German defensive sys- 
 tem of unusual depth and strength and a wide zone of 
 utter devastation, itself a serious obstacle to offensive 
 operations." 
 
 Yes; a wide zone of utter devastation. Wrecks, 
 half or whole, are the towns in it, almost all ; nearly 
 every name on the map of that three-cornered coun- 
 try is a label of obliteration. Go northwest down 
 the Meuse from Verdun to Sedan, come south from 
 Sedan, skirting the Argonne to Clermont, turn east 
 back to Verdun, and you will have enclosed a region 
 wherein many places had in them shelter for not a 
 living soul in 1919, and two years later, when next I 
 saw them, it was still the same with many. Grain 
 was green and swaying under the wind where holes 
 and shells had been, much of the earth was breath- 
 ing again; but from the dust of Fleury, Hautcourt, 
 Malancourt, and many another, nothing had as yet 
 arisen. 
 
 A wide zone of utter devastation : with more to its 
 east through the Woevre to the Moselle, and more to 
 its west across Champagne, and then more. 
 
 It is a large looking country of many distances. 
 Across it the eye often sees far. At all its edges and 
 also within it, hills rise. Numerous ridges roughen 
 and streak it, valleys furrow it, patches of woodland
 
 236 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 darken its open stretches; yet its spaciousness of 
 line is the chief aspect that sweeps over the memory, 
 with mounded blurs a long way off. In it, as in the 
 Somme region, our Western bad lands were sug- 
 gested once or twice by the huge, bald, discolored 
 slants of excoriation. Nevertheless it resembled but 
 little any other of the battle lands that I had seen. 
 Many wars had made it their arena, but this was 
 true of the other regions also, and with them it had 
 in common that look of a place where something has 
 happened, of a witness to deeds that will never be 
 absent from the eyes again. But as I watched it 
 from many changing points beneath the sunshine 
 of these final days, I knew, without being told, that 
 its serene amplitude in other days of sunshine had 
 been of a sober rather than a gay serenity. There 
 are faces which show the mark of much agreeable 
 society, of many acquaintances, of talk and laughter ; 
 while others reveal that meditation has been their 
 chief adventure. The Meuse-Argonne country has 
 communed a great deal with itself. To the under- 
 standing imagination it seems to say: " Fourteen 
 hundred years ago I saw Attila. He, too, like these 
 later ones, left me for dead. These are worse than 
 Attila, because they knew better." 
 
 Fourteen hundred years after Attila, the Meuse- 
 Argonne saw his successors. They came, turning 
 into deeds the words of their high priest, "the sight 
 of suffering does one good ; the infliction of suffering 
 does one more good," and those other words of their 
 high priest, "when one country conquers another 
 nothing should be left to it but eyes to weep." The 
 best of them came here, well taught and faithful 
 followers of their Bismarck. Over them was their
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 237 
 
 General von Mudra, with their Crown Prince over 
 him — but prudently tied to the apron-strings of Mar- 
 shal von Haeseler. These tutors were to place upon 
 the royal young brow the laurels of their conquests, 
 which would then furnish the theme of happy tele- 
 grams from hig father to his mother — those des- 
 patches that used to run, "Willy and God have done 
 nobly today." Thus the Fatherland could hail and 
 love the youth. He must have also caused many 
 German eyes to weep, for he was perfectly generous 
 in throwing away other people's lives. Many thou- 
 sand German bones lie in the territory of his failures : 
 at St. Hubert and around Four-de-Paris, which he 
 tried to take, from October to January of that first 
 year; at Fontaine-aux-Charmes and Bolante Wood, 
 where he was next active ; and at Les Islettes in June, 
 which he missed in his effort to get the railway from 
 Ste. Menehould to Verdun. He scattered German 
 bones prodigally at all these places, and at many 
 others — no need to recite his failure at Verdun in 
 1916: sitting at Montfaucon safely encased, he 
 watched operations through thirty feet of periscope. 
 This pipe reached him where he hid underground 
 and directed the bone-scattering right and left of 
 the Meuse, all the way to Vaux and Douaumont and 
 Dead Man's Hill and the other places of which we 
 all heard so much during those six months of French 
 agony and glory. 
 
 Even though long lulls intervened in the bone- 
 scattering from 1914 to 1918, the Meuse-Argonne 
 had little respite for communing with itself. The 
 tough ridge of the forest was eaten beneath with 
 galleries and mines, its beech and oak thickets on 
 top were gashed with paths, strung with wires, sawed
 
 238 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 short by shells; while out of the woods to its east 
 the open country, from the little Aire at its base to 
 the larger Meuse over the hills, was bled white and 
 left no eyes to weep with. I have seen them — the 
 empty hollow on the hill where Vauquois stood, and 
 Charny, Samogneux, Consenvoye, Dun-sur-Meuse, 
 Chattancourt, Avocourt, Varennes, Cunel, Romagne, 
 Buzancy — villages crushed, lying among crushed 
 woods and pastures crushed, — a wide zone of utter 
 devastation indeed. 
 
 Hither on September 25th, 1918, came our divi- 
 sions to fight their hardest fight of all — made harder 
 and delayed by a bad choking of their supplies along 
 the few difficult roads : a task allotted them because 
 it was so difficult, the tough hog-back of the Argonne 
 so mired and enmeshed with defences, and they the 
 only men not tired by four years of strain and strug- 
 gle. Where they had bled and died and won so 
 splendidly not yet six months ago, we followed their 
 course as they had gone pushing north and east. 
 We went over much of the very ground of their ex- 
 ploits, in sight of more, and never far from any of 
 it. The mud was still in many places strewn with 
 the broken machines of war. In it these lay flat, or 
 tilted, or stuck half sunk, rusting slowly as the wet 
 weather leaked among their stiff joints. We saw 
 where their victorious line had been when the Armis- 
 tice stopped their onward rush for Germany, and 
 they had flung down their baffled guns, and cried 
 tears of disappointed rage, all the more bitter over 
 the knowledge that the Germans had been permitted 
 to get up from their supplicating knees, and march 
 home with their arms and banners like an undefeated 
 army. There is a legend that the great Foch him-
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 239 
 
 self shed tears on that day of fateful error. We 
 skirted the territory of their quick advance during 
 the first days of the battle. Then in the dismem- 
 bered woods through which all sorts of fragments 
 lay strewn, and the wires sagged tangled among the 
 broken branches, we stepped where the mud allowed 
 us in order to see more sacred ground. It was where, 
 in the long slow time of hunger, horror, thirst, and 
 impregnable determination, American grit had been 
 tried out to the full and proved more than equal to 
 the test. 
 
 We had gone up the hill from Varennes and turned 
 in among the thickets ; and as we passed safe through 
 all this extinct, monstrous turmoil of war that lay 
 everywhere over the land like a contorted fossil, 
 once again — it might well have been for the hun- 
 dredth time — I asked myself, "What was this like 
 when it was alive 1 ' ' We must not forget ! We can 
 forget injuries to ourselves, but not a wound half- 
 mortal to mankind, not, at any rate, until the offender 
 show by sustained deeds that his spirit is changed. 
 Long ago, in 1915, I had said that a full comprehen- 
 sion of this war would burst any human brain; I 
 thought it again now, and that from the thousand 
 chronicles of personal experience which will be writ- 
 ten, the future will distil, not the total reality, never 
 that, but the final impression : and that will rise and 
 loom above the general level of history, a terrible 
 spectral shape. 
 
 To stop us in the Argonne the Germans brought 
 more and more of their best divisions, piled them 
 in our way — and could not stop us. They piled them 
 here because this ground was now their foot-hold 
 for the whole: knock it from under them, and they
 
 240 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 must fall their full length, from the sea south all 
 the way. "We knocked it from under them. To keep 
 us from their railway thoroughfare between Metz 
 and Mezieres, along which, as one might say, their 
 life-blood was pumped to the whole body, they threw 
 against us fifteen reserve divisions, while two of 
 our own had to be taken from us and sent to help in 
 Flanders: nevertheless we could not be kept from 
 the railway. When the wooded ridge of Barricourt 
 was gripped and held by our divisions — Wood's Own 
 and Alamo — on November the first, Foch, on hearing 
 the news, exclaimed, "the war is over!" — for that 
 ridge commanded the Meuse and more than threat- 
 ened the life-blood thoroughfare beyond the Meuse. 
 Not ignorantly, nor yet with an open guide-book 
 merely, but with at least some seasoned knowledge 
 should one go over this ground : Barricourt, Buzancy, 
 Beaumont, Letanne, Mouzon, Raucourt, and beyond 
 to the line where the Armistice halted us. All of it 
 is territory where our soldiers — colonels, captains, 
 lieutenants, sergeants, privates — by deeds of single 
 daring won honors that are recorded, and deserved 
 many more that never will be known. As day fol- 
 lowed day their dash increased. They had pierced 
 almost at once beyond the line planned for the war 
 to stop at and wait until 1919 should see its finish. 
 They changed the date of that finish to 1918. Six 
 divisions of them were ready to go eastward through 
 Briey into Germany, on November 14th, with twenty 
 French divisions under General Mangin. Four were 
 already starting their march on November 11th. 
 General Foch had at his disposal two hundred and 
 five divisions in all, the Germans but one hundred 
 and eighty-seven, of which the seventeen in reserve
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 241 
 
 jgsu^r v ■-■•-* 
 
 could not have reached the Lorraine front in time to 
 stop us, because we had cut their railway. The Ger- 
 mans were already evacuating Metz and Thionville, 
 knowing themselves impotent to stop us. Their 
 whole army was helpless from Holland to the Saar, 
 incapable to move its vast demoralized mass. Catas- 
 trophe was imminent, inevitable; retreat was im- 
 possible. Even after the Armistice, the German 
 command left all its material on the spot, gave it up, 
 and crossed Dutch Limbourg. Organized to crush 
 down a robust opposition on the Lorraine front, the 
 Allied offensive would have there met with but feeble 
 opposition at the first line of defence, and would 
 have gone on almost without loss. At a blow the 
 whole German front from Switzerland to Holland 
 would have crumpled together. It would have been 
 done within ten days. So the Germans in terror fell 
 on their knees, the Armistice was signed three days 
 before the Lorraine attack was to begin, the German 
 Army escaped disaster, marched home with its arms 
 and banners — and our doughboys who had come three 
 thousand miles to do a clean final job, dashed their 
 arms down and cried bitter tears. 
 
 And who were our soldiers that fought this Ar- 
 gonne fight? What sort of men were they who took 
 Montfaucon Hill by noon of the second day, making 
 eleven kilometres through the entangling defences 
 by that evening, and, by the next, so alarming the 
 enemy that he threw six new divisions into first line f 
 Such was the start these Americans made in the 
 Argonne, delivering a direct frontal attack through 
 barbed wire, machine guns, cross fire, bad country, 
 deep mud, thick fog: seven days of this forward 
 striding, and then that long slow second chapter
 
 242 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 which filled nearly the whole month of October — from 
 the fourth day until the last. The final chapter like 
 the first was short — eleven days — with a return 
 to the stride forward, the enemy's last defences 
 smashed, the stride quickening to a pursuit. "We 
 may think, then, of the Meuse-Argonne battle as 
 thus divided : a swift beginning, a swift end, with a 
 middle twenty-seven days long— days of holding on, 
 of crawling on, of torment and great loss, a test of 
 every quality and resource which combine to make 
 successful aggressive warfare: and when the test 
 was over, the survivors ready for more, getting out 
 of their Argonne woods, getting up on their Barri- 
 court heights, knocking the enemy off the heights 
 of Dun-sur-Meuse, driving him back faster and faster 
 out of the home into which he had broken, and when 
 halted in full stride, weeping with rage at being 
 thwarted in catching him in his own home, for which 
 he was making with such haste. 
 
 Who was this doughboy that did this ? Who were 
 they that helped him? 
 
 The front he held was seventy-five miles wide. 
 More than a million of him held it. Behind him from 
 where he fought, all the way across France to the 
 shore where he had landed, all his machinery was 
 working to feed and arm him and care for his wounds. 
 It was not perfect — how could it be? But daily it 
 was growing towards perfection. Though still so 
 new at the vast, terrible game — three years (and in 
 most cases nearly four years) newer than his allies 
 — once fairly in the game, he caught up to them with 
 a speed that astonished them, and which they remem- 
 ber with the warmest admiration. 
 
 To General Mangin I said on a later day, purposely
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 243 
 
 steering clear of any phrase which might hint of 
 brag: 
 
 1 'And I hope you found that our soldiers did fairly 
 well?" 
 
 The tone in which he answered was like a rebuke. 
 "Fairly well! ,, he exclaimed, "but very well! very, 
 very well." 
 
 He spoke without reserve and all the more cor- 
 dially, perhaps, because during the talk which had 
 preceded this question of mine he had found me not 
 unaware that we owed our Allies quite as much as 
 they owed to us ; that the moral tonic of our coming 
 in had been weakened by our delay in coming over; 
 that twelve long months after we had come in, only 
 300,000 of us had got over ; that nothing but the ter- 
 rifying imminence of disaster, in March 1918, had 
 started the getting us over in adequate numbers, and 
 with proper speed ; that, but for the help of British 
 transports, more than half of us could not have got 
 over even then ; that nothing but the superb sticking 
 to it of British and French armies during 1917-18, 
 and General Nivelle's attack in 1917, without waiting 
 for our coming, had held the Germans off, and thus 
 given us the time in which to get ready; and that 
 during this time our private citizens by the thou- 
 sand, Americans on whose shoulders rested great 
 private responsibilities, had dropped their work re- 
 gardless of their politics, and dedicated their unre- 
 warded ability to propping up the most incompetent 
 and most ungrateful administration which we have 
 thus far staggered along under. The French had 
 helped us out with nearly three thousand airplanes 
 — we had nothing of this kind ready. As to guns, 
 even by Armistice day we had on our front no 75 's,
 
 244 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 155 mm. howitzers, or 155 G. P. F. guns — the French 
 equipped us from their own plants with this artil- 
 lery for thirty divisions. During the Meuse-Argonne 
 battle our remount resources fell so short that Mar- 
 shal Foch turned over to us 13,000 animals from 
 the French armies. Our men had been dragging the 
 guns through the mud themselves, leaving behind 
 their rolling kitchens in order to do it, and eating 
 roots. One division had been obliged to do so much 
 walking in other regions that it named itself the 
 Sight-Seeing Division. 
 
 A word about our deficiencies, the lightest acknowl- 
 edgment that we did not win the war alone, that 
 General Gouraud, for example, with the 4th French 
 Army was fighting west of the Argonne while Gen- 
 eral Liggett with our first army was fighting in it 
 and east of it, and that together we broke the evil 
 spell and at the finish were, so to speak, flying to 
 victory — any syllable of such recognition brought 
 instantly its generous response from any Frenchman 
 just as well as from General Mangin. What they 
 liked, what opened their hearts, was a word, or even 
 a sign, which expressed appreciation of their cour- 
 age and suffering during the three years before we 
 brought any courage or suffering into it; receiving 
 such word or sign, they would say readily enough 
 that we had saved them in 1918. What they did not 
 like, what shut their hearts, was to hear us boast. 
 It is difficult to pay compliments to a man who has 
 already begun to pay them to himself. 
 
 But who were these American doughboys for whom 
 General Mangin had such handsome compliments? 
 
 Four French and twenty-one American divisions 
 fought the Meuse-Argonne fight, and of our divisions
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 245 
 
 five were regulars. All the rest came from civil life, 
 like the embattled farmer who in 1775 at Concord 
 and Lexington fired the shot heard round the world. 
 Every trade, profession, walk in life from all over 
 the country united to make that roar which spoke 
 to the enemy of American courage in the Meuse- 
 Argonne. 
 
 And who were the enemy? Germany's best troops, 
 prepared from the cradle for this day, their minds 
 put in uniform at the kindergarten. So fierce be- 
 came the American onset that when a German divi- 
 sion had once got into it, it had to stay in, it could 
 not be relieved. Twenty divisions were taken from 
 the French and one from the British front to pile in 
 the way of the Americans. Forty-seven days of this, 
 forty-seven days of the worst battle Americans have 
 known from Lexington and Concord to the Armistice, 
 and it was over. Not as at the second battle of the 
 Marne, or at St. Mihiel, where we attacked on two 
 sides of a pocket and squeezed the enemy out of it, 
 but in a remorseless frontal attack, did our divisions 
 fight through the Meuse-Argonne, managing entirely 
 by ourselves for the first time the whole mechanism 
 and apparatus of it — communications, dumps, tele- 
 graph lines, and water service. "We lost some 117,000 
 in killed and wounded, captured 26,000 prisoners, 
 847 cannon, 3,000 machine guns, and large quantities 
 of material. Except by the five divisions of regulars, 
 it was not done, it could not be done, with the tech- 
 nical experience of regulars. Life was wasted: — 
 seeing the waste at times the French exclaimed, 
 "they're crazy": and perhaps General Pershing's 
 words about it belong here: 
 
 The less experienced divisions, while aggressive, 
 
 a i
 
 246 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 were lacking in the ready skill of habit. They were 
 capable of powerful blows, but their blows were apt 
 to be awkward — team work was not often well under- 
 stood. Flexible and resourceful divisions cannot be 
 created by a few manoeuvres or by a few months' 
 association of their elements. On the other hand, 
 without the keen intelligence, the endurance, the will- 
 ingness, and enthusiasm displayed in the training 
 area, as well as on the battle field, the successful 
 results we obtained so quickly would have been ut- 
 terly impossible." 
 
 Let this page therefore chronicle the names of 
 those sixteen divisions who by a few manoeuvres and 
 a few months' association in the training area were 
 able with our five divisions of regulars to obtain so 
 quickly those successful results. 
 
 That splendid 26th Division, the Yankee, came 
 early to France, fought early, and fought late; the 
 28th was the Keystone, and saw war from the second 
 Marne to Varennes and Apremont in the Argonne 
 Forest; the Blue and Gray, or 29th, captured Hau- 
 mont; the Terribles, or 32nd, knew the Vesle and 
 met the 4th Prussian Guards, and was twice in the 
 Meuse- Argonne — especially at Cierges and Romagne, 
 and its name does not disclose that it came from 
 Wisconsin and Michigan, but only that the French- 
 men who gave it this name thought that it knew how 
 to fight; the Prairie came from Illinois, it was the 
 33rd, and fought with the British in July, and along 
 the Meuse in October ; the 35th, or Santa Fe, did not 
 come from the ancient city, but from Missouri and 
 Kansas, where the trail to the ancient city began, 
 and after being in the Vosges it came to the fight, 
 especially at Vauquois and Cheppy ; the Buckeye, or
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 247 
 
 37th, naturally came from Ohio, and most particu- 
 larly took one side of Montfaucon Hill while the 79th 
 took the other ; it was a devastating piece of courage ; 
 the true cause of the 42nd being called the Rainbow 
 Division was not, as has been repeated, any incident 
 in the sky, but because men from twenty-six states 
 and the District of Columbia were in it, and of its 
 record it has reason to be proud; it knew the July 
 fighting in the chalk-white country east of Reims, 
 and the Aisne-Marne, and St. Mihiel, and came in 
 for the flying finish of the Meuse-Argonne ; I do not 
 know whether the 78th got its name from the New 
 Jersey men in it or not; men from New York and 
 Delaware were there too, and it was called the Light- 
 ning Division ; it came into the fight by Grand Pre, 
 where it relieved the heroic 77th after the bitter 
 struggle through the Argonne Wood, and had a bitter 
 struggle itself to take the Bois des Loges; the Lib- 
 erty or 79th Division came from Pennsylvania, Mary- 
 land, and the District of Columbia, and after its share 
 at Montfaucon and its extra rush to Nantillois, went 
 east of the Meuse and was headed for Lorraine ; the 
 Blue Ridge began the Argonne early at Bethincourt, 
 fought through the whole of it, finishing after the 
 capture of Beaumont and Yoncq ; the Wildcat fought 
 east of the Meuse, and took Chatillon and other 
 towns; and the reader will expect to hear that it 
 came from North and South Carolina and Florida, 
 but it also came from Porto Rico : the All American, 
 or 82nd Division, came from thirty-seven states, 
 though it was the National Guard of Georgia, Ala- 
 bama, and Tennessee; it fought through October, 
 taking Marcq, Chehery, and other places; the 89th, 
 at whose capture of Barricourt heights Foch ex-
 
 248 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 claimed "the war is over," was called Wood's Own, 
 and I think that Leonard Wood must have liked that 
 name as much as did the men ; they came from Kan- 
 sas, Missouri, Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, 
 New Mexico, and Arizona ; they began to fight in the 
 St. Mihiel, went into the Meuse-Argonne, capturing 
 other places beyond Barricourt, and found themselves 
 beyond the Meuse on November 11th. They derive 
 pleasure also from remembering that they were the 
 football champions of our entire army. The 90th, 
 the Alamo, from Texas and Oklahoma, came into 
 the fight in October, and stayed till the end, capturing 
 ten places and advancing eighteen miles against re- 
 sistance. The 77th, the Metropolitan Division, had 
 a somewhat special chance to suffer and to triumph. 
 They happened to be placed in the thick of the Ar- 
 gonne Wood, on the worst side of that bristling 
 hog-back, their period on the front line during the 
 difficult advance which constitutes the second chap- 
 ter of the battle being longer than that of any other 
 division. They fought from the first day until Oc- 
 tober 15th, and again from October 31st to November 
 11th, and their losses were severe. One incident of 
 their fight has become widely known; we read of it 
 in the newspapers each day while it was happening, 
 we have read of it since. Three whole years after 
 it occurred, we were all reminded of it again by an 
 event of piercing sadness. Through the romantic 
 phrase of a newspaper correspondent, a misrepre- 
 sentation was unintentionally spread, and though the 
 error has been corrected and Major Whittlesey set 
 right, an established mistake needs to be set right 
 more than once. His battalion was not a "Lost Bat- 
 talion," as it was called in the despatches.
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 249 
 
 After the 77th Division had been advancing six 
 days, through the bristles and across the slits in 
 the hog-back, a wickedly hot fire stopped it, notwith- 
 standing which it was ordered to go on. Near a 
 place called Binarville, fairly west through the wood 
 from Varennes, trickle some marshy tributaries of 
 the Aisne, down the west side of the hog-back. These 
 make swamps and come to junctions, over whose wet 
 ground rise high, steep, wooded rocks in walls. Com- 
 panies from the 307th and 308th Infantry with some 
 of the 306th Machine Gun Battalion, formed the bat- 
 talion which Major Whittlesey was ordered to take 
 into one of these junctions and hold the position. 
 He carried out the order, working through the meshes 
 of wet growth, losing near a hundred men, raked by 
 fire, and taking prisoners nevertheless. Here he was 
 to have been supported on the west by some of Gou- 
 raud's 4th French Army, and on the east by the 
 307th Infantry. These flanking supports failed to 
 make the planned parallel advance each side of him. 
 Being thus the only one to succeed in carrying out 
 his orders, he found himself cut off, surrounded, with 
 food for one day, and set about making the best he 
 could of it. He got one message back to headquarters 
 by a carrier pigeon, the man he sent for food never 
 returned. His general had ordered Whittlesey to 
 stay, and now did his best to get reinforcements to 
 him. For three days the battalion listened to Ger- 
 man voices, returned German fire, and grew more 
 hungry, more thirsty, and fewer in numbers — from 
 more than six hundred to two hundred and fifty — ■ 
 but they kept off the Germans, who asked them now 
 and then why they did not surrender. On the fourth 
 day, with still no food, with scanty water, and groan-
 
 250 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 ing wounded, and lessening ammunition, they still 
 held on, refusing the German invitations to surren- 
 der. The last of these invitations was not shouted 
 from the enemy line, it was a note brought by mes- 
 senger — a captured American soldier. Part of this 
 note read: 
 
 ' ' The suffering of your wounded men can be heard 
 over here in the German lines, and we are appealing 
 to your humane sentiments to stop. A white flag 
 shown by one of your men will tell us that you agree 
 
 with these conditions. Please treat Private as 
 
 an honorable man. He is quite a soldier. We envy 
 you. ,, 
 
 That was a handsome message, and Whittlesey 
 made no comment as he read it; it is said that he 
 smiled. After showing the note to officers standing 
 near him, he put it in his pocket. It was the men 
 who shouted their defiance pungently and unprint- 
 ably to the enemy when the news of the note and its 
 contents got about. They preferred death to sur- 
 render, and death it would have been that evening 
 for them all, but they were saved by the arrival of 
 the 307th. 
 
 There is the story : Whittlesey had orders to take 
 and hold at any cost a certain position. He did it, 
 and through his dogged courage our line was pushed 
 forward and stabilized. 
 
 Whittlesey is dead. Three years after those Ar- 
 gonne days, he jumped from a steamship to his 
 death at sea. We must suppose that his nerves had 
 received a bruise incurable. This war with the hor- 
 rors of its new science seems to have destroyed the 
 mental or physical health of many who came bravely 
 through it unhurt, so far as appearances went at
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 251 
 
 the time. Its work on mind and body resembles the 
 burn of radium on occasions, invisible at first, a deep 
 sore later, hard to heal, and sometimes fatal. 
 
 Bruised nerves, the radium burns of the war, can 
 be seen today in many hospitals and asylums. A 
 lady where I live wished to arrange a little music 
 for the entertainment of some patients, and asked 
 that these sick soldiers be allowed to assemble in a 
 large hall where the concert could be given. 
 
 "They cannot be allowed to go there," said the 
 superintendent. "They are seven hundred and fifty 
 men permanently raving mad." 
 
 On many acres in the Meuse-Argonne countless 
 great deeds were done that never will be known. The 
 hero that lives in most men and may sleep in them 
 through a whole life of week-days, waked in this 
 fiery month of battle and made of it a sacred day, 
 frightful, consecrated, divine through sacrifice. The 
 nameless unrewarded dead, the seven hundred and 
 fifty madmen, are less sad to think of than certain 
 of those who lived and came out whole, in whom 
 the hero has fallen so fast asleep again that his very 
 existence seems doubtful now. 
 
 Scarce three miles through the wood from the 
 swamps and tangles of the Beset Battalion, is quite 
 another sight. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria lived 
 in the trees above Varennes most comfortably. To 
 see his thoughtfully constructed quarters was ample 
 compensation for not seeing the elaborate conve- 
 niences below ground that the Germans had made 
 for themselves at Les Eparges. I have been twice 
 to Rupprecht 's look-out. It must have housed more 
 enjoyments and relaxations for his royal senses than 
 Montfaucon supplied to the Crown Prince. I cannot
 
 252 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 blame a prince for taking such good care of his pleas- 
 ures so much as I blame those unthinking American 
 soldiers who, as soon as they got out of war-stricken 
 France into unscathed, whole-skinned Germany, be- 
 gan to prefer Germans, merely because they found 
 it more comfortable on the uninvaded Rhine than on 
 the shattered and bleeding margins of the Marne and 
 the Meuse. It is a pity that these doughboys were 
 capable of so little reflection — thought more like chil- 
 dren of eight than men of twenty-five. Elaborate 
 thought was apparent everywhere in the quarters of 
 the Bavarian prince. One descended concrete steps 
 so solid and shapely that they were like what you see 
 in some large handsome garden conducting from some 
 terrace or arbor to some lake with lilies and gold- 
 fish; there, one's eye followed a substantial balus- 
 trade, again like something in a park ; down the first 
 flight, in the rooms, were wainscotted walls, excel- 
 lently finished, apartment led to apartment, one im- 
 agined where the electric lights had shone on games 
 of cards, and where music and song had made the 
 nights agreeable — all in the middle of this muddy, 
 wild, disordered wood! Brick heaters were there 
 to keep Rupprecht warm; one room had a bay-win- 
 dow like a city house; there was ornamentation; 
 there was a theatre; in a trench to the left of Rup- 
 precht 's exit was beautiful concrete work; a fine 
 stone chimney stuck up into the wild, disordered 
 woods from a heavy, sunken concrete roof — probably 
 a division headquarters; the place was a veritable 
 city, the dug-outs went down sixty feet and connected 
 right and left. We did not go into a quarter of it. — 
 And then on the walls of Rupprecht 's parlor, "Du- 
 buque, la." scrawled in a clear hand. Also, " Oscar
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 253 
 
 McLeven," and "Robert B. Franklin," and "Little 
 McCarthy." 
 
 "During that battle?" I inquired, astonished that 
 they should have had time to write their names — 
 or anything — then. 
 
 "No," said our escort. "Done since by visitors." 
 He had "jumped off" at Cheppy, just north of Va- 
 rennes, and knew that our men had been otherwise 
 occupied. 
 
 Such was the scene inside these concrete caves; 
 traces — almost echoes — of comfort, pleasure, luxury; 
 and outside, at their very doors, the wild, disordered 
 wood, littered with leavings of war. Not yet were 
 the little wooden cleats along the wet paths disar- 
 ranged, nor yet the fragments among the sodden 
 leaves disturbed, and through the branches every- 
 where hung the telephone wires. We picked up, on 
 another day, two or three pages from a book, muddy 
 but legible still, libidinous and intimate, written to 
 stir youth and to goad age. To many an American 
 boy it would have been like the first dose of frontier 
 whisky to a Cheyenne or a Sioux, only more potent 
 in its appeal and more ravaging in its possible in- 
 fluence. Had the volume belonged to Prince Rup- 
 precht's library? Had it dropped from the kit of 
 some soldier of the 77th? Or had Little McCarthy 
 brought it? Well, we were not likely ever to know. 
 
 Not on the walls alone had the Little McCarthys 
 begun to leave their defacing mark; names and in- 
 itials were already carved upon the trees. This was 
 not the only place where such records were to be 
 seen; they covered the walls thick over at Mont- 
 faucon. Names were scribbled by the hundred in 
 that house on the height where the Crown Prince
 
 254 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 through thirty feet of periscope had safely watched 
 other people fight and die. These names were not 
 going to secure much immortality, however, for the 
 people who had written them; already this snug 
 abode of the Crown Prince was going the way of all 
 flesh and plaster and mortar and everything else. 
 Its gaunt shape reared up on the hillside, and it was 
 ceasing to be a house and beginning to be remains; 
 in a little while it would be like all the rest of this 
 village. We entered the gaps that had been its front 
 door; explored its rotting premises, walked up its 
 as yet safe stairs; looked out of its window-holes 
 over the wide, mournful country towards Verdun; 
 watched the swallows flying in and out of these 
 holes ; stared at the disintegrating walls ; stared most 
 at that observatory which had been built through the 
 centre of the house for the Crown Prince. That 
 was a structure indeed! It ran up through the 
 building which served as a concealment of its iden- 
 tity, as camouflage. It was reinforced with steel and 
 sand bags and concrete. We admired this symbol 
 of the solid, thorough German character — and of 
 the precautionary valor of the House of Hohen- 
 zollern. We mounted to the roof and stood there 
 to look better across the wide view, the woods and 
 fields over which the 37th and 79th Divisions had 
 made that devastating frontal attack by which they 
 took Montfaucon. It had been said that you could 
 not take it. It stood up there about midway between 
 the Meuse and the Argonne, strengthened and pro- 
 tected by three years of German military science — 
 but they took it. Perhaps it was wasteful tactics, 
 certainly it was splendid courage. 
 
 Still better could we see the ground over which
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 255 
 
 they had come from a point on the hill, which rises 
 higher than the look-out of the Crown Prince. There 
 was much in that graveyard to lead one to stand still : 
 another torn acre of tombs, another church that never 
 would be a church again. It made a high point in 
 the silence — one of the places where this enormous 
 stillness came flowing in from every quarter of the 
 horizon, flowing and flooding over ridge and wood 
 and field, coming to the base of the hill, rolling up 
 its steep sides, and meeting and settling on top in 
 a great wave upon which human voices and the sound 
 of birds made not the slightest mark. I remember 
 that all the time we were there a cuckoo was sing- 
 ing ceaselessly. He was as filled with spring as 
 was the sunshine, and the green of the new leaves; 
 but he made no difference, nothing made any differ- 
 ence, in this sea of silence that stretched around us, 
 west to the towers of invisible Reims rising above it, 
 and still west to Amiens ; and east also beyond where 
 eye could look. 
 
 I had copied no names in the house of the Crown 
 Prince, but in this graveyard among the heaved-up 
 slabs and ripped interiors where open coffins lay, I 
 wrote : J n F ois Drouet, Docteur Medecin, 1795-1849 ; 
 H yte Hector Guillenot d'Alby, 2 me regiment de cui- 
 rassiers, 1814-1855; Anne Brouchet, Epouse Drouet 
 et d'Alby, 1820-1880. These names were on the 
 tablet of a tomb broken open, and they belonged to 
 the corpses which had been scattered into sight. The 
 tomb was one of several fine monuments and had 
 been wired for the telephone and made an observa- 
 tion point, but this was no excuse for the wanton 
 desecration of the dead. 
 
 From here we could see the entire upland of the
 
 256 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 heights of the Meuse, as well as the ridge of the 
 Argonne Forest, and no place was better for relating 
 the parts of this large country to the whole. We 
 adjusted to each other the points where we had been, 
 and some of those still to come. There to the south 
 we could make out Hill 304, where our 80th and 4th 
 Divisions had begun their part of the Meuse- Argonne 
 battle near Bethincourt and Dannevoux, pivoting on 
 Verdun and swinging northward. We knew Hill 304, 
 for there we had been already in the course of our 
 circuitous wandering. We had gone in and out of 
 the folds of the landscape, and far and wide, seeing 
 various signs of the war scattered broadcast through 
 the region. Once, between Etain and Damloup, we 
 had passed a Baldwin locomotive, alive and steam- 
 ing, recalling home, and symbolizing reconstruction. 
 Tank traps had been placed along that road. These 
 consisted of very strong stone posts set in the ground 
 something like gate-posts, and between them would 
 be strung heavy chains. We had passed squads and 
 squads of German prisoners, dull in their dingy 
 green. These were at work upon the roads, and they 
 worked as little as they could. Alike in the knobbed 
 and gnomeish countenances of the old and the pleas- 
 ant ruddy faces of the young, I seemed to descry the 
 same look of puzzlement. Were they heavily won- 
 dering all the while how and why they had come to 
 be here, or had they worked beyond this to the later 
 stage of wondering how soon they would be able to 
 revenge themselves 1 ? We passed Russians too — 
 strangely different from any one else. Our escorts 
 could not tell us what they were doing or what their 
 status was ; and I doubt if they knew this themselves. 
 They had saved France as much in the beginning
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 257 
 
 as we had saved her in the end; they had fought 
 bravely, had been vilely betrayed at home, and 
 slaughtered pitifully by the thousand, and now their 
 country — the one that they had known — was welter- 
 ing in disaster, no longer herself. I gather that they 
 had been treated very stupidly by the French Govern- 
 ment, and that their souls must have been poisoned 
 by a sense of ingratitude. Over all this unearthly 
 mixture of Baldwin locomotive, cheerful doughboys, 
 saddened peasants, German prisoners, Russian exiles 
 at work or at idleness, amid mounds and holes and 
 obliterated roads and villages, shone a bright sun- 
 light upon the trees. In their branches the mistletoe 
 bunched like crows ' nests ; while above them in the 
 blue soared many larks like floating dots of song. 
 Their music fell upon the forlorn fields in scattered 
 drops of sound which might have been made by silver 
 hammers tapping upon a crystal vault. German 
 words were painted large and black upon many a 
 village corner, sometimes naming a street, sometimes 
 an office or headquarters ; and from these still habit- 
 able edifices we would pass almost in a breath to 
 zones where all had been blasted flat, and it was 
 rare to see any fragment that still resembled a house. 
 Along much of these winding journeys, camouflage 
 of various patterns remained, whole or in rags ; and 
 this also touched with unearthliness a scene where 
 shell holes lay like giant soup plates, scummed with 
 motionless bubbles and awful liquid. 
 
 And yet the fury which had reduced the world to 
 this, produced — otherwise man would have perished 
 as much from horror of the brain as from wounds 
 of the flesh — songs, and jokes by the thousand, and 
 philosophy, and in many cases deep, ultimate, serene
 
 258 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 belief in God. A piece of poilu philosophy from the 
 trenches has been translated into English and ap- 
 plied to our doughboys; but by an American brain 
 no such train of logic would have been formulated, 
 although, once it was formulated, American brains 
 might readily have assented to it : 
 
 With the poilu everything might be worse. 
 
 Of two things one is certain — 
 
 Either you're mobilized or you're not mobilized; 
 
 If you're not mobilized, there's no need to worry, 
 
 But if you're mobilized, one of two things is certain — 
 
 Either you're at the front or behind the lines. 
 
 If you're behind the lines, there's no need to worry, 
 
 But if you're at the front, one of two things is certain — 
 
 Either you're in a safe place or you're exposed to danger. 
 
 If you're exposed to danger, one of two things is certain — 
 
 Either you're wounded or you're not wounded. 
 
 But if you're wounded, one of two things is certain — 
 
 Either you 're wounded slightly or you 're wounded seriously. 
 
 If you're wounded seriously, one of two things is certain — 
 
 Either you recover or you die. 
 
 If you recover, there's no need to worry. 
 
 If you die you can 't worry, so what 's the use. 
 
 The gaiety of this, which flashes through it like a 
 blade of well-tempered steel, strangely ratifies a word 
 of foresighted discernment spoken by Bismarck in 
 1874. That was three years after he had defeated 
 France and taken Alsace-Lorraine from her. He 
 was passing with a friend through some German 
 city — it may have been Stuttgart — and in the evening 
 went to hear La Fille de Madame Angot, whose 
 words and music were then quite new. It came from 
 Paris. At first Bismarck was much diverted, and 
 laughed and enjoyed himself. Gradually he ceased 
 to laugh, became graver and graver, until he was
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 259 
 
 so dark and silent that his friend in surprise asked 
 him if he did not like it. 
 
 ''Not at all," he said. "For here is an enemy 
 singing and dancing, and an enemy who can sing and 
 dance like that is not conquered." 
 
 In those days and long after them, as late as 1914, 
 indeed, the rest of the world — and even France her- 
 self — would have heard in the sportive measures of 
 Madame Angot nothing but an irresponsible, if agree- 
 able, levity ; but canny old Bismarck heard that phi- 
 losophy of the poilu. One remembers it was in the 
 following year, 1875, that, if he had been allowed 
 by certain other powers, he would have invaded 
 France again in order to " bleed her white" so that 
 she should stay so. Very obviously the gaiety of 
 Madame Angot contributed its light straw to his 
 perfectly wise and perfectly savage intention. 
 
 Along the valley of the little Aire we followed very 
 intelligibly the advance made during the first eleven 
 days of October by our 1st Division. While Whittle- 
 sey was across in the wood west of the river, perhaps 
 six miles off, they were working along east of it, 
 capturing Baulny, Exermont, Fleville; and there 
 was but little along this ridge to hinder our view of 
 the whole of this. Down below ran the river pleas- 
 antly, its valley green with marshes and busy with 
 birds and looking like something at home — very dif- 
 ferent from the sights on the ridge. To tell a reader 
 about mud is hardly worth while, therefore I will say 
 no more of it than that later, beyond Grand Pre, and 
 between Buzancy and Raucourt, we grew venture- 
 some in our exploration, and for a while I wondered 
 if I were not going to be sorry that I had come. But 
 we got out of it at last, and I must certainly tell you
 
 260 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 about the bells of Autrecourt, another of the villages 
 taken by our 1st Division, in their fight during early 
 November. 
 
 On the river Meuse, upon that reach of it which 
 saw us come after the Huns in the final days, are 
 Mouzon, Letanne, Angecourt, Autrecourt, with Beau- 
 mont and Yoncq not far off ; all names full of mem- 
 ory to our divisions who pushed to the river or 
 beyond it during the flight to victory just before 
 the Armistice. Mouzon has a most beautiful little 
 church, but its bells are gone. So are the bells gone 
 from all of the churches thereabouts, save only the 
 church at Autrecourt. This has one, the others fol- 
 lowed where went their neighbors of Mouzon and 
 all the other places. Their bells were removed by 
 the Germans for the sake of their metal. One eve- 
 ning, just about the time that the order went forth 
 to take away all the French church bells that they 
 might be melted down in Germany for the better 
 destruction of the French, some Hun officers were 
 enjoying themselves in Autrecourt. They were sup- 
 ping freely and easily. So were the few other Ger- 
 mans who were there. The village, like all of the 
 Meuse-Argonne region, had been in German pos- 
 session since 1914, and the officers had made them- 
 selves much at home. That night during the supper, 
 fire broke out in the German military stores. As 
 this mishap was not at all one which concerned the 
 French, they became the pleased spectators of it. 
 Can you see those French peasants and villagers 
 with their hands in their pockets, watching the fire 
 get the better of the German stores'? When it was 
 quite too late to do anything in the way of preven- 
 tion, somebody came out from supper and saw.
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 261 
 
 a 
 
 Mein Gott!" he very naturally exclaimed. 
 
 But this did no good, nor did any of the various 
 other expressions which followed from him and his 
 brother officers, as they came piling out. 
 
 "Why did you not tell us of this?" they demanded 
 of the villagers. ' ' Why did you allow it to get beyond 
 control? You should immediately have sounded the 
 tocsin." 
 
 But to this the villagers had no answer except to 
 smile agreeably while they shrugged their shoulders. 
 
 So it all burned to ashes and more had to be sent 
 from Germany. 
 
 "Very well," said the officers, "for your pig-dog 
 disrespect for the property of the All Highest, you 
 shall receive punishment. During three months, be- 
 ginning tomorrow, every day two citizens shall ring 
 the tocsin for fifteen minutes." 
 
 This sentence was forthwith put into effect, and 
 while it was in mid-execution came the people to 
 carry out the order from Germany and remove all 
 church bells. But if you have no bell you can sound 
 no tocsin. Therefore from the church at Autrecourt 
 only two bells were taken in order that two citizens 
 should be able to carry out the punishment by ring- 
 ing the third bell for fifteen minutes every day till 
 the three months had expired. 
 
 Today, therefore, while all neighboring church 
 towers are empty of their chimes, you can hear one 
 bell at Autrecourt calling the peasants and villagers 
 to their prayers. 
 
 It was at Mouzon, next door to Autrecourt, a mile 
 or so up the Meuse, that the village apothecary told 
 me this, after he had accompanied me in a vain 
 search for the grave of an American boy, and we
 
 262 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 were inside the exquisite church. Throughout all of 
 this woe-begone country it was merriment bubbling 
 from the eternal masculine heart that helped that 
 tough heart to beat on sanely till the tempest was 
 over ; and when we wander among the crosses where 
 lie the dead men whose hearts were stilled during 
 the storm, we shall not imagine it rightly if we 
 imagine it as going on without laughter. There is 
 no laughter for us among the crosses: but of them 
 that were in it, few who survive, I think, could have 
 come through and remained at all themselves, had 
 they not been capable of mirth. Therefore when I 
 think of the men who fought and suffered so well — 
 French, British, Americans — I know that most of 
 them joked well too — know that nearly every day they 
 must have exchanged words such as these between 
 two American doughboys talking about a third, and 
 overheard by an officer : 
 
 "He's got just about no sense at all." 
 "No. If his brains were gunpowder and went off 
 they wouldn't blow his nose. ,, 
 
 The "buck privates" whom we saw in the streets 
 of Sedan looked as if almost any of them could talk 
 like that in almost any circumstances. Sedan they 
 had not entered at the end of their rush during those 
 early November days of 1918 ; this particular act had 
 been most fittingly done by the French ; it was right 
 to heal, so far as ever it could be healed, the wound 
 and the outrage dealt there by Bismarck to France 
 in 1870. Do you remember the outrage? There it 
 was that the Emperor Louis Napoleon surrendered, 
 and a great disaster fell upon the French army and 
 nation; and while that surrender was taking place, 
 Prussian trumpets blew the strains of the Marseil-
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 263 
 
 laise into the ears of their vanquished foes. Oh, 
 my friend, when you hear talk about the "irritating" 
 attitude of France since the war, put yourself, whose 
 country has never suffered anything like this, in a 
 Frenchman's place; and remember the indemnities 
 which Germany purposed to exact from France, 
 England, and ourselves, if she had won! 
 
 Just across the bridge over the Meuse as one came 
 from the south into Sedan, was the house where Louis 
 Napoleon had been on that day in 1870. Not far 
 away on the other side of the street was an old lady 
 in a booth selling picture post-cards of the place, and 
 of her I bought at once a picture of that Napoleon 
 house. 
 
 "I shouldn't have wanted to own this before," 
 said I. 
 
 "Oh, no, monsieur," she answered, "but now it 
 makes one joy, does it not?" 
 
 Our doughboys seemed to swarm in the town, in 
 the middle of the street, on the sidewalks, and in the 
 house and tree-grown yard of the Cafe de la So- 
 quenette. This pleasant establishment did a brisk 
 business, and as we ourselves sat there pausing 
 before our plunge back into the zone of utter devas- 
 tation, the voices of the doughboys came to us from 
 tables adjacent. 
 
 "Well," said one, "I'm told that the boats on the 
 Rhine have square port-holes to fit the heads of 
 Germans." 
 
 We left them and Sedan behind us. We had come 
 into the town by the road above which they had been 
 stopped by the Armistice, in their forward rush. 
 This road, the Meuse, and the railway, are all close 
 together at this particular point, to which three of
 
 264 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 our divisions came — the 1st on November 7th, the 
 42nd on the 7th and 8th, the 77th on the 10th and 
 11th. To mark this farthest fling of their victorious 
 tide, a memorial stone stands today above the road. 
 This I passed in those later days when the ticket 
 agent was so civil to me upon finding I was an 
 American. I hope that I shall drive along that road 
 some day again. I find myself wishing to linger in 
 words upon it now, instead of getting away from 
 Sedan. It is because of our doughboys. This is my 
 last chance to talk about them when they were at 
 their best, and I am loath to leave it. Discipline 
 and a great cause lifted thousands high above their 
 daily selves for once at least, and for this they should 
 feel gratitude instead of demanding pay. The flash 
 of Cantigny revealed their mettle; at Belleau Wood 
 and the bridge-head at Chateau-Thierry it flashed 
 again; in the second battle of the Marne the flash 
 widened to a steady blaze of established certainty; 
 St. Mihiel was a feat well and quickly done : but the 
 Meuse-Argonne, though less imprinted on the popu- 
 lar mind, rises above them all. It was truly a long 
 and tough battle, and virtually all their own. It was 
 difficult in every way ; through bad weather, through 
 bad country, inexpertly fed and supplied at times, on 
 account of the mud and the strangulation of the few 
 highways of supply — and against more and more of 
 Germany's best men fortified behind Germany's best 
 defences: forty-seven days of it; nothing like it in 
 the whole history of the nation. If there is such a 
 thing as being too proud to fight, the American 
 doughboy was sorely lacking in it. 
 
 You must not look at human nature with a micro- 
 scope alone ; distortion is the consequence. Even the
 
 LAST LAP TO ARMISTICE 265 
 
 calendared saints were sometimes sinners, and the 
 dongliboy was no saint. Moreover, in his mobilized 
 ranks abroad were enlisted professional criminals, 
 who escaped from discipline and degraded his name 
 by their foul deeds in Paris until a heavy hand closed 
 upon them — while in his demobilized ranks at home 
 are guard-house lawyers, politicians, pension sharks, 
 who also degrade his name and drive many of the 
 best of him to resign from the organization which 
 held at its beginning a hope too ideal to come true 
 in a world like this. None of these things has any- 
 thing to do with the doughboy and his battles in 
 France. He came, often most unwillingly, from a 
 nation that hates war, and once in it he so conducted 
 himself in that quarrel that his adversary was ware 
 of him. Then he lived his great moment when disci- 
 pline and the cause made him more of a man than 
 he had ever been before. He showed himself a ter- 
 rible fighter — those other terrible fighters, the Aus- 
 tralians, found him "a bit rough." He proved a 
 soldier dogged, aggressive, enterprising, and humor- 
 ous — nobody better than he at the game. He also 
 showed himself a lover of children, an adept in ath- 
 letic sport, a too lavish spender, and keenly appre- 
 ciative of hospitality: not in every case, of course: 
 avoid the microscope. A good name lingers behind 
 him. I wish that all of him were still as worthy 
 today. And so my chances to dwell upon him, my 
 American brother, end. My last close sight of him 
 was in Sedan, gay beneath the trees of the Cafe de 
 la Soquenette, conversing about Rhine steamers that 
 fitted their port-holes to the square heads of the 
 Germans.
 
 266 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 We left Sedan by another way and went along by 
 another river, la Chiers, which comes into the Meuse 
 just above Sedan, and goes through Carignan, Mont- 
 medy, and Longuyon, as we also did. All that road 
 was also along or near the Metz-Mezieres artery, 
 whose strangling by us throttled Germany's last 
 breath and threw her on her knees, praying to be 
 spared. There was no way of not granting that 
 petition; but prayers granted to Germany do not 
 improve her soul. Greater tragedy than the pre- 
 mature Armistice and the belated Treaty cannot be 
 met in history. We saw the chimneys of the Briey 
 basin, whence Germany got much mineral help for 
 the war, until we cut it off from her — and then in 
 one of those strange moments that was like some 
 evil magic, growing trees and living houses ended, 
 and we re-entered the awful Thing and the awful 
 Silence. 
 
 "For mark! No sooner was I fairly found 
 Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 
 
 Than, pausing to throw backward a last view 
 
 To the safe road, 'twas gone ! grey plain all round : 
 
 Nothing but plain to the horizon 's bound. 
 I might go on ; nought else remained to do. 
 
 "As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair 
 In leprosy — thin dry blades pricked the mud 
 
 Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. 
 And more than that — a furlong on — why there ! 
 
 What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 
 Or brake, not wheel — that harrow fit to reel 
 
 Men's bodies out like silk?" 
 
 Had he who wrote that passed in vision seventy 
 years beforehand over this ground of the Woevre 
 and the Meuse- Argonne?
 
 XXII 
 
 VERDUN 
 
 Somewhere far back along our way, near its begin- 
 ning, I had remembered that line of mystery in Lear: 
 "The worst is not while we can say, This is the 
 Worst." The words came back to me as we for the 
 first time neared Verdun; and Verdun has caused 
 my speech to die away at every sight of it that I 
 have had since. On its heights and in its hollows 
 I have walked with friends, none of us speaking a 
 word. Nothing that I or any man can say, or any 
 picture, will make you know what Verdun is. Music 
 might steep the spirit in the same mood. It is best 
 such a thing should have to be seen, should cost 
 effort; could its whole reality be carried about in 
 books and spread on laps, even it would be cheap- 
 ened. As it is, you must go there to know it all, 
 you must climb about among its barbed and wasted 
 mounds, and stand high up a long while, and look 
 slowly down over the torn sea of shell holes to the 
 bottom and across the wide plain there, pock-marked 
 and patterned by the blasts of war. Whiffs of the 
 rotting dead are no longer blown to your nostrils 
 as you go about ; on that first day they were. Writ- 
 ten in my notes on the spot, at the moment, is this : 
 
 "Douaumont. Pools, humps, stones, corrugated 
 fragments, dead distance, dead near by, stumps, steel 
 rail, rusted bits, whiffs from the dead, human bones 
 (a German grave, his shoes, his bones, a cross of 
 twigs unnamed), a pool with thirty dead in it, and 
 larks in the sky. ' ' 
 
 Sitting at Douaumont and staring, it seemed as if 
 
 267
 
 268 NEIGHBOKS HENCEFORTH 
 
 all the miles of sacred ways we had travelled led 
 here ; as if we had been coming here ever since Com- 
 piegne, through Amiens, Reims, everywhere, the 
 whole journey being inevitably to bring us to this. 
 In my thought I could see Reims and Amiens back 
 on the road — truer to say, they came and stood in 
 my thoughts suddenly. They were this, and this 
 but a piece of them, just like the French boy who 
 wrote the letters, just like the whole of magnificent, 
 tragic France. 
 
 As you come in one way from Etain, the white 
 dead fingers of the trees begin their stiff gesture 
 along the ridges. They beckon motionlessly, spread- 
 ing their ranks over the undulating dearth. Stark 
 and thin, with crazed knuckle joints, they show that 
 something wrong has happened to them, that they did 
 not die naturally, but were murdered. They stretch 
 around Tavannes and on to Vaux, in groves, or 
 by twos and threes, or sometimes just one flayed 
 bone, sticking up from meshes of barbed wire and 
 bumps of slaughtered earth. This ground, Vaux and 
 Douaumont, just these two fortresses, only a part of 
 Verdun's large circle of strongholds, was where dur- 
 ing four months 10,000 shells of 8 inches and larger 
 fell every day. Multiply it — one hundred and twenty 
 times ten thousand. How is it that any trees at all 
 still stand to show that they were murdered? What 
 wonder that all the men still alive by the ninth day 
 of it were weeping 1 ? 
 
 "They shall not pass." That was Petain's prom- 
 ise about the Huns. 
 
 Before they knew that they never could pass, the 
 earth had become like this, and it was November — 
 they had begun to try to pass in February. Over
 
 VERDUN 269 
 
 at Les Eparges not very far to our southeast, 70,000 
 French had been killed; of these dead, there were 
 8,000 not in shreds, the other 62,000 were mere name- 
 less drops of blood and bits of flesh. That seems bad 
 — but what was the cost of life here to prevent the 
 Germans passing? To save Verdun, four hundred 
 thousand French were killed, and of these were found 
 eighty thousand that still were human bodies. Of 
 these bodies about one-half could be identified. On 
 the forlorn hill beside the road, and opposite the 
 path that leads to Douaumont, is a wooden building, 
 a sort of chapel for the fragments of the featureless, 
 dismembered dead. A good man, the Padre Noel, 
 lives here in the wilderness, to be near these bones 
 and give them sacred shelter as fast as they are 
 found. They are being carefully searched for and 
 almost every day more are collected. Some came 
 from quite near, in a pinched little gully, the Ravin 
 de la Dame. Five hundred were killed in this place 
 and buried ; but later fighting wiped all these graves 
 away. In Padre Noel's chapel stood fifty-two coffins 
 full of nameless bones on the last day I was there. 
 More are there now. All will never be found in that 
 wild continent of obliteration ; but in time, instead of 
 the wooden chapel, houses more permanent for those 
 bones will stand there: churches where all the be- 
 reaved of every faith may come and say their prayers 
 — a church for Catholics and one for Protestants, 
 one for Jews and one for Mohammedans; the fami- 
 lies of every race that died fighting for Verdun will 
 have a sacred roof beneath which they can kneel and 
 feel at home and think of their dead. Or, if they live 
 too far away, or are too poor to come, they can know 
 that Padre Noel is there watching over the coffins,
 
 270 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and that when his watch is over, another will follow 
 him. Of the four hundred thousand French killed 
 at Verdun, eighty thousand were fairly whole, forty 
 thousand recognizable : our American total of deaths 
 (to September 1, 1919) was 81,141, of which 35,556 
 were killed in action — or about the same number that 
 were recognizable after Verdun. 
 
 I wanted to climb down to the bottom of Vaux. 
 It was a good long descent; but with the earth in 
 natural state, half an hour would have been more than 
 enough. With the earth as it was, I got a little way 
 below the flat top of the fortress and went no farther. 
 I was among barbed wire, I had crossed some sag- 
 ging strands of it, more of it was ahead ; all the way 
 down, fence after fence of it encircled the slope, each 
 but a few yards apart. This was to climb over, with 
 a ground to walk on that was ditched deep with 
 trenches and so tossed and gutted that, had I made 
 the attempt, I should have been letting my body 
 down into holes and pulling it up at every dozen steps. 
 It would have taken all that morning, even if none 
 of the wire proved impassable. So I stopped where 
 I was and looked at the great view. I had seen it 
 before in the days when no moving or living thing 
 could be descried. Today the slow smoke of a train, 
 creeping out from the deep folds of the hills on 
 its way to the open spaces of reconstruction, marked 
 the solitude. Its sound did not come up to me as I 
 watched it wind out of sight. It ran on a road-bed 
 between shell holes, dug-outs and the blur of barbed 
 wire, and once it stopped at a demolished station. 
 Beyond this, the hills opened upon the plain stretch- 
 ing to the forest of Spincourt. It was from this 
 wood that the Germans descended upon Verdun.
 
 VERDUN 271 
 
 The distance was wan, effaced, of hues lighter or 
 darker, according as the land was open or wooded. 
 Thus the distance ; near at hand, the broken upheaval, 
 the bristling wire, the waste of splinters, slanted 
 weeds, and stones. A grave was here. No others. 
 It had the hill to itself. It was close against one of 
 the barbed wire fences. I made my way to it and 
 copied the inscription on the wooden cross : 
 
 Leon Fautier 
 
 30 Avril 1916 
 
 119 fe Beg 4 d'infantrie 
 
 That day had been the 38th of the siege of Verdun. 
 How many shells by then had fallen on Vaux? And 
 why was Leon Fautier not sleeping in some cemetery 
 with comrades for company? Had he fallen here, 
 and had his people wished that he stay here? The 
 cross was set in rubble and supported by stones and 
 the rusting shells of the 75 gun. Not a wreath, not 
 a leaf, lay on this naked grave. 
 
 Such is Vaux. Such it was in May 1919, and two 
 years later it was unchanged. Exactly like it is its 
 neighbor Douaumont. In both you may descend and 
 be shown their dark interiors : a great disappearing 
 gun with its levers and machinery ; the hospital ; the 
 surgery; the chapel; where the commander slept; 
 where the soldiers lived; their well of water; the 
 place where the Germans came in; the gallery of a 
 frightful battle — the walls look stone-deaf from it; 
 and other galleries and labyrinths which you do not 
 explore, but merely peer into; all by the light of a 
 lamp held up for you by a grave poilu. He points 
 to where the tunnels lead to the tunnelled citadel in 
 Verdun itself, ten miles away. You can visit like-
 
 272 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 wise this enormous underground place and its gal- 
 leries; its chapel; its dining-room; where soldiers 
 and civilians lived in shelter during the siege of the 
 city in which every house was struck but one. It is 
 all strange and solemn; not to be missed; but you 
 will learn more in the outside air. Books have been 
 written about Verdun, many books already, a shelf 
 of them, well-nigh a literature. They are good, too, 
 some of them, well worth reading — the last days of 
 the Fort de Vaux, for instance. But you will learn 
 more in the outside air. Walk in the city, walk in 
 the plains, go up the hills and look down. Find some 
 chauffeur who fought through it all the four years, 
 and is here still, and will tell you about it, if he feel 
 that you care. Talk to Padre Noel among his coffins. 
 I walked away from him across the road and wan- 
 dered along the path that leads to Douaumont. Pres- 
 ently this changes to planks and later accompanies 
 the light rails of the little war railroad. It goes 
 among and over trenches. Some of them are kept 
 as they were, but most are melting in the wet and 
 crumbling in the dry. In the bottom of one of these 
 shelters I passed near two women in black. They 
 were so still that they might have been something 
 come from another world. They held a paper and 
 looked down at it. I went on to where the path and 
 railroad end below the abrupt, gashed summit. This 
 was two years after I had written in my diary upon 
 my first sight of Douaumont. In the later diary 
 come these words: "Walked to Douaumont. Rusted 
 debris — lumps — larks — pools — silence." I climbed 
 to the top. There was the unchanged sight, the de- 
 scents of barbed wire, the unfolding hills, the stretch- 
 ing distance, wan, effaced. I explored for a while,
 
 VERDUN 273 
 
 and came down the steep banks to the plank path 
 again, and so back among the trenches. Still the two 
 women were down in that shelter, motionless, black, 
 their paper in hand. I guessed right what brought 
 them. Every day, I learned, came women like this 
 with papers by which they are guided to the spot 
 where their living became their dead. There they 
 stay, remembering. 
 
 Thus, walking about in the air, and stopping, it 
 sinks into you: the murdered trees, the forts, the 
 scarred hills rising out of silence into silence, and 
 motionless women in black, pilgrims to the foot of 
 earth on which their sons and husbands fell. 
 
 After such a sight, more sights followed, as the 
 road from Padre Noel and his house of coffins sinks 
 to levels below; it passes the Trench of Bayonets, 
 the ravine where the buried dead were torn out of 
 their graves by later violence; it winds through a 
 tormented region, gashed, discolored, quarried with 
 shelter holes like rows of ovens, scribbled with 
 trenches, blotched with craters — the Cote du Poivre ; 
 then it comes out beyond these ravaged steeps and 
 slants to the level ravage along the Meuse, the 
 tumbled village of Bras, the impassable streets of 
 Verdun itself. 
 
 One road threaded through the town; into the 
 others, as at Reims, the houses had fallen, barri- 
 cading passage. By climbing over their heaps one 
 could make one's way on foot from one end of a 
 street to the other, but in no other manner. When 
 next I saw these stones two years later, they were 
 not yet built back again into houses; that will take 
 a long time; they had been cleared away from the 
 streets and stood upon their land, symmetrically
 
 274 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 piled in lerel cubes, each stone numbered to mark 
 its identity. The jostled disorder of races at Verdun 
 in the early day was as mingled as the stones which 
 blocked the thoroughfare. We had our lunch in a 
 Y canteen that had been a house of which enough 
 remained for this purpose. Its street front was 
 fairly whole, its back gaped upon a court into which 
 the rest of this house and parts of its neighbors had 
 been hurled. Timbers lay there, and the twisted iron 
 of a balcony, and a plaster Virgin, and over these 
 things hung a pair of drawers recently washed. Eat- 
 ing together in the room were Russians, French, 
 Americans, negroes, and behind the counter serving 
 them stood American women in blue caps. Here and 
 there in doorways stood German prisoners. Near 
 me was a negro soldier from Virginia who told me 
 that his name was Lee; behind him sat a boy from 
 Oklahoma who said that he was glad he had come 
 because "he had it to do," but now that it was done 
 he would like to get home. 
 
 Upon the townsfolk and the peasant mind, what 
 mark was left by this huddled medley of races sud- 
 denly pitched everywhere into the quiet midst of 
 France? A very slight mark upon their minds it 
 must be, after four years of fighting for their lives. 
 To those who came through that, no sight can ever 
 be strange again, no matter what is destined to enter 
 Verdun by its ancient gate, beneath which have al- 
 ready passed so many centuries of sights. It will 
 leave but a faint impression upon the French mind. 
 The mark upon the French race might be deeper, 
 did heredity cope evenly with environment — but it 
 does not. Those half-French offspring of unfor- 
 given, overtempted mothers, begotten by Mongolians,
 
 VERDUN 275 
 
 Slavs, Teutons, Africans, English, Americans, may 
 — some of them at least — have tragic childhoods ; 
 to the nation they will make but little difference, and 
 most of them will come to count as wholly French. 
 Verdun as it had fallen and still lay, was without 
 shape; Verdun with its stones piled in the blank 
 spaces where its houses had stood once, was like a 
 mouth with many teeth gone. But no gaps were in 
 the sane, determined spirit ; not a voice, unless after 
 some intimacy of acquaintance, told you of loss, or 
 of hardship, but only of going on, of determination 
 to come back to full life and vigor, no matter how 
 long the struggle might be. By the Meuse, where 
 it runs through the town sluggishly, is a little public 
 square, the place Chevert, named to honor a soldier 
 of Verdun. With top-boots and sword, his spirited 
 statue rises in the middle of the square ; underneath 
 is his name and rank: Chevert, Lieutenant General, 
 1695-1769. Upon another face of the pedestal are 
 words recording that the fact that he never became 
 a marshal is a loss, not to him, but to those who 
 choose him for their model — and then, upon still 
 another face, an account of him so proud that I wish 
 the words into which I must translate it could equal 
 the fire which thrills through the original: 
 
 Without Ancestors, 
 Without fortune, without influence, 
 Orphan from childhood, 
 He entered the Service 
 
 aged eleven years. 
 
 He rose in spite of envy 
 
 by force of merit, 
 
 And each upward step 
 
 was the reward 
 
 of a noble act.
 
 276 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "Well," I have thought more than once, as I have 
 come to that French soldier's statue in my walks 
 about the streets of his native city, "he was like 
 France in these present years — without fortune, 
 without influence, rising in spite of envy, each up- 
 ward step the reward of a noble act." 
 
 It is to Verdun, indeed, that all the sacred ways 
 conduct. Even after travel along the others, by the 
 Lys, by the Somme, by the Marne, and east to the 
 Vosges by Thann and Massevaux, something more 
 which these have not spoken, is heard in that silence 
 there, and one comes from it with knowledge of 
 France still deeper than even Reims and Amiens 
 could impart. 
 
 Go, after seeing Vaux and Douaumont and all 
 other spots which are included in the word Verdun, 
 to the Mort Homme. Do not be content to look at 
 that hill from your car at Cumieres; leave the car 
 and walk to the top of Dead Man's Hill, and stand 
 there beside its monument. Give to this an after- 
 noon, so that the light of the ending day may shine 
 upon that sight and mingle with your thoughts. 
 From there is plain each way they came upon Ver- 
 dun ; first on the east side of the Meuse to Vaux and 
 Douaumont — which you can see far across the gulf 
 of silence ; then, because the fire from the Avest side 
 forts raked them — Fort de la Chaume, Fort du 
 Chana, Fort des Sartelles, Fort de Choiseul, Fort 
 de bois Bourrus, Fort de Marre, Fort du Vacherau- 
 ville — they changed their plan of siege and came on 
 the Mort Homme side of the Meuse. They fell by 
 thousands day after day, but still came, rising as it 
 were out of the earth. The French did not learn for 
 some time that it was really a tunnel through which
 
 VERDUN 277 
 
 they made their way under the hills from the northern 
 slope towards Forges. Hill 304 was part of this 
 battle-ground. In a circle stand the heights from 
 which the French poured their lire. Sometimes this 
 huge cup of country was a roar of flames to its rim, 
 and it wears today the Charred look of ordeal. It 
 puts you once more in mind of the four hundred 
 thousand French who died here, of whom forty thou- 
 sand could be recognized. Those men had to fight 
 so hard lest the Huns pass that there could be no 
 stopping, they were given no breathing spell, until 
 70 per cent, of any command was wounded or killed ; 
 then the surviving remnant could pause and wait a 
 while until its strength was filled by new men, and 
 sleep and change had made it fit to go in again. 
 
 Over Dead Man's Hill the sky itself seems to grow 
 more solemn. From its summit the earth sinks away, 
 north, east, and west, in furrow after furrow of frag- 
 ments. The receding lumps merge and stretch to the 
 feet of distant hills, or to the horizon. The eye looks 
 across the wide valley to Vaux, or toward Montfau- 
 con, over a world that might be a planet after death ; 
 a planet that did not burn out and chill gradually, but 
 was violently killed through some last encounter 
 between the forces that created it. One thinks, Will 
 man's engines, greater than he already, break wholly 
 from his control and in the end be able to tear the 
 world to dust, so that as dust it floats on through 
 space — or will man sometime be so taught by what 
 war has done that he will cease to wage it and will 
 not have to die before he find peace? 
 
 Nothing that you see from Dead Man's Hill gives 
 an answer. You go on looking at the sky, at the 
 quiet, pitiful miles ; and here, still more than at Mont-
 
 278 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 faucon, the tidal wave of silence rolls in and covers 
 the place deep. It is gigantic, but yet so wistful, so 
 yearning, so potent, that you come to feel it is a sort 
 of being made of a million beings, and has a message, 
 and might speak if rightly commanded. 
 
 It went with me away from the hill, north to 
 Brieulles and across the Meuse there. As we came 
 back along that east side of the river through Sivry, 
 and Consenvoye where the German line had been, and 
 then Brabant where had been the French line, and the 
 ground and the ruin never changed, it seemed to enter 
 me. Rain began to fall and light was leaving the day. 
 Every village was a heap of stones, many houses 
 blown out of all shape. In some houses that were 
 half left, a single light burned, and you saw a peasant, 
 man or woman, after the day's work upon the shell 
 holes, entering home for the night. Along this road, 
 I think in Consenvoye, one half-ruin had passed by 
 upon which remained the solitary German word: 
 Spielhaus.
 
 PART SECOND 
 
 TWO YEARS AFTER 
 
 In the long run even a gloomy truth is better company 
 than a cheerful falsehood. 
 
 Augustine Birrell, Res Judicata.
 
 XXIII 
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 Soon after seeing Verdun I came home, where, with 
 far too many Americans, the war was out of sight and 
 out of mind. Moreover, great numbers of my fellow- 
 countrymen were still of the stale, misdirected 
 opinion that we owed our ally, England, nothing 
 but a grudge. Whether we like it or not, England is 
 quite the best thing since Home, better than Eome, 
 and not only the real cradle of American liberty but 
 its constant friend, although she once tried to upset 
 the child and has since then rocked it rather violently 
 at times. History, which has been concealed from 
 American youth by the grudgers, shows unanswer- 
 ably that England has never allowed other nations to 
 be rough with her offspring, invariably saying 
 "hands off" to all comers who meditated assault — to 
 Germany last and most emphatically in 1898. A cen- 
 tury of suppressed facts shows the distortion instilled 
 into the American mind by school histories and poli- 
 ticians who want Irish votes. These facts I gathered 
 and printed, and it took a long while to make a short 
 book. Then I set to work upon my second debt of 
 honor, this time to France who, next to England, is 
 the greatest thing since Eome, and our next best 
 friend. The truth is that since the surrender of 
 Cornwallis in 1781, France on the whole has been less 
 good than England to us, and has given us more oc- 
 
 281
 
 282 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 casions for a grudge, if grudge were possible ; but it 
 is not ; no American can forget what France did for 
 us in the darkest day of our childhood, and the high 
 example of generosity which she set in the first treaty 
 of alliance that she made with us : she was to receive 
 no compensation for her help. This was unprece- 
 dented in history, and our following the precedent in 
 1918 squares no account in decent minds, because 
 between friends there can be no question of such 
 accounts. 
 
 More than a dozen of the preceding chapters had 
 been written ; it was late in 1920 ; I had not been back 
 to see the devastated regions, but many whom I knew 
 had been there. Had they all told me the same story, 
 there would have been nothing to do but believe them 
 and go on writing this book; but the stories would 
 have bewildered any one: France was doing very 
 well, France was doing very badly, she was rich, she 
 was poor, she was working nobly to get on her feet, 
 she was perfectly idle and waiting for Germany's 
 reparation money, she was militaristic and making 
 all the trouble there was, she was not militaristic and 
 she wanted only to be let alone. What was there to 
 do but go over again and see for myself? I went 
 accordingly for two months — and stayed eight, be- 
 cause to see everything and hear everything and after 
 that to know my own mind clearly, was quite beyond 
 my powers, unless I took my time over it. I did not 
 see everything, but certainly I saw France, and I 
 heard everything else from very close. 
 
 My pilgrimage in chaos tangible had ended at 
 Verdun, and now began a journey in chaos intangible, 
 chaos politic, moral, financial, paper nations, paper 
 money, crumbling friendships, gathering hatreds,
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCE 283 
 
 misery and menace so appalling, that the tragedy of 
 the peace grew blacker to me than the tragedy of the 
 war and for a while I conld not see the wood for the 
 trees. Merely to read the morning paper was to renew 
 each day yesterday's restlessness, as in the war 
 times ; but this new restlessness was as much subtler 
 than the old had been as poison gas is more subtle 
 than bullets. Good news came during the war some- 
 times, it never came now ; in a word, civilization, after 
 its four years' sleepless battle for life, had entered 
 upon no healing period of rest, but had merely passed 
 from one state of insomnia into another. What was 
 happening to Wrangel ? Was Austrian starvation be- 
 ing relieved? Were the English miners to strike? Was 
 the plebiscite in Upper Silesia to be dominated by 
 Prussia? Was the Irish question nearer solution? 
 Were they going to cut down Germany's reparation 
 any further? Would she pay her next instalment? 
 It was for answers to such questions as these that 
 one opened the morning paper, instead of to see what 
 was happening on the West Front. There was no 
 west or any other front, no Hindenburg Line between 
 warring forces, the new evil was invisible and crossed 
 all fronts like a pestilence. Paper money is the mor- 
 phine of economic insomnia, as vain and dangerous a 
 drug, and many governments in Europe were giving 
 themselves weekly injections of it. Through the con- 
 tinuous convulsions in exchange, a traveller with 
 American money could live in Vienna or Warsaw or 
 Buda Pesth luxuriously for about ten dollars a week, 
 while on the other hand an Austrian who had buried 
 in his garden a fortune equal to a thousand dollars in 
 1914, would find it equal to less than two dollars if 
 he should dig it up. While these earthquakes rocked
 
 284 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 the buying and selling of Europe, England's unem- 
 ployment dole had merely helped to beget industrial 
 paralysis and a breed of bribed idlers. These 
 marched through London streets in small, mean 
 processions flanked by policemen, their flags and 
 their faces all one piece of ignoble discontent. Every 
 one in England seemed to be hard at work except 
 the laboring classes, whose aim, apparently, was 
 to make a second Russia of Great Britain. I know 
 of a gardener who gave his employer notice, and on 
 being asked if he was dissatisfied replied, no, but 
 that he could get higher wages for walking in the 
 procession of the unemployed. 
 
 Such was the background of my new pilgrimage, 
 every day being crowded with experiences and con- 
 versations so vivid and engrossing, that only at cer- 
 tain times when I was alone did the menace which 
 threatened us all — and is nearer now — darken my 
 enjoyment. 
 
 I went over every foot of the devastated regions 
 that I had seen two years before, and all the rest that 
 I had not then seen — from Ypres to Alsace and every- 
 thing between ; the Somme four times, the Aisne four 
 times, Champagne once, the Meuse-Argonne twice, 
 St. Mihiel once, the Vosges once. I began these 
 journeys early in February and finished them early 
 in August, able so to watch the land in different sea- 
 sons. I went as the guest and companion of French 
 and English officers, with friends, and alone ; meeting 
 everywhere official and unofficial courtesy all the 
 more friendly when it was discovered that I had come 
 on my own errand, the representative of nobody and 
 nothing except my own desire to ascertain the truth 
 and tell it. I spent one deeply interesting week at
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCE 285 
 
 Geneva, meeting under auspices that I can never 
 forget the members of the Secretariat of the League 
 of Nations. I heard of their work from themselves. 
 I saw where they did it, I talked with several of them 
 at length. I felt as if I listened to statesmen, not to 
 politicians. I came away to grow steadily more 
 sorry than ever that the reservations made by our 
 Senate should have been rejected by Mr. Wilson. In 
 the opinion of Lord Grey they were proper, and M. 
 Andre Tardieu, one of the ablest minds in France, has 
 written in his book that they were no grave modifica- 
 tion of the general document. I wish that Mr. Wil- 
 son had not kept us out of the League of Nations; 
 we could do no better thing than to join it intelli- 
 gently; various small countries have brought their 
 difficulties to it with success, and its action seems 
 steadily to be enlarging in scope and gaining in 
 authority. Any device so new cannot win immediate 
 acceptance, and none so complicated should have been 
 set going all at once. I am even of opinion that it 
 would be well if France could persuade herself to 
 admit Germany into the League if ever the improb- 
 able happen and Germany give to her and to the 
 world more solid proofs than she has so far of "moral 
 disarmament." I did not travel in Germany, but I 
 met, sometimes daily, English and Americans and 
 French who had just come from there, and whose 
 reports did not seem to me wholly reassuring. For- 
 tunately, the convictions which I have been able to 
 extract from my second pilgrimage in chaos are few 
 and clear : 
 
 Is France militaristic? No. 
 
 Is France idle f No. 
 
 Is France well off? No.
 
 286 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Are those Americans right who wish to keep up 
 American isolation ? No. 
 
 There they are, my four convictions; but before 
 dealing with them, I must say that nothing I found 
 over there so concerned me as the falling apart of 
 England and France and the falling together of Eng- 
 land and Germany. It seemed to me that England 
 was forgetting "Der Tag" rather soon, her battles 
 in Flanders and Picardy rather soon, and rather soon 
 the twenty thousand manufactories and five hundred 
 thousand houses that in France had been laid in 
 partial or total ruin. Some of the reasons were 
 natural but none of them wise, as it seemed to me, 
 unless there were complete "moral disarmament" in 
 Germany; and I remembered Benjamin Franklin at 
 the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when 
 some signer had remarked, "We must all hang to- 
 gether," and Franklin rejoined, "Otherwise we shall 
 all hang separately. " It seemed to me that the Eng- 
 lish were forgetting prematurely that in 1914 Ger- 
 many's plan had been to hang several nations 
 separately, and that only their hanging together had 
 stopped her. 
 
 Beneath the commercial reasons for this estrange- 
 ment, lurked two which may be termed psychological. 
 There was some jealousy. Each had been necessary 
 to the other's salvation, each would have liked it 
 better if it had wholly saved the other — although, 
 could this have happened, the other (whichever it 
 was) would have been still less pleased. Second, the 
 principle of old acquaintance was asserting itself 
 quite obviously in a sort of inverted manner; one 
 heard of unnatural friends and foes. Centuries of 
 enmity lay between England and France, and but four
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCE 287 
 
 years of a common cause. Once the common cause 
 was removed, old acquaintance would not be forgot, 
 and this acquaintance was hostile, while a long past 
 of friendship lay between England and Germany. 
 All this was very natural — and very undesirable. It 
 was made worse by a misapplication of one of Eng- 
 land's most magnanimous characteristics, shaking 
 hands with your enemy and forgetting all about your 
 quarrel, once you have soundly thrashed him. This 
 does very well, provided two things are true: your 
 enemy must give you an honest hand, and he must be 
 your enemy alone ; you can 't gracefully shake hands 
 with somebody else 's enemy. It does not seem to me 
 that Germany has given an honest hand to anybody 
 (unless this has happened very lately indeed) and I 
 know of no compelling reason to believe that she has 
 ceased to be the enemy of France. Why should she? 
 Why should she renounce — and especially in the cir- 
 cumstances of the Armistice and what has followed 
 it — a plan of world dominion for which she has skil- 
 fully and subtly been made ready for so long a time 1 
 Prussia began to train the grandfathers of the Ger- 
 mans who fought this war. Every toy, every song, 
 every book, every teaching from their nurseries to 
 their manhood has instilled three generations with 
 love of the Fatherland, contempt for other nations, 
 faith in the sacred mission of Kultur, and conquest 
 of the earth to spread its blessings — and for other 
 benefits of a more material kind. Just because she 
 failed in 1918, is all this to drop off Germany's back 
 like a change of linen 1 ? Were I a German and had 
 the deep and sincere belief and love of the Father- 
 land that is so fine a passion with them, it would not 
 drop off me ; it would be part of my soul.
 
 288 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "Oh, you're pro-French!" said an English friend 
 to me. 
 
 Well, it must have happened to everyone to agree 
 sometimes with one friend rather than with another, 
 and in this case I am bound to say that I think France 
 has the right of it. Some of her spokesmen have put 
 her, by their impatience, seemingly in the wrong ; but 
 in all faith and justice she is having what Americans 
 call a ' ' raw deal. ' ' 
 
 Beside the causes of disagreement already named, 
 is one for which it is even more difficult to find any 
 solution. Without two things no nation can live: 
 these are food and safety. To buy food England 
 must sell goods and she needs Germany as a market. 
 But France has to be safe; she has seen Germany 
 overrun her twice in fifty years and these were not the 
 first times, and Germany has a population of sixty- 
 five million to France's thirty-eight. Moreover, 
 France has to be re-built and this will keep Germany 
 poor if she pays. But if Germany is poor, how is 
 England to buy bread, since so much of her money 
 comes from what she sells to Germany? If Germany 
 is rich she can invade France again. Having just 
 been half -killed, France does not wish to be wholly 
 slain. 
 
 Here is a clash between two national instincts of 
 self-preservation, and both are perfectly just; Eng- 
 land must live, France must live ; and this pressing 
 fact causes each to have an inlook which is larger 
 than their outlook. 
 
 To an Englishman one can say: 
 
 "Are you quite sure that Germany will never come 
 after you again 1 Don 't you remember how sure you 
 were that she wasn't coming in 1914? Are 'Der Tag*
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCE 289 
 
 and ' Gott strafe England ' wholly turned to milk and 
 honey 1 And aren't you forgetting France's experi- 
 ence? When you talk of her greedy indemnity, 
 aren 't you confusing indemnity with reparation ? ' ' 
 
 To a Frenchman one can say : 
 
 "Do you want England to go under? Don't you 
 think she might be useful again some day on the 
 Somme? And are you quite consistent when you 
 insist — as at times you do — that Germany must be 
 kept poor but that she must also pay you about eight 
 hundred million dollars in gold a year?" 
 
 But to an American one must say : 
 
 "If you continue to consider that none of this has 
 anything to do with you, you are the biggest fool of 
 the lot." 
 
 They are all pushing each other off the plank. But 
 need old acquaintances fall out so ? Must either Eng- 
 land or France go under? The thought is unbear- 
 able. Is there no way of taking turns at the plank, 
 and making land together somehow? The question 
 is really much wider and far worse than this : more 
 than two nations are struggling in the water with not 
 enough plank, the whole of western civilization is 
 barely keeping its head above the surface ; and I have 
 slowly and very reluctantly been forced to the con- 
 viction that we Americans must throw this civiliza- 
 tion a life-preserver; not because it is virtuous or 
 humane to do so — although I think it would be that — 
 but because I believe that, if we do not, we shall in 
 the end be dragged under ourselves. Our ship of 
 state is no longer a solitary craft sailing her own 
 voyage to her own port, she is one of a fleet, and the 
 ports are all the same: science has enabled such 
 increasing millions to survive who used to perish;
 
 290 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 electricity has so enmeshed the world in its net, that 
 we and our various welfares are all crowded and 
 woven together in one vast common interest ; we can- 
 not get out of the net if we would, it is ultimately sink 
 or swim, live or die together. Difference of race, of 
 speech, of government, of religion, of anything you 
 please, can not outweigh the huge identity of bread. 
 We can raise enough for ourselves no doubt for a 
 while, but does any one who has grown beyond having 
 a brain of one dimension, and can see commerce 
 steadily and see it whole, imagine that we should do 
 well if all the rest of the nations were to die of starva- 
 tion? How about Utah Copper, Baldwin Locomotive 
 Works, Amoskeag Mills, how about Lowell, Law- 
 rence, Manchester, Fall River, Bridgeport, Pitts- 
 burgh, Birmingham? Could all the industries of our 
 country sell each other enough to keep paying divi- 
 dends, or the interest on their bonds? Were these to 
 fail, all fortunes in the country would be wiped out, 
 there would be no money to pay labor for the work of 
 its hands, no money to pay taxes to run the govern- 
 ment, none for anything, and everything would stop ; 
 we should arrive where Russia is. All Europe is in 
 sight of such a state, and if it overtakes Europe, our 
 turn will inevitably and implacably be next. Ruin 
 will stride over the sea and tear tariffs and senators 
 to scraps of paper. Since ours is the only ship at 
 present afloat, we shall have to throw some sort of 
 life-preserver to Europe. Our contribution to the war 
 should be, and will be, supplemented. Much money 
 that we lent England she spent upon our own muni- 
 tion plants when they worked for her ; only through 
 this expenditure were they sufficiently equipped to 
 work for us when we came into the war ; without it,
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCE 291 
 
 they could not have supplied us. If we count as our 
 supplemental contribution every dollar that we lent 
 England which she spent, so to speak, at the front, 
 or which she loaned her allies to spend there, we 
 shall do no more than right. We shall do less than 
 right if we fail to do this. — But when a man has 
 wrecked his own life, it does not become him very 
 well to patronize those who are helping him to repair 
 it. Europe, through jealousies, meanness, greed, and 
 incompetence, has brought herself to grief. Less 
 patronizing on the part of Europeans towards Amer- 
 icans would oil the machinery quite a little. 
 
 France's irritation with the world in general and 
 with her recent ally, England, in particular, is just 
 as natural and just as little wise, as the feeling in 
 England is about her. France is not idle, not militar- 
 istic, nor well to do; she knows that she is by no 
 means out of the woods, and she feels that she is 
 forgotten. 
 
 Her enfevered state affected the pulse of almost 
 every sustained conversation that I held with her 
 people. I recall how it disturbed the serene and mel- 
 low loveliness of a Sunday afternoon in Beaune, when 
 spring was coming slowly up that way and the winter 
 twigs seemed visibly to be growing warm. I was de- 
 fending England, when my companion broke out : 
 
 ''It is easy for them. They are as uninvaded as 
 Germany herself. ' ' 
 
 "Think of their dead on your soil," I responded. 
 
 "We do think of them. Do they often think of 
 ours? They do not see our graves, while we see both 
 ours and theirs." 
 
 "They are not having an easy time. Their un- 
 employed "
 
 292 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "We have our own unemployed, as well as our own 
 dead." 
 
 "Yes, but yours — why, compared to theirs, your 
 unemployed are a handful. Theirs run to the million, 
 and yours not even to the hundred thousand. ' ' 
 
 "I wonder if you think us French a little — 
 Chinese ?" 
 
 "Since you have said it — may I agree? Perhaps 
 you will not think it quite such bad manners when I 
 add that we Americans are also somewhat Chinese, 
 and that I fancy every nation has always been so, 
 either moderately or excessively; but I find only two 
 great nations worse than the French, Germany — and 
 the Chinese!" 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 "I think that England is the least Chinese of us 
 all," I ventured to add. 
 
 Her laughing stopped. "One sees well that after 
 all you are pro-English." 
 
 "My dear lady, in London they called me pro- 
 French, and two years ago our soldiers eyed me 
 askance because I insisted in speaking well of you to 
 them. They were inclined to suspect that I was pro- 
 everything except pro-American. Sometimes I feel 
 that the north pole must be the only agreeable place 
 left in the world because nobody lives there. Now, at 
 the risk of your displeasure, I repeat, that to every 
 unemployed Frenchman England has about four hun- 
 dred, and that compared to their need to sell their 
 wares, yours is almost negligible. ' ' 
 
 After a short silence, "do you think," she asked, 
 1 ' that if it was their Birmingham, their Leeds, their 
 Sheffield, their Canterbury Cathedral, that were in 
 ruins, and their wives and daughters who had been
 
 OLD ACQUAINTANCE 293 
 
 deported and debauched, they would enjoy hearing us 
 ask them to excuse Germany's debt?" 
 
 I could only meet it by saying, "Do you ever think 
 that what you French lost more than a hundred years 
 ago and have adjusted yourselves to, England lost all 
 in a moment in this war? — At Mons in 1914, at the 
 Somme in 1916 — the whole flower of her race, 
 madame, her youth, her promise, the fit lovers for her 
 fittest maidens, the fine-tempered steel of her future 
 strength in peace or war, all in a moment, madame, 
 burned off the face of her world like a beautiful 
 forest." 
 
 Perhaps it made her think of some of her own dead, 
 for she flung up her hands. 
 
 "Ah," she exclaimed, "the horror of it all!" 
 
 "Horror indeed!" 
 
 More than once, that chill returned which had shot 
 through me as I went along the street in Amiens in 
 April 1919, and I asked myself again the same ques- 
 tion that I had put then — were the signs of life around 
 me true stirrings of convalescence, or the last me- 
 chanical gestures of a man who does not know that he 
 has been killed 1 
 
 I recall another talk, in Paris this time, and with 
 an American. He had prophesied the war in a book 
 entitled "Problems of Power," which Roosevelt ad- 
 vised all Americans to read, if they wished to under- 
 stand Europe. Most Americans have no such desire. 
 His sagacity and knowledge are better appreciated 
 in Europe than in his own country; and as he con- 
 tinued to unfold and discuss one depth after another 
 of the world's desperate plight, it seemed almost as 
 if the lights grew dim. 
 
 'What you're saying, if it's true," I remarked, for 
 
 «c
 
 294 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 my pilgrimage was still near its beginning and my 
 eyes not yet half open, "is that you and I, sitting here 
 at this table, are living in the presence of a tragedy 
 that beats iEschylus and Sophocles and Hamlet and 
 Lear and Othello and every worst thing in history 
 that we can think of, all rolled into one." 
 "I think so." 
 
 "You might almost imagine," I continued, "that 
 malignant gods had sat above the world, up in some 
 hell, and deliberately thwarted by black magic every 
 human effort to save us from this, and deliberately 
 helped every blunder and ignorance and vanity that 
 would plunge us deeper into it." 
 
 "Yes, it tempts one to that superstition." 
 "And here sit you and I, enjoying a good dinner !" 
 "Would it noticeably help matters if we ab- 
 stained?" he inquired; "the milk is spilled."
 
 XXIV 
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 
 
 The reader will recognize almost every fact in this 
 chapter, of which not a word would need to be writ- 
 ten, were our memories more retentive and coherent. 
 History sweeps through each day in a pouring spring 
 flood, and on its surface events come whirling by like 
 the leaves of a torn book. We see each leaf, it rushes 
 on, the next follows; none are put together in our 
 brains, and so the import of what is a continuous 
 story and a significant warning sweeps by us in un- 
 comprehended fragments. 
 
 In March 1918, Germany showed what she thought 
 of the fourteen points set forth by Mr. Wilson as a 
 basis of peace. She launched an attack upon the 5th 
 British Army which came within a hair's breadth of 
 taking Amiens, of cutting apart the British and 
 French, and of winning the war; she continued to 
 launch attacks until she saw that the jig was up. We 
 knew what her peace terms were to be, did she win. 
 These were not at all like the fourteen points ; those 
 were a repudiation of the spoils system between vic- 
 tor and vanquished in war; by Germany's terms her 
 whole war bill was to be paid and whole countries 
 were to be annexed. 
 
 Not quite five months later, Ludendorff perceived 
 that Germany had failed and must ask for an armis- 
 tice. His opinion gradually prevailed in his country. 
 
 295
 
 296 NEIGHBORS HENCEFOETH 
 
 One does not see what right Germany in her hour of 
 failure had to peace terms which she had not accepted 
 in the hour of success. It is as if the owner of a race 
 horse had rejected an offer of twenty thousand 
 dollars for the animal, and then after it went lame, 
 stipulated for the same price. Germany was encour- 
 aged to do this by the letters which Mr. Wilson wrote 
 to Max of Baden without consulting the Allies, who 
 at that time were driving the German Army out of 
 France from the Channel to the Vosges. One can see 
 that American prestige, our help that saved the day, 
 led to the fourteen points being accepted "in prin- 
 ciple" by the Allies as a basis of peace; at such a 
 moment, whatever the Allies might think, they could 
 not ignore the apparent spokesman and actual symbol 
 of the United States. 
 
 Through October 1918 the speed of our success 
 heightened until it became what General Mangin has 
 called it, a flight to victory; and during these days 
 Foch was turning over in his mind the terms of the 
 Armistice. In meditating what terms should be 
 exacted, he said one day : 
 
 ' ' They have fought bravely. They shall keep their 
 arms." 
 
 It was the word of a gallant soldier, it was a chival- 
 rous gesture to heart-sick thousands who had bled in 
 the German cause, and whose fault the Prussian 
 crime certainly was not. Grant at Appomattox did 
 the same to Lee, and his act and Lee 's equally gener- 
 ous response to it have set both men on a high pin- 
 nacle in history; but Prussia does not resemble 
 Robert E. Lee. 
 
 General Bliss, our member of the Supreme War 
 Council, was of a mind different from Foch. On the
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 297 
 
 28th of October lie offered an addition to the terms of 
 the Armistice, of which the following is a translation 
 of one paragraph : 
 
 " First, the Associated Powers exact complete dis- 
 armament and demobilization of the enemy on land 
 and sea, leaving only a home force deemed sufficient 
 by the Associated Powers for the maintenance of 
 order within the enemy's country. This of itself 
 means the evacuation of all invaded territory and its 
 evacuation without arms, not by soldiers armed or 
 partially armed. ' ' 
 
 On the ground that it would be difficult to carry 
 out, Foch had already rejected a similar proposal 
 made to him by M. Clemenceau, and probably for this 
 reason the suggestion of General Bliss was not sent 
 to him. 
 
 Ignorant of these important links in the chain, I 
 had constantly inquired, first in England and then in 
 France : 
 
 "Why was the German Army allowed to go home 
 with its arms and banners ? ' ' 
 
 1 ' Oh, one didn 't want to humiliate them too much ! ' ' 
 
 This was the answer of a distinguished British 
 general. 
 
 "But do they seem to have appreciated such mag- 
 nanimity?" 
 
 He admitted that they had not. 
 
 When I asked the same question in Paris, a mem- 
 ber of the government replied : 
 
 "Foch never dreamed that the Armistice would 
 not be soon followed by a peace treaty, signed in 
 Berlin with the allied armies standing at attention, 
 and the German people looking on. ' ' 
 
 I must have asked six or seven Frenchmen about it,
 
 298 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and perhaps what one elderly and seasoned diplomat 
 answered sums it up : 
 
 "Foch spoke like a soldier." And then, after a 
 pause, he added with a gentle smile: "but it is a 
 pity." 
 
 A clue to what Foch had begun to think by March 
 1919, with four months gone since the Armistice and 
 no treaty in sight, has been dexterously pulled out of 
 the tangle by Mr. Fullerton, the author of "Problems 
 of Power. ' ' Speaking at a public dinner, the marshal 
 had said: "An armistice is the equivalent of a capitu- 
 lation." When his speech appeared in print, he had 
 made one change: "An armistice is merely a capitu- 
 lation." Mr. Fullerton adds that although Foch did 
 accept the Armistice, it was in the faith that state- 
 craft was not extinct. The reader will find translated 
 in Appendix B, the strange, sad interview given by 
 Foch on November 8th, 1920. 
 
 We have the word of Col. House (Public Ledger, 
 Philadelphia, July 12th, 1920) that a plan for peace 
 at once had followed straight upon the Armistice ; a 
 preliminary treaty to be signed by Christmas, cover- 
 ing broadly the army, the navy, reparation, and 
 frontiers ; and that this would have been the natural 
 step to take while all the Allied armies were confront- 
 ing Germany, full of fight and elated with victory. 
 
 Then why was this step not taken? Terror filled 
 the German generals during these October-November 
 weeks : one of them cried out frankly to his colleagues 
 that their army was demoralized, incapable any 
 longer to stave the Allies off, and that if a halt were 
 not called they would be soon in Cologne. These 
 generals were too elderly, too unstrung, so they them- 
 selves declared, to meet Foch, and so Erzberger was
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 299 
 
 sent in their stead. Later, as we know, he ceased to 
 be Prussian enough for the Junkers, and they assas- 
 sinated him. 
 
 But, if it was the natural step, why no treaty by 
 Christmas f 
 
 During the October week when Foch was pondering 
 the Armistice, I was staying at Sagamore Hill ; and, 
 "Can you explain," I asked Mr. Roosevelt one 
 day, "Mr. Wilson's writing notes to Germany over 
 the heads of the Allies when Germany is in full 
 retreat?" 
 
 "Don't you see?" he said. "This war may last 
 until spring, or it may finish any day ; and Mr. Wilson 
 intends to go over and sit at the peace table and be the 
 first president of the League of Nations. He is writ- 
 ing these notes to prepare for that." 
 
 It was not then known so generally as it is now 
 that the idea of being world mediator had been pres- 
 ent in Mr. Wilson's mind since 1916. Mr. Roosevelt 
 probably guessed it from the readiness to offer 
 Europe the benefits of his mediation which Mr. 
 Wilson had already displayed. 
 
 Whatever we may forget, all of us remember 
 Armistice Day. Our cities danced in their streets, 
 scraps of paper fluttered down like golden snow in 
 the sun from twenty stories of windows to the pave- 
 ment, bands and leaping processions came round 
 corners, a belt of steam whistles blew among the 
 suburbs that encircled our industrial centres. In 
 Paris our doughboys rushed along in camions, whirl- 
 ing girls from the sidewalk up into their arms. Lon- 
 don became a wilderness of joy, relief made us ready 
 for the new heaven and new earth which Mr. Lloyd 
 George later promised us J we were with him when he
 
 300 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 said in December that Germany must pay to the last 
 cent for the wrong she had done, and again when he 
 said that the Kaiser must be tried at Westminster. 
 
 Just before all this rejoicing, we had held an elec- 
 tion. Mr. Wilson had requested us to vote only for 
 Democrats, as he needed Democrats to support his 
 policies. It was remembered that upon the day he 
 gave his war message to Congress, the leader of the 
 Republicans had tendered him that party's cordial 
 and total help in carrying on the war, and it was also 
 remembered that numerous Democrats in both the 
 House and Senate had voted against measures of 
 defence and preparation offered by Republicans. 
 Mr. Wilson's request did not have a happy effect 
 upon the country, and was disregarded at the elec- 
 tions; but this failed to reach the general mind of 
 England and France. 
 
 No treaty was signed by Christmas, but Mr. Wil- 
 son sailed for Europe, as Mr. Roosevelt had pre- 
 dicted. A group of senators, by no means negligible 
 in number, somewhat formally sounded a note of 
 warning that they would not accept certain provisions 
 if these appeared in any draft of a League of Nations. 
 The rumor will not quite die that this and other later 
 and important news was prevented from crossing the 
 ocean both east and west. I know that the result of 
 our November election, and the warning of the sena- 
 tors, and the fact that Mr. Wilson did not represent 
 the unanimous opinion of our country, came to public 
 attention in Paris through a series of articles by M. 
 Cheradame in La Democratic Nouvelle. How much 
 impression these made I can not say. But it is plain 
 that no matter what was known in England and 
 France, they could hardly ask the President of the
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 301 
 
 United States for his credentials; as the editor of 
 Punch put it to me in London : 
 
 1 * We had to behave. ' ' 
 
 So did we. How were Americans to repudiate 
 their own President, and even had they wished to do 
 so, by what means could it have been done? Such a 
 thing as an American President twice in two months 
 sailing three thousand miles away from his desk, and 
 staying away four months the second time, was some- 
 thing new ; but the cause was new. Americans looked 
 on with various opinions, and hoped for the best. 
 
 Early in 1919, Mr. Wilson returned from his first 
 absence, and during his brief stay here he spoke about 
 the League of Nations in glowing general terms, but 
 without making clear its concrete significance for us, 
 or answering the specific doubts of the dissenting 
 senators, except by somewhat sAveeping denunciation 
 and one threat. He would weave the Peace and the 
 League, he said, so completely together that they 
 could not be severed. This was his parting word, 
 he sailed the next day ; and I think it may be safely 
 assumed that what he counted on was not so much 
 European ignorance about the November election or 
 the American Constitution as that the Senate, when 
 he should press against its head a treaty signed by 
 England, France, and Italy, would not dare to break 
 the heart of the world (as he phrased it later) by 
 refusing to go along with him. His miscalculation 
 involved us all in European displeasure for a while ; 
 even two years later I met the lingering resentment. 
 
 "Does your country always change its opinions so 
 easily!" " 
 
 "I am not quite sure that I follow you." 
 
 "Your President demanded a League of Nations.
 
 302 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "We bowed to his pleasure — and failed to please 
 you." 
 
 "Do your public men always represent the whole 
 of your public opinion 1 Allow me to felicitate you. ' ' 
 
 "We express our dissent." 
 
 "We expressed ours in the election before Mr. 
 Wilson went to you." 
 
 "Ah yes, your elections ! But you have so many and 
 they are so far away. We do not understand them." 
 
 "Quite evidently you misunderstood that one. 
 But there was something less recent. By our Con- 
 stitution treaties are to be made by the President 
 with the advice and consent of the Senate. Our Con- 
 stitution has been in print a hundred years." 
 
 "We know so little about your institutions." 
 
 ' ' That is equally evident. But I have never heard 
 that ignorance of the law constitutes any defence in 
 either civil or criminal cases." 
 
 Of such conversations I held a number, sometimes 
 less sharply edged, but once or twice more so, when I 
 found myself adding : 
 
 "You have always shown such a sincere interest 
 in our dollars, and lately so much in our military aid 
 in case of further unprovoked assault from Ger- 
 many, that I wonder if it would not be well for you to 
 turn your attention to some aspect of us less directly 
 useful to you?" 
 
 I had to shade my replies according to the shade 
 of civility meted to me on each occasion, and I was 
 always glad when the talk ended amicably, and never 
 sorry when it did not. It was every American 's duty 
 to set his country straight, after the miscalculation of 
 Mr. Wilson. 
 
 No man 's landing on a foreign shore was ever like
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 303 
 
 Mr. Wilson's first coming to Europe. That had been 
 awaited like an almost miraculous event. The people, 
 the simple rustic people, broken in heart and fortune, 
 thirsty for some ideal, longing for some touch that 
 should lift them from despair, stretched out their 
 hands to him. They had read his words and they 
 passionately believed that he was bringing to them a 
 gospel of balm which should heal their world. His 
 picture hung on the walls of expectant thousands. 
 Even their more sophisticated leaders, with whom he 
 had said that he was going to match his mind, sup- 
 posed that a matured plan lay behind the vision which 
 he had belatedly borrowed from the League to En- 
 force Peace, and that it was not all mere lofty words. 
 His first landing was in December. When, after half 
 a year, he started home the second time, his picture 
 was gone from the walls, and Europe's moment of 
 idealism had passed into cynical laughter. The re- 
 coil was also like nothing that history had ever seen. 
 Mr. Wilson had matched his mind with his colleagues ' 
 — and the wave upon which he had ridden first to 
 Europe 's shores had ebbed as far below the level of 
 justice to him as it had previously surged above it. 
 He had come to the conference with a noble idea — the 
 only man who so came, and he came asking for noth- 
 ing — the only man again. What had happened ? 
 
 Because of his letters to Max of Baden, Germany, 
 who had no moral right to his fourteen points, trusted 
 that these would yet save her skin ; upon these same 
 points each country based various hopes of peace and 
 prosperity. All were disenchanted soon or late. 
 
 One point of the fourteen, the freedom of the seas, 
 had gone early in the game — for game it turned out 
 to be, every one for himself, and Mr. Wilson no match
 
 304 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 for any of them. To keep his League of Nations 
 afloat he flung overboard all his other points: 
 Shantung went to Japan; open covenants were not 
 openly arrived at — they can not be, they can only be 
 adopted openly — but when one day it leaked out that 
 Mr. Wilson was dealing openly with one set of Rus- 
 sian delegates, while he was privately dealing with 
 their antagonists, a large piece of popular faith in 
 him cracked off. Self-determination was enforced 
 where it was not wanted, denied where it should have 
 been in all fairness applicable; Italy, Hungary, 
 Austria were alike aggrieved, the confidence of 
 friends and foes was equally destroyed. Germany 
 found that through a trick at the eleventh hour, and 
 in spite of the unanimous opposition of the American 
 experts, Mr. Wilson had consented that her repara- 
 tions include pensions for injured French soldiers 
 as well as damages to French civilians. For this and 
 the taking of her colonies Germany fell away from 
 him. An early and deepening chill had cooled French 
 enthusiasm; day after day he put off his visit to 
 the devastated regions. The French had expected 
 him to go at once, and see with his own eyes what 
 they had suffered. 
 
 "Is he going this morning?" 
 
 "Didn't he go today?" 
 
 "Isn't he going tomorrow?" 
 
 These questions were asked all over France each 
 day after his arrival; and his explanation that he 
 feared such a sight might prejudice him too much 
 against Germany did not help to keep him warm 
 in the popular affections, any more than did his 
 gaiety at lunch in Soissons on the one day when 
 he did finally visit the ruins. This disappointment
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 305 
 
 to the French heart changed to a more active senti- 
 ment when it turned out in later days that his prom- 
 ise of future military aid was, without senatorial 
 endorsement, void. It was after this that his name 
 one night was painted out by unknown hands on the 
 signs along the avenue that bears it. 
 
 In various books and in many discussions, the 
 weight of blame for the treaty's shortcomings has 
 been laid upon this or that particular pair of shoul- 
 ders among ' ' The Big Four ' ' ; — they were more often 
 the Big Three, if Signor Orlando took as little part 
 in the other discussions as he did in those concern- 
 ing Upper Silesia, which are given in Appendix A. 
 This way of fixing the responsibility is not borne out 
 by such facts as one can learn; good and bad were 
 alike the collaboration of all, because all in the end 
 accepted or rejected the wishes of any one; Mr. 
 Wilson happens to have suffered from a heavier 
 popular reaction because higher popular hopes were 
 set upon him — and, to my thinking, his own con- 
 tribution remains the finest in idea. Unluckily, to 
 gain its adoption he assented to many less admirable 
 provisions. 
 
 The British Prime Minister's lack of plan seems 
 due to the financial and labor powers behind him 
 at home; his zigzag moods too much resembled the 
 gestures of something jerked by strings with no 
 mind of its own, and they brought upon him that 
 caustic comment of M. Clemenceau, that Mr. Lloyd 
 George thought only in terms of parliamentary ma- 
 jorities. Like many democratic leaders he was 
 unsteadied by the eternal jar between domestic and 
 foreign policy. Very late indeed in the deliberations 
 of the Big Three, he returned one morning from
 
 306 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 one of his swift visits to London, and proceeded to 
 insist upon the uprooting and reversal of so much 
 which had been settled, that silence fell around him. 
 Mr. Wilson was described to me as leaning his dea- 
 con's head against the back of his chair and gazing 
 immovably at the ceiling, while Mr. Lloyd George 
 harangued with increasing energy. When after some 
 fifteen minutes he came to a stop, Mr. Wilson uttered 
 four words : 
 
 "You make me sick." 
 
 If the Upper Silesia conversations are a fair 
 sample of the rest, it is evident that M. Clemenceau 
 was far clearer sighted and much better acquainted 
 with Europe than either of his colleagues, and he 
 seems to me to have risen nearest to the level of 
 statesmanship ; but he had too much inlook, too little 
 outlook, saw France as a horse in blinders sees the 
 road ahead of him and nothing each side of it; on 
 that road was Germany to be got out of the way, 
 no matter what else happened. He did not discern 
 that right and left loomed a menace to everybody, 
 more imminent than the German danger to France. 
 None of them seemed sufficiently to have perceived 
 and guarded against this; they were blind to the 
 economical prospect, they saw the political only, they 
 failed to recognize that henceforth commercial and 
 financial team-work between all nations could alone 
 repair the destruction already wrought, and make 
 safe the bread and the money of the world ; that what- 
 ever image and superscription a coin may bear, 
 whether it be Caesar's or the American eagle's, hu- 
 manity has in the end a purse in common. This is 
 clearer to many today than it was then, but warn- 
 ings were not wanting — for instance, that of Garvin,
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 307 
 
 editor of the London Observer, in his book on what 
 ought to be the economic foundations of the peace. 
 In a word, Foch the soldier did a clean job in the 
 fall, and in the following spring the politicians — 
 did not. Mortals could not have dealt successfully 
 with a task so monstrous; the blunder was not to 
 have set themselves a simpler one. 
 
 And Germany? What of her during the fatal and 
 precious months between the Armistice and the com- 
 pletion of the treaty? 
 
 On November 11th, 1918, Foch had beaten her 
 to her knees; she was in deadly fear, abject, un- 
 nerved; she thought the Allies would be in Cologne 
 within a few days, and she threw up her hands and 
 cried "Kamerad!" 
 
 Not such was her attitude on that May 7th, 1919, 
 when she received the treaties from the hands of 
 her conquerors. She had regained something more 
 than confidence. Very naturally she had kept her 
 ears and eyes open while the Allies delayed and dis- 
 cussed. She had seen no peace signed in Berlin 
 by Christmas ; what she did see was her army return- 
 ing with its arms and its banners; what she heard 
 was, that it was undefeated. She erected arches, 
 she strewed flowers, she played triumphant music 
 for this undefeated army. She got up from her 
 knees and listened, and looked all the harder. She 
 saw the sailings back and forth of Mr. Wilson, she 
 saw Signor Orlando rush away from the confer- 
 ence to Rome in a rage over Fiume ; a hundred signs 
 during those weeks showed her that her recent ene- 
 mies who had stood together and so defeated her 
 were now falling apart ; and her despair changed to 
 hope. Who can say how much of the increasing
 
 308 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 gossip and cynicism in Paris, as the conference 
 wrangled on through those weeks, did not reach her 
 attentive ears ? She must have heard that they were 
 " making the world safe for Hypocrisy"; that when 
 Orlando went to Rome, the French had struck Italy's 
 name from the list of contracting parties in a docu- 
 mentary preamble to the treaty, and had to be 
 persuaded by their colleagues to re-insert it quickly 
 in ink, lest Orlando return and discover the medi- 
 tated slight, and deplorable discords ensue. It was 
 told at dinners in Paris that one of the army of 
 experts gathered there had been reproached by an 
 actress for rewarding her too slightly for the pleas- 
 ure of her company. 
 
 ' 'My nature is not thought stingy," he replied. 
 1 ' Only this morning I gave a whole province to some 
 people I have never seen." 
 
 If, in April 1919, I could hear comments like this 
 upon the lightness with which the old nations of 
 Europe were being sliced and repasted into new ones, 
 is it not likely that the acute ears of Germany heard 
 much more than did my innocent American ones? 
 
 When her emissaries came to Versailles to receive 
 the treaty, she had been up from her knees for a 
 long while. This was plainly to be seen by their 
 deportment on that Wednesday, May 7th, 1919. On 
 the day preceding, at the brief, stiff ceremony when 
 these delegates presented their credentials to M. 
 Cambon, the fewest possible words had been spoken, 
 and nothing was to be observed except the gait of 
 the approaching Germans and the color of their com- 
 plexions. The satisfactory inference drawn from 
 these signs was dispersed next day in the dining- 
 room of the Trianon Palace at Versailles. The great
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 309 
 
 ceremony was held there, all the council present, 
 splendid sunshine pouring in upon the room, blos- 
 soms on the fruit trees outside in the garden. _ The 
 Allied delegates sat waiting amid a silent swirl of 
 historic association, especially the memory of that 
 18th of January, 1871, when Bismarck the conqueror 
 sat here and dictated Germans terms to the French. 
 The door opened, a voice announced the German 
 delegates, the council rose. The Germans walked to 
 their chairs and sat down forthwith; then, noticing 
 that the company was standing, they stood for a 
 moment and reseated themselves. M. Clemenceau, 
 presiding, said a few words, Brockdorff-Rantzau was 
 handed the text of the treaty; he set it on the table, 
 laid his gloves on it, put his spectacles on, and read 
 in German a lengthy and unexpected address. While 
 the interpreters translated each passage twice, into 
 English and into French 
 
 "Come nearer!" snapped M. Clemenceau, "I can't 
 hear you." 
 
 The address went on, and the sad-eyed Foch sat 
 there with his colleagues, present against his will, 
 because he thought his absence would show the enemy 
 that he disagreed about the terms of the treaty. He 
 dissented deeply from its insecurities, and had said 
 so, and had been ignored. He looked at the German's 
 manner, noticed the tone of his voice, and heard from 
 him that the German people had gone to war in self- 
 defence, that there should be a committee of neutrals 
 to examine who was guilty; this and more he with 
 the Allied council heard said by the seated Brock- 
 dorff-Rantzau during the better part of an hour, and 
 then the ceremony ended. 
 
 "It is galling," said Mr. Lloyd George to M. An-
 
 310 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 dre Tardieu as they came away, "to be the winner 
 and have to listen to such words as those. " 
 
 They would not have had to listen, there would 
 have been no such words if, instead of dialogues, 
 delays, and discords for six months, the German 
 Army had gone home without its flags and arms, and 
 the German nation had seen a treaty signed before 
 Christmas at Berlin, with the allied armies present. 
 The object lesson, the fruit of victory, the chance 
 of peace, all was missed by the politicians in the 
 spring after the soldiers had done a clean job in the 
 fall. 
 
 "Our alliance," wrote Pertinax in the Echo de 
 Paris next morning, "has not based its provisions as 
 prudence should have dictated, on the assumption of 
 the worst, on the possibility of a Germany that may 
 regain its strength and its unity." 
 
 A German in Switzerland, Carl Rosemeier, pub- 
 lished on that same morning a plainer piece of 
 prophecy : 
 
 "They will cheat you yet, those Junkers ! Having 
 won half the world by bloody murder, they are going 
 to win the other half with tears in their eyes, crying 
 for mercy." 
 
 A verification of this began immediately ; all Ger- 
 many at once set up an outcry over the treaty, and 
 this served its end during the days between May 7th 
 and that June day when the treaty was signed. Ap- 
 parently, as is to be seen in the conversations about 
 Upper Silesia which occurred in this period, the 
 outcry alarmed Mr. Lloyd George more than it did 
 M. Clemenceau or Mr. Wilson. They do not seem 
 to have been afraid that the Germans would refuse 
 to sign the treaty; he seems to have been so nervous
 
 OVER THE SPILLED MILK 3ll 
 
 and restless about this that he proposed softenings 
 and conciliations with which his colleagues seldom 
 agreed, and which brought one day that remark from 
 Mr. Wilson as he leaned his head back in his chair. 
 Mr. Lloyd George carried some of his points — it can 
 never be known whether or no they were necessary 
 — and the treaty was signed. 
 
 "The Germans will not observe the most equitable 
 stipulations," remarked M. Clemenceau on that day, 
 " unless they feel that force stands behind justice." 
 
 That was in June 1919, and in May 1921, a Ger- 
 man said to a friend of mine : 
 
 "As an American this will not interest you; but 
 Germany does not intend to pay France, and France 
 is not clever enough to make her. Were the situa- 
 tion reversed, we should be clever enough to make 
 France pay." 
 
 Equally plain talk came from General Ludendorff 
 later in the summer of 1920. In addressing the stu- 
 dents at Koenigsberg, he referred to Upper Silesia, 
 and said : 
 
 "I have no doubt that our country's destiny will 
 sooner or later be decided by a battle for the eastern 
 region. . . . The greater our country's need, the 
 closer shall we rally round the Prussian flag." 
 
 No blame or shame attaches to him for that; it 
 is the word of a man true to his country and his 
 faith; the blame falls on those who shut their eyes 
 to all this. 
 
 And so, seven months after the clean job of Foch, 
 the peace was signed, giving us Mr. Lloyd George's 
 new heaven and new earth, and the labors of the 
 "Big Three" were ended. Upon M. Clemenceau 
 fell unjust wrath; the jar between French foreign
 
 312 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and domestic policy shook him from public into 
 private life. He deserved better from his people. 
 Mr. Wilson came home bearing the treaty like a 
 magic talisman, flawless, to be accepted just so. Ap- 
 parently he knew about nothing it contained except 
 his League of Nations, was unaware that he had 
 helped to establish a spoils system in the teeth of 
 his fourteen points. He had made promises alone 
 which two were needed to make, and wrath fell upon 
 him at home and abroad. Mr. Lloyd George came 
 off best at home, hardly as well elsewhere. Together, 
 the three had invaded commercial thoroughfares as 
 Germany invaded Belgium ; had shuffled and re-dealt 
 frontiers as if they were a pack of cards ; and many 
 of their arrangements seem as if they had supposed 
 that they could change human nature with a drop 
 of ink. The new heaven and new earth in which we 
 are living is their work.
 
 XXV 
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 
 
 When Germany threw up her hands and cried 
 "Kamerad!" she was spared having that done to 
 her which she had done to others; not one blade of 
 her grass was trodden down, not one invading foot- 
 step crossed her boundaries, not one hair of her head 
 was singed ; but her conquerors were agreed that she 
 must make good the havoc she had wrought. Then 
 these conquerors failed to strike while the iron was 
 hot. They doubled the error of a premature armis- 
 tice by a belated peace, and by so doing handed over 
 their victory to Germany ; and Foch, who had deliv- 
 ered the goods, saw these not only squandered but 
 never paid for. To the tragedy of the war is added 
 this sardonic mockery of the peace: defeated Ger- 
 many, who was spared invasion, is now not only to 
 be pardoned her sentence of reparation, her con- 
 querors must also stretch out united hands and help 
 to lift her from the economic collapse which she 
 brought upon herself by her assault upon them. Our 
 civilization must heal Germany or perish itself by 
 the contagion of economic pestilence. To some men 
 of finance there seems no other way out. 
 
 Does any literature of any age contain a drama 
 parallel to this? — wherein the half -killed victim of 
 an enslaving tyrant in order to save his own life 
 must nurse the sick tyrant back to health, knowing 
 
 313
 
 314 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 all the while that once the tyrant is firm on his legs 
 he will try the same trick again! Let us talk and 
 reason moderately, and try to keep our heads if 
 we can. 
 
 The opinion of these financiers would weigh more 
 with me did I not recall their prophecies at the out- 
 set of the war and during its course. They proved 
 that the war would be short, because no nation could 
 go on paying for it ; it was Kitchener, a soldier, who 
 said that it would last three years. The view of the 
 financiers looked at the time unanswerable on paper 
 — I confess that I cannot answer their present view 
 — on paper ; I can only reflect that human effort con- 
 tains surprises which upset the wisest calculations, 
 and that perhaps there is more life in us and in 
 Mother Earth than appears. Nevertheless, that is no 
 warrant for a blind optimism such as Americans 
 love to indulge in; the early spoken warning of Mr. 
 Keynes has come nearer the truth than the new 
 heaven and new earth promised to us by Mr. Lloyd 
 George, and the United States can no more turn its 
 back on the illness of Europe than one Siamese twin 
 can ignore his brother's jaundice. We shall have 
 to do something, and the sooner the better, but not 
 over-hastily. Just how extinct is Germany, just how 
 much is she shamming dead? It will be very well 
 indeed to keep in mind the warning of the German, 
 Carl Rosemeier, published the morning after the 
 treaty was delivered to his fellow-countrymen : 
 "They will cheat you yet, those Junkers." 
 Once a "Wall Street financier, imprisoned for his 
 misdeeds, was pardoned by President Taft upon a 
 doctor's word that his health was failing. Upon 
 being set free, his health returned immediately. It
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 315 
 
 is well known that women often have sent flowers 
 and refreshments to a condemned murderer, but be- 
 stowed not a crumb or a thought upon the family 
 of the victim. Should not the quality of mercy be 
 more strained than this? Too many people today 
 go about talking of the hardships of Germany, and 
 quite pass over the hardships of France. Many of 
 these persons wonder if the fault was Germany's, 
 or are sure that even if she may have been guilty, 
 she is sorry for it now. If they are asked the reason 
 for their opinion, they fade into vague generaliza- 
 tions. Even a simple question to the point has been 
 known to embarrass a financier ; one banker who had 
 recently returned from Germany and was asserting 
 that she had no money wherewith to pay her repara- 
 tion, was asked why she did not get some of the 
 millions which her profiteers were investing all over 
 the world? He replied: 
 
 "Oh, that is another story," and proceeded to 
 enlarge upon how hard Germany was at work. 
 
 We do not need to be told that. War has not made 
 Germany idle or inefficient. The superb manner in 
 which she ran her administrative machinery, the per- 
 fect physical training of her body politic and eco- 
 nomic, put all other nations to shame, and made our 
 own municipal and State and Federal Governments 
 look like flabby amateurs beside a professional ath- 
 lete. We could do nothing better than imitate her 
 methods in political housekeeping, and the nearer 
 we came to them the better off in health, and safety, 
 and order, and pocket we should be; but what we 
 particularly need to do in these days is to find out 
 how inanimate Germany really is, to watch the straws 
 that show which way the wind blows, to judge Jier
 
 316 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 by what she has done and is doing: "by their fruits 
 ye shall know them" — that is the eternal test. 
 
 The German people are most certainly at work, 
 and I doubt if in any of the Allied countries a list 
 of dividends like the following could be paralleled: 
 
 First year Second 
 
 after the year after 
 
 war the war 
 
 per cent. per cent. 
 
 Bremen Linoleum Company 10 30 
 
 Unger and Hoffman 15 15 
 
 German Rail Transport 15 40 
 
 German Wool Manufacturing 10 30 
 
 Saxon Cartonnage 171^ 20 
 
 Ottenser Iron Works 10 15 
 
 Leipsig Cotton 21 25 
 
 Poppe and Wirth 20 30 
 
 These figures were published in the Norwegian 
 Courier of March 8th, 1921. 
 
 For the third year since the war the dividends 
 were as large and larger, and I could give a longer 
 list of them, but the above seem enough for my point. 
 
 Where does the money go? Industrial leaders in 
 Germany are known to have on deposit, at home and 
 abroad, securities worth one billion dollars. Ger- 
 many taxes her people $13.88 per head, in France it 
 is $45.22. Bread in Germany costs three and a half 
 cents a kilogram, in France eight and a quarter. 
 A ten-ton railway car can be transported a thousand 
 kilometres in Germany for sixty dollars, it costs 
 nearly one hundred and eighty in France. The Ger- 
 man foreign debt is less than one billion, that of 
 France more than ten billion. 
 
 It seems to me that straws like these show which
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 317 
 
 way the wind blows; and here are two others of a 
 different sort: 
 
 A friend of mine, lately in Germany, looked out 
 of his window at the Hotel Bellevue in Dresden. The 
 Opera House stood opposite and some heavy scenery 
 was being brought in a dray and unloaded. Some 
 five or six men lifted ponderous columns and steps 
 of temples out of the dray and into the Opera House 
 in some five or six minutes. These men did not make 
 a needless movement of arm or leg, it was all a 
 precise piece of team-work with them, and their job, 
 performed by our undrilled American methods, would 
 have taken at least half an hour. 
 
 My second straw is an instance of mental and 
 moral drill. This same friend was in Berlin, and 
 was being shown a particular quarter where the mob 
 of the brief revolution had swept through. A space 
 of lawn lay in their course, and my friend pointed 
 to the rich and flourishing grass. 
 
 "No revolution ever trod on that," he said; "that 
 shows years of care." 
 
 "They went round it, naturally," said his German 
 companion, and pointed to the sign "verboten." 
 
 Drill did its magic work when our soldiers came 
 to occupy Coblenz and its neighborhood. They were 
 not well received during the first hours of their ar- 
 rival; they met with sullen manners and scowling 
 looks, which is hardly to be wondered at. Had I 
 been a German at Coblenz, I should not have felt 
 like greeting the American Army with a smile and 
 a hand outstretched. The next morning, all was dif- 
 ferent at Coblenz ; it was welcome, and geniality, and 
 "What-can-I-do-for-you? The doughboy did not re- 
 flect deeply over this agreeable but unnaturally sud-
 
 318 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 den change, he merely began to like the Germans 
 better than he had liked the French. It was his 
 officers who nsed their reason and discerned that 
 some wise observer had sent word to Germany's 
 control office of the rudeness shown the new arrivals, 
 and that the office had at once given out the needful 
 direction, changing German manners overnight. 
 
 Many accounts of Germany's actual political state 
 reach us, some quite plainly meant for uncritical and 
 credulous readers, but others as plainly honest and 
 well observed. One derives from these latter the 
 impression that the present German Government 
 wishes to fulfil its obligations to France and the 
 world — is, in a word, reasonable and well disposed; 
 but that it is weak, that the true power lurks behind 
 and is in the hands of a few very able captains of 
 industry, who are playing chess with the Reichstag 
 and all other pieces on the board — pawns, knights, 
 bishops, castles, and even kings — for their own bene- 
 fit. What is their own benefit? That question is 
 answered satisfactorily by no one; we are left un- 
 certain what these strong and resourceful men, who 
 seem to be the real rulers of Germany, intend. Are 
 they at the bottom of the unrest which has been 
 playing like sheet lightning over the question of 
 Upper Silesia? Were they of General Ludendorff 's 
 mind when he told the college students of Koenigs- 
 berg that a battle would some day settle that ques- 
 tion, and Prussia's army would be victorious there 
 through the same drill and discipline and trust in its 
 leaders which had won at Tannenberg? I don't 
 know; but when I meet those who are inclined to 
 release the prisoner because his doctor says that he 
 is dying, or who are sending flowers and refresh-
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 319 
 
 ments to the outlaw across the Rhine, I think it well 
 to remind them of that billion dollars invested in 
 foreign securities, of those dividends paid by Ger- 
 man corporations since the war, and of the difference 
 between the German and the French tax rate. 
 ' 'They will cheat you yet, those Junkers." 
 I do not say that they will, I do not know that they 
 will not ; I know only that straws show which way the 
 wind blows. 
 
 Returning travellers bring word of the shifting 
 tides in Germany's party politics — which currents 
 are flowing strong and which seem to be weakening ; 
 and these reports do not always match. All are 
 interesting and none seem important, because they 
 tell of what goes on near the surface and not of the 
 invisible ground swell, at which one can only guess. 
 There is something to be gathered by the number of 
 seats which this or that party has lost or gained in 
 the Reichstag; socialism would seem on the whole 
 to be on the wane, with a tide setting toward the 
 return to traditional institutions, by no means for- 
 gotten, tenaciously remembered, increasingly re- 
 gretted. In the deep woods are huts upon whose walls 
 the royal portraits still hang, they are being put back 
 upon walls from which they were removed three 
 years ago; it is against the law, but the law does 
 not seem to mind. One may be fairly sure that when 
 a dreamy, poetic, and long-memoried people, with 
 a strong accumulation of legend in their subcon- 
 sciousness, have gone to war, and drunk their beer, 
 and begotten their sons, for centuries under the rule 
 of dukes and princes and kings, serving their fami- 
 lies, wearing their colors, singing their songs, danc- 
 ing at their pageants, dying in their battles, and far-
 
 320 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 ing all the while as well as their neighbors, that the 
 taste for their old leaders will die hard in them, and 
 they will not immediately drop it all and turn into 
 a self-governing race because they have been pre- 
 scribed a tablespoonful of democracy three times 
 a day after meals. But even if we do wake up some 
 morning far or near to see a throne in Germany once 
 more, and some dynastic family from Prussia, or 
 Bavaria, or elsewhere seated upon it, not even this 
 seems to me the important point for us: it is not 
 what form of government this strong-souled and 
 persistent people may keep or change to, it is what 
 of their ambitions will survive beneath any garb, 
 what they are going to do, what will be done through 
 them, what young Germans who are now five, ten, or 
 fifteen years old are being taught — since they are the 
 Germany of tomorrow. 
 
 Well, some of this is known. Old Germans are 
 saying, and young ones are believing, that in 1914 
 the Fatherland was obliged to fight a war of self- 
 defence, particularly against Russia; Russia had 
 been making ready to attack it for months. One 
 does not know how an old German would meet such 
 a comment as this: 
 
 "But you know that on the night of July 31st, 
 1914, when Austria was showing signs of drawing 
 back from the gulf to whose edge you had pushed 
 her, and had entered into amicable conversation with 
 Russia, you cut it short in haste and declared war 
 upon Russia yourselves." 
 
 I can not say how this would be met, but in the 
 Fatherland it does not have to be; the unfledged 
 nestling German asks no questions, he opens wide 
 his mind and what he is to know is dropped into it
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 321 
 
 by the Prussian parent bird, and consequently, when 
 he flies from the nest, it is with a string from Berlin 
 tied securely to his brain. Did the war break that 
 string? Hardly. The great skill in the devising 
 and instilling of lies for an end, by which Germany 
 was duped and directed into the war, is not at all 
 defunct. It does not invent imaginary bombs at 
 Nuremburg any more, or publish Roosevelt's con- 
 gratulation to the Kaiser on his victorious entry into 
 Paris, or stamp the compressed fuel-bricks for 
 locomotives with "Gott strafe England"; but it cir- 
 culates almanacs with saint-like images of the Hohen- 
 zollern family and their military glories, and pious 
 texts beneath them; and it makes toys for children, 
 boxes of little French houses and churches, and little 
 guns with which to knock them down on the nursery 
 floor. Could anything be more natural, more excel- 
 lent for the young of a nation that had a great preda- 
 tory purpose to implant in its people? And what 
 people has ever proved by temperament more polit- 
 ically docile than the Germans, less instinctively 
 revolutionary, better adapted to receiving impres- 
 sions like wax, and retaining them like adamant? 
 Their subtle educators never miss a trick. On the 
 morrow of Mr. Hughes' proposal for disarmament, 
 out came the German papers, like the well-drilled 
 chorus that they are, with exclamations about "Yan- 
 kee hypocrisy." There again they present us with 
 a straw for our guidance: the word "disarmament" 
 is to be associated with the word "hypocrisy," and 
 thus dropped into the docile German mind. It mat- 
 ters not whose the mailed fist be at present ; whether 
 imperial or industrial, it is there; a soft glove has 
 been drawn over it, that is all — and sometimes there
 
 322 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 are little holes in the glove through which the metal 
 gleams. 
 
 As no people is more politically docile than the 
 Germans, so also none has ever run more true to 
 form. Merely as a revelation of the changeless per- 
 sistence of their character, it is deeply interesting 
 to read that, in the first century after Christ, a 
 Roman general named Velleius Paterculus wrote of 
 them that they were "cunning in ferocity, born to 
 lie" — to read this and to remember that in 1914 at 
 Fontenoy, they displayed flags of truce, and when 
 the French accepted this signal in good faith and 
 walked up to receive the surrender, the Germans 
 killed them ; to remember that in 1918 near Cambrai, 
 they left behind them as they retreated that live 
 kitten nailed above the concealed mine which killed 
 the British soldiers who hurried to release it from 
 its torture. 
 
 Equally interesting is it to find Tacitus writing 
 in the fourth book of his history: 
 
 "There will always be similar motives to excite 
 the Germans to invade the Gauls. It is lust, greed, 
 the desire to change place, to quit their marshes 
 and solitudes, to seize upon a fertile soil and its 
 inhabitants ' ' 
 
 And after this to read in a number of that illus- 
 trated family paper the Gartenlaube, published in 
 1874, an article with pictures of the Marne valley, 
 by a German who had walked through it, and who 
 concludes : 
 
 "Your heart bleeds in your breast to think that 
 this splendid region does not belong to Germany.' ' 
 
 And finally to read the remarks of two Prussian 
 generals, von Clausewitz and von Schellendorft* :
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 323 
 
 "Let us not forget the task of civilization which 
 Providence by its decrees lays upon us. As Prussia 
 was by destiny the kernel of Germany, so Germany 
 regenerated shall be the kernel of the future empire 
 of the West. 
 
 ' ' That none may go in ignorance, we proclaim that 
 henceforth our continental nation has a right not to 
 the North Sea only, but also to the Mediterranean and 
 Atlantic. Consequently we shall absorb, one after 
 another, all provinces which border on Prussia; we 
 shall annex successively Denmark, Holland, Belgium 
 . . . then Trieste and Venice, and finally the northern 
 part of France from the Somme to the Loire.' ' 
 
 General von Schellendorff, in commenting upon 
 this prospectus, said: 
 
 "The style of old Clausewitz is very soft. He was 
 a poet who put rose-water in his inkstand. Now it 
 is with blood that matters of war should be written, 
 and the next war will be atrocious ; between Germany 
 and France nothing but a duel to the death is ade- 
 quate. To be or not to be, that is the question which 
 can be settled only by the ruin of one of these antago- 
 nists. 
 
 "... We shall annex ... the north of France 
 from the Somme to the Loire. This program, which 
 we announce without fear, is no fool's work; this 
 empire which we intend to found will not be a Utopia : 
 we have in hand even now the means of realizing 
 it." 
 
 In nineteen hundred years, the marshes and soli- 
 tudes across the Rhine have become miracles of 
 fertility and comfort; but "the greed, the desire to 
 change place, to seize upon a fertile soil and its 
 inhabitants," which Tacitus recorded, we too have
 
 324 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 beheld; and in thinking it over, once again the acute 
 judgment of Heine is borne out. 
 
 ''The German is stupid," he says; "educate him 
 and he becomes malignant." 
 
 Prussia's intensive education of the race of Luther 
 and Beethoven has made it the race which bombarded 
 the cathedral of Reims and nailed the live kitten to 
 the door. 
 
 Midway in the long chain of testimony comes 
 Dante, with his word about the Tedeschi lurchi. 
 This poet of Latin race and refinement had seen 
 plenty of Germans in Italy, and his word lurchi, 
 though it is not quite easy to find any single English 
 adjective which expresses it perfectly, is exactly 
 translated by the use to which the piano was put by 
 the German officers billeted at the farm where we 
 slept; by what I heard about the daily personal 
 habits of the interned prisoners at Fort Oglethorpe ; 
 by what I read in the letters of the orchestra leader ; 
 and by what the Germans did in public to Belgium 
 women — all is a translation of Dante's word lurchi. 
 It does not mean those excesses of hot blood common 
 to all warfare, but the quality which showed itself 
 in the German caricatures, and which impelled Ger- 
 man officers, after living months in a French house, 
 to defile it when they left. It is perhaps Tacitus 
 rather than Dante who is recalled by Bismarck's 
 speech concerning the indemnity that he was impos- 
 ing in 1871: 
 
 "If France does not meet her obligations, we will 
 do as caterpillars do that invade a tree. We will 
 eat her leaf by leaf." 
 
 It was Frederick the Great who said that he first 
 did what he chose, and afterwards could always find
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 325 
 
 pedants to justify it. Did he inherit this from the 
 days of Dante? As any rate he transmitted the 
 custom; and we still remember that manifesto of 
 the ninety-three professors in 1914, who told us 
 under their ninety-three signatures the truth about 
 the Fatherland. 
 
 "It is not true," they declared, "that Germany 
 provoked this war." 
 
 "It is not true that we criminally violated the neu- 
 trality of Belgium." Their own Chancellor had said 
 the contrary. 
 
 One understands why Schopenhauer wrote in his 
 memorabilia : 
 
 "In anticipation of my death I make this confes- 
 sion, that I despise the German nation on account 
 of its unlimited stupidity, and I blush at belonging 
 to it." 
 
 The ninety-three did not stop there; they, and 
 others to what number I know not, were busy through 
 four years, justifying the acts of their Kaiser until 
 he ran off to Holland — it may be that they have also 
 justified that; but they produced a mass of pam- 
 phlets and addresses proving heavily to the entire 
 satisfaction of their readers the righteousness of any 
 number of things. I do not know what they may have 
 had to say about such incidents as this, of which 
 there were a great many : 
 
 From the diary of Private Hassemer, 8th corps, 
 September 3, 1914, at Sommepy: 
 
 "Horrible carnage, the village burned and razed 
 to the ground, the French driven into the houses in 
 flames, civilians and all burned together." 
 
 I have read in the writings of German generals, 
 that work like this is done in order to discourage
 
 326 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 further resistance on the part of the enemy, and so 
 to make the war short: one of the objections to such 
 policy seems to be that it did not achieve its pur- 
 pose. Would it have provided Schopenhauer with 
 another reason for blushing? We can imagine his 
 cheeks growing hot over a solemn pamphlet which 
 proved that the Meuse country was Germany's by 
 historic right, since Verdun had long been known in 
 Germany as Wirten, showing that the town must 
 have had a German origin. The trouble about this 
 argument is, that there are twelve other Verduns 
 in France, six of which are in the south, quite be- 
 yond the inroads of all Hun invasion from Attila 
 down. 
 
 Strasbourg was full of printed arguments like this, 
 little books, little lectures, that fell into the hands of 
 the Allies after the Armistice. They form a library, 
 and they draw a map of the German mind, a portrait 
 of the German spirit, carefully, by its own hand, not 
 an enemy's. I can not choke this chapter with one- 
 half or one-tenth of these touches which go to make 
 the portrait ; three or four must suffice : 
 
 What us the World War bring must, is the excel- 
 lent title of a work published in 1914, and I will not 
 disarrange its sequence of syllables. It seems ad- 
 dressed to mothers, but to mix its genders : 
 
 1 i Enough of the twaddle about morality ! . . . now 
 is the moment thou noble . . . woman, Germania 
 ... to suppress manfully such moments of pity . . . 
 nations at war find themselves in a pure state of 
 nature ... all feeling of generosity is to be silenced 
 . . . even if a state of panic amongst women and 
 children is to arise!" 
 
 Professor Fleischner, of Berlin, publishes in 1915
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 327 
 
 at Frankfort his opuscle entitled, Of the War against 
 German Kultur. 
 
 "The greatness of Germany," says the professor, 
 "has not been wrought by her merchants, diplomats, 
 scientific men, or artists. . . . Only the mailed fist 
 can establish it. . . . Hit and destroy ... Ger- 
 man spirit . . . with the strength and simplicity of 
 the bear and the child. ' ' 
 
 Professor Lasson tells his fellow Germans that 
 
 "To observe a treaty is not a question of right 
 but of interest. . . . Force can create what we call 
 right . . . the weaker becomes the prey of the 
 stronger . . . and this . . . can be called moral as 
 well as rational." 
 
 Professor Kohler writes in his "Holy War" that 
 
 "Might overrules right. Americans . . . never 
 understood the philosophy of Law. . . . We may 
 smile . . . that the vulgarity of our critics . . . 
 shows where barbarism and ignorance are to be 
 found in this War ' ' — this war, with whose causes and 
 objects Mr. Wilson told us in 1916 that the United 
 States was not concerned. 
 
 But on the whole I like this next selection best, as 
 a portrait of the German mind. It is Dr. H. U. 
 Schmidt, of the University of Gottingen, who speaks 
 about the destruction of the cathedral of Reims in 
 an address of March 22nd, 1915, one of a series en- 
 titled German talks in heavy time. His thesis is, 
 that the French deserve to lose Reims, because it 
 was built when they were more worthy of it than 
 they are now. The doctor says (and I will not dis- 
 arrange his style) : 
 
 "More and more vanishes of course the German 
 element also out of the north and east of France;
 
 328 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 ever less will henceforth the possibility for the 
 French be to understand what great and genuine in 
 the German, yea in the Germanic nature, is. Ever 
 stronger must through this the chasm between France 
 and Germany, but also between modern France and 
 her own pasthood be. The world story is often sym- 
 bolic, and the sacrifice of the cathedral of Reims — 
 since about that is it being dealt — can as the symbol 
 of the estrangement of the French people from their 
 own pasthood, how it itself even wider yet with 
 necessity be drawn must, taken be." 
 
 I sometimes wonder if the best portrait of the 
 German mind — its shape, not its content — is not per- 
 haps the syntax to which it has given birth. 
 
 We see it from the religious angle in an interview 
 which the renowned chemist, Professor Otswald, ac- 
 corded to "Dagen" of Stockholm. 
 
 " Question. What do you think of the more and 
 more decided part which the different churches are 
 playing in the countries that have thus far suffered 
 invasion?" 
 
 1 'Answer. That is a consequence impossible to 
 avoid. The present situation necessarily invokes 
 atavistic instincts in many regions. I will say, 
 nevertheless, that God the Father is reserved with 
 us for the personal use of the Emperor. Once He 
 was mentioned in a report of the General Chief of 
 Staff, but, note this well, He has not reappeared 
 since." 
 
 In his talks with Eckemann, Goethe says : 
 
 "I have often felt a profound grief in thinking of 
 this German nation, which is estimable in each of 
 its individuals, and collectively so wretched. The 
 comparison of the German people with other peoples
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 329 
 
 arouses painful sentiments which I have sought to 
 escape from by every possible means." 
 
 This was said in days when Prussian education of 
 Germany was in its infancy ; after it was full grown, 
 and the mailed fist had flung Germany against civili- 
 zation, Germany's Prussianized voice spoke true to 
 form, true to the word of the Roman general, the 
 word of Tacitus, the word of all ages, in this 
 outburst : 
 
 "Let us give up our wretched attempts to excuse 
 Germany, let us cease from casting unfounded accu- 
 sations upon the enemy. It is not against our will 
 that we have thrown ourselves into this gigantic 
 adventure. It was not forced upon us by surprise. 
 We willed it, it was our duty to will it. We do not 
 stand before the tribunal of Europe, we recognize 
 no such court. 
 
 ' ' Our might will create a new law in Europe. It 
 is Germany who strikes. When she has conquered 
 new realms for her genius, then the priests of all 
 gods will praise the holy war. . . . 
 
 "Germany does not make this war to punish the 
 guilty or to liberate oppressed peoples and rest after- 
 wards upon the consciousness of her disinterested 
 magnanimity. She makes it in the changeless con- 
 viction that her exploits give her the right to more 
 space. . . . 
 
 "Spain, Holland, France, and England have seized 
 and colonized large territories, the most fertile on 
 earth. Germany's hour has sounded. . . . 
 
 "Come, is Germany strong? Yes. What stuff are 
 you telling us, professors in spectacles and theolo- 
 gians in slippers? That right exists? Do those
 
 330 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 lofty notions amount to anything ? . . . Force ; a fist ; 
 that's all! . . . 
 
 "Get used to the idea that in German land live 
 barbarians and warriors. . . . 
 
 "When Tangier and Toulon and Antwerp and 
 Calais belong to the Barbaric Power, then we will 
 condescended to talk to you sometimes." 
 
 This was Maximilian Harden in the Zukunft. 
 
 After the thorough education which Prussia had 
 been giving Germany for several generations, this 
 changeless conviction is perfectly natural ; but what 
 is perfectly extraordinary is to hear people excusing 
 her on the ground that she was merely doing at last 
 what other nations had done at first. The other na- 
 tions could not have done it and would not have 
 dared to do it, if the weaker peoples whom they 
 conquered had been strong enough to stand them off. 
 By like reasoning, the apologists who offer these 
 extenuating circumstances in Germany's case, would 
 invite Mr. Smith to forgive a burglar who had been 
 caught breaking into his house, because previous 
 burglars had successfully stolen the silver spoons 
 of Mr. Jones. 
 
 Is the "changeless conviction" changed? 
 
 When the iron was hot, and the fierce shock of 
 the war was stinging public attention awake, the 
 words of Harden were vividly familiar, often quoted 
 together with many others like them that are faded 
 utterly out of the general memory, now that the iron 
 is cold. When reminded of them today, the apolo- 
 gists not infrequently reply: 
 
 "Ah yes; but we have a new Germany since the 
 war. She has seen a great light. She is industrious 
 and peace loving. If any of the old Junker spirit
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 331 
 
 survives, it is a negligible influence, and on the 
 wane." 
 
 But is the conviction changed? 
 
 Some signs of this were apparent, to be sure ; some 
 editorials, some public utterances, showed a new 
 spirit. Vorwaerts, the Berlin paper, declared that 
 "the German Republic must repair the crimes 
 of Imperial Germany . . . and that is why it 
 should silence the admirers of the old regime who 
 now would lift up their voices in reference to this 
 question. ' ' 
 
 Such opinions did not strike me as plentiful, they 
 seemed confined to the small handful of bold and 
 liberal papers. The Deutsche Tageszeitung was 
 more representative. 
 
 "The hate between Frenchmen and Germans is 
 ineradicable, " it said, "Europe will know no repose 
 until the eternal peace disturber is annihilated politi- 
 cally and militarily ; and this moment is perhaps less 
 distant than may be thought." 
 
 To any eyes on the watch for them, gleams like 
 this of the mailed fist shone through not infrequent 
 holes in the soft glove. While the laments over Ger- 
 many's poverty and her utter inability to pay the 
 reparation flowed copiously, in a daily stream, from 
 the pens of editors and the lips of politicians, now 
 and then something like this, from the Welt am 
 Montag, would appear : 
 
 "Everybody knows that millions in paper money 
 have been hidden away to escape from taxation. It 
 must also be recognized that agriculture is rolling 
 in wealth. ..." And the journal is so incautious as 
 to publish specific details of prosperity: 
 
 As against a five per cent, dividend the year pre-
 
 332 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 ceding, the Rheingan sugar refinery had this year 
 declared forty-eight per cent. 
 
 The Sugar Trade Union of Hamburg had risen 
 from sixteen and a half to forty-eight per cent. 
 
 The Diisseldorf Blast Furnace Company in 1920 
 made a profit of twenty-two million marks on a capi- 
 tal of three million six hundred thousand. 
 
 The Sandloch Lead Works, capital one and a half 
 million, made a profit of seven million marks. 
 
 The Concordia Chemical Factory paid eight per 
 cent, one year, seventy-five per cent, the next. 
 
 The North German Iron Trucks rose from eight 
 to sixty per cent. 
 
 Observing travellers in Germany noticed a curious 
 difference in appearance between those parts of the 
 Fatherland under military occupation and in the 
 beaten routes of foreign travel, and those parts where 
 foreign travel was infrequent. In occupied Rhine- 
 land, stoves were in the restaurants and hotels, trains 
 were cold and bad, streets were unlighted; France 
 was envied the coal she took from Germany and 
 did not need, while here it was needed so sorely. 
 But if one penetrated into districts more intimately 
 German, where nothing had been arranged for effect 
 on foreign visitors, bread cards, though required by 
 printed rules, were never asked for; there were no 
 temporary stoves, the central heating systems were 
 going, the hotels and trains were so hot that windows 
 had to be open ; in short, lignite was taking the place 
 of coal very satisfactorily, there was plenty of it, 
 and there was an effort to hide this fact from the 
 Allies. Travellers who happened to visit Turkish 
 baths, circuses, cinema shows, merry-go-rounds, out- 
 side the zone of foreign visitors, were not at all
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 333 
 
 deceived as to the camouflaged dearth of coal. They 
 noticed, too, even while they were hearing the cries 
 of distress and the assertions that German industry 
 and prosperity were paralyzed, that forests of fresh 
 scaffolding bristled in large towns where corpora- 
 tions and banks were in the act of erecting palatial 
 quarters wherein to house their expanding needs; 
 they observed that a vast new underground railway 
 system was being pushed forward in Berlin; it 
 seemed odd to them that if funds were so scarce, 
 two millions should have been voted to the State 
 Fair at Leipzig in 1920, and twenty millions to the 
 same enterprise in 1921. This grant was made at a 
 time not remote from the London Conference, where 
 Dr. von Simons assured Mr. Lloyd George that Ger- 
 many could not possibly pay in reparation more than 
 two billion and a half pounds in forty-two years, 
 instead of the eleven billion and a third demanded by 
 the Allies. At that moment, the tax per head in 
 Germany was three pounds, while in England it was 
 twenty- two. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George broke off his conversation with 
 Dr. von Simons, and said later to his English and 
 French colleagues: 
 
 1 'If we had let him talk for ten minutes more, we 
 should have been owing Germany several billion." 
 
 In those days when Dr. von Simons was explain- 
 ing to Mr. Lloyd George that Germany had nothing 
 wherewith to pay her reparations, the news that her 
 factories were doing a disastrous business reached 
 America, and Americans at once made large offers 
 to buy these ruined German plants. Not an offer was 
 accepted, not a factory was for sale ! 
 
 "When an American in search of them visited the
 
 334 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 great Krupp establishment at Essen, he did not find 
 it shut up. What he found was a place where work- 
 men worked for one-seventh the pay of English labor, 
 and did not strike ; where they worked full hours, and 
 so far from being anarchistic were they that they 
 touched their hats to their employers and went to it 
 with the same drill of mind and body which had un- 
 loaded the scenery from the dray in Dresden, and 
 kept the revolution off the grass in Berlin; a place 
 that was turning out three hundred locomotives a 
 year, three thousand cars a year, trucks in propor- 
 tion, cinema apparatus, sewing machines, everything 
 in short that can be made of steel ; and a place which 
 had employed thirty-five thousand men before the 
 war, and was now employing forty-five thousand. 
 
 If this American traveller had continued to go 
 about the Fatherland in quest of factories for sale, 
 he would have found : 
 
 1. Jena, turning out cheaper and better optical 
 glass than any competitors; from furnace to show 
 room a gigantic organization busy over every stage 
 of construction from the making of the glass to the 
 mounting of it in microscopes, cameras, field glasses, 
 cinema projectors, theodolites, ultramicroscopes, 
 nautical and astronomic instruments; and ten thou- 
 sand serious workmen employed upon this. For 
 these men in times of recreation, libraries, reading 
 rooms, parks were constructed. 
 
 2. Leipzig, printing newspapers, periodicals, illus- 
 trated colored plates, Latin and Greek books, cata- 
 logues, trade papers of fifty pages, and sensational 
 novels — all cheap. Pulp is plentiful because Ger- 
 many used Polish forests during the war, and saved 
 her own for peace.
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 335 
 
 3. Dresden, making pianos, organs, steam organs, 
 instruments to suit all national preferences, little 
 grands for bridal housekeeping, tall uprights for 
 Spain, Italy, South America; and wires for these, 
 as well as for violins, mandolins, and guitars. Beside 
 this industry of Dresden are the porcelain works at 
 Meissen, where workmen proud of their hereditary 
 descent from those selected for the works by King 
 August II in 1710 were making fake antiques for 
 New York dealers, telegraph insulators, hand-painted 
 sets of egg-shell china, crucibles for scientific use, 
 electric lampshades, statuettes, vases and plates imi- 
 tating the wares of Copenhagen, Sevres, and Li- 
 moges. Living is cheap in Meissen, and the work- 
 men's houses clean and pretty. 
 
 4. Pforzheim, carving bone for combs, pendants, 
 necklaces, beads; handbags, umbrella handles; little 
 cats and pigs in bronze or celluloid or imitation 
 crystal for the watch chain; every sort of cheap 
 jewelry ; souvenir brooches with Venice, Seville, and 
 the Passion Play at Oberammergau done in color on 
 their glazed convexity ; souvenir spoons showing the 
 ruined cathedral of Reims; and, to advertise a cer- 
 tain make of automobile, neat pencils lettered in six 
 different languages and distributed free throughout 
 the world ; knickknacks inscribed with publicity mat- 
 ters in Turkish, Japanese, and Russian characters. 
 Wages at Pforzheim had gone up. 
 
 5. Frankfort and Mannheim fabricating cheap 
 dry goods, employing as many hands as before the 
 war. 
 
 6. Berlin and its suburbs equally busy ; east Ber- 
 lin over enamel ware, pianos, optical goods, furni- 
 ture, textiles, domestic chattels generally, including
 
 336 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 jewelry, confectionery, carved frames and cases, per- 
 fume, fans ; north Berlin over heavier work, electric 
 and railway supplies. In the science of perfume 
 several experiments were being successfully made — 
 in dry scent, for example, a powdered perfume which 
 dissolves when sprinkled upon a warm hand; syn- 
 thetic essences, smelling like strawberries, pine- 
 apples, mushrooms, that never saw a strawberry or 
 pineapple or mushroom; soap in quantity, in spite 
 of the loudly alleged shortage of fat. At another 
 suburb, Charlottenburg, drugs and medicines. These 
 had been made near Cologne until the Armistice, and 
 they were then hurriedly removed out of reach of 
 the Allies' observation, lest these chemical secrets 
 should become known outside of Germany. The un- 
 divulged processes are now producing medicines in 
 far greater volume than before the war. They are 
 in demand all over the world and their retail price 
 is three and four hundred times the cost of produc- 
 tion. To escape export duties a brisk traffic in smug- 
 gling goes on at various frontiers. I skip Chemnitz 
 and its dry goods, and Plauen with its lace and dye- 
 ing and bleaching, and other places. 
 
 None of these establishments was for sale ; it was 
 the same everywhere; the American quest would 
 have been fruitless in purchases, but very profitable 
 in experience. 
 
 In their offer to buy German manufactories, our 
 business men had meant business, had been perfectly 
 serious; they believed the "hard luck" stories so 
 ingeniously circulated. Their failure to find any 
 acceptances of their offers revealed to them that 
 what they had unwittingly done was to "call a bluff. " 
 
 It may be said that among all the industries in
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 337 
 
 which she excels, propaganda is at the head of Ger- 
 many's list; the organization of private industry 
 stands second, but still so high as to overtop anything 
 of the sort in those countries which are her competi- 
 tors. This organization is being perfected every day ; 
 Germany's set-back has vitalized her energy, while 
 the Allies' has been slackened by their sterile vic- 
 tory. She has carried Trusts into higher terms, 
 under the title Community of Interests Association, 
 whereunder all productive factors, from the raw 
 material at the bottom to the finished article at the 
 top, are gathered and co-related under a single 
 management. This is known as the " vertical line" 
 system. For instance, if a company made telephones, 
 it would acquire control of all the areas from which 
 all the raw materials needed for a complete telephone 
 are drawn — mines, forests — and also all the corpora- 
 tions which manufacture wire, or electrical appara- 
 tus, or fixtures such as hotels and offices use, switch- 
 boards, everything necessary to a system in complete 
 working order. Or again if coal is at the bottom and 
 hardware of every description at the top of a verti- 
 cal line of production, one huge hand of the Com- 
 munity of Interests Association grasps both ends 
 and everything between, and conducts the whole 
 work harmoniously, with the least possible waste and 
 the greatest possible gain. Meanwhile, the workmen 
 of Germany who carry on the physical part of this 
 vast activity retain their habit of drill, have no use 
 for strikes, and are satisfied with their state. Small 
 concerns outside the association of giants have come 
 to grief, and these cases have been adroitly used to 
 convey the idea of a general collapse. 
 
 "They will cheat you yet, those Junkers."
 
 338 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 With such organized energy, it is not wonderful 
 that industrial dividends went from eight to sixty 
 per cent, and that a billion of profit is already in- 
 vested in foreign securities. Germany, with mas- 
 terly self-control, made herself ready to sell to the 
 world, and now the world has begun to buy from 
 her. Before the war she saved ten billion marks a 
 year; were she to save eight billion now, it would 
 more than meet the requirements of her reparation. 
 It is to be noticed that one of the leading financiers 
 of New York — not affiliated with German concerns — 
 has stated that the payments, spread over forty-two 
 years, if capitalized at Sy 2 %, will form a sum of about 
 thirteen billion dollars, which Germany can pay 
 easily. Under the Treaty of Frankfort, when she 
 was victorious in 1871, she laid down and acted upon 
 the principle that the nation provoking the war 
 ought to pay the costs of the war. She has not been 
 dealt with according to her own rule; the Allies 
 deliberately have not asked Germany to pay one 
 single mark for the cost that they incurred in defend- 
 ing themselves : therein lies the profound difference, 
 both practical and moral, between the indemnity 
 exacted by Germany in 1871 from France who had 
 provoked the war and was beaten, and the reparation 
 demanded by the Allies from Germany for the in- 
 juries that she inflicted upon the land, the houses, 
 and the manufactories of France. Most financial 
 writers that I have read, even Mr. Frank Vanderlip, 
 whose book is the latest and quite the best that I 
 know, constantly speak of the indemnity demanded 
 from Germany : this is false to fact, and it misleads 
 many readers who have not gone into the matter. 
 
 It seems to me also that these financiers are them-
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 339 
 
 selves confused by the horrible condition of state 
 finance in Germany, while they overlook the vigor- 
 ous health of private finance, the large dividends, 
 the invested billion of profit. No doubt the govern- 
 ment has paid the deficits of railroads whose trans- 
 portation was artificially cheap, the losses on exports 
 sold needlessly below cost ; has rioted in paper money, 
 kept a huge army of salaried Junkers in office, and 
 is consequently without funds to pay its current 
 expenses. "What has that to do with the reparation? 
 How is it that new banks and buildings are going 
 up, and twenty million marks are voted to the Leipzig 
 Fair? If private Germans are making millions, 
 whose fault is it that the public purse is empty — if 
 it is empty? A man who kept two bank accounts, 
 one overdrawn and a thousand dollars in the other, 
 would not be allowed to plead bankruptcy. 
 
 The financier who was pardoned by Mr. Taft on 
 account of his ill health, ate soap for days to make 
 himself an emaciated and pitiable object. "When he 
 was let out he changed his diet and soon resumed his 
 old appearance and previous habits. It looks more 
 than likely that the German Government has been 
 eating soap. I suggest that the financiers inquire 
 a little further into the case before they ask France 
 and the rest of us to commute the Fatherland's sen- 
 tence of reparation. I think that they ought to re- 
 member more often than they do, how sure they 
 were that the war would be a short one; and that 
 before asking the world to help in lifting weak Ger- 
 many on her legs, they should make us all sure not 
 only that she can not get on them by herself, but 
 also that when she is up she will not promptly knock 
 us all down.
 
 340 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 What is the mailed fist doing beneath its glove, 
 meanwhile % 
 
 Articles 160 and 178 in the Treaty of Versailles 
 are definite: 
 
 "The number of effectives in the army of those 
 states which constitute Germany must not exceed 
 100,000 men, and shall be exclusively for the purpose 
 of maintaining order and for policing the frontiers. 
 
 "All measures of mobilization are forbidden." 
 
 Article 176 forbids military academies. Berlin 
 had one, Munich another. Over these the glove was 
 drawn. In each of the division staffs, staff courses 
 of lectures were created, to which the entrance ex- 
 aminations were like those of the military academy. 
 The documents of the army were collected at Berlin 
 in a war library. To sort and classify these and to 
 aid in research and historic study, officers were sum- 
 moned from time to time. It was not mentioned that 
 those officers permanently in custody of the library 
 gave courses of lectures and conducted exercises. 
 The officers who formerly taught at the military 
 academy no longer wear uniforms, but frock coats 
 instead and are under civil jurisdiction; in these cir- 
 cumstances they continue to teach what they taught 
 before — for the instruction of their "Sipo," their 
 Sichereitspolizei — their police. These police forces 
 are most remarkable. Each man has a gas-mask, 
 although Article 171 forbids the further manufac- 
 ture of poisonous gas. 
 
 Up to October 1919, the demobilization bureau 
 retained lists of reservists, but as these men were 
 slowly dispersed the rolls of their names were dis- 
 tributed among the local recruiting bureaus, which 
 are conveniently called pension bureaus. By their
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 341 
 
 means mobilization could be rapidly effected. In 
 1920 the old army, apparently dispersed in accord- 
 ance with the treaty, was replaced by the "Reichs- 
 wehr," to which the regulars of the old army can 
 be despatched by means of the rolls of their names 
 at the local "pension" offices. In his Koenigsberg 
 speech, Ludendorff in August 1921 lauded the excel- 
 lence of the old army, which he declared the Reichs- 
 wehr must imitate. 
 
 "Think," he said, "what won us Tannenberg: the 
 will of the chiefs, faith in them, discipline and cour- 
 age in the face of death. . . . The greater our coun- 
 try's need the closer will we rally round the black, 
 white, and red Prussian flag." 
 
 This Reichswehr numbered 300,000 men in August 
 1919, 320,000 in November, and 370,000 in February 
 1921. If to these be added two corps organized in 
 Lithuania and Lattonia, and the regulars retained 
 under the treaty, the total mounts above 420,000 in 
 February 1920.' On February 18th, 1920, Mr. Lloyd 
 George granted an "extension" to the time limit 
 for German demobilization set by the treaty. This 
 caused much Teutonic joy. 
 
 The treaty was signed June 28th, 1919; by July 
 Germany had created a State Police force in addi- 
 tion to the force existing before the war. That was 
 divided into two classes, Ordnungspolizei — Order 
 Police — and Kriminalpolizei — Criminal Police — 
 each a body for maintaining law and order in cities, 
 in other words, a municipal force, armed with re- 
 volvers only. 
 
 This new Sichereitspolizei — Safety Police — was 
 for the repression of mobs. Its organization was 
 military, with companies, battalions, regiments, bri-
 
 342 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 gades, divisions ; its equipment was the same as that 
 of the Reichswehr, even to cannons, minenwerfer, 
 and liaison material. Its uniform was green, the old 
 police wore blue. 
 
 By October 1919, this "Sipo" was already a little 
 army, its Berlin contingent commanded by a briga- 
 dier general, its complement three corps of 3,000 
 men, with two parks of artillery, 1 squadron, 1 liaison 
 detachment. One-third of this force was in service, 
 one in readiness, one in repose. In the spring of 
 1920, exercises between it and the Reichswehr re- 
 doubled. In June the Allies at Boulogne made a 
 sign of expostulation; they shook their finger at it, 
 and said it must stop. Three months later it was 
 somewhat larger than in June. The Fatherland pro- 
 fessed herself deeply alarmed by her state of internal 
 unrest ; still, her desire was only to please the Allies. 
 Therefore, being composed of 18 sovereign states 
 and 13 of these having a "Sipo," 10 resolved to 
 disband it and one joined them later. Sipo disap- 
 peared, but immediately appeared a new force, named 
 the Schutzpolizei. The entire Sipo passed into this, 
 dropping in its metamorphosis some inferior mate- 
 rial and replacing this with younger and better stuff. 
 
 During April 1919, an agitation in Munich made 
 the establishing of the Einwohnerwehr most easy and 
 convenient. The citizens had been frightened and 
 this new force gave them peace of mind. This body 
 had been started by a law passed on the 12th of the 
 preceding December; the events at Munich gave it 
 fresh impetus. Its ramifications spread through the 
 Fatherland, it was provided with arms. To the 
 world outside it was presented as a defence against 
 internal disorders; the trouble appeared on investi-
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 343 
 
 gation to be, that Germany had so little disorder and 
 so much defence, and that such an amount of arms 
 which by the treaty should have been delivered to 
 the Allies is not plausibly represented as essential 
 to this defence. Constant meetings of the young, 
 who formed the Einwohnerwehr, kept their hands 
 and eyes skilful at target shooting and other military 
 accomplishments. Under the pressure of remon- 
 strance, this vigorous training society, like Sipo, 
 dispersed as mercury when pressed beneath the fin- 
 ger ; and, when the finger was removed, came together 
 again. A new set of labels was invented for it, very 
 long names like Schiitzorganization and Selbschiitz- 
 organization ; but underneath them, there it was. 
 Bavaria was very slow in performing the dispersal. 
 Behind all this disguised militarism, work some 
 societies who are loyal to the old German traditions, 
 and to whom democracy is distasteful. The animus 
 of these societies may or may not be the cause of 
 that setting of the tide away from the communistic 
 parties and towards the traditional dynastic form of 
 government; certainly there is a close correspond- 
 ence between the facts. It is, however, probable that 
 quite independent of any secret organization, the 
 wish to return to the old ways lies deep in the breast 
 of many a German who is not a member of any of 
 them. The Orgesch is the principal secret society 
 of this sort in Bavaria, in the Tyrol next door it is 
 the Orka ; there is reason to suppose that in this part 
 of Europe, as in several others, the frontiers which 
 were shuffled and redealt so lightly at the Peace Con- 
 ference will not remain in their present arrange- 
 ment : it was too often a derangement — a violence to 
 ancient association, a dislocation of beneficent chan-
 
 344 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 nels of trade, and a hurried and ignorant tying up of 
 the dog and the cat in the same bag. Bavaria may 
 loom a very important nucleus of a new Central 
 Europe empire, when the various organizations that I 
 have mentioned will play their thoroughly rehearsed 
 parts. At certain schools today, two months' mili- 
 tary instruction has been slipped into the curriculum. 
 All the while that these activities have been going 
 on beneath the nose of the Entente, news has been 
 constantly coming of secret stores of arms. 
 Throughout my eight months in Europe, one read 
 almost every week of these being discovered. It 
 would be in East Prussia, where the key to some 
 door was "lost" when the Entente inspector came 
 his rounds. The door was forced and thousands of 
 rifles were hidden there; or it would be in Berlin 
 that a treasure house of military telephone and tele- 
 graph apparatus was unearthed. In many directions 
 these "caches" of every kind of implement and 
 munition of war, great and small, were being found ; 
 while on the other hand, some gigantic objects, like 
 the Big Bertha guns, have never been found at all. 
 The explosions at chemical and dye works, far more 
 frequent in the Fatherland than ever before, lead 
 one to wonder what the Germans can be making: 
 one recalls those gas-masks of the polizei. Now 
 and then, too, comes another gleam of the mailed 
 fist through some incautious hole in the glove; on 
 February 11th, 1921, the Volhzeitung said : 
 
 "That nation will be victorious which shall have 
 discovered the most virulent germ to spread in the 
 country of its enemy and the surest vaccine to render 
 itself immune. Fifty agents would be enough to 
 infect as large a country as Germany." 
 
 Months later, General Ludendorff, running true
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 345 
 
 to form in his new book, "Politics and the Conduct 
 of War," says: 
 
 " Conflict for the individual as for the State is a 
 permanent natural phenomenon, and is founded in 
 the divine ordinance of the world ... we must have 
 done once for all with the talk of such things as eter- 
 nal peace, disarmament, and reconciliation of man- 
 kind . . . war will continue to be the last and only- 
 decisive instrument of policy. . . . 
 
 "There must again be a Kaiser . . . the birth of 
 Prussianism must again be blown into the adminis- 
 tration framework. . . . Political leaders . . . are 
 to be trained in school and university in the doctrines 
 of Clausewitz." 
 
 Quite near the time when this book appeared, dur- 
 ing the last rnonths of 1921, six hundred howitzers 
 of large calibre were found walled up in the Rock- 
 stroh near Dresden. The Entente investigators were 
 discouraged in their search by many artifices and 
 objections, but they went on. 
 
 Dr. Wirth, in whose government and good inten- 
 tions much confidence is placed by Mr. Vanderlip, 
 was sure that these arms had been made before the 
 war, and were concealed to be broken up as old mate- 
 rial. Is this innocence on the part of the Chancellor ? 
 But what if it is? The guns were made after the 
 Armistice. Breechblocks and other parts of 342 
 howitzers were next discovered, five rifling machines 
 were hidden under the floor, seven times the number 
 of howitzers allowed by the treaty were discovered 
 in this one factory, with official invoices directing 
 the guns to be kept here and not forwarded, as usual, 
 to the arsenal at Spandau. At Spandau were found 
 two rooms packed from floor to ceiling with papers
 
 346 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 concerning the strength of the German Army at the 
 time of the Armistice ; these, when asked for at that 
 time and ever since, were reported as "lost." The 
 Entente investigators, who would appear to be among 
 the most humorous characters alive, left them under 
 a guard of the Spandau military authorities over- 
 night, and returned to get them the next morning. 
 They were all lost again. 
 
 In Upper Silesia, since October, the French have 
 reported numerous discoveries of concealed arms — 
 seven since January 1st, 1922 ; six hundred shells for 
 heavy guns found in a barn; in a coach house the 
 equipment for a company of infantry; others in the 
 park of a country house, in a music hall, and in a 
 deaf and dumb asylum. At the end of January the 
 Germans made an armed attack upon French who 
 were searching for concealed arms, wounding twenty 
 and killing two. This was about six months after 
 General Ludendorff 's assurance to the students of 
 Koenigsberg that the fate of Upper Silesia would 
 be decided soon or late by a battle. 
 
 Where is the moral disarmament, where the 
 changed intention 1 What converted and pacific Ger- 
 many is to be found in all this? And what matters 
 it whether Chancellor Wirth and his government are 
 the deluded or the conniving cats' paws of Kultur? 
 Since the Armistice, as before it, Germany has run 
 true to form, and by her fruits any one can know 
 her. The mind's eye sees the big dividends secretly 
 shuffled into foreign investments, the big guns se- 
 cretly manufactured, the thousands of young stu- 
 dents secretly drilled — and the renowned chemist, 
 Dr. Otswald, closeted over test tubes, retorts, and 
 microscopes with his scientific brethren, trying for
 
 BY THEIR FRUITS 347 
 
 new explosives no larger than an egg, but able to 
 flatten Paris, London, and New York to dust; and 
 trying for a new germ, bred from all the deadliest 
 contagions that will mingle, and capable of rotting 
 any community to deliquescence in twenty-four hours. 
 
 Such a people may not be precisely lovable, but 
 they are in truth a great race; their industry puts 
 us all to shame, and one bows to their impregnable 
 steadfastness to themselves. One can hardly over- 
 praise the power of their team-work, or over-damn 
 the wabbling incoherence of some of their adver- 
 saries, into whose feeble political hands Foch the 
 soldier delivered them in November 1918. 
 
 Is there in the whole course of history a spectacle 
 more stupefying?
 
 XXVI 
 
 MILITARISTIC % 
 
 To divert attention from herself, Germany has 
 been pointing the finger of accusation at France. 
 
 ''Behold the trouble maker!" she says to her own 
 people and to the Allies; "see what a big army she 
 is keeping up." 
 
 It is an old trick. Policemen are familiar with 
 it when there is disorder in the street, and they have 
 been known to arrest the wrong man. Of course 
 the German people are taken in by it. Under the 
 forty years of drill to which their minds have been 
 subjected by Prussia, they accept all official state- 
 ments automatically ; they have believed and will go 
 on believing anything that Berlin tells them. At 
 the age when the children learn the Lord's Prayer, 
 they have been taught the following words : 
 
 ' ' Germany is my fatherland, a country surrounded 
 by enemies." 
 
 Upon a soil so carefully tilled, the seed of any 
 lie will grow. This Prussian perversion continues 
 unimpeded, and the preparation of no germ or ex- 
 plosive could be more dangerous, since it is the man 
 behind the gun that counts. Therefore it is wholly 
 natural and inevitable that sixty-five or seventy 
 millions of Germans should believe Prussia when she 
 accused France of militarism. But why should any- 
 body else? Why should English and Americans look 
 
 348
 
 MILITARISTIC? 349 
 
 in the direction that Germany is pointing, and 
 express themselves as shocked at the large army of 
 France at a time when all really good persons are 
 talking about disarmament? It is remarkably like 
 the policeman arresting the wrong man in the street, 
 and it is also a piece of the whole stupefying 
 spectacle. 
 
 At the Peace Conference, France asked for a Rhine 
 frontier by way of protection against further inva- 
 sions from Germany. This she was prevented from 
 getting by England and the United States ; but these 
 friends of hers offered her something in exchange 
 for what she gave up; they would bind themselves 
 to come to her help in case Germany should ever 
 assault her again without provocation. Renouncing 
 her Rhine frontier, she accepted this offer. Then her 
 friends went home. Mr. Lloyd George had been 
 careful to make England's promise depend upon 
 America's; so that when it turned out that Mr. 
 Wilson had promised more than he could perform, 
 it all fell down. France had given up her Rhine 
 frontier and got — nothing; she was left by England 
 and America to take care of herself. 
 
 Against sixty-five million Germans, France counts 
 thirty-eight. Her people saw German hordes come 
 in to pillage and burn before the land was named 
 France, or the invaders were called Germans. From 
 the year 102 before Christ, when the Cimbri and 
 Teutones got almost to Marseilles and were stopped 
 by the Roman general, Marius, down to Ludendorff's 
 last lunge at the Marne in 1918, the land of France 
 has been incessantly trodden down by the barbarians. 
 Sometimes they got no farther than the Oise, or 
 Verdun; sometimes they swept to the Somme, or
 
 350 NEIGHBORS HENCEFOETH 
 
 overran Franche-Conte* and threatened Italy from 
 the stronghold of Besancon ; sometimes they swarmed 
 into the Rhone Basin and destroyed Lyons. There 
 were centuries when they broke in several times, and 
 again a long period would pass without a visit; but 
 it has been computed that there has been an average 
 of one invasion of France by Germans every fifty 
 years for fifteen centuries — and the fathers of those 
 who fought in 1914 fought in 1870. Had it not been 
 for European intervention, Bismarck would have 
 tried it again in 1875, because he was not satisfied 
 with his job five years earlier. 
 
 Is it not conceivable that England, had she suf- 
 fered from a habit of German invasion so chronic 
 as this, might have been more acutely attentive to 
 the warnings which Lord Roberts gave her through 
 those seven years before 1914? Had she renounced 
 a Rhine frontier and got nothing for it, would she 
 not be likely to want an army? To call France mili- 
 taristic in such circumstances looks somewhat like 
 putting the cart before the horse. France seems to 
 me more like a man who goes about his premises 
 armed with a revolver and a big stick, because he 
 has lately been twice sandbagged, and the police have 
 all gone away. 
 
 I have never noticed that England, or America, 
 or any nation enjoyed misrepresentation and abuse ; 
 yet they are calling France militaristic and accusing 
 her of impatience because she resents it. How satis- 
 factory to Germany, their enemy, this attitude 
 towards their friend France must be! How per- 
 fectly this carries out Germany's plan that the Allies 
 should fall apart ! 
 
 Yes ; France is being accused of impatience, and I
 
 MILITARISTIC? 351 
 
 am afraid that it is true ; the marvel is that she has 
 not been much more so. Her newspapers are intem- 
 perate at times — are they the only ones? At Wash- 
 ington her delegates made a righteous case seem 
 wrong for a while, and were surpassed in urbanity 
 by the delegates of Great Britain. But put your- 
 self in her place, review the story of her recent 
 experience : 
 
 One-fourteenth of her territory devastated; four 
 million men lost in killed, maimed, and wounded; a 
 frontier renounced in exchange for a broken promise ; 
 the German damages awarded her by the court whit- 
 tled down under British pressure while the German 
 fleet is safe in the British pocket; her demand at 
 Washington to increase her own greatly reduced sea 
 power, skilfully distorted by the press. Her naval 
 plan was held up to the world as an enormity, when 
 in fact, after the cobwebs of misrepresentation had 
 been brushed away, what she asked was very close 
 indeed to what Mr. Hughes proposed. 
 
 By the reporters she was made to appear as in- 
 tending to have completed ten new dreadnoughts of 
 35,000 tons each by the end of ten years ; as a matter 
 of fact, they were to come at the end of twenty years ; 
 at the end of ten she would have just two. This was 
 the first distortion by the press. 
 
 France had built no new ships for seven years; 
 she had turned over to England, for war purposes, 
 what vessels she possessed. Some had been lost, and 
 her plan when truly stated came to nothing more 
 than replacing superannuated tonnage at the rate 
 of one new ship in two years. According to this 
 plan, she would have at the end of the "ten-year 
 holiday," counting six old ships and two new ones,
 
 352 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 200,000 tons instead of 175,000— only 25,000 more 
 than the ratio first proposed ! 
 
 Her tonnage in existing capital ships is 283,923; 
 Great Britain 's is 1,031,000 ; onrs is 628,390. France 
 has a colonial population 20 million greater than at 
 home ; a colonial area of 13 million square kilometres 
 to our 9 million; she has a coast from Belgium to the 
 Bay of Biscay, with Ostend, Calais, Havre, Cher- 
 bourg, Brest, St. Nazaire, Bordeaux, among the har- 
 bors which she must defend, and Marseilles on the 
 Mediterranean, with her two African ports, making 
 a triangle. Since the begiiming of the war she has 
 built 5 submarines; since the Armistice, the United 
 States has built 44 and is building 38 more, while 
 Great Britain has built 41. To put it in another way, 
 our total tonnage in submarines existing and to be 
 built is 82,105; Great Britain's is 82,464; France 
 has 42,949, and is building none, while we propose 
 to build 38, having officially declared that the sub- 
 marine is a defensive weapon, which is precisely 
 what France has contended. 
 
 France was obliged to stand in a false light dex- 
 terously thrown upon her during the Washington 
 Conference, to hear the outcries of editors based upon 
 distorted news, and in the midst of this din a con- 
 gressman introducing a bill demanding immediate 
 payment of money owed to us by any European 
 nation that had announced its intention of increasing 
 its navy. Patience is always desirable, but in such 
 circumstances is impatience wholly unnatural? 
 
 So much for the charge that France is militaristic. 
 Why it is made by Germany is perfectly plain ; why 
 it is made by England is not so plain, because the 
 safety of France from Germany is just as important
 
 MILITARISTIC? 353 
 
 to England now as it was in 1914 ; but as the general 
 British mind could not take in what Germany was 
 getting ready to do during the seven years before 
 1914, it is equally unable now to imagine that Ger- 
 many will do anything more. The war is over, the 
 German sea power eliminated, and England set upon 
 resuming her interrupted trade. The French Army 
 seems to be a disadvantage to this, and consequently 
 the British mind does not see why France should be 
 needing something that is unnecessary to England. 
 
 "Why does she not disband her army as I have 
 done? We beat Germany." That is virtually the 
 thought in the British mind, because it lacks imagina- 
 tion, and without this you cannot put yourself in the 
 other man 's place ; you always put him in yours. 
 
 Mr. H. G. Wells says of his own countrymen: 
 
 "Most Englishmen, even those who belong to what 
 we call the educated classes, still do not think sys- 
 tematically at all; you can not understand England 
 until you master that fact ; their ideas are in slovenly 
 detached little heaps, they think in ready-made 
 phrases, they are honestly capable therefore of the 
 most grotesque inconsistencies.' ' 
 
 Why Americans should call France militaristic, 
 and why a congressman should offer such a resolu- 
 tion as that demanding immediate payment of money 
 owed to us by any European power intending to in- 
 crease its navy, is because many congressmen, as 
 well as many of those who elect them, are in the 
 habit of thinking that they know all about everything 
 when they know nothing of anything.
 
 XXVII 
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 
 
 As I travelled back and forth through the land of 
 France, after two years, I watched the winter go, 
 the spring come and go, and a part of the summer. 
 What I saw and heard of France in her great emer- 
 gency of peace through those months would fill a book 
 — and must be condensed into a chapter. The mere 
 aspect of things was often so contradictory as en- 
 tirely to explain the discrepancies between the vari- 
 ous reports of her state which travellers had brought 
 home; all depended upon where they had gone and 
 how long they had stayed. At the bottom there was 
 no contradiction, everything that I had been told 
 was true, except that France was idle and that she 
 was prosperous; she was neither the one nor the 
 other. Perhaps the only unchanged things that I 
 found were her sane and gallant spirit, and her deep, 
 unspoken sadness. 
 
 ''See, monsieur," said Madeleine my chamber- 
 maid, after she and her husband and I had come to 
 know each other well, "Nicholas and I, we are work- 
 ing and saving to have some day a home where I 
 can take care of him, though he doesn't know that. 
 You did not see him before the four years of prison 
 with the Germans. He is changed, monsieur, changed 
 inside, and it is for me who have not been in prison 
 to take care of him. ' ' 
 
 354
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 355 
 
 I saw many brave women and broken men like that, 
 who said no words to me such as Madeleine's, because 
 we had not gone far enough in friendship, but whose 
 state a glance or a whisper would reveal ; at Bleran- 
 court, where American ability and devotion are lift- 
 ing to health the crippled communes of the Aisne; 
 at Arras, St. Quentin, Soissons, Albert, Bapaume, 
 Keims, Verdun, Thiaucourt, Pont-a-Mousson and 
 along the roads between — where did I not meet with 
 this? Many of the men lacked an arm, or a leg, or 
 breathed with lungs that had been gassed ; there they 
 were, in the fields, in the estaminets, going on as 
 well as they could, each with a woman working hard 
 all day, and taking care of her man, because, mon- 
 sieur, he is not the same as he used to be ! 
 
 I saw those orchards which the Germans had cut 
 down, still kneeling as if in supplication, and some 
 of their trees like true French trees were trying to 
 go on when April came; a rag of bark and wood 
 still tied them to their roots, and through this still 
 flowed the sap, breaking into white blossoms that 
 leaned and bowed close to the ground. 
 
 At Peronne the German placard, "nicht argern 
 nur wundern, ' ' was gone ; Peronne had manufactured 
 sugar, and while she waited for the rebuilding of her 
 destroyed machinery to resume her ancient industry, 
 she was by no means idle. She was sowing wheat in 
 her reclaimed fields, and barley, and was raising hay. 
 In centuries past she had been a storm-centre of his- 
 tory, and had counted many beautiful old buildings 
 which I had seen shattered and demolished upon my 
 last visit. She was but a tomb of beauty now. She 
 recalled the mining camps of the eighties in our West. 
 Scarce any movement had been in her wasted streets
 
 356 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 in 1919 ; they were wasted still, raw, without order, 
 something like a face that needs shaving, but life 
 was bustling in them. The stumps of the dead trees, 
 with glaring new board shacks scattered like litters 
 of boxes among them, might have been Montana 
 forests cut down to make way for civilization. Here 
 was a cinema in a tent; there was a pharmacy in a 
 shack; there in another was a shop with a proud 
 name like Grand Magazin de Paris, with boots and 
 buttons and spoons and shovels and nearly every- 
 thing else for sale; long new wooden barracks like 
 bowling alleys housed the homeless people of Pe- 
 ronne; this once symmetric and historic town was 
 now as ugly and shapeless as any six months old 
 place I had ever seen in our Rocky Mountains ; and 
 to look at it and reflect that this identity of aspect 
 came from destruction in one case and advance in 
 the other, was strange and sad. 
 
 The woman who kept an estaminet here where I 
 went to drink coffee and get warm, was as lively and 
 competent as my friend Madeleine. 
 
 " Until '16 I stayed here in Peronne, monsieur, 
 and then I had to go to Amiens. At Amiens they 
 complain too much. We have suffered more here, 
 do you not think?" 
 
 "I certainly do." 
 
 "As you see, this cafe is made of wood — double 
 planks with paper. And the bedroom is very cold, 
 constructed by my husband. When the Boches were 
 here they made men and women and young girls 
 work beneath the stick. There are Boches and 
 Boches; but you know, the best of them don't come 
 high." 
 
 The startling resemblance of these French towns
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 357 
 
 that were being built again to those camps in our 
 West was a common sight which met me all through 
 the devastated regions. In their ruins they had been 
 noble and pitiful, and now this dignity was gone, and 
 the stage through which they were passing wore a 
 degraded and sordid appearance, where the beauty 
 which had been blasted away was replaced by un- 
 sightliness. Yet even this disorderly make-shift and 
 improvisation of existence had been touched with 
 grace already by the French hand. Amid the raw 
 square shacks and the rusted sheets of corrugated 
 iron that arched the beds and kitchens of these en- 
 camped townsfolk, flowers, blue and white and pink, 
 would be growing along some sill in a box, or in the 
 earth of some tended corner, and new-washed cur- 
 tains veiled the little windows with the caress of 
 neatness. 
 
 At Cuisy-en-Almont, I passed a new house two 
 stories high, and very pretty, which a man and his 
 two daughters had built entirely with their own 
 hands. In certain of the larger towns, such as Sois- 
 sons, those residents who had been well-to-do and 
 had some money still, were not waiting for help 
 from the government to rebuild their houses; and 
 wherever this was the case, the new residences stood 
 out very plainly among the general ruins. They were 
 apt to have red roofs, or to be of brick, and were 
 often ugly in shape ; and before long it became easy 
 to judge from a distant sight of any village how far 
 its restoration had progressed, so very marked and 
 so very small in amount was the new construction 
 amid the old destruction. Help from the government 
 came, but it had to come slowly, and by instalments. 
 If a destroyed house had been worth 25,000 francs in
 
 358 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 1914, to rebuild it in 1919 would cost three or four 
 times as much, according to the fluctuations in the 
 price of material. Its owner would be given its value, 
 in 1914, as damages for his loss, and supplementary 
 sums to cover the excess price of replacing it. But to 
 establish his claim to any of these subsidies, he must 
 return to the place where he had lived and stay there, 
 or within a radius of 50 kilometres. Many were liv- 
 ing in any fragment of a house that they could find, 
 and many in holes, asking merely for somewhere to 
 come back to for rest after each day's work. Many 
 villages from which the war had swept all life were 
 still lifeless and in dust, still totally dead, and some 
 of these would never be alive again; others were a 
 quarter alive, or half; while some towns, less de- 
 stroyed and with more resources of food and shelter, 
 were harboring not only their own population, but 
 refugees also; Arras, for example, had numbered 
 25,000 people before the war, and now had 50,000. 
 But Arras, like other towns where I ate or slept, 
 showed the shock of shells not only out-of-doors, 
 where the cathedral and Hotel de Ville had been 
 purposely destroyed, and many streets were walled 
 by hollow ruins, but indoors too, where big holes 
 were in the ceiling of one's bedroom and big cracks 
 in the mirrors Of the restaurant. I walked about in 
 Lens, where the water was gushing copiously out of 
 the vent as they pumped it from the flooded mines, 
 and where 1,000 houses had been built of the 12,000 
 that were needed, and 6,000 men were now working. 
 These mines were spending a million francs a day, 
 in a year it was expected to be many times that sum, 
 and they were making a loan of 20 milliards to cover 
 their coming expenses. At Ronssoy, north of St.
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 359 
 
 Quentin, there was a graveyard where the Germans 
 had emptied the bones from all coffins of lead, of 
 which metal they stood in need. They were as prac- 
 tical with their own dead. I heard that English pris- 
 oners saw these baled in wire, six naked corpses to 
 a bale, for shipment to various reduction plants. 
 They were kept away from those factories, but they 
 could smell them. 
 
 The aspect of the French country varied as greatly 
 as that of the towns, but it had recovered in far 
 greater proportion. The first labor had been spent 
 upon the more fertile and valuable areas, and there 
 were other wide stretches where nothing as yet had 
 been done at all. Miles of shell holes and barbed 
 wire that I had seen in 1919 were now smoothed and 
 plowed, waiting for the spring; as the season ad- 
 vanced and I passed them several times again, I saw 
 these acres rise into life and become a waving sea 
 of crops. Nothing among or near them would have 
 led a traveller to suspect that they had been a wilder- 
 ness, two years ago, except the large coils of barbed 
 wire which had been removed from them, and often 
 lay piled along the roads. These roads ran through 
 other miles where the wire and the shells and the 
 holes still spread across the desolate surface, over 
 which no change had come save a growth of rank 
 weeds and grass, robbing this land of its tragic 
 appearance without redeeming it from its barrenness. 
 So it was by Beaumont Hamel, on that road beyond 
 Mailly-Maillet towards Arras. Not even the road 
 had been there in April 1919, and now it was the 
 only thing there. It was worse beyond Bethune and 
 Neuve Chapelle ; indeed, in that direction, there was 
 still almost perfect desolation all the way through
 
 360 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Armentieres and Messines to Ypres and the Menin 
 road and the ridge of Paschendael. Towns and lands 
 alike still lay in wreck and obliteration unredeemed, 
 not a fragment seemed to have been touched among 
 the mounds and the holes and the wire; along the 
 main road I saw a thighbone sticking out of a pool. 
 This part of the battle-ground was one of the few 
 that remained where it was still difficult to find one's 
 way; we were turned back twice, and once had to 
 make a long detour in order to gain a road that was 
 open. This happened to me in only one other place, 
 between the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames; 
 through all my other journeys, although one came 
 at times to roads that were still impassable, there 
 were other roads open near at hand; progress had 
 virtually ceased to be the picking out from many 
 ways the only one not closed, and had become the 
 avoiding among many ways the only one not open. 
 France had re-established her channels of communi- 
 cation in a very large measure, both her thorough- 
 fares and her railroads. These latter on their main 
 lines were nearly normal in the service of their trains, 
 and the speed, though still not as fast as it had been 
 before the war, had decidedly increased. It was only 
 a certain small number of branch lines that were 
 still unopened. 
 
 While the various voices were busy reporting that 
 France was not trying to pick herself up, but was 
 lying in the ground, supinely waiting until Germany 
 should pay her reparations, this is what I found she 
 had accomplished by January 1st, 1921 : 
 
 Of the 277 million cubic metres of trenches to 
 refill, 219 million had been done ; of the 310 million 
 square metres of barbed wire to uproot and remove,
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 361 
 
 249 million had been done ; of the 3 million 8 hundred 
 thousand devastated hectares to be brought back to 
 safety and fertility, 3 million four hundred and fif- 
 teen thousand had been purged of live shells and 
 projectiles, and 3 million 126 thousand had been made 
 level and normal. Or, to put it in another way — 
 
 Of shells removed 89% 
 
 Of land levelled 82.2% 
 
 Of barbed wire removed 80.1% 
 
 Of trenches filled 79% 
 
 Of wreckage cleared away 60% 
 
 in 18 months, with a male population reduced by 4 
 million, and a debt increased tenfold. And again — 
 
 Of 1,757,000 hectares destroyed, 1,669,000 were levelled, 
 1,405,000 were cultivated, 1,000,000 were sown. 
 
 The French harvest in 1919 had been 24% of the 
 harvest before the war; in 1920 it was 50%. 
 By January 1st, 1921 — 
 
 334,000 hectares were sown in hay. 
 
 304,000 
 
 i i 
 
 1 1 
 
 < 
 
 " wheat. 
 
 57,000 
 
 1 1 
 
 i < 
 
 i < 
 
 " beets. 
 
 39,000 
 
 1 1 
 
 a 
 
 (« 
 
 " rye. 
 
 37,000 
 
 < « 
 
 <« 
 
 1 1 
 
 " barley. 
 
 150,000 
 
 (< 
 
 < < 
 
 i< 
 
 " other crops. 
 
 Of main line railroads restored 96.6% 
 
 " local railroads 28% 
 
 " canals and navigable streams 93% 
 
 1 ' engineering works 70% 
 
 " roads , , 64.7%: 
 
 Three thousand six hundred and three tunnels and 
 bridges had been destroyed, one thousand four hun- 
 dred and ninety-eight remained to be repaired.
 
 362 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 That is a part of what idle France had been doing 
 in 18 months— from the spring of 1919, when she 
 was able to begin work, until January 1st, 1921 ; and 
 here is more of it: 
 
 In November 1918, twenty thousand five hundred 
 of her manufactories were paralyzed, either knocked 
 down and without machinery, or left standing without 
 machinery. After 18 months, 18% of these were 
 going concerns, 26% in partial activity; but 56% 
 were still stationary. The German work of destruc- 
 tion and robbery could not be repaired very rapidly, 
 and so, while German factories were whirling full 
 speed at night as well as in the day, earning those 
 30 and 40 per cent, dividends, more than half the 
 industry of France was still a total wreck. 
 
 But it was in making new houses for her homeless 
 millions that France was most behind. She had so 
 little money to spend at all, that she devoted most 
 of it to what would immediately increase her income 
 with the least outlay; therefore her first care had 
 to be for her fields and her channels of communica- 
 tion. Meanwhile, those homeless French lived near 
 their place of work in any shelter that could be found 
 or improvised. In their anxiety to return to their 
 homes and reclaim their land they came back from 
 their exile in a stream with which no reconstruction 
 of the demolished farms and villages could keep 
 pace; especially in a country that had lost one-fifth 
 of its revenue, and had been spending 9 billion francs 
 a year in self-defence. This outstripping of the 
 sheltering capacity in the devastated regions by the 
 returning peasants caused a very heavy shortage of 
 every kind of habitation, adequate and inadequate. 
 Five hundred and ninety thousand dwellings had been
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 363 
 
 wholly or partially destroyed — 293,000 were wiped 
 out, the remainder left in various stages of ruin. 
 By January 1921, 40,000 of these were rebuilt, 280,- 
 000 made partly habitable, and to this housing ca- 
 pacity 40,000 barracks, 60,000 shacks, and 29,000 
 shelters of other substances had been added ; this had 
 to accommodate one million seven hundred thousand 
 people. The total insufficiency of housing in ratio 
 to the housed was 24% ; of repaired or provisional 
 houses in ratio to the population in 1914, 33.1% ; 
 the insufficiency of normal houses, 96%. Since Jan- 
 uary 1921, the energy of France in restoring herself 
 has never flagged; today more than six-sevenths of 
 her schools are reopened, nearly half of her destroyed 
 homes are permanently or temporarily repaired, 
 more than three-quarters of her productive soil has 
 been reclaimed. This she has accomplished in spite 
 of having been compelled to buy from abroad much 
 wheat, sugar, coal, and other necessaries which she 
 had produced at home before the Germans destroyed 
 her machinery and sources of production. To re- 
 build the destroyed areas, the bridges, roads, rail- 
 ways, telegraphs, to set industries, commerce, farm- 
 ers on their feet, France up to the year 1922 had 
 devoted fifty-six billion francs since the Armistice. 
 
 Yet Germans have intimated, and others have 
 echoed the intimation, that France has been lying 
 idle, waiting for Germany to pay the reparations! 
 It is singular that Germany should expect such a 
 tale to be believed, because the idea that any nation 
 which had to go on living should voluntarily expire 
 makes a very feeble appeal to human reason; more 
 singular still is it that any one should have actually 
 believed it. It is somewhat as if a man who had
 
 364 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 been crushed by his neighbor's automobile should 
 wait to be paid the damages before he went to a 
 hospital. Germany has given the world another sug- 
 gestion about France, certainly more plausible on 
 its face. France refused Germany's offer to send 
 workmen and rebuild her ruins for her; had she 
 accepted this offer, says Germany, France would by 
 now be rebuilt. Without taking into consideration 
 the problem of feeding a large army of strangers 
 when food was scarce and expensive, and also the 
 feelings of the French at having to see again and 
 to live side by side with those who had wrecked their 
 homes, killed their brothers, and debauched their 
 sisters, there is something else ; with that offer which 
 Germany made went stipulations about the comfort 
 and food and general well-being of her workmen, 
 while they should be in France, which it would have 
 been perfectly impossible to meet, and the Germans 
 knew it. They did not intend that France should 
 accept their offer, any more than they had intended 
 on July 23d, 1914, that Serbia should accept Aus- 
 tria's ultimatum. Acceptance of the scheme would 
 have flung Germany into the same flurry of indigna- 
 tion at the "duplicity" of France that they impro- 
 vised when Serbia took them aback by accepting the 
 ultimatum. The offer was what we call a "frame- 
 up," something to be used for effect, quite like the 
 incident of Casablanca in 1907. That was a "cause 
 of war" with France which Germany had been care- 
 fully engineering. Germans with a past, who had 
 enlisted in France 's Foreign Legion, like many others 
 with a past, were induced by German secret agents 
 to desert, and were to be represented to the world 
 as being worthy subjects of the Kaiser, whom the
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 365 
 
 French Army had kidnapped and enslaved. The 
 trick was played prematurely, before the Kaiser felt 
 ready to light; and he backed down in the face of 
 the energetic position then taken by M. Clemenceau, 
 who was President of the Council. 
 
 "Born to lie," wrote the Roman general in the 
 first century, and this pattern running through the 
 German character shows no sign of fading out, after 
 two thousand years. Its color has glowed brightly 
 whenever, after some conference at which Germany 
 has asseverated to the Allies that it is out of her 
 power to pay her reparation, they have taken, or 
 have even threatened to take, steps to enforce pay- 
 ment under the sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles, 
 the cash has been forthcoming at once. 
 
 "You have answered all sorts of questions," I said 
 to a member of the French Government, "and now 
 I am going to ask you one more — and even then it 
 may be that I shall not have finished ! ' ' 
 
 He bowed. "You know I am always at your 
 service. ' ' 
 
 "It is this: how about your taxes?" 
 
 "That is our weak point," he answered with im- 
 mediate frankness. "We have not been able to col- 
 lect our tax from the profiteers as successfully as 
 England or yourselves. But Germany has this same 
 weak point, as well as a number of others. Don't 
 forget that!" 
 
 "I don't!" 
 
 "And that she is the culprit while we are her 
 victims. ' ' 
 
 "No American who has seen your devastated re- 
 gions will forget that." 
 
 "Also, it is not that we are conniving with our
 
 366 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 great industrials, that they may escape the tax and 
 hide their profits in foreign investments. That is 
 the second deep moral difference between Germany 
 and ourselves in this matter of taxes. First, she is 
 the guilty debtor, we the injured creditor; second, 
 she deliberately winks at the diversion of large sums 
 of money into these foreign investments, which by 
 the treaty should go to us for reparation. She 
 violates the Treaty of Versailles every day. With 
 us it is inefficiency. We are violating no treaty, and 
 it is only we who suffer from our own — well, call 
 it timidity, if you like. The French people hate direct 
 taxation, and ministers fear to push them too far. 
 Our leaders, like yours, I fancy, find their position 
 difficult when it comes to a clash between domestic 
 and foreign policies." 
 
 " England has the same embarrassment," I said. 
 
 "But not Germany," he answered. " Whatever it 
 looks like on the surface, they stand together at bot- 
 tom, because they are just as much against the world 
 in peace as they were in the war, and this keeps them 
 unified. Yes, I admit that we fall short of you in 
 the matter of taxes. Only half a million Frenchmen 
 paid a direct income tax in 1920, when about four 
 million ought to have paid. But who does that hurt 
 except ourselves? And in spite of it, we have not 
 remained at a standstill. ' ' 
 
 "I am very well aware of that!" I exclaimed. 
 
 1 'Yes; but do you know that our exports have 
 increased some 16 per cent, over last year, while our 
 imports have decreased 45 per cent. 1 That will come 
 to an export balance of nearly a billion francs against 
 an import balance of almost 28 billion last year. And 
 by our bookkeeping we have continued so far to keep
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 367 
 
 our heads above bankruptcy. Our public debt 
 amounts to — in dollars — $1212 per capita against 
 England's $875 and yours of $240. But of this debt 
 of ours — about forty-eight billion and a half dollars 
 — only 8.4 per cent, is external debt. And — have no 
 fear! — France will meet her obligations. It is not 
 in her tradition to repudiate. Only — may we not have 
 time to build ourselves up before paying? Who is 
 the real debtor — France, or the one who forced us 
 all to spend these billions to save our liberty? And 
 one word more, monsieur " 
 
 He paused a moment, as if to be able to continue 
 his calm manner and speech : 
 
 "Do you think if Germany were just across the 
 river from certain bankers and politicians, that they 
 would be quite so ready to invite us all to deny our- 
 selves for her sake?" 
 
 " Don't let them make you give up your army!" 
 said I, "whatever else you may have to deny your- 
 selves." 
 
 ' ' Oh, we shall keep our army ! Mr. Lloyd George 
 is not our Prime Minister, you know." 
 
 "He almost seems so, at times," I ventured to 
 murmur. 
 
 He let this go. "They tell us, monsieur, that we 
 are asking from Germany more than the true price 
 of our damage. That is very easy for financiers to 
 say, but not so easy to prove when exchange is in 
 such rapid and constant fluctuation that what we 
 have correctly calculated on Monday will have be- 
 come false on Tuesday. Let Germany pay us until 
 our regions that she devastated are rebuilt, and then 
 we will excuse her whatever excess we asked." 
 
 "Nobody has ever suggested that," I said.
 
 368 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "Is it not perfectly simple and practical? " 
 1 ' Perfectly. But they say that Germany can never 
 pay the true cost of rebuilding." 
 
 1 'And in reply to that I say, monsieur, that when 
 France, short of men, short of money, and with her 
 industries paralyzed as you have seen, has been able 
 in two years to rebuild herself in the manner that 
 you have also seen, that Germany, who has not a 
 wheel cracked in her vast industrial machine, can 
 pay perfectly well, and in a shorter time than they 
 have allowed her. No, monsieur! This is how it 
 is: Either Mr. Lloyd George and his friends know 
 better, or they do not; either they understand Ger- 
 many, or they do not. It comes to the same thing in 
 result — that they are the best friends that Germany 
 has, and are aiding her in her plan which France 
 clearly perceives. That plan is to delay her pay- 
 ments and so compel us, who can not go on living 
 without a roof over our heads, to pay for the new 
 roof ourselves — and with the generous help that you 
 and other friends are sending us. Germany intends 
 the Allies to heal their own wounds — and to deal 
 them some new ones, perhaps, before the old ones 
 are cured. Meanwhile, her democratic workmen are 
 very respectful to those above them. When they 
 declined to launch for Monsieur Stinnes his new 
 ship the von Tirpitz because of its name, he dismissed 
 3,000 of them. Since that they have launched the 
 Hindenburg and the Ludendorff for him with the 
 most correct and obliging politeness." 
 
 I slept two nights among the ruins in the depart- 
 ment of the Aisne, whence the violence of war had 
 scarcely been absent at all during the four years.
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 369 
 
 In that region, out of 841 communes, 814 had been 
 demolished; of 590,000 people, 290,000 had fled; of 
 736,000 hectares, 730,000 had been plowed up by 
 projectiles ; of 10,000 kilometres of road 6,000 were 
 still impassable, and to rebuild them one million 
 seven hundred thousand tons of stone would be re- 
 quired. Of 489 kilometres of main line railroads, 
 489 — the whole — had been destroyed, and of the 648 
 kilometres of branch lines, 609 had been destroyed. 
 The little town of Coucy-le-Chateau — and nowhere 
 in France was there a gem of more exquisite beauty 
 — stood on its hill as silent and dead as Herculaneum, 
 destroyed by no volcano, but by the eruption of 
 wanton, baffled German hate. 
 
 At Anizy-le-Chateau on the Sunday that I spent 
 in this region, the croix-de-guerre was given to 21 
 of the devastated communes by Marshal Fayolle. 
 The people came from their own ruins through the 
 dead forests to the ruins of Anizy, and assembled 
 round a platform in the sunlight to listen to the 
 speeches. These were eloquent and moving, made 
 by prominent men who spoke to the bereaved and 
 hard-working people of their beloved France. Bright 
 flags covered the little broken place, hanging quietly 
 in the warm and motionless air. Beyond these and 
 across the tiny stream, the Ailette, rose the forest of 
 Pinon, grim and leafless, never to be green again, 
 every tree a mere dead spike above the marshy green 
 of the new grass by the river. Twenty thousand 
 dead had been in the forest of Pinon in September 
 1918. The great silence was living here still; but 
 as those Frenchmen spoke of France and I listened 
 to the solemn and passionate devotion of their words, 
 and looked at the forest beyond, it was easy to im-
 
 370 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 agine unheard music floating from the depths; the 
 songs of the mothers bidding their dead sons to sleep 
 and dream proud dreams because they lay in the 
 bosom of their country that they had saved; the 
 songs of young mothers over their cradles, bidding 
 their new-born to sleep and dream proud dreams 
 because they would in their turn live for France and, 
 if she asked them, die for her. The heart of the 
 ceremony was the conferring of the war cross to 
 each one who stood forth to represent his commune. 
 Its name would be called from the roll, and at this 
 the representative approached Marshal Fayolle. 
 Then the roll of the commune 's dead would be called, 
 name after name; and after each came the answer: 
 
 " Jules Touzet." 
 
 "Mort pour la France." 
 
 "Leon Jourdois." 
 
 "Mort pour la France." 
 
 "Andre Renard." 
 
 "Mort pour la France." 
 
 Always the same reply, "dead for France," com- 
 mune after commune, until all the twenty-one had 
 been decorated with the cross through their repre- 
 sentative by Marshal Fayolle. Not only did it not 
 seem long, but time ceased to be, the sacredness of 
 it was a moment of eternity ; and through it sounded 
 the unheard music from the forest of Pinon, and it 
 seemed as if the whole company were sitting in the 
 cathedral of Reims, invisible, a wreck no longer, made 
 whole and rising glorious beyond the grave. 
 
 The people of the communes had wished so much 
 to make the marshal and all their guests feel that 
 they were welcome, that they had spent themselves 
 to provide, not a meal, but a feast. They had done
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 371 
 
 far more than was needed, they had determined that 
 none of their poverty which could be hidden should 
 be seen today ; and their endless bill-of-f are, printed 
 with such zest, contained both a smile and a heart- 
 break. 
 
 It had been the plan of the ministering spirit who 
 presides over the American Relief of this department 
 to reduce and simplify, for the sake of expense, each 
 detail of help that should cease to be needed. _ It 
 had been hoped that after two years the surgical 
 help might cease. Nothing else could ; not the little 
 shacks for school children; not the little new brick 
 libraries scattered through the wasted region; not 
 the automobile service, or the assembly rooms where 
 the people came at night to see moving pictures, or 
 the dispensary, or the dentist, nothing that meant 
 help to work, or to instruct, or to amuse, or to keep 
 well; but war wounds had either got well or had 
 been placed in the care of more central organizations. 
 Nevertheless, surgical equipment had to be continued 
 by the American Relief in the Aisne, because of the 
 bombs that were being removed from the fields, the 
 unexploded hand grenades. A special force was 
 being employed all through the devastated regions 
 to find and take away these live shells. In the de- 
 partment of the Aisne, 648 men had been doing this 
 work in 1920, of whom 100 had been killed and 38 
 wounded. The French shells were more dangerous 
 than the German on account of their mechanism; 
 they had a spring which caused the fuse to ignite. 
 In time and under exposure, this spring became rusty, 
 so that sometimes the lightest touch, or even a jar 
 caused by the earth pressing against it where a man 
 had set his foot, would snap it, and the man might
 
 372 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 lose a leg, or be blown to atoms. Consequently the 
 surgical equipment had to be retained. 
 
 In the windows and on the counters of the book- 
 shops all over France were the signs of a great 
 change. Innumerable pamphlets and periodicals 
 were now published to teach and encourage out-of- 
 door competitive sports. One of these was called, 
 "How to become a good player of Football Asso- 
 ciation," another, "Football Rugby," another 
 1 ' Feminine Basket Ball. ' ' These were but a few that 
 I noticed. Not one of these publications had I ever 
 seen before, and until the war the French had paid 
 but scant attention to the games of England and 
 America. Competitive sport had not been a habit 
 or a tradition with them, and to this fact one weak- 
 ness in the national character may be ascribed — the 
 absence of the instinct of team-work, of co-operation, 
 straight through the entire social and economic struc- 
 ture of the country. 
 
 Two officers, a Frenchman and an American, were 
 talking together as they watched a line of our dough- 
 boys standing in a heavy rain growing wetter and 
 wetter, each soldier patiently waiting his turn to 
 have his supper handed to him. This astonished the 
 Frenchman. 
 
 "Are your men willing to keep in line like that?" 
 he asked the American. 
 
 "Yes. Why not?" 
 
 "French soldiers would not endure that deluge of 
 rain. They would all crowd each other to get first. ' ' 
 
 What they saw of the British and of ourselves 
 during the war, of the games we played, of our gen- 
 erally athletic habit, has evidently made a deep im- 
 pression upon the French. They constantly spoke
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 373 
 
 to me of the size of our men, and of their broad 
 shoulders. It has not stopped there, they have done 
 more than talk about it; broad shoulders and the 
 instinct of team-work and fair play have seemed to 
 them something worth acquiring, and they have set 
 about doing this systematically. Football has been 
 made compulsory in the French Army. "When the 
 government is able to pay Soissons the money which 
 rebuilding will cost, it will also return to the Ameri- 
 can Relief in the department of the Aisne their outlay 
 in developing the play grounds at Soissons and at 
 Reims. The 67th regiment was stationed there at 
 the time of my visit, and its team played a game of 
 basket ball with a team from Couy— a neighboring 
 village of which not one stone is left upon another. 
 The score stood 9 to 9 close to the finish, when the 
 soldiers in the Couy team made a desperate rally — 
 and won. 
 
 ''What made you play so hard just then?" an 
 American asked them. 
 
 "Because, if we won, each of us was to get a per- 
 mission of forty-eight hours. ' ' 
 
 The ministering spirit of the American Relief 
 found at first a grave obstacle in the absence of all 
 sense of co-operation, or wish for it, among the 
 peasants. They had always done their own work, 
 they had no desire to do their neighbor's. But 
 France was too short-handed now for such indi- 
 vidualism; if the fields were to be reclaimed, if the 
 crops were to be sown, the farmers must come to 
 each other 's help, and this they were learning to do. 
 They were also adjusting themselves to waiting their 
 turn to use the farm machinery which was being 
 supplied to the department by the American Relief.
 
 374 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 If competitive sport and the habit of co-operation 
 outlast the emergency of the peace, and persist when 
 normal conditions are wholly resumed, something so 
 new will have taken root in France, that a marked 
 and salutary modification may be looked for in the 
 national character. Quite as odd and novel as the 
 sight of the books on sport for sale in the shops was 
 the spectacle of little boys of eight and ten years old, 
 kicking footballs in the various French towns where 
 I stayed; more interesting still was a game played 
 near Paris between an all England and an all French 
 team, in which the French outplayed their adversa- 
 ries during the second half, and at which fifty thou- 
 sand spectators looked on. It was a sight as new 
 as aeroplanes were once; it may in time become as 
 familiar. If the war so far has done anything but 
 harm to the world, it is in the awakening of the 
 French to the value and the practice of outdoor 
 competitive sport. 
 
 Another new sight in France was a large official 
 placard in the railway stations and in other public 
 places, exhorting young husbands to beget many 
 children, and specifying the graded sums that would 
 be paid by way of support and reward to parents 
 with families of three, four, five, and more. Not 
 infrequently I saw couples who were evidently quite 
 fresh from the marriage service reading these no- 
 tices. Once at Meaux, I spoke to such a pair. 
 
 "In Germany," I said to them, "I understand that 
 this sort of encouragement is not needed." 
 
 : It appears so, monsieur," said the bridegroom. 
 'Well, young man," I returned, "I am sure you 
 know the words of the Marseillaise: 'Allons, enfants 
 de la patrie.' " 

 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 375 
 
 a, 
 
 C'est juste, monsieur!" cried the bridegroom 
 with a gleaming laugh. The bride had walked a 
 few steps away so that she might seem to be out of 
 hearing. 
 
 But to Nicolas, who brought my hot water morn- 
 ing and evening in Paris, and to Paul, who took me 
 so often and through so many miles of the devas- 
 tated regions in his car, I said more. Nicolas had 
 been telling me how he came to be taken prisoner in 
 the early days of the war. 
 "I was of the 8th corps, monsieur." 
 "That was away off in the East, wasn't it?" 
 "Yes, monsieur, in the Vosges. We were led by 
 persons who made some blunder every day. We 
 were marched round and round without any point. 
 Once we rambled about in various directions for 
 fifteen days. We had been at Gerard Mer and at 
 other places in the Vosges, and finally one morning 
 in a fog we were on a plain near Ste. Die, and the 
 battle of Luneville began. We were left without any 
 guide, with the Germans on eminences all round us, 
 and our whole battalion was captured. Others, who 
 were better led and were not helpless, escaped." 
 "What did they do with you in Germany?" 
 "They put us to work. I was at Ingoldstadt, and 
 also at Bayreuth. I did work in the railroads, and 
 of course we never got any news that we believed, 
 but we learned how it was going by the difference in 
 the manner of the Boches. In 1915 the German 
 soldiers who passed us on their way to the front 
 used to shake their fists at us. They would have 
 massacred us if they had been permitted to do so, 
 but we were too useful. Thus we knew things were 
 going well with them. Then there were times in '16
 
 376 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 and '17 when those going to the front did not shake 
 their fists at us. Their heads hung down. By that 
 we could tell that things were not going so well for 
 them. ' ' 
 
 "Were there no German workmen with you?" 
 
 "But yes, monsieur, naturally. Ah, those work- 
 men in Germany, they are slaves! See! whenever 
 the ingenieur was coming near us — every time and 
 each time he came, no matter how often — they bowed 
 low to him, just as low as the first time. In France, 
 after you have once touched your hat and said good- 
 morning, you don't keep on doing it. C'est une 
 platitude. But they would say to us, 'Hush! The 
 foreman is coming' ; and they'd start bowing. As if 
 we cared for the foreman ! They work through fear. 
 Ah, they are slaves. Voila. And that is why they 
 are doing so well now in their business, because those 
 workmen work through fear. And after the Armis- 
 tice they saw their soldiers come back heads high, 
 with their arms and banners, wearing flowers. So 
 they strewed the streets with flowers and hailed their 
 heroic army and believed that the war had finished 
 en queue de poisson. They will come again, mon- 
 sieur, one knows that. And they outnumber us." 
 
 "Whose fault is that, Nicolas?" 
 
 "It is not our fault that they are barbarians and 
 have a child every year. ' ' 
 
 "Well, Nicolas! Then you will call me a barba- 
 rian because I have six children ! Listen ! You have 
 heard of Mr. Roosevelt?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, monsieur. Every one has heard of 
 him. He was here and made a fine speech at the 
 Sorbonne." 
 
 "Mr. Roosevelt told us Americans that we were
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 377 
 
 committing race suicide. He said that the richer we 
 became the fewer children we had, while the foreign- 
 ers in our slums were having many, and that it would 
 be merely a question of time when the old American 
 stock would die out and our Bepublic fall to pieces 
 in the hands of races that did not have the tradition 
 or the power of self-government in their blood. Now 
 I think at this rate you French will commit race 
 suicide. You wish us to come back and help you fight 
 the Germans if they invade you again. But if I say 
 to American mothers that we ought to do this, that we 
 ought to save France, they will reply, why should 
 we bear sons to be killed in France? Let French 
 mothers bear more sons ! After all, Nicolas, in Brit- 
 tany your peasants do have large families." 
 
 "They are Catholics, monsieur.' ' 
 
 "Well, on too many of the crosses in your ceme- 
 teries, I read the names of men who are described 
 as the only son of the family." 
 
 "It is because the parents wish to have the little 
 share of land which they have owned for generations 
 descend as a whole to that son. They love it and they 
 wish to keep it whole, and not have to divide it among 
 several as they are compelled to do by the Code 
 Napoleon." 
 
 "I don't think our American mothers will be im- 
 pressed by that argument, Nicolas." 
 
 He now became philosophic. "Yes, monsieur, it 
 is true. The Frenchman is an egoist. He does not 
 wish to be burdened with the support of a family so 
 large that he has no time to enjoy himself. In Ger- 
 many life is easier, and their ways do not induce them 
 to limit their families. And when a family grows to 
 eight — or perhaps it is ten — children, the Kaiser has
 
 378 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 always stood godfather to that last child. So you 
 see, with their feeling about the Kaiser, they have 
 had a strong incentive. We, with our love of our 
 land, have that reason for making only one son to 
 inherit all of it. ' ' 
 
 "Now that the Kaiser is gone, Nicolas, perhaps 
 those families of ten will stop. ' ' 
 
 "That is not very probable, monsieur. You see, 
 when one has got the habit — " and Nicolas shrugged, 
 ' * Ah, oui, ' ' he concluded. His generalizations almost 
 always ended with ' ' ah, oui. ' ' 
 
 Paul, my chauffeur, also had his philosophy, like 
 most Frenchmen of every class, and, like most 
 Frenchmen, he had the art of expressing it. We had 
 come into Amiens one afternoon, and I got out on the 
 steps at the west front of the cathedral. 
 
 "Paul," said I, "I wonder if I could guess your 
 age?" 
 
 "If monsieur will try," he smiled. 
 
 "I think that you must be about thirty-two." 
 
 "That is my age, monsieur," he said, with a tone 
 of surprise. 
 
 "So you were expecting me to get it wrong?" 
 
 "I thought you would say that I was older." He 
 stopped, and into his face came that look which I had 
 begun to know in April 1919 — the look of having been 
 changed by sights and by knowledge that would never 
 be forgotten, and that were always present. Then 
 he said quietly and simply : 
 
 ' ' The war has made old people out of many young 
 people." 
 
 "Yes, Paul. And I suppose the only way to look 
 at that, is to think that any man like you, who were 
 in your twenties when that whirlwind caught you up
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 379 
 
 from ordinary life, would be no true man at all if he 
 were not many years older in the spirit when the 
 whirlwind set him down." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Are you married?" 
 
 "No, monsieur. Oh, no. Not that." 
 
 ' ' Well, but you 're thirty- two. It is quite time. ' ' 
 
 "Perhaps. I have never turned my mind in that 
 direction. It may be that I shall come to it. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Don 't wait too long ! ' ' 
 
 "He, monsieur, le mariage est si bizarre!" And 
 Paul, like Nicolas, punctuated his generalization with 
 a shrug. 
 
 The remarkable and unanswerable adjective which 
 he applied to marriage stuck in my mind, and on a 
 subsequent day, I said to him: 
 
 "Paul, if the idea of a wife does not appeal to you, 
 here is something that will. I see the old people 
 that the war has made out of young people. I see 
 them everywhere, and it is very sad. But I am sure 
 that the years of rebuilding which lie before you all 
 will not be as dreary as they look. Don 't think about 
 them as a whole, don't imagine their united weight 
 as pressing down upon every day. It will be dis- 
 persed, only a little of it will be in each day, and it 
 will always be growing less." 
 
 1 ' That is true, ' ' said Paul. 
 
 "And to see France reviving, to be part of it, to 
 cause some of it yourself, will carry you through each 
 day, and you will find, beside plenty of hard work, 
 plenty of laughter awaiting you. Perhaps even 
 plenty of children ! ' ' 
 
 "Children will not be a laughing matter!" said 
 Paul.
 
 380 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 It was easy to talk to him, and to any one before 
 whom a possible future stretched, a span of years 
 wherein to rebuild and refill an emptied life; — but 
 there were others. There was a custodian in the 
 museum at Dijon. He grew to know me as we walked 
 among the pictures and while he told me about the 
 dukes of Burgundy, whose tombs are there; and one 
 day he talked about himself. He was sixty-seven, he 
 had seen the Germans come in 1870, he had seen 
 France recover from the war only to be thrown 
 prostrate again in his old age. 
 
 "There are people," he said, "who can make new 
 friends when they have lost old ones. But if one 
 loses one's only son, one has nothing left. Life is a 
 burden. One is not sure that one wishes it any 
 more. ,, 
 
 What could I say to him? 
 
 Again there were others, many others all over 
 France, who had gone a step beyond him, and had 
 become sure that they did not wish life any more: 
 Clerks, small officials, employees faithful and of many 
 years' service, whose fixed salary was no longer 
 enough. It had sufficed them, they had felt safe, they 
 had built their lives upon it, a roof, a family, books, 
 perhaps a garden. Suddenly the bills for food, for 
 all necessities, trebled, and they found themselves 
 past their middle years — and unable to pay. The 
 salary grew no larger, they faced implacable debt and 
 want at fifty. They had no spring with which to 
 start afresh. They drew down their window shades 
 — and freed themselves from the burden of life. 
 Perhaps some might have persisted but for the four 
 years ' draft upon their fortitude. To meet the war
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 381 
 
 they had drawn upon their courage every day ; there 
 was no balance left for further stress. 
 
 It is hard for us, whose lives and property no in- 
 vading enemy has ever disturbed, to think of what 
 living near that war was like. Abbeville was a large 
 place near enough to it to be bombarded every night 
 at times. The shells came in the dark hours. The 
 citizens attended to their daily affairs in town, but 
 they dared not sleep there. Every evening a special 
 train took them away, out into the country, and there 
 in the fields, or in any shelter that they could find, 
 they slept; and each morning the train took them 
 back to their business. The aunt and uncle of a 
 young lady who told me this came into Abbeville by 
 the train one day, and found the house that they had 
 locked up the night before was no longer to be seen ; 
 it had been dashed to atoms. 
 
 What inhabitants of Philadelphia or St. Louis, or 
 anywhere here, can imagine what it was to live 
 through weeks and years of such experience? Had 
 they done so, they would hardly be asking if France 
 intends to "insist" upon the whole of her " in- 
 demnity " from Germany — that "indemnity" which 
 has already been cut down by about one-third of the 
 sum set by the Treaty of Versailles. And those 
 Americans who talk about the line between us and 
 Canada, unguarded for a century, and ask why 
 France wishes an army, would they like to change 
 places with France, and have an unguarded line 
 between them and a race that has invaded them every 
 50 years for 15 centuries ? 
 
 At Massevaux in Alsace, I found the cure's door, 
 and wrote "de la part de M. Clemenceau" on my 
 card, and sent it in. The cure came, and I said :
 
 382 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 ' * Clemenceau sent me here. He told me to come 
 and see two of his friends in Massevaux and Thann, 
 and say that he had bidden me to do so, and they 
 would talk freely." 
 
 ''Come in," said the cure. And he took me first 
 upstairs to his room. There the windows looked out 
 upon his church. 
 
 After explaining what had brought me to France, I 
 continued : 
 
 "Is that the church where you took Clemenceau 
 and the generals that day of 1918, when Massevaux 
 had ceased to be Germany and was France again after 
 46 years?" 
 
 "But certainly," said the cure. 
 
 "You went with him and the generals and their 
 soldiers in there, and after standing silent for a while, 
 you all sang the Marseillaise together?" 
 
 "But certainly." 
 
 "What deep and great happiness, mon pere, to be 
 able to sing that song aloud again and not to have to 
 say French prayers in silence any more ! ' ' 
 
 Then we spoke of Alsace, France, and the future. 
 
 ' ' Have you talked with many Alsatians ? " he asked. 
 
 "I wish that I could. I am afraid to begin politics 
 with them — and I think they are with me. Who can 
 be sure who any stranger is ? Germany haunts their 
 minds, I feel that, and it haunts their manners also. 
 What do you think of this? When I changed trains 
 at Cernay to come here, there was a woman getting 
 into the car. I drew back and motioned her to go 
 first — and she said, 'After you, monsieur, ' and waited 
 till I had preceded her. That is a little thing, mon 
 pere, but does it not reveal much?" 
 
 He nodded. "If they became willing to tell you
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 383 
 
 what they have in their hearts, you would find that 
 they all expect the Germans to come back in ten 
 years." 
 
 "In October 1914," I said, "when Mr. Wilson was 
 writing those notes to Max of Baden, I published a 
 little piece in our papers in which I said that if we 
 trusted Berlin when it cried 'Kamerad,' our children 
 would pay for it with their blood. ' ' 
 
 "People in Mulhouse spoke to me of such a piece," 
 said the cure. ' ' They said it was by an American. — 
 Alsatians believe that Germany will never pay the 
 reparations, but that they would have forced France 
 to pay most of it by now, had the situation been 
 reversed." 
 
 "You are not the first person who has said that 
 to me," I responded. "The present situation seems 
 to me to be chiefly the fault of Mr. Wilson and Mr. 
 Lloyd George. We are more fortunate than Eng- 
 land. England still has Mr. Lloyd George. I was 
 indiscreet enough to say to M. Clemenceau that it 
 seemed to me Mr. Lloyd George, if he continued on 
 the way he is going, would end by achieving what 
 Napoleon Bonaparte failed to achieve — the destruc- 
 tion of the British Empire." 
 
 The cure looked at me. "And what did M. Cle- 
 menceau say to that ? ' ' 
 
 "Naturally he was discreet. But he talked much 
 of India. ' ' 
 
 "Have you ever heard any one say that Mr. Wilson 
 sent a message through Lloyd George that if the 
 Allies did not accept an armistice, he would withdraw 
 the American troops?" 
 
 "I have heard that several times, but never at first- 
 hand. I hope it is not true. ' '
 
 384 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 "Listen," said the cure, "in September 1918, Foch 
 was here, in Massevaux, and so was General Castel- 
 nau. I said to Foch, 'how is it going ? " I hold them, ' 
 he answered, 'they are done.' 'Then why go on?' I 
 asked him. 'Because we must enter Germany and 
 finish there. Otherwise they will say that we did not 
 win, and there will be no finish. ' So said Castelnau 
 also. And then, why did they not finish in Germany ? 
 The greatest victory in history was turned into an 
 abortion." 
 
 "It is very grievous for me to think," said I, "that 
 we are responsible for that." 
 
 "Oh, we all understand now that it was not you. 
 Mr. Wilson was without your mandate." 
 
 "We could not tell you so," said I. 
 
 "Nor could we French tell him so. By his own 
 arbitrary act he placed us all in this false position." 
 
 "Then you think that Foch " 
 
 "Foch — what was he to do but to be loyal? He 
 sank his own judgment, he stood by what was forced 
 upon him, and said to the world that an armistice 
 gave us all that we wanted without the sacrifice of 
 more lives. But do you think that he, who told me 
 in September that it must finish in Germany or 
 remain unfinished, had changed his mind ? Have you 
 ever heard that one afternoon when Clemenceau and 
 Wilson and Lloyd George were sitting in council to- 
 gether, Foch came in to speak to Clemenceau, and 
 Wilson said, 'Who is that military man? I will not 
 have military men in here.' And Clemenceau, to 
 save the situation quickly, rose and said, 'It is five 
 o 'clock. Let us go to tea. ' Have you heard that ! ' ' 
 
 1 ' Never. Couldn 't that have been invented ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes, it could have been invented ; but no inven-
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 385 
 
 tion sticks which is not characteristic. We know that 
 Mr. Wilson had no power to promise us your help in 
 case of another invasion. But the next war, should 
 it come, would be over before you could reach us. 
 People will never march to any war again, they will 
 fly through the air. ' ' 
 
 We must have been talking for an hour, when I 
 rose. 
 
 ''Let me show you our church, where we sang the 
 Marseillaise, ' ' said the cure. 
 
 He accompanied me out and across the street into 
 the church. There he pointed up to a broken window. 
 
 "A bomb did that," he said. "It also killed the 
 only man who had moved into Massevaux for safety. 
 He was an old man. Here is where we stood and 
 sang the Marseillaise." 
 
 I stood there with him for a while ; and after he 
 had shown me the rest of the church, and the very 
 fine organ, I took my leave. His farewell words 
 were: 
 
 "I have known the Germans for forty-five years. 
 They are a curious race; like no other. And they 
 have won the peace. : 
 
 >5 
 
 On such another afternoon as this I made my way 
 to Thann. The light of May was shining upon the 
 Vosges, hill and valley were filled with it, the fruit 
 blossoms glowed in it. Thann was neighbor to Mas- 
 sevaux, separated by one of the wooded ridges of the 
 Vosges ; and along the valley where it lay, the mills 
 of a large and long-founded industry extended. The 
 house of the present master of this industry stood on 
 a hill overlooking his manufactories and the village 
 where his operatives lived. Once again the name of
 
 386 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Clemenceau opened doors to me, and the master took 
 me into his study; once again the understanding of 
 America was clear and cordial. The responsibility 
 of the evil Armistice and of all that followed was 
 fixed where it belonged, not upon us or our Senate ; 
 and the good that we had done was also fixed where 
 it belonged, not upon the man who had "kept us out 
 of the war," but upon the heart and mind of the 
 nation that had ended by seeing the true meaning of 
 the war in spite of him. This French gentleman had 
 seen many of our officers, and these had told him the 
 truth about our country. 
 
 In one of the front windows of the room where we 
 talked, a bullet had drilled a splintered hole through 
 the pane ; another had dug a cavity in the wall while 
 the daughter of the house had sat at the desk where 
 her father was sitting now. These were the only 
 injuries the house had suffered. Both the master's 
 sons had been killed. After speaking of the North 
 and the South he asked me about our Middle West. 
 
 "They were slower," he said, "to realize the war, 
 were they not 1 ' ' 
 
 ' ' For this reason, ' ' I answered. ' ' They were mis- 
 led by our President who told us in 1916 that we were 
 not concerned with the causes or the objects of the 
 European conflict — and they are a community deeply 
 absorbed in its own development. They are not in- 
 clined to look out of the window. But when they 
 finally did look out and saw what was happening, the 
 manner in which they rose and set to work was truly 
 magnificent. They can do anything, once they are 
 aroused." 
 
 "Is your industrial crisis over?" he asked; and for 
 a while we discussed that and our labor difficulties.
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 387 
 
 I discovered that he was a man who certainly 
 looked out of his window and saw long distances. In 
 speaking about some of the French methods of busi- 
 ness, he said: "We are Chinese." Presently he 
 turned the talk to Alsace and its special problems. I 
 had spoken about the double personality which I felt 
 in the people of Strasbourg. 
 
 "I am travelling second and third class in the 
 trains here," I said, "because it is in those cars 
 rather than in the first class that I seem to see the 
 Alsatian more distinctly. I notice that the people 
 glide from French into the local dialect here, and 
 back again into French, almost in the same sentence. 
 And I notice also that their appearance is rather 
 German than French." 
 
 "That is quite true. Their bodies have the heavy 
 character of the German physique — but not their 
 minds. Have you observed their manner of speak- 
 ing?" 
 
 "I am not quite sure what you mean." 
 
 "There is a lightness, a turn of drollery and of 
 wit in what they say which is not at all like the heavi- 
 ness of their flesh. Their spirit is French. They have 
 not dared to be French outwardly since 1871. In 
 November 1918, some soldiers of our army who had 
 entered and were marching by a field where stood an 
 old peasant woman, saw her suddenly burst into 
 tears ; and she cried out to them that it was nothing 
 but happiness at being able to speak French aloud 
 again." 
 
 1 ' Have you any idea how much German sympathy 
 is lurking among the people?" I asked. 
 
 "Broadly speaking, I think it is among the lower 
 classes that the German spirit hangs on, but it is by
 
 388 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 no means universal there. In spite of all that they 
 conld do during 46 years, they did not manage to 
 make us love them. It was a rule of fear. You have 
 heard of the Saverne incident ?" 
 
 " Where the Prussian officer cut the face of a 
 lame cobbler with his sword because he was not 
 wearing a sufficiently German expression? Oh, 
 yes. And the Crown Prince sent him a message of 
 congratulation. ' ' 
 
 "But do you know about poularde?" 
 
 "Poularde? No." 
 
 "In the cafe at Saverne which the Prussian officers 
 frequented, there was a bill-of-fare on the table one 
 day, upon which, among the German words, was the 
 French one, poularde. A young Prussian lieutenant 
 was so enraged by the appearance of this that he drew 
 his sword and cut the bill-of-fare in two where the 
 word occurred. His name was von Forstner. It was 
 in the Restaurant a la Carpe d'or, opposite the Place 
 du Chateau, where this happened. If you have time, 
 pay Saverne and that restaurant a visit. The lady 
 who saw the whole poularde affair still keeps it." 
 
 "That whole brutal outrage of Saverne," said I, 
 "was a sort of rehearsal of what they did next year 
 in the war — a specimen of what they would have done 
 to the world, had they won. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, they did their best to Prussianize us and 
 divide us against each other, by encouraging disunity 
 in both religion and education. They had separate 
 schools for Catholics, Protestants, and Jews — but 
 always with the Kaiser as the centre of worship. I 
 have heard a pastor say in a pulpit 'you must not 
 consider the Kaiser as God's deputy, but as Jesus 
 Christ himself.' " He added that it was German
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 389 
 
 policy with the young to educate "le conscience contre 
 l'interet." 
 
 "How long do you think it will take," I asked, "for 
 Alsace to become completely French?" 
 
 "A generation should accomplish it. All the chil- 
 dren are eager to learn French, and certain troubles 
 which we are having now will be adjusted. There is 
 a difficulty about the church. The clericals naturally 
 resist a change to the present system in France which 
 would deprive them of the direct control of their office 
 and estate. This would never have come about in 
 France if M. Combe and the Pope had either of them 
 been capable of compromise." 
 
 As he talked on about Alsace, and France, and 
 America, I listened and replied, feeling all the while 
 a sympathy for him that I dared not express. His 
 mills in the valley of Thann had been going for a 
 hundred years, owned and conducted by his family 
 from the beginning. He told me that he had never 
 had any trouble with his operatives. 
 
 "I have a system of pensions, and I have always 
 remembered that these men are human. There came 
 a time when they demanded syndicalization. I made 
 no ob j ection to this. ' You have the right to it, ' I said 
 to them. 'But I have a right also. I will deal with 
 you directly, and not with any outsider; and I will 
 treat non-syndicalized men exactly on the same foot- 
 ing, neither better nor worse.' I thought that I 
 knew what would happen, but I did not expect it 
 so soon. In six months all of my workmen had left 
 the syndicate." 
 
 I wanted to stay on and listen to this French gentle- 
 man. His father had been president of the Senate 
 during the Dreyfus case, and was one of the first to
 
 390 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 believe that Dreyfus was innocent — a stand which 
 cost him many friends, and his office. He in his turn 
 was now a senator. 
 
 "And so M. Clemenceau sent yon to me," he said. 
 "I have known him since I was knee-high. What a 
 man ! ' ' 
 
 "He made me think," I answered, "of Mr. Roose- 
 velt when he was our President. "Whenever I paid 
 him a visit, I always felt as if I had been talking to 
 Vesuvius in active eruption." 
 
 Yes, I wanted to stay ; but I had been here an hour, 
 and so I rose. 
 
 "But at least you will let me get you some refresh- 
 ment ? " he said ; and when I declined, ' ' then I will go 
 with you to the station." 
 
 It was about half a mile ; and as we walked down 
 towards the valley, very beautiful church bells 
 sounded from below, their tone floating up through 
 the quiet air among the woods and ridges. It was 
 May 1st, and as we drew nearer the village, we heard 
 a strain of thin false brass music. Presently we 
 turned a corner, and a very small company of "reds" 
 marched by, blowing trumpets to the glory of dis- 
 order. A few ragged children followed them. The 
 master pointed to them, smiling. 
 
 1 ' Not a large proportion for a great industrial com- 
 munity," he said. 
 
 Once more I looked at him, a senator, a captain 
 of industry, the establisher of pensions, friend to 
 his men, and owner of a mass of buildings which 
 stretched far down the valley ; and with both his sons 
 killed in the war. I could not help speaking : 
 
 "Is there none of your blood to follow and take 
 this from your hands?"
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 391 
 
 "Not any longer," he replied quietly, "I am the 
 last." 
 
 I went to Saverne and the lady of the Golden Carp 
 enacted the whole scene of the poularde for me as I 
 sat drinking coffee at the table in the back of the 
 room where it had happened. But the youth, or the 
 beauty, or some attribute of Lieutenant von Forstner, 
 had softened her heart toward him. 
 
 "He was only 19," she said. "It was the fault of 
 his colonel." And she told me, among other things, 
 that all the children of Saverne were eager to learn 
 French, and that the girls were quicker at it than the 
 boys. Were I Alsatian, I, too, should wish to learn 
 French ; — here is some Alsatian : 
 
 "De reizigers gelieven niet op het privaat te gaan 
 zoolang de trein in eene statie stilstaat." 
 
 As I talked with General Humbert in Strasbourg, 
 a budget of papers lay upon his desk. 
 
 ' ' This, ' ' he said, laying his hand upon the heap, ' ' is 
 my latest secret information from Germany. They 
 are not disarming. They are merely changing the 
 name of the Polizei which they agreed at Spa to 
 disband into a Polizei with a new name." Then he 
 gave me the details. "And they are practising gun- 
 nery twice instead of once a week. ' ' And he thumped 
 the papers lightly. 
 
 "I am being indiscreet every day," I said, "and 
 now I will add one more to my indiscretions. Some 
 of your recent allies are calling you impatient. 
 What strikes me is the extraordinary patience of 
 France under repeated provocations."
 
 392 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 As I was going, he suddenly spoke of America, of 
 onr army, of our soldiers and officers, with such a 
 warmth and enthusiasm that I will not repeat it ; and 
 all I could reply was : 
 
 "My lack of French prevents my expressing to 
 you, as I should like to do, how deeply your words 
 touch me." 
 
 Anywhere that you went, anyone that you saw, it 
 was the same ; if you were silent on the subject of our 
 contribution to the war, they would introduce it 
 sooner or later, and always with generous and cordial 
 words ; but American boasting had not pleased them 
 any better than it pleased those Americans who did 
 not boast. 
 
 From Guy Ropartz, the distinguished French com- 
 poser, and director of the conservatory of music at 
 Strasbourg, I heard most interesting facts about 
 music there under the German rule. His Hun pre- 
 decessor had done his best to extinguish French music 
 in the town — none had ever been taught, and none had 
 ever been played at the concerts. Ropartz found the 
 young people of Strasbourg entirely unaware that 
 any French music existed ; they had never heard of 
 Saint-Saens, or Cesar Franck, or Debussy, or Berlioz, 
 or apparently of anybody except Germans. But he 
 found something even more interesting than this. 
 The Hun predecessor — whose name was Kitzner, I 
 think — had introduced many improvements into the 
 symphonies of Beethoven; he had not only made cuts 
 in them, he had put in his own orchestration and made 
 changes in the notation. Ropartz was obliged to 
 spend much time in restoring Beethoven's own in- 
 strumentation in the scores of the symphonies. 
 
 "I always admired greatly the calm conducting of
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 393 
 
 Hans Kichter , ' ' he told me. ' ' It was not only deeply 
 understanding, but it was also always reverent. His 
 aim was never anything but to learn the composer's 
 intention and then to carry it out. But after the time 
 of Nikisch and Weingartner, it became the fashion of 
 German conductors to use the symphonies of the 
 masters merely as vehicles for themselves. ,, 
 
 "I have heard Nikisch do that to Mozart in Bos- 
 ton, ' ' I told him. 
 
 During the war Kopartz had three sons at the 
 front. He was then teaching at the conservatory of 
 Nancy, and as that town was not safe, he sent his 
 wife and daughter away to Brittany, and meanwhile 
 kept the students at Nancy busy over the musical 
 exercises. 
 
 "When the whistle blew to announce an air raid," 
 he said, "we used to go down into a cellar and con- 
 tinue our exercises there until the bombs stopped 
 falling and the safety signal blew. Then we would 
 come back above ground again and go on with the 
 work. The young people were perfectly calm. One 
 day I was getting ready to go to Brittany for a short 
 visit to my wife and daughter. I was writing and 
 signing some papers at my desk before leaving, when 
 the thought came to me, what a needless thing it 
 would be to be bombed at such a time ! So I took my 
 papers to the cellar. While I was down there I heard 
 a noise of an unusual quality, not like the sound of 
 a Boche bomb, and I wondered if it might be a gas 
 or a flame bomb. When I went back, my office had 
 gone. A French bomb had fallen upon it. Now it 
 would have been tiresome to be killed by that." 
 
 Earlier in the spring, before blossom time, while 
 the peasants were plowing their fields, I spent a day
 
 394 NEIGHBOES HENCEFORTH 
 
 in the St. Mihiel country. Much of it was still des- 
 olate with the shell holes and the barbed wire, but 
 here and there were stretches that had been re- 
 claimed. The earth was brown, and one could look 
 deep into the violet grey of the woods. Where the 
 fields rose to a ridge, the horses and the plowing 
 peasants showed against the sky, and along the fur- 
 rows went the sowers with their bags, flinging their 
 arms with a forward gesture as they scattered the 
 seed. Sometimes I got out and talked to those who 
 were near the road. Often, as we talked, the sound 
 of explosions came heavily from various distances 
 through the quiet air, and the clotted pillars of their 
 smoke would rise and hang for a long while. Those 
 were the live grenades left in the soil by the battles 
 and now having their stings drawn. The farm- 
 ers were sowing oats to be plowed in later, and there 
 was a growth of a bad weed named chien dent to be 
 uprooted. One peasant explained that no one dared 
 to plow the soil deep. 
 
 "Because," he said, "ce n'est pas une noce to hit 
 an obus. Those artificers who are being paid 35 
 francs a day to explode these shells are very unsys- 
 tematic. They ought to do it progressively, like 
 plowing, but they run here and there. If I am not 
 blown up, after my oats next year, I shall plant pota- 
 toes. It will take me 3 or 4 years to get my ground 
 clear of weeds. Yesterday I plowed up two obus, but 
 I am still here, as you see." 
 
 On the way back, near Verdun, a puncture gave me 
 a chance for a longer conversation with a farmer and 
 his wife. One of their buildings was a complete ruin, 
 with rusty shells lying around and inside of it, and 
 wire ran tangled through the grass. They were
 
 IDLE? WELL OFF? 395 
 
 living as best they could in a sort of hovel near by, 
 where the woman was digging. 
 
 ''How do you do, madame?" I said, "you certainly 
 were not here during the war." 
 
 "No, monsieur, we were refugees. ,, 
 
 "And where?" 
 
 "In Touraine first, and after that at Montpellier. " 
 
 "And now you are back at work. Does it go 
 well?" 
 
 "It is very hard to dig. The ground is full of 
 stones and tin cans and saletes de toutes especes." 
 
 "Well, madame, I hope you will have a good 
 harvest." 
 
 "Oh, yes, monsieur, everything is going well." 
 
 At this point her man with a plow and two mules 
 came up, having finished work for the day. It was a 
 very light and a very poor plow, and I asked him 
 about it. 
 
 "Yes, look at it," he said, with a sort of gruff 
 joviality. "Everything is very dear now. Before 
 the war that cost 125 francs. Now 700. And a good 
 mule 5,000 francs now. Before the war 800. — So you 
 are American?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "We ought to have got some of those big animals 
 that you left behind. They would have done our 
 plowing well. But other people . . . " he com- 
 pleted his sentence by making a most eloquent and 
 comical curving sweep with his hand behind his back, 
 and this made his meaning quite plain. 
 
 " Alors vous etes American?" he repeated jovially, 
 "Have you returned to make some more war?" 
 
 "Ah, no!" 
 
 He stood straight and stiff, and his face changed
 
 396 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 to gravity. "Well," he said, with deliberation, 
 "without you, this would be Germany today." And 
 he pointed down to the earth. 
 
 "We are very glad if we were of any help," I said. 
 
 "This would be Germany if you had not come," he 
 reiterated with emphasis. 
 
 "They should have invaded Germany," said I. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The chauffeur overheard this. 
 
 "That is true," he said. " Nothing more true. 
 We wished to go on, but we were not allowed. Foch 
 wept." 
 
 "Yes, I have heard that from many. General 
 Pershing wanted to go on too." 
 
 That is the France which I saw for five months in 
 1921, and which some said (and are saying still), is 
 idle, prosperous, and militaristic. Though some of 
 those that have represented her have at times mani- 
 fested impatience at the treatment she has received, 
 and the perversions of her true position which have 
 appeared in certain newspapers and fallen from the 
 lips of certain public men, the plain truth is that as 
 a nation she has been as patient with England about 
 Germany as England has been patient with America 
 about Ireland ; and that is saying a great deal.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 THE BRAIN OCT ONE DIMENSION 
 
 All through History are incidents which to their 
 own generation have seemed important, and which 
 have dwindled as the years left them behind, while 
 the significance of others has steadily enlarged with 
 time. To this latter class belong the Norman Con- 
 quest, the invention of printing, and the voyage of 
 Columbus. When we, who have lived so close to the 
 war that we can not measure it, are long gone, and it 
 has fallen into the motionless landscape of the past, 
 what will it seem like then? Today we can hardly 
 believe that it will ever cease to be known as the Great 
 War ; and yet, that is a question to be answered then, 
 and not now; convulsions more gigantic may dwarf 
 the terrible years of 1914 to 1918. But as time goes 
 on, America's act in 1917 will not look smaller. It 
 will grow in two ways, in relation to ourselves and in 
 relation to our neighbors. We had risen to greatness 
 before, certainly once, paying with our blood ; but to 
 keep the Union and free the slave was an act accord- 
 ing to our faith, was carrying out into action what our 
 religion declared and compelled; whereas in joining 
 the Great War, in leaving our new world and crossing 
 the sea to the old, we ran counter to an article of our 
 faith so deep that it was second only to our belief in 
 liberty denned and assured by law. Both — our 
 liberty and our isolation — have been woven so close in 
 our minds and emotions they can be called American 
 
 397
 
 398 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 instincts. And yet we broke from the second. It 
 was like tearing apart one 's brain. To go upon our 
 own way, to mind our own affairs, to keep apart from 
 others' quarrels, to stand aloof from the meshes of 
 foreign jealousies, this course had been set for us, 
 had been preached to us from the beginning, and it 
 had been practised throughout a century of success. 
 Every decade of our national life had ratified and 
 vindicated the wisdom of our isolation; and yet we 
 wrenched ourselves loose from the embedded anchor. 
 That small handful of Europeans who have studied 
 more about Americans than their money, know this 
 and understand that to take such a step cost us a sort 
 of mental revolution ; they know that our delay was 
 inevitable, beyond our control, that a mental revolu- 
 tion in a hundred million people is not accomplished 
 in a moment ; especially under the powerful and con- 
 fusing influences that were at work in our midst, 
 befogging us night and day. Some of us, who saw 
 where our duty lay sooner than the mass, have been 
 inclined to apologize to Europe for our lateness. No 
 apologies are due, except from those Europeans who 
 still, in cold blood and after the event, have sneered 
 because we did not do at once what none of them has 
 ever done at all in their whole history. 
 
 One conspicuous demagogue has termed the Euro- 
 pean conflict a rich man 's war and a poor man 's fight. 
 Those Europeans who have given us their intelligent 
 attention know that we fought for an ideal, that it 
 was precisely our rich, and not our poor, young men 
 who threw themselves first into the war as a class, 
 who enlisted in the Allied armies, who formed the 
 Lafayette Escadrille, who offered themselves to the 
 cause of Liberty before their country had taken the
 
 THE BRAIN OF ONE DIMENSION 399 
 
 step, who did not wait for the draft, who shouldered 
 arms before the hour of obligation, and whose names 
 now shine on the tablets of our schools and colleges. 
 It was our sons of privilege that showed themselves, 
 as a class, worthy of their privilege, whose young 
 eyes discerned in 1914 what the whole country came 
 to see at last. Three words, spoken by one of these 
 sons of privilege as he lay dying, enshrine the whole 
 truth, the reason that he and his kind went at once, 
 never waiting for any call but the call from within. 
 He came from one of our great preparatory schools, 
 he Avas a Harvard student, he enlisted in Canada, he 
 met his death in Europe. In the hospital where he 
 was taken, the nurse asked him how it happened that 
 he was in the war when his country was neutral. He 
 answered : 
 
 " Our fight too." 
 
 The sentence is a parable. No orator, no states- 
 man, no poet, could better say why America broke 
 from that second article of her belief and poured her 
 treasure and her life across three thousand miles of 
 sea, and stood ready to go on spending herself to the 
 last dollar and the last drop of blood. Nothing in 
 that manifestation of our soul and strength more 
 astonished the Europeans than how, once we were 
 aroused and aware, we accepted conscription and re- 
 quired no law to enforce our self-denial. Did the 
 Allies need sugar or flour ! We went without them — 
 it was the kitchen, not the dining room that rebelled ; 
 once again it was the privileged classes that saw their 
 duty and did it. If oil grew scarce, it was only neces- 
 sary to tell us, and thousands gave up the chief 
 pleasure in their week and left their automobiles in 
 the garage on Sundays.
 
 400 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 No, it is not likely that our part in the war will 
 dwindle as it grows distant in time ; and the essence 
 of the internal conflict that it cost us will be seen more 
 clearly than it is today. Although we departed from 
 our creed of isolation, that very departure was a pas- 
 sionate adherence to the first article of our faith — to 
 liberty, defined and assured by law. The struggle 
 was between those two principles, and the fundamen- 
 tal one prevailed ; for in the last analysis, isolation is 
 not a fundamental, but a temporary principle, and it 
 is no longer a question of our renouncing it — it has 
 renounced us. No matter how much some of us may 
 wish it, Americans can no longer enjoy a brain of 
 one dimension. It is not going to be a question of 
 choice, natural laws have settled it for us. You may 
 push facts out of the door, they will come in at the 
 window. A natural law does not speak, it asserts 
 itself in silence, and if you ignore it long enough, it 
 will grind you to powder. Here we reach the second 
 aspect of our part in the war, its relation not to our- 
 selves but to others. Of those four years, we fought 
 but half a year ; it is not the size of our participation, 
 but its consequences, that are now the point. 
 
 When the emergency of the war began in August 
 1914, we looked at it as one of those foreign complica- 
 tions with which Washington told us to have nothing 
 to do. By August 1918, nearly two million Ameri- 
 cans had gone to fight in France. We had been 
 drawn into the emergency. Why? Look at the map, 
 think of electricity and of steam, and you will have 
 the answer. Is it very likely that Washington in 
 April 1917 would still have advised us to avoid that 
 foreign complication 1 ? 
 
 Next, the war was over, and in a way, won. We
 
 THE BRAIN OF ONE DIMENSION 401 
 
 thought at the time that it was won much more com- 
 pletely than the ensuing years have disclosed; and 
 with a deep sigh of joy and content our country came 
 home — home physically and mentally. It turned its 
 thoughts again to itself, and there was indeed plenty 
 to think about. But the emergency of the war has 
 been followed by the emergency of the peace. That 
 is going on now ; and once again some of us are quot- 
 ing "Washington. We can no more keep out of the 
 present foreign complication than we were able to 
 hold aloof from its predecessor. Just as much as that 
 was, this is "our fight too" — not for reasons of 
 sentiment, but for reasons of self-preservation. 
 Why? Look at the map, think of electricity and 
 steam, and again you will have the answer. War and 
 peace are merely different processes of self-preserva- 
 tion, different means by which nations control and 
 protect their existence, manage their affairs, survive. 
 We like to hope that peace will some day be the only 
 method by which nations live ; but whether this comes 
 to pass or not, if the fundamental state of the world 
 is changed, and a great war draws everybody into its 
 emergency, the emergencies of peace are bound to do 
 exactly the same thing. 
 
 It would be good news if we did not have to think 
 about Europe as a concern of our own, if foreign 
 complications could be pushed out of our reckoning, 
 if we could return to our brain of one dimension. 
 But that comfortable day is done, and the truth is, 
 that the word "foreign" has ceased to have any 
 economic or political meaning ; in that sense, there is 
 little that is foreign in the world any more. We are 
 all neighbors in the same street, and neighbors hence- 
 forth it is our destiny to be.
 
 402 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 I do not wonder that great portions of our people 
 sincerely believe what I wish that I could believe — 
 that our going over to Europe was an accident, an 
 exception, a parenthesis in our isolation, a closed inci- 
 dent; and that now we can resume our development 
 and attend to our own housekeeping, and never think 
 of Europe, or any other part of the world, again 
 except when it pleases us to do so as a market for 
 our wares, a playground for our holidays, or an 
 object of our voluntary compassion and assistance, 
 like Belgium. I wish they were right, I wish it were 
 true. When I think of our pioneers, our backwoods- 
 men, our cowboys, I have a home-sick longing to be 
 back in their simple day, and I desire to turn my 
 face away from the welter that Europe is in — the 
 deceits, the jealousies, the greed of conquest, the 
 flare of discord, the collapse of prosperity. We are 
 no more responsible for that state of things than 
 we were for the war ; why saddle ourselves with the 
 burdens of others when we have enough of our own 
 to carry already? Let Europe be satisfied with the 
 help we gave her in 1918, and settle her present 
 troubles for herself. That is what many Americans 
 are saying and feeling, and it would make a strong 
 argument, if isolation were a matter of choice in 
 these days as it was in the days when George Wash- 
 ington wrote that Farewell Address which is being 
 so freely quoted and misquoted just now on the sub- 
 ject of entangling alliances. 
 
 It is to be noticed how remarkably little we quote 
 or follow a certain other piece of advice which Wash- 
 ington gave us in that same Farewell Address — that 
 we should avoid occasions of expense by cultivating 
 peace, "but remembering also that timely disburse-
 
 THE BRAIN OF ONE DIMENSION 403 
 
 ments to prepare for danger frequently prevent much 
 greater disbursements to repel it." Not once in 
 our history have we followed that wise counsel; on 
 the contrary, Congress has steadily opposed and ob- 
 structed preparedness for war ; and every war which 
 we have fought has caught us with our clothes off. 
 The hasty toilet that we were compelled to make on 
 the last occasion, in 1917, could not have been made 
 at all if the British fleet had not stood between us 
 and the enemy like a wall, behind which we were 
 able to cover our nakedness before it was too late. 
 Some day it may be too late. As it is, we are suffer- 
 ing from a heavy burden of taxes, due to the hurry 
 in which we had to get ready at the eleventh hour, 
 and which might have been averted, had Congress 
 and Mr. Wilson heeded the advice of George Wash- 
 ington, instead of heaping every champion of pre- 
 paredness, such as Augustus Gardner, or Leonard 
 Wood, with falsehood, sneers, and abuse. Against 
 stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain; and 
 our politicians are quick to remember George Wash- 
 ington when they can use him for something that 
 they like because it is easy and will cost them no 
 votes, but they find it convenient to forget him when 
 his advice is disagreeable to them. Consequently in 
 these present days they are placing in front of the 
 gloomy truth that America can no longer play a lone 
 hand but must do team-work with Europe, the cheer- 
 ful falsehood that Washington forbade team-work. 
 
 What did Washington really say about Europe 
 and its relation to us in his Farewell Address! 
 
 ''Europe has a set of primary interests which to 
 us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she 
 must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes
 
 404 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. 
 Hence, therefore, it must be nnwise in us to implicate 
 ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissi- 
 tudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations 
 and collisions of her friendships or enmities. 
 
 "Our detached and distant situation invites and 
 enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain 
 one people, under an efficient government, the period 
 is not far off when we may defy material injury from 
 external arrogance ; when we may take such an atti- 
 tude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time 
 resolve upon to be scrupulously respected. . . . 
 
 "Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situa- 
 tion? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign 
 ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with 
 that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and 
 prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rival- 
 ship, interest, humor, or caprice? 
 
 " 'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent 
 alliances with any portion of the foreign world . . . 
 we may safely trust to temporary alliances for ex- 
 traordinary emergencies. . . . 
 
 "There can be no greater error than to expect 
 or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation." 
 
 That is every word which the Farewell Address 
 contains on the subject of alliances; and this docu- 
 ment, dated 19th September, 1796, is being offered 
 to us as a guide in 1922, with its language about 
 foreign alliances generally misquoted. Why not ask 
 us to wear knee breeches and a wig because Wash- 
 ington wore them? In the first place, he expressly 
 admitted temporary alliances for extraordinary 
 emergencies, and in the second place his whole 
 thought is naturally based on the world as it was in
 
 THE BEAIN OF ONE DIMENSION 405 
 
 1796. They pay a very poor compliment to the 
 marvellously observant and far-sighted sagacity of 
 the Father of his Country, when they apply his re- 
 marks to 1922, and assume that he would repeat them 
 unchanged. In his time, it took nearly two months 
 to send a message to Europe and receive an answer ; 
 today it can be done in a few hours. Would Wash- 
 ington call Europe remote now? Would he speak 
 of our " detached and distant situation' ' after seeing 
 an aeroplane, and a submarine, and the Baldwin 
 Locomotive Works, or any other works which sell 
 our wares all over the world? 
 
 When he was notified of his unanimous election as 
 President in April 1789, Washington set out from 
 Mt. Vernon on the 16th and reached New York on 
 the 23d. Had some neighbors in Virginia at that 
 time asked him how long one should allow for a com- 
 fortable journey to New York, the answer would 
 have been seven days ; and as Washington was care- 
 ful about details, he would have told the neighbor 
 where he would find the best lodging for the night at 
 the end of each day's journey. Since then London 
 has been reached in seven days by many steamers. 
 To suppose that he would give us today the same 
 advice about Europe that he gave in 1796, is precisely 
 as sensible as to suppose that he would tell a friend 
 that it would take a week to go from Mt. Vernon to 
 New York, instead of recommending the express 
 trains that do it now in five hours. 
 
 Washington's outlook was not narrowed by a brain 
 of one dimension; he thought internationally, his 
 policy was not shackled to obsolete conditions. 
 Scarcely more than ten years after our Revolution, 
 he declined to fall in with the wishes of France, who
 
 406 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 had been our friend, and made a treaty with Eng- 
 land, who had been our enemy. For this he was 
 violently abused by the brains of one dimension of 
 that day, until the good results that followed from 
 his wise policy put them to silence. If the changes 
 in conditions after ten years could cause such a 
 change in Washington's mind, it is hardly worth 
 while to try to fit to the present day a piece of advice 
 given 126 years ago based upon conditions that are 
 no longer the same. 
 
 When we bee;an our national life, the total popu- 
 lation of the 13 original states was less than that of 
 the city of New York today; we exported nothing, 
 the few articles that we made, such as glass, were 
 of local use; our thin population was scattered in 
 unrelated spots from New Hampshire to Georgia, 
 with miles of uninhabited wilderness lying between 
 them : travel on land was bv horse, on water it was 
 by sail. Similarly at that time, the whole world was 
 inhabited in spots, no wires or rails tied nations 
 togpthpr. the tides of trade and intercourse were few, 
 and like thin streams, compared to the thick volume 
 that pours back and forth between all countries now. 
 Todav, distance and time are virtually obliterated 
 by electricity, Europe and America are no longer 
 snots with space between them; they are confluent, 
 with thousands of veins and arteries of commerce 
 and crpdit flowing through them, makina: them like 
 parts of one bodv. If one nation falls a victim to anv 
 gravo and nrolonsred economic disease, the rest will 
 suffer in time just as inevitablv as blood poisoning 
 in a man's fin irer will infect his whole system if it is 
 not checked. Like neighbors in the same street, the 
 nations of Europe and America depend for their wel-
 
 THE BRAIN OF ONE DIMENSION 407 
 
 fare more and more upon the same set of supplies, 
 supplies of meat, grain, coal, hardware, and credit, 
 especially credit; in this essential above all they 
 can not get on without team-work. If Europe goes 
 bankrupt, disaster will flow through the arteries of 
 trade and attack us too. The American who shuts 
 his eyes to this because it is a fact which jars his 
 ideal of isolation, is like a man who puts off making 
 his will because it is unpleasant to be reminded that 
 he is not going to live for ever. 
 
 As America was compelled to take notice of the 
 war, and submit to team-work in order to prevent 
 a catastrophe that in the end would have reached 
 her as well as England and France, she will have to 
 continue her team-work henceforth. She can never 
 break away again. Catastrophes are not over, and 
 it is as unlikely that they will ever cease in the future 
 as that they ever ceased in the past. The great 
 difference between the future and the past is, that 
 nations used to be able to have catastrophes by them- 
 selves, without one toppling brick pushing down the 
 whole row. Consequently, we must join hands with 
 Europe to fight all disasters that threaten. 
 
 And we shall play the part of creditor gracefully if 
 Europe plays the debtor's part gracefully: it isn't 
 pretty for him who stretches out his hand to be 
 shaking his fist, or even his finger. 
 
 The signs are good. I can remember that long 
 after I was grown up it was a rare thing to hear 
 foreign news discussed by Americans of any class. 
 It is now the subject of daily conversation, not only 
 in marble halls but in street cars. In the Back Bay 
 station in Boston, there is a boot-black who comments 
 on France and Germany and Mr. Lloyd George while
 
 408 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 he polishes my shoes ; when I was an under-graduate 
 I could have walked the length of Beacon Street with 
 its most leading citizen and never touched once upon 
 foreign affairs. That is because in those days, affairs 
 could still be foreign, while now the word foreign is 
 growing obsolete. As Columbus discovered us we 
 are now obliged to discover Europe. 
 
 In his day, the world was said to be flat. When 
 he proved that it was round a number of persons 
 were highly scandalized. Today a number of Ameri- 
 cans are highly scandalized to hear that our isolation 
 is done for. But I do not think that the brain of 
 one dimension is going to prevail now in the peace, 
 any more than it did during the war. It came dread- 
 fully near it, but it failed. We played team-work 
 in time. We must not be too late now, and we shall 
 not be. In some form, worked out by our men of 
 affairs collaborating with our government, we shall 
 bear a hand again to England and France. Nothing 
 must happen to either of them. Whatever rough- 
 nesses there may be, they are the salt of the earth. 
 The danger that hung black over them when we came 
 in 1917 has been replaced by another danger, they 
 barely keep their heads above water. If they sink 
 they are certain to drag us down with them. For 
 our own preservation we must throw them a life- 
 preserver. 
 
 And not only for that reason ! In those moments 
 when France and England are at their best, they 
 see a best in us that is not merely material. We 
 have money, yes ; but they know and we know (when 
 all are at their best) that beyond and above money 
 there is that imponderable thing which outweighs 
 all gold. It is hard to name; the word ideal has
 
 THE BRAIN OF ONE DIMENSION 409 
 
 been over-used ; but it is what made us free the slave, 
 set Cuba free, and come to help them in 1917. It 
 is the thing that built Westminster Abbey, and the 
 cathedral of Amiens, and made Washington come 
 to New York to be President, when what his heart 
 craved was to rest at Mt. Vernon beneath his own 
 vine and fig tree.
 
 XXIX 
 
 CAN THESE BONES LIVE f 
 
 It is not alone in Flanders fields that poppies blow 
 between the crosses. From Paschendael and the 
 Lys, over the Somme and Aisne, across the Argonne 
 and past Komagne and the Meuse and Moselle to 
 Massevaux, the dead lie everywhere ; the young dead 
 of many languages, whose spirits at the end spoke 
 a tongue universal. What they wrote to their 
 mothers in a legion of letters that have gone to homes 
 all over the world would have been understood by 
 every mother bereaved of a son. Whether these last 
 messages went to Warwickshire, or Inverness, or 
 Dauphine, or Ontario, or to the lands of the far Pa- 
 cific, they could almost be exchanged by those who 
 received them, so much do they all say the same thing. 
 Their writers, while still in this life, had passed 
 beyond these voices to a life where what was terror 
 and horror to us who read of it, was to them a state 
 of serene and even happy dedication to the will of 
 God. As one passes their graves, and again more 
 graves, and then still more, out in the open stretches, 
 along the sheltering edges of groves, on the slopes 
 of hills, among plowed fields or growing harvests, 
 or near some lovely ancient spire, the silence of 
 France is filled with the memory of them, and to each 
 of those quiet hearts one applies the words that are 
 graven on the stone of a certain boy who lies in a 
 field of Tardenois : 
 
 He has outsoared the darkness of our night. 
 
 410
 
 CAN THESE BONES LIVE? 411 
 
 Thirty-three hundred British cemeteries are in 
 France ; we have four. 
 
 Much thought, much art, much care, went to the 
 shaping of these cities of the British dead. They 
 are very beautiful, and simple reverence lives among 
 their paths and growing flowers, and consolation 
 almost visible seems to be waiting for every soul 
 who comes there in need. Each body that lies in 
 them rests in the company of comrades, near the 
 very spot where all offered together their last and 
 highest sacrifice to the same great cause, and upon 
 the soil that all helped together to save. To visit 
 these assembled dead, come the living all through the 
 year, each to seek some special grave. They take 
 away a rich and twofold solace ; they have seen how 
 fittinglv the ashes dear to them are tended, and they 
 have felt the great unison of sacredness which comes 
 from all these soldiers' graves, and is shed upon 
 each one. Thev tell others what they have seen, and 
 of the peaoe which the sight has brought them; and 
 so to mothers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 
 and every British land across the world is wafted 
 soon or late the knowledge that it is well with their 
 boys. 
 
 Along the roads from Ypres to Massevaux, to right 
 and left all the way, the signs come by : British Ceme- 
 tery, French Cemeterv, Canadian, Australian, and 
 sometimes American Cemetery; we still have four. 
 From our chief one at Eomagne, where once lay all 
 our dead of the Meuse-Argonne, not quite one-half 
 were taken from where they rested together, and 
 were dispersed to rest alone, far away over the sea, 
 in company that had not shared their errand or their 
 sacrifice. Over the happy remnant at Romagne,
 
 412 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 France will bow her head on sacred days when she 
 remembers and honors her own sons, through all the 
 years to come. If Britain, whose killed were eight 
 hundred thousand, counts thirty-three hundred ceme- 
 teries, how many must France possess, whose dead 
 were not far from twice as many? But America 
 still has four; and France will not forget them on 
 her sacred days. 
 
 To see those British cemeteries that are finished, 
 gives one the wish that one had the right to lie there 
 too. The quiet and beautiful holiness that their 
 paths and flowers and similar headstones make is like 
 nothing I have ever seen. The headstones are all 
 alike, proportioned with excellent skill, expressing 
 dignity and simplicity; no upstart column or spike 
 of vanity mars the solemn and sweet concord of the 
 whole. One is moved to linger, one is led to read 
 one name after another. Beautiful is the inscrip- 
 tion without a name : 
 
 IN HONOR OF A 
 BRITISH SOLDIER 
 NAME UNKNOWN. 
 
 2nd July, 1916 
 
 KNOWN UNTO GOD. 
 
 The lettering and the graceful proportions of the 
 cross reveal the same thought and art which are to 
 be seen in every detail throughout.
 
 CAN THESE BONES LIVE? 413 
 
 These thirty-three hundred cemeteries are laid out, 
 furnished, and maintained by subordinate camps 
 which depend upon the general headquarters at St. 
 Omer. The local camps are established in each of 
 the regions into which the whole territory of the 
 British dead is divided. From these are issued the 
 headstone and the plants and other supplies, in ac- 
 cordance with the directions from St. Omer. At the 
 camp in Bethune, for instance, is a nursery for 
 plants ; and in 1920 one-quarter of a million of these 
 were distributed from here for the graveyards in 
 that special region. At St. Omer are the various 
 departments which plan and superintend severally 
 the laying out of each ground, its grading and shap- 
 ing in relation to its environment, its planting with 
 trees and shrubs, its decoration with flowers, and its 
 paths and arrangement of headstones, and the war 
 stone and war cross. 
 
 Some cemeteries are larger ; the one named TYN- 
 COT on Paschendael Ridge contains 15,000 dead, 
 while others are like country churchyards in size. 
 For the 2,000 Chinese I saw some of the headstones 
 at Bethune, lettered with their alphabet and carved 
 with symbols strange to a Western eye ; but with the 
 date and a text in English. These dead have to be 
 buried with their feet towards water, in accordance 
 with their oriental faith. Among the English graves 
 at Heilly were those of some German prisoners, 
 tended with the same care and respect ; and an altar 
 which had been raised above these bore this sentence : 
 
 O freund wenn du nach Deutchland Kommst 
 erzahle dass uns liegen sahst 
 den Gesetzen unseres Landes getreu.
 
 414 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 At Louvencourt, English, French, and Flemish 
 words were on the signs of a finished cemetery, where 
 the war cross and war stone were in place, and around 
 and beneath them, enclosed by the completed stone 
 wall, generals, gunners, surgeons, lieutenants, trum- 
 peters, drivers, able seamen — all ranks were lying 
 beside each other, in the same majestic level of death. 
 The emblems of their regiments were carved above 
 them on each headstone, turf was green upon the 
 walks. English daisies grew in it, and flowers grew 
 round the graves. It was Sunday, and the bells of 
 Louvencourt were ringing as I walked about and read 
 the names. 
 
 How came there to be able seamen in so many of 
 these cemeteries ; privates of the Royal Naval Divi- 
 sion, which was the 63d? Because they had come 
 from Gallipoli. Battalions named after ships and 
 admirals were organized for Gallipoli and employed 
 there for beach duty, the landing of supplies and 
 men. Afterwards they were proud to be turned into 
 a fighting division ; and so these able seamen retained 
 their description but became soldiers and met their 
 deaths on dry land. 
 
 The graves in the little plot at Warloy-Baillou 
 were beneath old apple trees, and once I was there 
 when the blossoms were at the full, and petals from 
 them fell quietly now and then upon the dead. Some 
 of the trees were failing, and there had been a thought 
 of planting cypress or yew or other churchyard 
 tree in their stead; but this has been changed, and 
 apple trees will always grow here and spread their 
 branches and blossoms over these graves. 
 
 Scarce a mile away from this cluster of the dead 
 was the cemetery of Forceville, also small, and also
 
 CAN THESE BONES LIVE? 415 
 
 complete. I returned to it very often, because it is 
 not far from Amiens, and in no other that I visited 
 did reverence and consolation seem more present. 
 If the dead know and care where they lie, those that 
 are here must be content; and the living who have 
 come to see this place in anguish and agitation, be- 
 cause it held the dust they mourned, have gone away 
 with spirits calmed. This I was told on the spot. 
 Mothers have arrived there in winter time, dis- 
 traught, out of themselves, asking wild privileges; 
 they must see their dead, the earth must be opened, 
 they must know how it is with him; perhaps he is 
 cold ; she would like to make a fire for him. Wilder 
 prayers than this were made. After a little while, 
 with that war cross, and that war stone, in that holi- 
 ness that hangs over those clustered dead, generals, 
 trumpeters, surgeons, able seamen, she has found her 
 self-control, she has not raved any more, she has 
 felt the strange peace of loss, and has said that now 
 when at home again and thinking of it, she would 
 not worry any more. 
 
 He is dead and gone, lady, 
 
 He is dead and gone; 
 At his head a grass green turf, 
 
 At his heels a stone. 
 
 Against this graveyard is an old French one with 
 high trees in it. As you approach from the road 
 you pass along the hedge by the French graves, and 
 there among these is a single new one, a British 
 soldier. A splintered tree stump, a foot high and 
 soon to be hidden with growing leaves, juts up close 
 by. He had seen the shell coming and stepped be- 
 hind the tree, and along with it he was dashed to
 
 416 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 fragments. What could be found was buried here. 
 A few steps more, and you come to the stone gate 
 where the British are. You pass under its arch, 
 through the solemn swinging door of iron bars that 
 show the peace within, and there the turf, the flowers, 
 the headstones, the decent order, possess you at once. 
 The war cross rises high, but not too far above your 
 head; first its pedestal, and then its slender shaft 
 of stone, symmetric, perfect, eloquent without words, 
 nothing on it but a long slender sword in bronze. 
 It holds the eye, it compels to silence. It presides 
 at one end of a turf walk that runs through the mid- 
 dle of the ground to the war stone at the other end. 
 This is like an altar, and behind it, as long as 
 itself, a great stone bench, both again compelling to 
 silence. They seem to stand for that greater thing 
 of which Christianity is but the latest part. The 
 war stone and the cross mingle their influences, which 
 seem to flow from them, and bathe the headstones 
 benignly. Beyond the war stone, over the wall, a 
 field stretches away into quietness; beyond the war 
 cross, over the opposite wall, stretches another field 
 but a little way to the trees at the village edge, and 
 through these rise the quiet rustic roofs, and an old 
 steeple. To one side lies the French cemetery, and 
 a field to the other; so is the whole place set and 
 framed in trannuility. As one stands and looks at 
 this handful of British dead in France, thought goes 
 beyond them and their headstones, the gunners and 
 trumpeters, to Thermonyljp, to Sfdamis, to Water- 
 loo, to Gettysburg, to Verdun. All are of the same 
 company. France is the home of those at Forceville 
 who died in thp battle of the Somme, at Paschendael 
 of those who fell in Flanders fields, at Romagne of
 
 CAN THESE BONES LIVE? 417 
 
 those who fell in the Meuse-Argonne; and France 
 will care for them all perpetually, as for her own, 
 whether Calgary, Melbourne, or Omaha was their 
 birthplace, and no matter what their name or speech 
 or faith; she is the true home of them all, and to 
 her dust does their dust belong. 
 
 This is what our brains of one dimension could 
 not see: that if all the rest of the dead were to lie 
 in France, it would be exile for ours to be brought 
 away from that great companionship. Ours alone 
 have been brought from the sacred circle of all na- 
 tions, and are now dispersed over a wide continent 
 that did not witness their sacrifice or share their 
 conflict. They lie apart from each other, instead of 
 in a place consecrated especially to them, and they 
 will be inevitably forgotten when those who mourn 
 them now are followed to the tomb themselves and 
 in their turn forgotten. Could those exiled bones of 
 our soldiers speak through the ground to those who 
 visit them now, there are few indeed who would not 
 say: 
 
 "Mother, did no one tell you that I said I wanted 
 to stay with the boys?" 
 
 Sad women all over the rest of the world know that 
 remembrance and honor will continue to salute their 
 assembled dead, when not a flower or a thought is 
 any longer given to the dispersed exiles here. 
 
 More than two million lie in France between Flan- 
 ders fields and Massevaux. When they died, nations 
 were lifted as high above their week-day mood of 
 getting and spending as they have fallen below it 
 since. Sometimes, very often today, as one reads 
 the morning news, one has to remember those ceme- 
 teries and the towers of Reims and Amiens rising
 
 418 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 above that devastated land, in order not to fall into 
 despair. From what goes on, there is temptation 
 to believe that mankind spent its last drop of nobility 
 in the war, and has nothing left but its baseness. 
 This is not true now any more than it has ever been. 
 Amiens and Reims have stood through many tides. 
 Other temples that are crushed only made way for 
 them, as their place will be taken by still others. 
 What passes is the Inn; what remains is the soul 
 which builds the Inn and dwells there, but for a time 
 only. Those two million bodies in France prove the 
 existence of that soul. Just now it seems stifled and 
 extinct, as it has often seemed before, when other 
 bodies in other battlefields had proved its existence. 
 
 1 ' Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe 
 upon these slain, that they may live. ,, 
 
 We must not expect to live above our week-day 
 level for any long time together ; but may that level 
 rise, as the growth of pity shows it has risen. If it 
 is to sink, if the dead have died for no gain at all to 
 the world, the world were best unpeopled. Stray 
 hints and projects of a next war are given, a conflict 
 waged with forces of destruction let loose by men who 
 never see each other; new germs of pestilence set 
 going, which leave no living to bury the dead, new 
 gases made from the minerals and acids of the earth, 
 that with a puff blow out the breath of a city. 
 
 To believe that wars will ever wholly cease while 
 man is here is hard; but if that is to be war, if 
 nothing but more means for destruction have been 
 learned, if that alone is what science and human 
 minds are making ready for, then may the annihila- 
 tion be complete! Let not only London and Paris 
 and Berlin and New York, and all near and far, but
 
 CAN THESE BONES LIVE? 419 
 
 Asia and Africa and every inhabitant of the globe, 
 old and young, be extinguished, and so be rendered 
 incapable of further abuses of science. Then only the 
 wild animals will inhabit the earth: — the wild ani- 
 mals, who, although they fight to kill, at least fight 
 with tooth and claw, whose instinct for combat is at 
 least redeemed by personal courage ; who do not pol- 
 lute the streams, who do not burn and fell the forests, 
 or despoil the caves of the planet of their coal and 
 gold; who leave Niagara to flow in its natural 
 majesty, who disfigure no mountain, and blacken no 
 valley; who are innocent of chemicals and poison — 
 the wild animals, whose character is honester than 
 men's because they have no souls to corrupt and 
 degrade, and who come into the world and go from it, 
 leaving it unmanned. 
 
 That would be best, if the Spirit of Knowledge 
 prove for ever hostile to the Spirit of Life. Each 
 time it has won and religion has gone wholly down, 
 the civilization where such triumph occurred has 
 perished. Better a world without man, if that is 
 to be the end. We can not know; but we can be 
 calm, and wait until the bruised nerves which the 
 years from 1914 to 1918 gave us all have recovered. 
 There have always been an Amiens and a Reims to 
 symbolize the Spirit of Life; never yet has there 
 been a race wise enough to keep the hostile Spirit 
 of Knowledge in its place. That is the recurring 
 problem of problems; it dwarfs all others; and for 
 a while at any rate it looked as if the agony of the 
 war had brought us a step nearer to its solution.
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 THE SUPREME COUNCIL DIFFER ABOUT 
 UPPER SILESIA 
 
 The restitution of Upper Silesia to Poland had been implied 
 in Mr. Wilson's fourteen points, January 1918, and again in 
 the statement issued by the Allies on June 3d, 1918. After Jan- 
 uary 1919, it was definitely to be given back to Poland; and 
 so it stood in the treaty as delivered to the delegates of Ger- 
 many on May 7th — but it did not stand so when the treaty 
 was signed, June 28th. During the interval, Mr. Lloyd George 
 re-opened the subject. He urged that Upper Silesia should 
 decide by a popular vote whether to remain German or rejoin 
 Poland. Messrs. Clemenceau and Wilson objected to this change 
 of plan on the ground that German methods would prevent the 
 election from being a fair one. The opinions and to some ex- 
 tent the characters of the three men are disclosed in the dia- 
 logues which follow, and which are directly translated from 
 the French stenographic reports. These were put into my 
 hands by an eminent Frenchman who was part of it all, and 
 from whom I had leave to do with them what I saw fit. They 
 were published in The Saturday Evening Post of December 
 3d, 1921, with some explanatory comments which also follow. 
 They are among the few stenographic records of the Supreme 
 Council's conversations still in existence. Most of these were 
 destroyed by order. 
 
 The question was first brought up by Mr. Lloyd George on 
 the 2nd of June, 1919. At this meeting he asked that the left 
 bank of the Rhine be not occupied, and that the reparation 
 clauses of the treaty be revised to provide for a lump sum to be 
 paid down at once, reducing the German debt. Then he turned 
 to Upper Silesia, and the material parts of the conversations 
 follow, translated from the French record: 
 
 Lloyd George: My colleagues all say that the eastern 
 frontier of Germany is inadmissible unless it is changed, and 
 if Germany refuses to sign [the treaty] they all think that 
 steps of coercion will not seem justifiable to the country 
 [England]. Moreover they agree with our experts in thinking 
 that as Upper Silesia has not been a part of Poland for six or 
 seven centuries a plebiscite is indispensable. If the plebiscite 
 is favorable to Poland it will be impossible for the Germans to 
 talk of retaliation. That is what would have happened in 1871 
 if a plebiscite favorable to Germany had been held in Alsace- 
 
 421
 
 422 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Lorraine. Besides, I am convinced that the plebiscite will be 
 favorable to Poland. 
 
 Clemenceau: First, as to Poland, amends are to be made 
 for a historic crime, but also there is a barrier between Ger- 
 many and Russia to be created. Read the interviews of Erz- 
 berger, who wishes Poland to be made as weak as possible, 
 because it separates Germany from Russia. Mr. Erzberger 
 adds that Germany, once she is in touch with Russia, can attack 
 France in far better circumstances than in 1914. Is that what 
 you want? Germany in control of Russia? That means that 
 our dead are slain for nothing. That's all I have to remark 
 on this point for the moment. 
 
 (June 3rd. Afternoon.) 
 
 Wilson: A plebiscite in Upper Silesia seems difficult to me; 
 it would be necessary first to expel the German officials. 
 
 Lloyd George: Do you mean the petty officials? 
 
 Wilson: No. I'm thinking of those in charge of the ad- 
 ministration. 
 
 Clemenceau: Don't forget that in Germany it's the central 
 power that appoints the mayors. 
 
 Lloyd George: I agree that the chief German authorities 
 ought to go out of the country before any voting. 
 
 Wilson: Yes, but it's more than that. Fifteen or twenty 
 big capitalists are the bosses in Upper Silesia. 
 
 Clemenceau: Quite true. Notably Henckel von Donners- 
 marck. 
 
 Wilson: Unless the Germans are absent, a free and honest 
 plebiscite, according to my expert advisers, can't be looked for 
 in a country so long dominated and under constant fear of 
 reprisals. 
 
 Lloyd George: Yet in 1907, in spite of this fear, the Poles 
 won the elections. My experts foresee a plebiscite favorable to 
 Poland. They believe that such a plebiscite will preclude later 
 reprisals by the Germans. 
 
 Wilson: There's no trend of German opinion favorable to 
 Upper Silesia; it's a capitalistic affair. 
 
 Lloyd George: Yet the majority of the German Govern- 
 ment is socialist, and it is that which is protesting. 
 
 Wilson : Yes, for the benefit of the capitalists. 
 
 Lloyd George: I don't agree with you. It is national 
 spirit. Upper Silesia has been separated from Poland for 
 seven hundred years. I ask nothing unreasonable in asking 
 that the inhabitants be allowed to vote. [Let the reader notice 
 the word "inhabitants," used by Mr. Lloyd George. Later on, 
 much turns upon this word.] 
 
 Wilson: But I repeat that a free vote will be impossible. 
 
 Lloyd George: Very well, we'll occupy the territory during 
 the vote. 
 
 Wilson: Then they'll say that we brought military pres- 
 sure to bear.
 
 APPENDIX A 423 
 
 Clemenceau: One way or another the Germans will always 
 be protesting. 
 
 Lloyd George : None the less the vote will have been cast. 
 Furthermore, how are the Germans going to intimidate a re- 
 sisting industrial community? We've gone through that in 
 Wales, and got the better of the big owners. 
 
 Wilson: You're comparing dissimilar things. 
 
 Lloyd George: But I tell you that the elections have gone 
 for the Poles in the localities which concern us. 
 
 Wilson: Those were local elections and not a plebiscite to 
 determine nationality. 
 
 Clemenceau: We haven't promised any plebiscite in this 
 region. 
 
 Lloyd George : It's Mr. Wilson who has proclaimed on every 
 occasion the right of self-determination. We're providing 
 plebiscites for the Saar, Fiume, Klagenfurt, so why deny one to 
 Upper Silesia? 
 
 Wilson: I go back on none of my principles, but I don't 
 want the Poles to come under German pressure. 
 
 Lloyd George: You're employing the argument you op- 
 posed when Mr. Orlando was using it about Dalmatia. 
 
 Wilson: That is simply absurd. What I'm after is an 
 honestly free vote. Now I am advised that the Germans are 
 getting ready for military action in Upper Silesia. 
 
 Lloyd George: All the more reason for a plebiscite. 
 
 Wilson: Well, then, what are you offering us? 
 
 Lloyd George: The same procedure as in East Prussia. 
 
 Wilson: And if the Germans decline to obey the decision 
 of the League of Nations? 
 
 Clemenceau: You're going to ask them to promise; they'll 
 promise, and they'll not keep it. Is that what you want? 
 
 Lloyd George: I don't exclude military occupation of the 
 plebiscite zone as a hypothesis. 
 
 Wilson: I tell you that Germany will say that pressure 
 was used. 
 
 Lloyd George: One division would suffice. 
 
 Wilson: Suffice for them to accuse us of pressure. 
 
 Lloyd George : I want peace. I know from a reliable source 
 that the question of Upper Silesia is the most important one 
 to the Germans. I prefer sending one division into Silesia 
 rather than armies to Berlin. 
 
 Clemenceau: Who says you'll have the choice? 
 
 Lloyd George: I don't want to repeat the madness of 
 Napoleon in Russia, and be in Berlin as he was in Moscow. 
 
 Clemenceau: It's a bit late to say all that. 
 
 Wilson: The point is to find out if our decision is equi- 
 table. Let them show a mistake as to race, and I am ready to 
 correct it; but the threat that Germany will refuse to sign is 
 of small interest to me. If the Germans have something valid 
 to say as to Upper Silesia I'm willing to go into the question.
 
 424 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Lloyd George: It's not at all too late. The treaty of May 
 7th is not an ultimatum. We must hear the Germans. My 
 colleagues in the government think so too. The Germans ask 
 nothing unreasonable in asking that the inhabitants be con- 
 sulted [Notice again the word "inhabitants" used by Mr. Lloyd 
 George] ; as to the freedom of the vote, that is our business : 
 if Germany rejects a plebiscite favorable to Poland the British 
 Army will march enthusiastically to Berlin. That's what I 
 require. I must have the English people with me in case of 
 trouble. 
 
 Wilson: It seems to me we are further apart than we were 
 at the start. My point is that a "no" from Germany isn't rea- 
 son enough for changing our decisions. I am ready to change 
 them in every case where we can be proved in the wrong. 
 
 Lloyd George: There are other considerations. Why re- 
 fuse secondary changes if they facilitate the signing? It's my 
 conviction that the plebiscite will both give Upper Silesia to 
 Poland and facilitate the signature. 
 
 Wilson : Your intentions are excellent, but if we send troops 
 we shall be accused of exercising pressure. I should prefer 
 taking other guaranties to insure the freedom of the vote, and 
 not sending any troops. 
 
 Clemenceau: I have listened attentively to both of you, 
 and here's my objection: you want to avoid difficulties, you're 
 going to create worse ones. A plebiscite is ideal, but not in 
 Germany, where liberty has never existed. To decide on a 
 plebiscite and wash your hands of it would be very nice, but 
 it would be a crime against the Poles. Occupation of the 
 plebiscite zone remains, in which case Germany will say that 
 pressure has been used — and do you know what will happen? 
 In six months, in a year, right in the midst of peace you'll have 
 all the bothers of war, and then the situation will probably 
 be more difficult than it is today. You say, Monsieur Lloyd 
 George, that you don't wish to go to Berlin; no more do I. If 
 we have caused millions of soldiers to be killed it was to save 
 our existence. You say that you want to learn the choice of 
 Upper Silesia; I reply that under German rule Upper Silesia 
 can't make a free choice, and that with interallied occupation 
 the Germans will claim that the plebiscite was queered. You 
 wish to quiet racial passions; you're going to inflame them. 
 There are times when the simplest and wisest thing is to say 
 no. We believe that we have made a fair treaty. Let's stick 
 to it. A plebiscite and an occupation mean quarrels for to- 
 morrow, battles perhaps; in a word, the very opposite of what 
 you desire. 
 
 Lloyd George: But if you're afraid of German resistance 
 it will come about much more if there is no plebiscite, and we 
 must recognize that from the standpoint of right Germany will 
 be in a better position than ourselves. 
 
 Wilson: We have said on our basis of the peace that all 
 the indisputably Polish provinces must come back to Poland.
 
 APPENDIX A 425 
 
 Lloyd George: But the Germans say that this is precisely 
 not the case in Silesia. 
 
 Clemenceau: What? You know perfectly well that Ger- 
 man statistics themselves show a large majority of Upper Sile- 
 sia to be Polish. 
 
 Lloyd George: But the legal aspect is not the only one; 
 there's a sentiment, and I want to know that. 
 
 Wilson : The racial question is not doubtful. As to the rest 
 I am willing to amplify what we have decided, but we are not 
 obliged to do so by the basis of the peace. 
 
 Lloyd George: On the racial basis one would have to say 
 that Alsace is German. 
 
 Clemenceau: The case of Alsace-Lorraine, as you know 
 well, is not analogous to any other. 
 
 Wilson : What I maintain is that our decision is not con- 
 trary to the fourteen points. 
 
 Lloyd George: Who of us had thought of Upper Silesia 
 before the report of our experts had brought it to our atten- 
 tion? 
 
 Clemenceau: You are absolutely wrong. All the Poles 
 from the start have claimed Upper Silesia. 
 
 Wilson: Monsieur Clemenceau is right. When I received 
 Dmovski and Paderewski in Washington I questioned them a 
 long while, map in hand. Their claims were excessive, but we 
 all agreed upon the formula "to give Poland all regions in- 
 habited by Poles." 
 
 Lloyd George: I tell you again that we can never have 
 thought of giving to Poland a province which has not been 
 Polish for eight hundred years. 
 
 Clemenceau: And I tell you again that the claim as to 
 Upper Silesia has always been formulated by Poland and recog- 
 nized as just by us. 
 
 Wilson : We must finish. We might consent to a plebiscite 
 under the control of an interallied commission. We would 
 declare the plebiscite to be void if the commission reported to 
 us that pressure had been exercised. 
 
 Lloyd George: I fancy that Germany would accept an 
 American occupation. 
 
 Clemenceau: Well, I promise you that no matter who the 
 occupiers may be, Germany will protest just the same. 
 
 Wilson: Germany doesn't love the United States any better 
 than she loves the other allies. What is your decision? Do 
 you want a plebiscite and do you wish an interallied commission 
 to define how it shall be held? 
 
 Lloyd George: The German troops must evacuate Upper 
 Silesia. 
 
 Wilson: Quite so, and the interallied commission must even 
 be able to summon allied troops. 
 
 Clemenceau: But what force do you think necessary? 
 
 Lloyd George: One division. 
 
 Clemenceau: I'm not convinced.
 
 426 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Lloyd George: If the Germans refuse to sign I must be 
 able to prove to my cabinet and to the people that the fault is 
 not ours. 
 
 Then they decided that the experts draw up a scheme; and 
 on the morning of June 5th they had in Mr. Paderewski, whom 
 Mr. Wilson addressed as follows : 
 
 Wilson: They tell us that the most serious question is 
 Upper Silesia. Our experts have prepared a note, which has 
 been communicated to us. But before deciding we want your 
 opinion. The material change will be the provision for a 
 plebiscite. The population is Polish by a large majority, as we 
 know, but some think that a plebiscite, held of course after the 
 departure of the German troops, will give more strength to our 
 decisions. 
 
 Paderewski: The actual text of the treaty is justice itself. 
 In Silesia there are two districts where Poland has an un- 
 doubted majority, and one where the majority in German. The 
 part to the west, which is agricultural, is under the influence 
 of the Catholic clergy, very dangerous from our point of view; 
 it influences the opinion of the peasants. To the east the popu- 
 lation is more thoughtful and freer, but if only the east be- 
 comes Polish, the whole industrial region will be close to the 
 frontier. 
 
 Lloyd George: Which zone is the more densely populated? 
 
 Paderewski : The east. In the mining region there are 900,- 
 000 Poles, 400,000 Germans. In the farming region there are 
 600,000 inhabitants; it is an indisputably Polish country. 
 
 Wilson: The Germans themselves recognize that the popu- 
 lation is Polish. 
 
 Paderewski: Yet, nevertheless, they claim Upper Silesia. 
 
 Lloyd George: If we were to speak of Silesia as a whole, 
 and not merely of Upper Silesia, in its entirety it is mainly 
 German. 
 
 Paderewski: Yes, many people were speaking Polish at 
 Breslau when I was there. [He means by this that in a German 
 city much Polish was spoken just as much Yiddish is spoken 
 in New York, and that these are not the facts which decide to 
 what country a city belongs.] 
 
 Clemenceau: But as to what concerns Upper Silesia, do 
 you agree to a plebiscite after the evacuation of the territory 
 by German troops? That's what we want to know from you. 
 
 Paderewski: Such a change in the treaty would oblige me 
 to resign, for the people to whom the text of June 7th [a mis- 
 take for May 7th ] promised Upper Silesia would lose their 
 confidence. 
 
 Lloyd George: We promised nothing at all, we wrote the 
 scheme of a treaty, we didn't give it the form of an ultimatum. 
 We reserved our liberty to examine the reply of the Germans, 
 and consequently we have the right to make concessions if they 
 are reasonable. What? Yesterday Poland was divided in 
 three pieces, your fellow-countrymen were fighting separately
 
 APPENDIX A 427 
 
 against each other, and all were fighting together against the 
 independence of their own country. Today you are sure of a 
 resurrected Poland which will have 20,000,000 inhabitants; 
 you're demanding in addition, for example, a population in Gali- 
 cia which is not Polish. You're demanding all this from us ; you, 
 whose liberty has been won by the death of 1,500,000 French- 
 men, 800,000 Englishmen, and 500,000 Italians. It's our blood 
 that has paid for your independence. If you kick against our 
 decisions we shall have been mistaken in you. 
 
 Paderewski: I confined myself to stating that I could not 
 remain in office. 
 
 Lloyd George: We have given liberty to Poland, Bohemia, 
 Jugo-Slavia; and those are the countries that kick against 
 the plebiscite. They are much more imperialistic than the great 
 nations themselves. 
 
 Paderewski: I cannot admit what you say; you are merely 
 reproducing newspaper talk. 
 
 Lloyd George: I say that you want to annex people against 
 their will. 
 
 Paderewski: Not in the slightest degree. We defend our 
 countrymen when they are attacked. 
 
 Clemenceau : I want to come back to the question of the 
 plebiscite. If it is held after some postponement and until 
 that time American troops occupy the country, do you think 
 the vote will be free and favorable to Poland? 
 
 Paderewski: Yes, undoubtedly in the eastern part. As for 
 the western part, the threefold influence of the freeholders, the 
 officials, and the clericals will make the outcome uncertain. 
 Furthermore the object of the Germans is to provoke a dis- 
 turbance in order to have to repress it. They have 350,000 
 men on the Polish frontier. 
 
 The conversation about Poland was resumed on the morning 
 of June 9th. 
 
 Lloyd George: The experts who have been at work over 
 the plebiscite do not agree as to the interval between the signing 
 of the treaty and the plebiscite. Now this interval bears upon 
 the system to be established. We alone are able to solve this 
 question. Do not forget that three of the experts are hostile 
 in principle to the plebiscite. 
 
 Wilson: It will be enough to ask them to explain the two 
 systems. 
 
 Lloyd George: That's it. Moreover, some proposals are not 
 acceptable, such as the expulsion of the entire clergy. The com- 
 mission who will be on the ground must be exempt from its 
 decisions. \ 
 
 Clemenceau: I recognize that it may be difficult to expel 
 the entire clergy, and yet you cannot overlook the pro-German 
 influence that it will exert. 
 
 Lloyd George: As in Ireland; and in spite of that we do not 
 expel the Irish clergy. The plebiscite will deprive the Germans
 
 428 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 of all pretext for fighting. With concessions as to the repara- 
 tions in addition, the Germans will sign. 
 
 On the afternoon of June 11th they returned to the question. 
 
 Clemenceau: Do you wish to hear the commission on Polish 
 affairs? 
 
 Lloyd George: That commission is very biased regarding 
 Poland; I don't want to debate with it. 
 
 Clemenceau: We'll debate only with each other, but we 
 must first hear the commission, question it and listen to it. I 
 desire to repeat once again that I am against a plebiscite 
 in Upper Silesia. Since you all agree to the principle I'll be 
 with you in a spirit of conciliation, but I can't forget that 
 wherever the population has elected Polish deputies the pleb- 
 iscite is useless. [He means that Polish deputies to the Reich- 
 stag count for nothing.] 
 
 Wilson: We can examine its limitations. I should add that 
 my colleague, Mr. White, has also brought me reports of the 
 pro-German influence of the Polish clericals. 
 
 Lloyd George: I'll bet those reports come from Polish 
 sources. Look what the Poles are saying about the Jews. They 
 claim to be giving them the best treatment in the world, and 
 we all know it's not true. A plebiscite is a just thing. With- 
 out a plebiscite our consciences would not be at ease if British 
 troops had to be sent to get themselves killed in Upper Silesia. 
 A plebiscite put off for several months or an interallied occu- 
 pation will give us free elections. 
 
 Wilson : You're very biased yourself. My information 
 comes from Americans on the spot. You appear to have for- 
 gotten what the Germans can do in the way of propaganda and 
 pressure. I know what they did in America. What will they 
 not do in Silesia, where they are politically and economically 
 sovereign? When it comes to the Germans I am against them 
 and for Poland. 
 
 Clemenceau: That's truth. 
 
 Lloyd George: I tell you again that if we have to fight 
 about the east frontier of Germany our soldiers won't fight if 
 Germany can prove that the plebiscite was rejected in spite 
 of Great Britain's opinion. 
 
 Wilson: We've been making no sacrifice of our own inter- 
 ests; don't let us consent to them at the expense of a little 
 country. [Mr. Wilson meant by this that after a lively discus- 
 sion and upon the unbreakable opposition of Mr. Clemenceau 
 the clauses relating to the occupation of the left bank of the 
 Rhine and the reparations had been retained without change. 1 
 
 Lloyd George: You know perfectly well that my sole object 
 was not to give Poland territory that was not Polish. Were 
 we to do that we could not fight to assure such territory to it. 
 
 Wilson: I'm sorry for the excitement into which I've 
 thrown you. It's also quite certain that you've never changed 
 your opinion about this.
 
 APPENDIX A 429 
 
 Lloyd George: I want to avoid conflict. The Germans in 
 Upper Silesia consider the Poles an inferior population, for 
 whom they entertain contempt; and to put Germans under 
 Polish rule would be to provoke trouble. 
 
 Clemenceau: You'll have trouble, never _ doubt it, of all 
 sorts, now or later, with or without a plebiscite. 
 
 Lloyd George: I hold an utterly opposite opinion. 
 
 Clemenceau: The future will settle it, but I beg you not to 
 forget what I'm saying today. 
 
 Wilson : The first thing to do, according to the experts, is 
 to cause the withdrawal of German troops. Will British soldiers 
 fight to make the plebiscite respected? 
 
 Lloyd George: Yes, because it's a just principle; and what 
 I'd like to know is, if the French Army would fight for Upper 
 Silesia to become Polish without a plebiscite? 
 
 Clemenceau: I reply yes, because the question is not as 
 you put it; here's the one question: to know if the Germans 
 will sign or not sign the treaty. 
 
 Wilson: The American soldiers will always fight against 
 the Germans. 
 
 Lloyd George: I'm not speaking for your soldiers; I'm 
 speaking for mine. You know how Lord Northcliffe is attack- 
 ing me in his newspapers, and yet he is for the plebiscite in 
 Upper Silesia. 
 
 [The experts are brought in — Mr. Jules Cambon, General Le 
 Rond, Mr. Morley, and Mr. Lord.] 
 
 Wilson: In what do the experts agree and in what do they 
 disagree? 
 
 Le Rond: We agree upon the territorial question, the coal 
 question, and the financial clauses. We disagree upon the ques- 
 tion of the plebiscite in Upper Silesia. President Wilson two 
 days ago ordered us in the name of the Four to present two 
 schemes — one for a plebiscite shortly, the other for a postponed 
 plebiscite. In Upper Silesia the Poles are not their own 
 masters. The big freeholders are lords of the soil; they are 
 really feudal with more power than those of the thirteenth 
 century, because they own not only the ground but what is be- 
 neath, and the manufactories and the capital. 
 
 Clemenceau: Chiefly the bishop of Breslau, who is one of 
 those big freeholders. 
 
 Le Rond: I'll speak presently of him. The big freeholders 
 hold the country in a net, notably the clergy. The bishop of 
 Breslau is particularly powerful. Since the armistice the Polish 
 priests have been sent elsewhere. The Germans suppress the 
 Polish newspapers and it's being said that if Silesia becomes 
 Polish the money in the savings banks will disappear. Accord- 
 ing to the general opinion of the experts, serious precautions 
 should be taken. The majority of the experts consider that a 
 pretty long postponement is required; between one and two 
 years. 
 
 Lloyd George: I accept.
 
 430 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Le Rond: Out of eight electoral districts in Upper Silesia, 
 five were represented in the Reichstag by Poles. 
 
 Clemenceau: Did these Poles claim they were independent? 
 
 Le Rond: They couldn't under the German system. 
 
 Wilson: There was a strong Polish party in Upper Silesia? 
 
 Le Rond: Yes. 
 
 Lloyd George: I fancy it's useless to bring up the question 
 of an immediate plebiscite. 
 
 Le Rond: I'll speak of the preparation for a plebiscite. If 
 it doesn't take place until after a fairly long wait you must 
 give wider powers to your commission. 
 
 Lloyd George: The question is settled for me. 
 
 Le Rond: Who will settle the date — the Powers or the 
 League of Nations? 
 
 Lloyd George: I'll accept either method. 
 
 Wilson : Can you inform us as to the Polish part of Upper 
 Silesia? 
 
 Lord: There are two parties, one socialist, one not, but 
 both are working for union with Poland. 
 
 Lloyd George: But is it not the same thing as in Ireland 
 or in Wales — attachment to the nationality, but never until 
 recently, even in Ireland, a serious idea of separation? 
 
 Lord: Separation was not in the program, probably be- 
 cause it wasn't supposed possible in the condition of Europe. 
 
 Le Rond: Since the war the movement in favor of union 
 with Poland has been very active in the whole of Upper Silesia. 
 
 Lloyd George: I don't contest that, but what I don't know 
 is the strength of Polish sentiment. 
 
 [The experts retire.] 
 
 Wilson: I consider that we must decide for a plebiscite a 
 year off at least, two years off at the latest. Mr. Lord has it 
 from an American on the spot that all classes of the population 
 want a plebiscite. Now Mr. Lord himself is against a plebi- 
 scite. 
 
 Clemenceau: I've nothing to add to what I have said. I 
 persist in thinking the plebiscite a mistake. Since I'm alone 
 in this, I must bow; none the less I continue to believe that we 
 are headed for grave difficulties in Upper Silesia and that a 
 prompt settlement would have been better. 
 
 Wilson: Here is the scheme for defining the powers of the 
 commission on the plebiscite. 
 
 [The scheme is adopted.] 
 
 Clemenceau: Is occupation provided for? 
 
 Wilson : Yes. 
 
 Clemenceau: Is the evacuation of the German troops stip- 
 ulated? 
 
 Wilson : Yes. 
 
 Clemenceau: What interval shall we set for the plebiscite? 
 
 Lloyd George: The committee will make a proposal at the 
 end of the year. 
 
 Clemenceau: Who are the troops of occupation?
 
 APPENDIX A 431 
 
 Lloyd George: I think we'll all have to participate. I'd 
 still prefer that it was the Americans. 
 Wilson: I'll consult my military authorities. 
 Clemenceau: Who'll pay the expenses of the occupation? 
 Orlando: The country who'll get Upper Silesia. 
 
 They resumed on the morning of June 14th. 
 
 Wilson : We have decided to have recourse to the plebiscite 
 to deprive Germany of the slightest pretext for irredentist 
 action in the future. Besides, the Germans realize that the pop- 
 ulation is Polish in majority but they deny its wish to be joined 
 to Poland. Mr. Paderewski has marked out two zones — the 
 mining region to the east, where the result of the plebiscite 
 seems to him not doubtful, and the farming region to the west, 
 where the result is doubtful. This must be taken into consid- 
 eration. Accordingly we have decided: 
 
 1. That the plebiscite shall be held by commune [township, 
 parish] . 
 
 2. That it shall be put off for several months in order that 
 German pressure may be eliminated. 
 
 3. That the German troops shall immediately evacuate 
 Upper Silesia. 
 
 Paderewski: I can't pretend that this is not a cruel blow, 
 for we had been promised Upper Silesia. If the plebiscite turned 
 out unfavorable to us it would be the peasants, the working- 
 men, who would suffer. As to the period of waiting which you 
 have provided, it will create an unwelcome tension. The plebi- 
 scite should not be put off longer than six months at the most. 
 Our delegation accepts your decision with the respect it hag 
 for you, but not without profound regret. 
 
 Wilson: Your words move me deeply; I've gone through 
 many doubts and scruples of conscience. 
 
 Clemenceau: You know that my opinion has never changed. 
 
 Lloyd George: I was myself much moved by the state- 
 ments of Mr. Paderewski. We have reflected a long while, but 
 I am certain that Poland has nothing to fear in the mining 
 region from the plebiscite. 
 
 Wilson: An American who went there tells me that union 
 with Poland is desired by everybody and that the result will be 
 favorable. 
 
 Dmovski: I am convinced that taken altogether the plebi- 
 scite will give good results. I know the German argument well. 
 They declare that the population does not want to be Polish. 
 I realize that fifty years ago it was no longer Polish save in 
 speech, but during the past half century there has been a great 
 awakening. This might now create difficulties if districts which 
 in 1919 might hesitate to vote for Poland should rise up against 
 German rule later. What would the Great Powers do? 
 
 Wilson: To deal with such questions is one of the essential 
 offices of the League of Nations.
 
 432 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 Lloyd George: Quite so; we can't settle everything at once, 
 but there'll be permanent machinery for adjustment. 
 
 Dmovski: What have you decided about the evacuation of 
 Upper Silesia by German troops? 
 
 Wilson : It will take place at once after the signature. 
 
 Dmovski: What have you decided about the German 
 officials? 
 
 Wilson: The commission has full power to drive them out. 
 
 Dmovski: The commission in its work would have to be 
 aided equally by the German and the Polish element. 
 
 Wilson : The commission will have discretionary powers. 
 
 [Mr. Paderewski and Mr. Dmovski retire.] 
 
 Lloyd George: All the partisans of Poland asked that the 
 plebiscite be put off, and here's the Polish delegation asking 
 that it take place as soon as possible. 
 
 Wilson: I should have supposed that an interval of from 
 one to two years was a guaranty for Poland. 
 
 Clemenceau: Possibly; but Mr. Paderewski tells you that 
 the intervening period runs the danger of driving everybody 
 crazy. 
 
 Wilson: We must take what he said into consideration and 
 adopt a plan that allows at need an abridgment of the interval 
 before the plebiscite. I suggest we say from six to eighteen 
 months. [Adopted.] 
 
 So Mr. Lloyd George had his way, and a plebiscite in Upper 
 Silesia was provided for, accordingly, by Article 88 of the 
 Treaty of Versailles, as follows: 
 
 Article 88: "In the portion of Upper Silesia included within 
 the boundaries described below, the inhabitants will be called 
 upon to indicate by a vote whether they wish to be attached to 
 Germany or to Poland. . . . Germany hereby renounces in 
 favor of Poland all rights and title over the portion of Upper 
 Silesia lying beyond the frontier line fixed by the Principal 
 Allied and Associated Powers as the result of the plebiscite." 
 
 Section 4 of the annex to this article specifies and limits very 
 precisely who the qualified voters are to be. 
 
 a. All persons of either sex who have completed their 20th 
 
 year. 
 
 b. Who were born in Upper Silesia or were domiciled there 
 
 by January 1st, 1919. 
 
 c. Or who had lost their domicile by being expelled by the 
 
 German authorities. 
 
 Clause C enlarges the definition of "inhabitants" by including 
 the banished inhabitants; they can come back; but not Germans 
 born there and emigrated voluntarily. To have meant that all 
 persons born in Upper Silesia should vote after completing their 
 20th year, and then to add an annex describing which persons 
 should vote there would have been a manifest absurdity. 
 
 One would suppose this pretty clear; but the Germans who 
 had emigrated from Schleswig were allowed to return and vote
 
 APPENDIX A 433 
 
 in violation of provisions virtually similar to these. The same 
 provisions, virtually, applied to Allenstein and Marienwerder in 
 East Prussia (see Article 95), and the treaty was violated in 
 the same way. When it came to Upper Silesia the precedent 
 thus established was claimed by Germany and conceded by 
 the Allies. Germany asserted that Section 4 of the Annex 
 destroyed the meaning of "inhabitants" in Article 88. 
 
 This grows more inconceivable when you find, in Section 5, 
 that "regard will be paid to the wishes of the inhabitants as 
 shown by the vote" — nothing said about emigrated Germans; 
 that the report of the commission computes the number of voters 
 as 1,900,000 — which is the number of inhabitants of Upper 
 Silesia in 1910, according to the Prussian census — no question 
 of emigrants here; and that the German note of May 1919 con- 
 fines itself to requesting that the right to vote be granted to 
 "any German subject aged 20 years complete and living in the 
 plebiscite territory at least a year before the conclusion of the 
 peace." No question of emigrants here. This request, as the 
 reader will notice, was granted by clause b of the annex, fixing 
 January 1st, 1919. What followed is more inconceivable still. 
 
 In the summer of 1920, the Allies allowed that emigrated 
 Germans should vote in Upper Silesia. In the autumn, Mon- 
 sieur G. Leygues obtained the concession that at least these 
 Germans should not vote on the same day as the inhabitants. 
 In January 1921, at the Paris conference, this concession was 
 renounced by France. In March the plebiscite took place, and 
 Germans to the number of 190,000 entered and intimidated the 
 voters. This election failed utterly in its object, which was to 
 register the true aspirations of the inhabitants. From March 
 until August — again in violation of Article 88, which sets one 
 month after the vote as the term in which frontiers and admin- 
 istration are to be settled — nothing is settled ; then the Supreme 
 Council passed the mess it had made to the League of Nations. 
 Then the League of Nations by its decision awarded Poland 
 more than was, according to German ideas, satisfactory. 
 
 At this the German Cabinet resigned office and took it again 
 the next day, like something in a comic opera, while the Berlin 
 papers were remarking, "We must help accelerate the Polish 
 process of decay," and that Germany was no longer bound by 
 the Peace Treaty because "it has been grossly violated again!" 
 Soon the League of Nations confessed itself at a loss, not very 
 unnaturally. What could it do? It had been founded upon a 
 theory of human nature rather than on a condition, and con- 
 sequently rested on sand, which we must hope may slowly 
 change to rock. Meanwhile, we usually supply sailboats today 
 with^ auxiliary power. The suggestion of power, during all this 
 passing back and forth of resnonsibility, came from quite 
 another source. General Ludendorff, in a speech he made at 
 Koenigsberg. indicated his way of settling the question of 
 Upner Silesia. 
 
 "I entertain no doubt," he said, "that the destiny of our
 
 434 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 country will be decided sooner or later by a battle for tbat land 
 to our east. When the hour comes remember what won us our 
 victory at Tannenberg — the will of our leaders, our faith in 
 those leaders, our discipline and courage in the face of death. 
 The greater our country's need the more closely shall we rally 
 round the black, white, and red flag of Prussia. We are proud 
 of our beloved Prussia; we are, and we wish to be, Prussians." 
 
 Great applause followed these words, the audience gave the 
 general an ovation. A counter demonstration by socialists was 
 promptly suppressed. 
 
 In May 1922, Poland and Germany agreed to abide for fifteen 
 years by the decision of the League of Nations. Will this be 
 another scrap of paper? 
 
 The Treaty of Versailles has had but few readers. During 
 our presidential campaign in 1920 many friends of the League 
 of Nations reproached me for being a Republican. Not one of 
 these friends had read the treaty; most of them had never even 
 seen the outside of it. Yet, perfectly ignorant of its many 
 provisions, unwise and hastily prepared, they wished it ratified. 
 I hope that I have made clear the story of Upper Silesia. 
 First, early in 1919, it is to be given outright to Poland; next, 
 a string is tied to this gift by a plebiscite, at which shall 
 vote only native-born and residents naturalized before January 
 1st, 1919, and residents exiled by Germany; next, contrary to 
 this signed agreement, German emigrants are to vote; next, 
 these are to vote on a different day from the inhabitants; next, 
 they are to vote on the same day; finally, 190,000 of them enter 
 and vote on the same day, and the election is an intimidation and 
 not free, precisely as Clemenceau told Lloyd George it would 
 be and Lloyd George told Clemenceau he was sure it wouldn't. 
 
 Would not a sticking to the treaty have been simpler? This 
 is not a case of posterity interpreting the vague language of a 
 document it did not write; it is the departure by the stipulators 
 from their own specific stipulations. Many a set of politicians 
 have gone back on a treaty which their predecessors signed; 
 but never until now have we seen a set of politicians going back 
 within two years on what they have signed themselves; and 
 this irresponsible levity about a solemn agreement not only 
 belittles the Allies and encourages Germany in her plan of 
 revenge but it insults and impairs the sense of honor of the 
 entire civilized world.
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 FOCH SPEAKS HIS MIND 
 
 On November 7th, 1920, eighteen months to a day after the 
 Treaty of Versailles was delivered to the Germans, Marshal 
 Foch was on his way to Amiens to decorate the graves of the 
 Australians who had defended the city for three years, and 
 saved it in 1918, and had left fifty thousand dead on French soil. 
 
 Perhaps it was because he was in the same private car in 
 which the Germans had signed the Armistice almost exactly 
 two years before, that his companion, M. Jules Sauerwein, a 
 writer for Le Matin, found him in a mood, at first slightly re- 
 luctant but finally almost without reserve, to talk about the 
 Armistice. He broke his silence about this and also about two 
 other matters of historic interest, namely, the circumstances in 
 which he was made commander-in-chief of the allied armies 
 after the disaster to the 5th British army in the great spring 
 drive of 1918, and the tardiness as well as the character of the 
 peace treaty. 
 
 No observer can look at the face of Foch, especially at his 
 eyes, without perceiving that his is a nature of perfect loyalty 
 and also that whatever animation may pass over the surface, 
 he is deeply and finally sad. This comes not alone from the 
 personal bereavement that he suffered in the war ; it is due also, 
 and possibly even more, to the undoing of his work by the 
 politicians, which he foresaw but which he was powerless to 
 prevent. 
 
 When the world read his reasons for granting an armistice 
 at the time they were published — the sparing of human life, 
 since all was gained without further bloodshed — they seemed 
 adequate. Very few could have known then that the Armistice 
 was forced upon him against his conviction, and that loyalty 
 alone prompted him not only to assent openly but also openly 
 to support the step taken. What he would have done had he 
 known that no peace would be signed until the following June, 
 no one can be sure, probably not even he. 
 
 To lay the calamity of the Armistice wholly at Mr. Wilson's 
 door is probably not any more correct than to leave out his in- 
 fluence altogether. Several causes would seem to have com- 
 bined, and were alleged then, and later. It was said that the 
 British Army, after its tremendous and exhausting pursuit, 
 could have gone no further then; that all the armies had 
 
 435
 
 436 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 marched so far in advance of their bases of supply as to make 
 further progress at that time, or until the spring, impossible; 
 that every bridge and other link of communication had been 
 destroyed by the retreating Germans, so that necessary repairs 
 both in front and in the rear would have delayed an invasion 
 of Germany until spring, giving Germany time to entrench 
 herself formidably; and, finally, that Mr. Wilson, whose 14 
 points had helped to allay in January a growing socialistic 
 opposition to carrying on the war in 1918, had by his notes 
 to Max of Baden in October again revived this opposition to 
 an extent so widespread that it had to be reckoned with. These 
 reasons, if true, must have seemed strong in November 1918. 
 A complete answer to them, however, is to be found in the plan 
 for the Lorraine offensive to have been launched on November 
 14th. In the light of that, any threat to withdraw the American 
 troops would have been by itself enough to have forced the 
 Armistice; and if such a threat was in fact made, Mr. Wilson's 
 figure will stand almost as prominent in history as that of the 
 Kaiser. 
 
 Much controversy surrounds the delay in uniting all the 
 armies under the command of Foch after this had been urged 
 in high quarters. The conversation between him and Sauerwein 
 throws some light upon this, but not enough. Foch begins by 
 expressing weariness of repeating the story of the Armistice, 
 but as he warms to it, occasionally dropping into colloquialisms 
 for which it is not easy to find English equivalents, his opinion 
 of the slump from victory to failure is revealed, as well as his 
 unhappiness. 
 
 "What is an armistice? It is a suspension of arms, a cessa- 
 tion of hostilities, which has for its object the discussion of 
 peace by putting the governments which have consented to it in 
 a situation such that they can impose the peace on which they 
 have decided. 
 
 "Has the Armistice which I signed on the 11th of November, 
 1918, fulfilled its object? 
 
 "Yes, since on the 28th of June, after seven months of nego- 
 tiations, Germany accepted all the conditions of the Allies. I had 
 said to M. Clemenceau, the President of the Council, 'Here is my 
 Armistice: you can make any peace you please, I am in a posi- 
 tion to enforce it.' If the peace has not been good, is it my 
 fault? I did my work; it was for the politicians to do theirs. 
 
 "I had been thinking thf> neace over for a l°ng while. P>y 
 Sentember 1918 I was writing to M. Clemenceau. I said to 
 him: 'The end of the war approaches. Send me a member of 
 our foreign ministry to inform me of the conditions of peace 
 which you are preparing in order that our armies mav occupy 
 all the regions which should serve as a guaranty for the execu- 
 tion of the treaty which you will make.' 
 
 "Mr. Clemenceau replied: 'That is no business of yours.' 
 
 "Do you wish me to tell you about the Armistice? It has 
 been told so often! Very well; I'll tell you that when I saw
 
 APPENDIX B 437 
 
 them entering this car, Erzberger and the two others, accom- 
 panied by a naval officer whose name I have completely for- 
 gotten, I had a moment of emotion. I said to myself, 'Here is 
 Germany. Very well, since it is coming to me, I will treat it 
 as it deserves. It is beaten. I will be stiff, cold, but without 
 rancor or rudeness.' 
 
 "I had reached Rethonde at six in the evening, where my 
 train was put on a siding. Next morning a train arrived very 
 slowly, pushed from behind. It was the German train. They 
 laid a footbridge between the two trains because it was very 
 muddy. An instant later Weygand entered and told me that 
 the German plenipotentiaries were at hand. Erzberger comes 
 first, and presents the others in a fairly indistinct voice. It's 
 translated. I say: 'Gentlemen, have you your credentials? 
 We'll examine their validity.' They show me papers signed 
 by Max of Baden. We consider them satisfactory. I turn to 
 Erzberger and say to him: 'What do you desire of me?' 'We 
 have come,' he answers, 'to receive communications of the con- 
 ditions on which you wish to make the Armistice.' 
 
 "I answer: 'I have no communication to make to you. _ If 
 you have any request to present to me, make it.' And he gives 
 some more explanations. I say to him: 'Do you ask for an 
 armistice?' He answers me: 'We ask it.' I reply: 'Then I will 
 inform you through my intermediary upon what conditions the 
 allied governments consent to grant the Armistice.' 
 
 "We sit down in the next car where my officers were. 
 Admiral Wemyss at my right, Weygand at my left, and opposite 
 me Erzberger, between Oberdorf and Winterfeldt. Weygand 
 read them the conditions, which were translated piece by piece. 
 "I saw them collapse. Winterfeldt was very pale. I even 
 think he was crying. After the reading, I add at once: 'Gen- 
 tlemen, I leave this text with you ; you have 72 hours to answer 
 in. During that time you can present me comments of detail.' 
 "Then Erzberger became piteous. 'Monsieur le marechal, I 
 pray you will not wait for 72 hours. Stop the hostilities to- 
 day. Our armies are the prey of anarchy; bolshevism threatens 
 them: this bolshevism may spread over Germany, over all 
 central Europe, and threaten even France herself.' 
 
 "I don't budge. I reply: 'I don't know what condition your 
 armies are in ; I only know the state of my own. Not only can 
 I not stop the offensive, but I will give the order to push it 
 with redoubled energy.' 
 
 "Then Winterfeldt takes it up. He had notes in front of him 
 and he had carefully got up his case. 
 
 " 'It is necessary,' said he to me, 'that our chiefs-of -staff 
 should confer and talk over together all the details of execution. 
 How can they? How can they onmmuni"ate if the hostilities 
 continue? I request you to stop the hostilities.' 
 
 "I answered him : 'These technical discussions will be en- 
 tirely in order in 72 hours. From now until then hostilities 
 will continue.'
 
 438 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 "They withdrew. As for me, I send an order to all the allied 
 armies, a last call to the courage and energy of all. All the 
 commanders-in-chief returned me an enthusiastic answer: 
 'Count on us, we shall not stop.' 
 
 "I skip the three following days. The Germans attempted 
 submersion, submersion by means of notes. Weygand received 
 them and transmitted them to me." 
 
 Here the marshal with a smile of kindness and recognition 
 interrupted himself to speak of his colleagues. 
 
 "They are," he said to me, "crack-a -jacks. Ah, how well they 
 know their business! And when there was talk of sending 
 Weygand to Poland, and somebody said that he had never been 
 in command, I said: 'Don't worry, he'll know what to do.' 
 
 "On the evening of the 10th I remind the Germans that they 
 must sign the next day. They receive a long message from 
 Hindenburg telling them to sign; but the revolution breaks out 
 in Berlin, and I tell them: 'Who do you represent now?' They 
 show me a telegram from President Ebert, a cipher telegram 
 which was signed '606.' I don't know why. This telegram 
 satisfied their authority. 
 
 "During the night of the 10th I didn't sleep much. 
 
 "I was resting between midnight and one o'clock, and then 
 the Germans arrived. I allowed them 5,000 mitrailleuses, and 
 some camions. That was all. At 5.15 they signed in heavy, 
 furious handwriting. At seven o'clock I left for Paris. 
 
 "At nine I was with M. Clemenceau. He was not particularly 
 amiable. He was growling. He asked me if I had yielded to 
 the Germans . . . but no matter about that ... I told him 
 that at eleven o'clock the cannon must be fired to announce the 
 end of hostilities. He wanted it to be at four in the afternoon 
 at the moment he should mount the tribune in the Chamber of 
 Deputies. I told him that the allied armies had been advised 
 since the night by my order; that at eleven o'clock the last 
 shot would be fired, and the whole world would know it. 
 
 "On this M. Barthou, M. Neil, and others entered his study 
 and backed me up. He consented to have the cannon fired at 
 eleven o'clock. 
 
 "I said to him : 'My work is done. Yours begins.' " 
 
 Sauerwein: But was it really over, your work? After beat- 
 ing Germany wasn't it your duty to give advice as to the 
 peace? 
 
 Foch : I don't know if it was my duty, or rather I believe 
 it was, and that's what I understood ; but I never was given the 
 right. 
 
 "I often saw M. Clemenceau and I sent him three written 
 notes. But let me tell you the end which will explain the begin- 
 ning to you. The peace which they proposed to sign — I spoke 
 to you about it at the time — seemed bad to me. I summed it up 
 thus: neither frontiers nor pledges. 
 
 "For the security of France the frontier of the Rhine was 
 needed, a military frontier, you understand, not a political one.
 
 APPENDIX B 439 
 
 For the reparations due France I demanded the occupation 
 of the left bank of the Rhine until the full compliance with the 
 treaty was consummated, because in my opinion that was the 
 only way to secure those reparations. 
 
 "In the month of April, the 7th, I think, I was allowed to be 
 heard at the council of ministers. I had vainly asked to be 
 heard by the French delegation. They refused me. I recall 
 that council of ministers. I came there with M. Jules Cambon 
 and Tardieu. I asked at first if they kept no minutes. It 
 appears that this was not the custom. Then, as I had com- 
 mitted my remarks to paper, I gave a copy to each minister and 
 then began to speak and develop my theme: no guaranties, 
 no security. 
 
 "M. Poincare supported me, he alone, I must acknowledge it. 
 After that they begged me to retire. Going out, I said to M. 
 Tardieu before M. Cambon: 
 
 " 'Some day there will be a High Court to judge us, because 
 France will never understand how we came to make a failure 
 out of victory. On that day I want to present myself with a 
 tranquil conscience and my papers in order.' 
 
 "I made one more attempt. It was at the full session of the 
 6th of May, when they gave to the allied powers the treaty 
 which had been finished during the night. The Portuguese, and 
 others whom I don't recall, protested. Then I got up and de- 
 veloped my theme once more. They listened, nobody said a 
 word, and the session rose. 
 
 "While they were taking tea in the adjoining room I found 
 M. Clemenceau and said: 
 
 " 'I had the honor to ask a question, and I should be glad 
 of an answer.' 
 
 "Then I saw him talk animatedly a moment with M. Wilson 
 and M. Lloyd George. Then he came back to me and declared: 
 
 " 'Our answer is, that there is no answer.' 
 
 "I replied: 
 
 " 'Monsieur the President, I am asking myself if I will ac- 
 company you tomorrow to Versailles. I find myself facing a 
 case of conscience, the gravest that I have ever known in my 
 existence. I repudiate that treaty, and I do not wish to par- 
 ticipate in the responsibility by sitting beside you.' 
 
 "He was not pleased, and urged me to come. In the evening 
 he sent M. John Dupuy to me, who held a long discourse with 
 real emotion. Then I said to myself: 'The Allied governments 
 are going to present themselves before Germany to impose a 
 treaty upon her. Is it possible for them to present themselves 
 without their armies, without the chief of their armies? I 
 haven't the right. It would be to weaken them in the presence 
 of the enemy. 
 
 "At Versailles I found myself by M. Klotz. When the cere- 
 mony of delivery was over, I said: 'Monsieur Minister of the 
 Finances of the French Republic, with such a treaty you can 
 present yourself at the bank of the German Empire and you
 
 440 NEIGHBORS HENCEFORTH 
 
 will be paid in fake money.' M. Klotz replied acrimoniously, 
 'That is not my custom.' 
 
 " 'It will be your custom,' I retorted. 
 
 "And those are the people," concluded Marshal Foch, looking 
 sadly at his pipe, "those are the peoole to whom I said: 
 
 " 'Make what peace you wish, I'll take care that it's per- 
 formed.' " 
 
 Sauerwein: It looks as if the head of our government did 
 not love you to excess. 
 
 Foch: What can you do? I don't know if he liked me, but 
 he did not show it. I recall a council of war in London, the 
 14th of March, 1918. I had been nominated commander-in-chief 
 of the reserve army, which didn't exist much. At that meeting 
 I a*ked the English to contribute effectives to this army. 
 
 "Marshal Haig declared to me. in the name of the English 
 Government, which was principally represented by Mr. Lloyd 
 George, that it was impossible. I was going to answer sharply 
 when 
 
 " 'Be quiet,' said M. Clemenceau vigorously to me, 'I'm speak- 
 ing in the name of the French Government, and I declare that 
 I accept Marshal Haig's answer.' " 
 
 He^e, writes M. Sauerwein, Foch smiled, and that violent 
 incident seems to have left not the slightest bitterness. 
 
 "I said to myself," continued Foch, "wait. Tomorrow I'll 
 say something. And next day when the council was on the point 
 of separating, I spoke, and I was not cut short this time. I 
 declared that a formidable offensive was preparing, and I added 
 that I knew what allieH battles were. I've taken part at the 
 Marne and in Italv. Here is what the liaisons ought to be 
 (I said) and here is the way to play team-work, those are the 
 precautions to be taken, &c, &c. I assure you (I said to them) 
 that nothing is ready to resist the offensive and that it may 
 be a disaster. 
 
 "They were impressed all the same. And a few days after- 
 wards at Com^i^fme and Donllens thev remembered me. [This 
 was when Gough's army had been defeated.] 
 
 "At Donllens there were Lord Milner, Marshal Haig, M. 
 Poincare, M. Clemenceau, M. Loucheur, and General Petain. I 
 was not satisfied. From what I could learn, General Petain 
 was getting readv to retire on Paris. General Haig to the west. 
 It was the onen door for Germany — it was defeat. 
 
 "Marshal T*aie\ snnnorted bv Lord Milnpr, said there must 
 be a responsible head and unity of command. I was proposed. 
 
 " 'We can,' said Clemenceau, 'give to Marshal Foch the com- 
 mand of the armies operating round Amiens.' 
 
 "Marshal Haig was the one who onnosed this and declared 
 that there was onlv one sensible solution, which was to give 
 me the command of the armies on the west front. M. Clemen- 
 ceau bowed, and it was decided. 
 
 "At lnnch, which followed. M. Clemenceau said to me: 
 
 " 'Well, you have it, the place you wanted!'
 
 APPENDIX B 441 
 
 "I lost patience a little; I answered: 
 
 "'What, Mr. President! You give me a lost battle and you 
 ask me to retrieve it. I accept, and you've the idea that you've 
 made me a present? It requires my entire self-effacement to 
 accept in such circumstances.' "

 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 2 Bf9 
 RETD BOOK BOX 
 N0V2 3 1962 
 
 REC'D SD-URD 
 
 APR 2 4 4973 
 
 1 JUL5 
 
 Form L-!i 
 
 20 7tt-12, '30(3380) 
 
 u~r< 
 
 L(
 
 
 )C SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 221394 o