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FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
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FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 THE TALE OF A SCHLESWIG 
 DANE 
 
 BV 
 
 ERICH ERICHSEN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ROBERT M. McBRIDE & Co. 
 
 1917 
 

 Translated from the Danish by 
 INGEBORG LUND 
 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT FOR 
 THE HUNS 
 
 I 
 
 He was a boy at the time when I first met 
 him — a little lad of four, with sun-bleached 
 hair and bright eyes ; a child of the fields and 
 the soil, of the stable and the barn. 
 
 We were sitting that day above a roadside 
 ditch, the bright summer sun shining down 
 upon us, and around us the fragrance of wild 
 roses in the hedges. I had to tell him stories, 
 but they all had to be about noble knights clad 
 in gilded armour and carrying good gleaming 
 swords. The knights all had to slay the wicked 
 dragon and rescue the fair princess. Unless 
 they did that, neither they nor the stories were 
 any good. 
 
 All the time while I was telling him these 
 tales his ardent, enraptured eyes were fastened 
 upon me, while his soft and yielding child's 
 mouth looked like a big note of interrogation. 
 
 3717C0 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 I saw him again in July in the first year of 
 the war. He was then a happy and light- 
 hearted young man of twenty-four ; straight 
 and strong, heavy in limb and firm in step. 
 He had that confidence and calm in all his move- 
 ments which is common to those who own the 
 ground they walk on. 
 
 His face was bronzed by the sun and hardened 
 by all kinds of wind and weather. The glance 
 of his blue-grey eyes was open and fearless, 
 as in those who are used to seeing far and dis- 
 tinguishing clearly, and his voice, when speaking 
 the language of his childhood and youth, was 
 gentle and rich. 
 
 His father's homestead stood on one of the 
 downs overlooking the fjord. He had been born 
 there, and his father and grandfather before 
 him, and their forefathers, for as long as the 
 family could be traced back. 
 
 He came of that good, sound peasant stock 
 that has drawn its nourishment from the soil, 
 and that looks upon each foot-space of ground, 
 each little hummock of earth, as a sacred 
 treasure that fills the mind with joy and the heart 
 with love. 
 
 His glance had absorbed the green of the fields 
 and the blue of the fjord, the golden brightness 
 of the corn and the white sheen of the church 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 3 
 
 tower, both when the sun rose and when it set 
 behind the downs. 
 
 His mind had drunk from the pure source of 
 fidelity, and whether guiding the plough or 
 swinging the scythe, in the barn or the loft, 
 he had learnt to sing that ^ which his father and 
 grandfather always kept in their hearts, because 
 it was the greatest thing in their lives and held 
 their dearest hopes. 
 
 When I saw him then he was lying on a 
 heather bank in the summer sunshine and gazing 
 up at the southward-drifting clouds. 
 
 He had been telling me about the homestead 
 on the downs above the fjord, about the girl he 
 loved and who belonged to the same countryside 
 as he, born of the same soil and of the same 
 steadfast race, that might sometimes be silent 
 but would never forget. 
 
 With his eyes he followed the clouds racing 
 across the blue vault of the sky. He saw them 
 vanish under the skyHne, and sent a greeting 
 with them, as they sped on, to all that he held 
 most dear — the golden rye and the green forests, 
 the blue fjord and the white church towers, 
 and to the girl to whom he had given his young 
 and joyous love. 
 
 I remember him on the day when he stretched 
 
 ^ /.(?., the Danish national songs. 
 
4 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 out his hand to me to say good-bye before going 
 home to the farm that he loved and that he was 
 to guard and tend like his father before him 
 when the time came for him to take possession 
 of it. 
 
 He stood facing me with radiant eyes and 
 smiling lips. His voice rang out with such joy 
 and freedom that it seemed as if he was shout- 
 ing the words across wide fields. He was so 
 young and handsome, so gallant and strong. 
 He looked as if he were going out to face life 
 with firm steps and happy thoughts because 
 he knew that he and life were on the best of 
 terms. 
 
 He was the finest picture I have ever seen of 
 youth endowed with the will and the power to 
 do something good and great — of youth full of 
 faith and hope, health and truth, uprightness 
 and honesty. 
 
 He was the incarnation of the growing, promis- 
 ing future : the fermenting grape that yields 
 precious wine, containing the strength and 
 fragrance of many a glorious summer. 
 
 I saw his face once more for the last time 
 when the train glided away amongst the downs 
 near by. I had a last glance from his clear, 
 steadfast eyes. I had the last smile from two 
 strong and firmly chiselled lips. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 5 
 
 I never saw that glance nor that smile 
 again. 
 
 This summer he was sitting one day in my 
 room. 
 
 His right coat-sleeve hung empty and was 
 tucked into his pocket. His body was limp and 
 shrunken, his chest flat, his shoulders bent. He 
 sat hunched up like one newly risen from a long 
 and severe illness, and his face, which bore traces 
 of sorrows and hardships, looked like an old 
 man's. 
 
 His hair was white at the temples, his skin 
 sallow and shrivelled, and it looked as if it had 
 by main force been stretched over his sharp 
 bones. There were deep lines on his forehead, 
 his lips were pale and thin, and the lines from his 
 nose down to the corners of his mouth were 
 long and like two deep scars. 
 
 His blue-grey eyes, which before had been so 
 bright and fearless, were the strangest thing 
 about him. 
 
 Now they lay deep under two sharp eye- 
 ridges, as if they had been pressed back into 
 their sockets by force, and the look in them was 
 at the same time staring and distant. 
 
 They never rested at any definite point. It 
 was as though there was before them a constant 
 vision that kept on pursuing them and never 
 
6 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 left them any peace — as if he saw some dread 
 thing from which he could not escape that 
 terrified him and drove him to despair. 
 
 Now and then he would close his eyes and pass 
 his left hand over his brow. The hand was long 
 and thin — all its sinews could be seen stretched 
 under the skin like violin strings ; they looked 
 as if they lay and quivered and could not find 
 rest. 
 
 He had been sent home from a hospital in 
 the Rhine country, where he had lain for nearly 
 three months tortured by the fever of his wounds 
 and near to death. 
 
 He was now to be sent to Norway to regain 
 his health, if possible, in the mountain air, and 
 to find healing for a suffering mind that seldom 
 left him any peace, day or night. 
 
 We had been sitting a while talking about 
 many things. We had talked about his home, 
 his mother and father, his fiancee, and every- 
 thing that lay nearest his heart. 
 
 We had not yet exchanged a word about the 
 war. I avoided the subject continually. It 
 seemed to me that it would be like digging dirty 
 fingers into a wound that was still bleeding 
 and suppurating. 
 
 There was something distant all the time about 
 his way of speaking. It was evident that his 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 7 
 
 words and his thoughts mostly went each their 
 own way, and that his wandering and distant 
 look beheld something quite different from that 
 of which he spoke. 
 
 Then a silence fell between us. I really 
 could not think of anything else to talk about. 
 He sat with closed eyes and pressed his hand 
 against them. 
 
 Sometimes a fit of trembling seized him. He 
 stooped as if he expected a thrust from behind, 
 a thrust which he knew must inevitably come 
 and which he could not ward oflf. His lips 
 quivered, and the lines about his mouth grew 
 deeper and sharper. 
 
 At last he spoke. His glance hurriedly sought 
 mine, but immediately after it was again caught 
 by something that made it falter and hesitate, 
 and as though filled with apprehension. 
 
 " It was the horror of horrors. You cannot 
 understand it at all, you who are living safely 
 in your own land and growing rich on the 
 misery of others. You can have no conception 
 of the crushing wretchedness, the fathomless 
 despair, the appalling inhumanity, that we have 
 had to see, we who have had to fight for a 
 country that had made us its subjects by 
 force. 
 
 " I can imagine suffering, and suffering every- 
 
8 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 thing, for that which is beautiful and sacred and 
 eternal. I can imagine that one might in that 
 case look back upon what one had seen of horror 
 and dread as upon something great and exalted, 
 because in its intention it was dedicated to an 
 ideal so precious, so dear that one could not bear 
 to lose it — something beyond life and time, 
 something filled with eternal hopes and longings. 
 
 " I can imagine all this. 
 
 " I can imagine still more. 
 
 " I can imagine that a man's mind might 
 be filled with a holy pride in all that he had 
 done — so that he could look back upon every 
 hour of suffering, every moment of horror, 
 bought with fire and murder, as upon something 
 that had been consecrated by justice and the 
 beautiful relentlessness of eternal retribution. 
 
 " I can imagine that. 
 
 " But when it is all a mere matter of duty ! 
 Cold, inevitable duty ! Do you understand now 
 what a chalice of suffering and torture one has 
 to drink when it is only that ? Not just at 
 the actual moment. You do not think at the 
 time ; you only act. There is nothing human 
 left in you when you are in the midst of the 
 tumult. 
 
 " You fight for your life. You are driven on 
 by forces you have never known before and that 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 9 
 
 you will never learn to understand in all their 
 horror. 
 
 " Passions and instincts, hot as one's blood, 
 must have been lying dormant in one's mind, 
 and when they are set free by the licence of 
 war, they flame up with all primeval man's 
 desire to kill and destroy. 
 
 " You laugh as if for sheer joy every time you 
 see a body fall, the light fade away from a pair 
 of eyes, or the flames devouring and wasting 
 what human skill and human art have brought 
 forth in joy or in pain. 
 
 " You proclaim your joy in wild shouts, while 
 your heart hammers and your cheeks burn and 
 beat as if you were caught up to the highest 
 state of bliss. 
 
 " I do not understand it. But it is the glory 
 of glories at the actual moment. The extreme 
 height of happiness. Seething and spell-weaving 
 passions dissolve into a state of intoxicating 
 
 joy- 
 
 " But afterwards — afterwards ! 
 
 " I shall never be able to find words to 
 express the pain and torment, the shame and 
 despair of it all. I always feel as if I must hide 
 away from myself, or escape from it all with a 
 bare-faced lie, or else fall on my knees and 
 humbly implore God's forgiveness. 
 
10 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " I could never look my comrades in the face. 
 It always seemed to me that they would be able 
 to look down into the unclean depths of an 
 unclean soul, and that they were afraid I should 
 see the same in them — all of us who had our 
 homes on the same dear soil, all of us who had 
 done our duty^ and killed those who had never 
 injured that which was dear and precious to us^ 
 or that which was our very life and our hope 
 and future. 
 
 " Wherever I went my comrades and superiors 
 always called me ' The silent Dane.' 
 
 " They were right. I was silent. 
 
 " How could it all make me anything else ? 
 
 " Do not horrors, in their paralysing relentless- 
 ness, always make one silent ? " 
 
 He ceased speaking a while, and again closed 
 his eyes. Two red, burning spots came out on 
 his cheeks and a quiver passed over his face. 
 His body sank down still more in the chair. 
 He looked as if all his muscles were slack and as 
 if he had no strength to straighten his sunken 
 chest. 
 
 After a while he spoke again and his voice 
 grew husky as if he were on the verge of tears. 
 
 " I do not count that as anything." 
 
 He looked down at the empty sleeve with a 
 glance of indifference. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT ii 
 
 " Many would say I came off cheaply ; I 
 think so myself. But all the thoughts that 
 rack and torment one's mind, early and late. . . . 
 It is said that remorse can torture a soul to 
 madness. I believe that the thoughts and 
 memories that day and night tear at me hke 
 red-hot pincers in living flesh are a hundred 
 times more merciless. From the moment when 
 I regained consciousness in the hospital I have 
 felt that there is a bond between these memories 
 and myself which nothing can break. They 
 meet me in my dreams, making a hell of my 
 nights and turning the dark into an abyss of 
 horror. 
 
 " I lie in torment until the day breaks without 
 finding rest. I stare up at the merciful light of 
 day and yet find neither rest nor peace. 
 
 " I meet them in human smiles and sounds 
 of joy. I meet them in a child's glance or in 
 the kind words of my dear people at home. 
 Wherever I look I encounter them. 
 
 " It does not matter what I see or what I hear. 
 There is always a- bridge connecting it with all 
 the things I have had to witness or take part in. 
 
 " A woman in a street door, and I see the 
 houses I had to help to set on fire, whilst bullets 
 took innocent lives or the flames devoured their 
 bodies. 
 
12 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " A child crying ; and I see innocent babies, 
 whose lives were destroyed amidst cold and 
 terror, or whose existence ebbed away on the 
 point of a bayonet. 
 
 '^ A man smiling. I see a distorted face, full 
 of hate to the last, its glance evil and cursing, 
 even after the heart itself has long ceased 
 beating. . . •. 
 
 " Great God ! to think that we have been born 
 with such passions ! That we should destroy 
 and kill and murder till we could not go on for 
 very weariness, and take life after life in order 
 to save our own ! " 
 
 He clenched his hand in the air, and, while 
 his face stiffened under a sallow paleness, he 
 repeated, in a voice that seemed to force its way 
 through his throat : 
 
 " Great God in heaven ! That we have been 
 born with such instincts and that all these 
 horrors should come upon my head ! I, who 
 never wished the least harm to anyone ! . . . 
 
 " Great God ! that it became my duty — 
 my duty! — to be like that to people who never 
 wished harm to anything dear to me — never 
 thought any evil against that which holds all 
 my hopes and my longings ! " 
 
 He fell back with his hand pressed against 
 his eyes. His face was distorted as if by the 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 13 
 
 horror of a vision of blood and fire, and he 
 groaned heavily and hopelessly. 
 
 II 
 
 That evening and during the evenings that 
 came after it he told me, sometimes calmly 
 and sometimes with excitement, about all those 
 experiences that had whitened his hair and worn 
 out his body, and made him an old man, though 
 he had not yet completed his twenty-seventh 
 year. 
 
 I am telling his story as he told it to me. 
 
 The words are mine, but all that gives life 
 to them, the moods and thoughts, the hopes and 
 sufferings, the abasement of the soul and the 
 horror of the mind — all these are his. I have 
 neither added nor taken away. For it can not 
 be more saturated with grief and horror than 
 it was. Sometimes I had to get up and leave 
 him or ask him to cease. 
 
 It was so far and away beyond all reason 
 and understanding, all that he had Hved through 
 and endured, and often it was impossible to 
 see anything human behind it. 
 
 " I came home at the end of July, 191 4," 
 
14 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 he began. ^' You remember that even then, 
 before we said good-bye to each other, I was 
 rather anxious about what might come, and 
 when I saw my people at home my anxiety 
 grew. It is true that none of us said anything 
 that could add to the anxiety, but when we 
 read the papers and what they said about the 
 state of tension we looked at each other, and our 
 looks really said all that we had not the courage 
 to put into words. 
 
 " I remember that one evening a day or two 
 after I had arrived, my fiancee and I were sitting 
 in the garden on the seat under the old flag- 
 staff. It has continually been renewed, but no 
 flag has been hoisted upon it for fifty years — it 
 has only stood ready. ... 
 
 " I remember how we sat there and looked 
 down at the corn-covered fields, wreathed about 
 with scented hedges, and with the light blue 
 of the fjord behind them. 
 
 " The deepest peace seemed to brood over 
 that evening. The air was mild and soft, and 
 easy to breathe. Sitting there and listening 
 to the healthy breathing of the soil seemed to 
 me to fill one's mind with a wonderful calm, and 
 quiet. 
 
 " A last streak of sunshine passed over the 
 tops ot the trees on the other side of the fjord. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 15 
 
 I sat and watched how after a time the light 
 faded away, while the evening clouds in the west 
 lay sleeping, with golden rims that gradually 
 sank away into the purest crimson. 
 
 " Suddenly my fiancee seized my hand in a hard 
 and violent grip. I turned to her and smiled. 
 I thought she meant that I dreamt too much 
 and spoke too little. 
 
 " But when I looked at her face I grew 
 frightened and asked her if she were ill. She was 
 pale, and her eyes had a strange, staring and 
 distant look. 
 
 " When our eyes met she bent her head, and 
 again gripping my hand tightly she said in a 
 voice that could hardly find utterance : * Why 
 don't we say it straight out to each other ? ' 
 
 " I turned away my head. I understood, as 
 I had understood during these last few days, 
 what it was that tormented her. But it seemed 
 as if I could not find the words. And why seek 
 for them ? We did not need them. There is 
 no need for anyone to speak of that which is in 
 everybody's thoughts. 
 
 " But she said again : ' Why don't we say 
 it straight out to each other ? ' 
 
 " I turned round to her and put my arm about 
 her, and she leaned her head against my shoulder 
 I could feel that her body was trembUng and tdiat 
 
i6 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 she was weeping. I sat silent awhile and then, 
 as I drew her closer to myself and stroked her 
 cheek, I said to her : ' Let us hope that it will 
 blow over.' 
 
 " And because I believed it would comfort 
 her, I said, as I tried to smile : ' I am certain it 
 will blow over. You just wait and see ; nobody 
 will dare to do it when it really comes to the 
 point of being serious.' 
 
 " She looked at me ; she said nothing, but 
 I could read in her face that she knew I was 
 saying something quite different from what I 
 meant. 
 
 " She rose slowly and stood for a moment 
 looking intently at me ; then she threw her 
 arms round me and clung closely to me. With 
 her lips close to my ear she moaned softly : 
 ^ I will not lose you ! I will not lose you ! ' 
 
 " I did not answer. I passed my hand over 
 her cheek and her shoulder. I knew quite well, 
 of course, that what I had said to comfort her 
 was exactly what I did not believe myself. I had 
 not the least doubt that the crash would come. 
 
 " I had that strange feeling in my mind that 
 is like the firm and unshakable conviction of a 
 presentiment. It was perfectly clear to me that 
 in a few days', perhaps in a few hours', time the 
 disaster would be upon us, and I should have 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 17 
 
 to say good-bye to my home, along with several 
 other young men in the neighbourhood. Perhaps 
 to say good-bye for ever ! . . . 
 
 " I dared not think that thought down to its 
 roots. 
 
 " Then I rose slowly, put my arm about her, 
 and kissed her. Her lips were cold, and I felt 
 how they trembled against mine. 
 
 " After that we went down through the garden 
 and across the fields. A path beside the hedge 
 runs from the farm down to the fjord. The rye 
 stood golden and rich and full. Here and there 
 poppies flamed up, and the deep-blue crowns 
 of the cornflowers shone on their climbing stalks, 
 as if they were standing on tip-toe in order 
 to peep^out over the heavily filled ears of 
 corn. 
 
 '^ We walked with our arms round each other. 
 But we were still silent, and there was not a 
 sound about us. We could hear each other's 
 quiet breathing. Only a grasshopper in the 
 ditch played at whiles on its tiny fiddle. 
 
 " Down by the fjord we stood still and looked 
 over its calm surface. We could see a forest 
 steamer running out from the opposite shore. 
 We saw its two lanterns gleam Uke two big 
 shining pearls. And once we heard the faint 
 sound of distant voices of laughter and merry 
 
1 8 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 talking. Soon after we went home again, still 
 without speaking. 
 
 " Dusk had begun to fall. A pale mist was 
 rising over the sloping fields, and a slow and 
 whispering breath of evening air sent a trembhng 
 and fear-laden sigh through the heavy ears of 
 corn. 
 
 " It seemed to me that never had the soil 
 about me been so tenderly dear to me as at that 
 moment. 
 
 " I felt a reverence towards it, as if I were 
 walking on holy ground. I could hardly bear 
 to set my foot on the straws in the path. 
 
 " It was all so unutterably dear to me. I could 
 have put my cheek against the warm earth as 
 against the strong bosom of a loved woman 
 and wept out my love in tears as hot and 
 frightened as a child's. 
 
 " We went on together past my home and 
 along to the local magistrate's where she kept 
 house. We met one of the men from the nearest 
 farm ; he greeted us with a ^ God's peace,' as he 
 passed us. Usually he was cheery and talkative, 
 but that evening he walked with a weary and 
 lurching step close to the ditch, and his voice 
 was low and anxious. 
 
 " My poor girl looked at me. Her eyes were 
 very bright and she was not far from tears. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 19 
 
 But she said nothing, while she rested her arm 
 still more heavily in mine. 
 
 " Outside the garden gate we stood holding 
 each other's hands. Our eyes met and she tried 
 to hold mine with her look. 
 
 '' Then she clasped me closely about my neck, 
 and with her cheek against mine she whispered : 
 ' I will not lose you ! I will not lose you ! ' 
 
 " I patted her gently on the shoulder and 
 pressed my cheek against hers. 
 
 " Then she suddenly loosened her hold of 
 me, pressed her hands against her face,. and ran 
 up through the garden into the house. She did 
 not turn round, not even in the doorway. I 
 only saw a fluttering fold of her light summer 
 gown as the door was closed. 
 
 " I stood still awhile and looked about me. 
 The dusk had glided into the pure deep blue 
 of a July night and all the shadows were vague 
 and soft. My eyes sought her room. I had 
 expected to see a light appear, but it remained 
 in darkness. The window was open, and the 
 night wind played with the chaste white curtain. 
 
 " Then I turned and walked home ! I thought 
 at first of going into the house, but I went into 
 the garden. 
 
 " I don't know how it came about, but 
 suddenly I glanced at the naked flagstaff, and 
 
20 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 looked at it from the foot up to the knob 
 at the top, where the bright weather-cock 
 pointed northwards. 
 
 " I felt its emptiness like a physical pain. It 
 stood there as the symbol of something both old 
 and new, stirring at that moment within myself 
 — something that ran like a chill through my 
 mind, but which I am not able to put into words. 
 It came nearest to that feeling of forsakenness 
 that used to seize us when as children we had 
 gone too far from home to find our way back 
 again. 
 
 " From the flagstaff my eyes wandered over 
 the fjord to the downs on the other side. The 
 changing fields and the green of the forest 
 glided away into the same blue haze. Here and 
 there a light gleamed out like a little child's 
 eyes bHnking in the night, so trustfully and 
 confidingly. 
 
 " And then my glance sought the pure sky 
 of the summer night. 
 
 " I let it wander from horizon to horizon, 
 watching how star after star came out, noticed 
 how their colour varied from pale golden 
 to almost glowing red, and how their shining 
 gradually grew keener and keener, while the 
 vault beyond them seemed to grow clearer and 
 deeper and more infinite. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 21 
 
 " It seemed to me so comforting to look 
 upwards. I was in kinship with all these wonders 
 — we came and went under the same Will. But 
 at the same time they told me how infinitely 
 little I mattered in all this great unfathomable 
 mystery. 
 
 " Then I went into the house. 
 
 " The lamp was lit in the sitting-room, but 
 the blinds had not been pulled down, and the 
 window over-looking the garden was open. 
 Mild scents of flowers breathed into the room — 
 the scent of roses and elders in the hedges. 
 
 " My mother sat leaning back in a corner of 
 the sofa ; she had just finished reading the news- 
 paper which was lying on the table in front of 
 her, with her spectacles upon it. The stems 
 stood up in the air, blinking in the lamplight. 
 
 " My father was sitting at the writing-table 
 smoking his pipe. He was writing and I could 
 hear his heavy breathing — a habit with him 
 when he had a pen in his hand. The quiet snoring 
 of his pipe murmured through the stillness. 
 
 *' I went over to my mother and stroked her 
 hair. She seized my hand and pressed it hard : 
 * So you have been for a walk with Marie. 
 What did she say, by the way ? ' 
 
 " She spoke softly and again gripped my 
 hand tenderly. I could feel her hand trembling. 
 
22 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " ' She did not say anything in particular,' 
 I answered. ' She was only . . . ' 
 
 " ' She feared the worst — the war — didn't 
 she ? ' 
 
 " My father turned from the writing-table 
 and his words seemed to come as if by a great 
 effort of will. And, bending his head low, he 
 continued quietly : ' We all fear that, though 
 none of us say so straight out. May God be 
 merciful to us, each and all ! ' 
 
 " It was the first time that the word ' war ' 
 was mentioned in my home in those days, and it 
 was as if a painful silence had been broken by 
 my father's words. It seemed to me that we 
 came closer to each other all at once and found 
 the old open and steadfast confidence again. 
 
 " Then we talked about it for a little while, 
 but quietly and in anxious voices. The word 
 * war ' was not mentioned again ; we avoided 
 it or alluded to it in other ways. 
 
 " ' If it does come,' we said, or ^ if things get 
 serious,' or ' if the worst should come to the 
 worst.' 
 
 " At last my father said, as he passed his 
 hand over his deeply-lined forehead : ^ Let us 
 pray to God that He will bring good out of it 
 for us all — in our Saviour's name. . . . ' 
 
 '' His head sank forward with a quick move- 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 23 
 
 ment upon his chest and my mother covered 
 her eyes. She pressed her lips closely together 
 like one who is determined to be strong, not 
 only against tears, but against despairing words 
 strugghng to find utterance. 
 
 " The room was so quiet that a mere sigh 
 would have made us tremble. 
 
 " The next day the orders for mobilisation 
 came. 
 
 " I was standing outside the gate in the morn- 
 ing, waiting for the postman. 
 
 " The road, white and quiet, was flooded in 
 sunshine, dappled by the fleeting shadows of 
 the old poplars. 
 
 " Suddenly I saw Marie running down the 
 middle of the road from the magistrate's house. 
 She stumbled once or twice and looked as if 
 she were going to fall. She ran like one pursued 
 by something evil, and with her arms stretched 
 out as if pleading for help. 
 
 " She did not stop until she had reached me 
 and had flung her arms about my neck. There 
 was a wheezing in her chest every time she 
 breathed, and in a voice that was almost sound- 
 less she moaned : ' It's coming now — it's 
 coming ! . . . ' 
 
 '' I tried to remove her arms from my neck. 
 I have never cared much for violent expression 
 
24 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 of feelings. But I allowed her to keep hold 
 when I saw her face. 
 
 " I have never seen a face stamped with such 
 helpless despair as hers was then, I could 
 not recognise it. The eyes were rigid and dead 
 as if they were made of glass, the skin a sallow 
 grey, and the features distorted to plainness. 
 She had bitten her under-lip until it bled. A 
 streak of blood lay upon her chin, and a drop 
 of it had trickled down upon her breast. 
 
 " Unfortunately she was right. The order 
 for mobilisation came soon after. It was my 
 duty to report myself without unnecessary 
 delay at the nearest railway station and to 
 proceed to my garrison by the first available 
 train. In my case this meant going to Berlin. 
 
 " I remember the last half-hour before I 
 left home. 
 
 " There was silence both outside and in. An 
 arbitrary, painful silence that caused a trembling 
 in one's chest and seemed to empty one's lungs. 
 
 " One or two young fellows had come in from 
 the nearest farms to ask for news, but otherwise 
 there was no one about. The farms are rather 
 far apart in our part of the country, and people 
 stayed at home looking after their own affairs. 
 We voluntarily avoided each other in those days, 
 so that we might not have to speak about that 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 25 
 
 which tormented the minds of all of us, but 
 which we were so painfully loth to believe. 
 
 " We had just risen from our mid-day meal. 
 My father had said grace as usual, but his voice 
 had faltered and scarcely been audible. His 
 * Amen ! ' sounded like a full-stop to something 
 beautiful that had come to an end, and like a 
 prayer that all that was to come might not 
 bring us too great sorrows. 
 
 " He was standing now beside his writing- 
 table, one hand resting upon its surface. I 
 could see how his hand shook. 
 
 " My mother was sitting on the sofa with her 
 hands folded upon the table, and gazing straight 
 in front of her, her eyes fastened upon me as if 
 she wanted to fix my image for ever in her mind. 
 
 " Her eyes were tearless, and her features 
 looked as if they had stiffened in pallor. 
 
 " I stood near the window. I could hear our 
 head man dragging out the little hght dogcart 
 and the horses stamping on the stone flooring. 
 
 " My father turned round to me. His face 
 was ashen-grey and his lips tightly clenched. 
 He blinked once or twice and then said, in a 
 voice that sounded as if something broke now 
 and then in his throat : 
 
 " ' . . . Well, whatever happens to you, my 
 lad, remember that you can with perfect right 
 
26 FORCED TO -FIGHT 
 
 be called upon to do your duty to the utmost. 
 It shall not justly be said of us here that we did 
 not know what duty was. 
 
 " ^ I know, of course, where your heart is. 
 I know, too, that you could never go out to that 
 to which you are now called upon to go with 
 sacred enthusiasm. But you can do one thing ; 
 you can earn the report that you acted to the 
 last as duty bade you — even though your heart 
 was cold and your feelings elsewhere — and that 
 you gave your strength, your life perhaps, 
 fairly and honestly to the country you had 
 undertaken to serve. 
 
 " ' Duty, my lad, is never deserted by the 
 man who respects himself and his word, even if 
 it hurts ever so much. We have asked for it 
 ourselves from the others, early and late, with- 
 out growing weary. They did not know what it 
 meant. They shall see now that at any rate 
 we understand what duty is and how to act 
 accordingly.' 
 
 " He had put both his hands upon my shoul- 
 ders and looked into my eyes. I looked back at 
 him calmly and steadily. I could feel my eyes 
 smarting, but I kept firm and strong. I did 
 not wish to be the first to be conquered by 
 tears. 
 
 " Then he kissed me on the forehead. It 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 27 
 
 seemed like a consecration to me. I felt his 
 lips trembling. 
 
 " He then let go of me, turned to the window 
 and looked out. I could see by the heaving of 
 his back that he was sobbing heavily and hope- 
 lessly. 
 
 " Soon after I went to my mother and put 
 my arms round her neck. She sat quite still 
 and silent, as if she were paralysed. Her hands 
 were still folded upon the table and her eyes 
 turned to my father. 
 
 " Still she neither moved nor spoke when 
 I bent over her, kissed her and whispered : 
 ' Good-bye, mother dear, and may we all meet 
 here again soon ! ' 
 
 " I stroked her hair and patted her hands. 
 But suddenly she collapsed. Her head sank 
 upon the table and she moaned in broken cries : 
 ' My son, my boy — my only one ! . . . ' 
 
 " My father hurried to her side and bent over 
 her while he kept on whispering : ' We are all 
 in God's hands, mother dear ; we are all in God's 
 hands. . ' 
 
 " Then he said calmly to me : ' The horse is 
 put in now. I think you will have to be going, 
 my boy.' 
 
 " I stood in the middle of the room and looked 
 at the two, and for the first time in my Hfe I 
 
28 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 understood what two people who love their child 
 can be made to suffer, and how mercilessly 
 grief can paralyse both their words and their 
 bodies. 
 
 " And one thing more : how little it all meant 
 to ^e compared to all that it meant to them. 
 
 " I could lose only one thing — my life. 
 
 " They could lose much, very much, more. 
 They could lose that which meant happiness to 
 them, and life, and the future — that which was 
 everything to them. 
 
 " My father slowly raised his head and looked 
 at me. 
 
 " ' There my boy, go now,' he said in a voice 
 that trembled and broke, while at the same time 
 he sat down beside my mother and drew her to 
 his side. * We two will fold our hands and trust 
 and hope in Him who permits everything to 
 happen according to His will and for our good.' 
 
 " He nodded to me. I stood a moment hesi- 
 tating. Then I went slowly out of the room, 
 looking at the two who were sitting cheek against 
 cheek as I closed the door, and quickly I 
 mounted the dogcart. 
 
 " I saw nothing of Marie. I reined up at the 
 magistrate's. They told me that she had 
 collapsed upon the floor in a violent fit of weep- 
 ing when she came back that morning. They 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 29 
 
 had had to carry her upstairs to bed, and since 
 then she had had no control of herself. She 
 had lain moaning and weeping and had spoken 
 in a way that no one could understand. 
 
 " I heard later that on the following night 
 they had had to send for a doctor, and that for 
 many days they feared for her reason. 
 • • • • • 
 
 " That is how one says good-bye when one 
 goes away to the war," he said, and beat his 
 head. *' At least that is what happ'ened in my 
 case, and I know it was the same in that of 
 many, many others. 
 
 " It was duty that called. 
 
 " But the rejoicings, the enthusiasm, the 
 flying banners and the martial music ! 
 
 " It is dreary when duty calls and one's heart 
 is cold. I was made to feel that so often later 
 on, and even still more painfully than on the 
 day when I said good-bye to my people and 
 my home." 
 
 Ill 
 
 " I arrived in Berlin late in the evening, 
 together with several others who had also come 
 by train from my part of the country and from 
 one or two other places on the road. 
 
30 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " I knew Berlin quite well. When serving 
 my military duty I spent three years in this 
 cosmopolitan city, which has an atmosphere 
 of provincial pettishness and narrow-mindedness. 
 It is the strangest mixture of power and industry, 
 of integrity and the most coarsened vices. 
 God-fearingness and bestiality walk side by 
 side ; beauty and incomprehensible lack of 
 taste live next door to each other. A city in 
 which language snaps out lashing words of 
 command and of overbearing brutal energy, 
 or lisps in decadent rottenness. 
 
 " I could not recognise it that evening. 
 
 " There had been joking and singing in the 
 train. ' Deutschland, Deutschland iiber AUes, 
 liber AUes in der Welt ' had run from carriage 
 to carriage, had found hearing and response 
 in one and had glided unnoticed away to the 
 next. 
 
 " We were not all equally pleased, of course, 
 with the prospect before us. 
 
 " I recognised the tone, however. I had had 
 an experience of something like it at the 
 manoeuvres. Only now it was still more blatant, 
 more self-satisfied and self-glorifying wherever 
 it could find a vent. 
 
 " But Berlin ! It was something quite new 
 that evening. It was like a world by itself 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 31 
 
 hidden away under an immense blue dome 
 filled with clamour. 
 
 " It seemed as if every throat tried to shout 
 itself hoarse, as if it were a question as to who 
 could shout the loudest. Everybody's eyes 
 shone. Every mouth laughed ; at last the great 
 day had come when we were to display our might 
 and power, and the indomitable, invincible 
 strength of our army. 
 
 " ' Long live the Emperor ! Long Uve the 
 Army ! ' they shouted. 
 
 " Now and then, as if the longings and dreams 
 in every one's mind had found clamorous 
 utterance, one heard the shout, ' To Paris ! 
 To Paris ! ' 
 
 " It came from somewhere or other in the 
 densely-massed crowd surging through the 
 Friedrichsstrasse and filling Unter den Linden 
 from the Monument of Victory up to the Palace 
 like a human rampart pressed from wall to wall. 
 It struck like lightning in the nearest mind, it 
 caught like fire in tow, and it flashed through 
 the multitude like an electric shock : ' To 
 Paris! To Paris! Long live the Emperor! 
 Success to the War ! ' 
 
 " Then it died away far off in a faint and 
 lessening murmur. But only for a moment. 
 The surging mood of the hour rose again. Some 
 
32 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 voices began to sing : ' Deutschland, Deutsch- 
 land liber AUes, iiber AUes in der Welt ' ; and at 
 once the song burst forth from everyone's lips 
 while faces laughed and shone with enthusiasm, 
 courage, and rampant self-assurance. 
 
 " There was a strength and grandeur in the 
 sound that made one giddy. It was like the 
 flames of a sacred fire shooting heavenwards 
 and turning the city into one great, beating 
 heart, into one single mind, filled with the same 
 burning hope and the same ardent longings. 
 
 " Rich and poor were there, working-people 
 and grand folks, bright-eyed and modest young 
 women and painted minxes &i the street, 
 ^ souteneurs ' and street arabs, students and idle 
 loungers, people from offices, factories and 
 shops — all were singing, all were shouting, 
 when the last notes of the song came back to 
 their ears like a faint echo from far away : 
 ' Long live the Emperor ! Long live Germany ! 
 Long live the War ! ' 
 
 " I understood then that it must be a joy to 
 let oneself be caught up by this omnipotent 
 enthusiasm ; to be able to feel in one's own mind 
 something of the same grandeur and glory, 
 something that only needed setting free to 
 become ardent zeal, dauntless will, courage 
 far beyond all human thought and reason. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 33 
 
 " At the same time I felt so unutterably poor 
 as I walked there amongst all these noisy people, 
 who went on shouting and singing as if a world 
 had to sink into ruins under the breathing of 
 their lungs. 
 
 " At last it was more than poverty that I 
 felt. It was a painful consciousness that I had 
 really no place amongst all these tumultuous 
 and rejoicing people who shouted and went on 
 shouting ' To Paris ! Long live the Emperor ! 
 Long live the Army ! Long live the War ! ' 
 just because this very desire, *To Paris,' would 
 be the realisation of all their desire, their hope 
 and their hate. * 
 
 " There was nothing in the shouts that 
 kindled any ardour in me. There was nothing 
 in all that happened around me that could make 
 my heart beat with joy or cause the blood to 
 course quicker in my veins. I was as a stranger 
 in the midst of it. It inspired me with loathing 
 at last, with weariness and ill-will. All this 
 roaring and yelhng jarred upon my ears. 
 
 " It was sheer physical pain to me, all this 
 shouting about Paris and the Emperor, the Army 
 and the War. 
 
 "It was all something in which I had no 
 concern. 
 
 " I had never learned to become part of it 
 
34 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 that was beyond me. My hopes lay in another 
 direction, my innermost thoughts too. I had 
 no love whatever for all that these people about 
 me worshipped as their own life. Nor did I 
 curse what they cursed. Their dreams were not 
 my dreams, nor their hate my hate. 
 
 " I felt very forsaken and lonely as I walked 
 back to the barracks — so inconsolably deprived 
 of everything. 
 
 " All the others possessed the hopes and 
 longings of a great period in history — something 
 great to suffer for, something great to die for, 
 with a bright and happy smile on their lips, 
 and a glad light in their dying eyes. 
 
 " They were ready, all of them, for the utmost 
 sacrifice. I understood that. 
 
 " I had only one thing as my goal to guide 
 me — duty. Cold, hard, unalterable duty, 
 demanding everything of me, without giving 
 me anything whatever in return, except the 
 pale consciousness that I had done what I ought 
 because I had to ; and only because of that. 
 
 " I think I could not very well have had less. 
 
 " At the barracks I met a comrade who had 
 been next to me in the ranks during the 
 last year I spent as a soldier in Berlin. It 
 was a homely and comforting pleasure to see 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 35 
 
 him again after the lapse of four years. He was 
 always such a decent fellow, rather heavy and 
 usually of very few words, but I knew he had a 
 heart of gold. 
 
 " He told me about his home. It was all so 
 touching and simple, and his words were so 
 quiet and gentle. Apparently there were no 
 violent emotions in his mind. 
 
 ** He had been married about a year and had 
 been living on a small half-neglected farm in 
 Brandenburg. He told me about the farm, the 
 fields, and the cattle. It all sounded very beau- 
 tiful. It breathed the gentlest and tenderest 
 love for the soil that had become his. I under- 
 stood that every acre, every little hummock, 
 every blade of grass had a happy and hidden 
 place in his heart. 
 
 '' He told me, too, about his wife and the little 
 daughter who was not more than two months 
 old. 
 
 " ' My little wife is so pretty,' he said ; and 
 his voice took such a warm and tender tone. 
 ' And she is so good. She was so cheerful and 
 brave and proud when I had to go. She never 
 cried once ; she only told me to be brave and 
 strong and not to worry about anything at 
 home. She would manage everything all right 
 until I came back. 
 
36 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 a i. 
 
 She placed our little girl in my arms and 
 promised me that she would take care of her and 
 tell her about her father who was away at the 
 war to fight for the rights and the honour of 
 his country. 
 
 " ' It certainly never occurred to me for a 
 moment that perhaps I might never again see 
 her or our little girl. 
 
 " ' " When you come back again, soon," she 
 kept on saying, as if there could not be two 
 opinions about that matter. 
 
 " ' " But if I should happen to stay there ? " 
 I asked her once. But she only smiled and 
 kissed me and said that she knew I would come 
 back. She knew for quite certain. God would 
 not have the heart to take a father from such a 
 dear little girl and her mother. She had already 
 arranged all that with God.' 
 
 " My dear old comrade took my hand in a 
 warm and hearty grip. There was a trembhng 
 anxiety in his voice as he said to me : 
 
 '' ' But who knows what will happen to you 
 and me ? Perhaps neither of us will ever see 
 our homes again. They all say, of course, that 
 it will all be over before Christmas ; and I 
 suppose it will, or why should they say so ? 
 But promise me one thing. If I am killed, 
 write to my little woman. Tell her that I was 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 37 
 
 a good comrade and a brave soldier, and that I 
 died honourably for my country. 
 
 " ' It isn't at all that my wife needs to be 
 told ; she knows all that quite well. But I 
 think it would be a fine thing for my daughter 
 to read something like that about her father 
 some day when she is older : " That he died 
 honourably for his country." ' 
 
 " My dear man, he said it so sincerely and 
 cordially, this plain and simple-minded young 
 Brandenburg peasant. It seemed to send a 
 warm thrill through my mind. It was clear to 
 me that the words came from the depths of 
 his soul ; that they were part of himself and gave 
 him rest and peace of mind and the everlasting 
 consolation that his cause was just and great. 
 
 " I understood so many other things that 
 night and the following day as we marched to the 
 railway station, to proceed to the Belgian front. 
 
 " I shall never forget the exultation that 
 hailed us as we marched through the town, 
 clad in new substantial uniforms. 
 
 " Bright smiles greeted us and exciting cheers. 
 Flowers rained down upon us. 
 
 " It was a brisk and smart parade march, 
 accompanied by sweeping, noisy and flourish- 
 ing music. We were the hope of the nation, 
 
38 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 and its heroes, before ever we had fired a 
 shot. 
 
 "They believed in us. They trusted in us 
 as one trusts in that which cannot be shaken. 
 There was no- doubt in their hearts. They had 
 read and heard so often that we were unconquer- 
 able. Young women waved their handkerchiefs 
 to us. Old men and young waved their hats, 
 and cheering roared about us. Mothers held 
 their babies up high, so that they might get a 
 good view of the pride of the nation and its 
 victorious power setting out to deeds of glory 
 and the unfading honour of heroes. 
 
 " And as the train carried us through the 
 radiant summer country, flooded in sunshine 
 and golden grain wherever we turned, the rejoic- 
 ings surged around us. 
 
 " Along the railway-line children and grown-up 
 people stood waving flags and handkerchiefs. 
 Blushing young ladies with bright, enthusiastic 
 eyes gave us flowers and fruit and other good 
 things at the stations we stopped at. 
 
 " It was a triumphal progress — a festival, 
 a splendid, all-reconciling glory. 
 
 " In the train we sang all the songs we knew — 
 ' Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles,' ' Wacht 
 am Rhein,' ' Heil dir im Siegerkranz,' and all 
 those ; and running from carriage to carriage 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 39 
 
 there was the constantly recurring cry that had 
 burned in the hearts of all and expressed the 
 longings and hopes of years. And the hate. 
 
 " ' To Paris 1 To Paris ! Long live the War ! ' 
 * We shall be there in a month, in a month ! ' 
 they shouted. ' In a month ! in a month ! ' 
 
 " And the laughter was loud and uproariously 
 sure of victory. 
 
 " Sometimes the laughter had an evil ring 
 in it. It foreboded death and seemed not to be 
 quite human. It was inspired by new and hot 
 instincts — instincts that began to work their 
 way to the surface and that made the voices 
 gruff and hoarse and kindled in the eyes a 
 strangely wild and burning brightness. 
 
 " I wondered at the change that had come 
 over my old, quiet comrade of the ranks. His 
 quietness seemed to have been swept away. His 
 eyes glittered too ; and there were lines about 
 his mouth that I had never seen there before. 
 
 "There was a brutal, lustful laugh on it. 
 Something coarse had come out upon it that 
 seemed to bring out the animal in him and 
 stamp it upon his face. 
 
 " I asked him once how he thought his wife 
 and little daughter were getting on. 
 
 " He looked at me for a moment. He stared 
 and seemed surprised. It seemed to me that 
 
40 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 something bright and tremblingly tender awoke 
 in his eyes, but it vanished again at once. 
 
 " ' Long live the Emperor ! Success to the 
 War ! ' was shouted around him. 
 
 " He joined in the shout in a hoarse and 
 grating voice, and as he struck his rifle against 
 the floor, he went on, his lips seeming to tighten 
 evilly about the words, — 
 
 " ' To hell with the French !— to hell with them ! ' 
 
 " I have often wondered since what all 
 these young men, who rejoiced in war and 
 seemed so assured of victory, really thought 
 about the war then. I am inclined to beHeve 
 that they did not think at all, or, at any rate, 
 in their overweening confidence, they thought 
 the whole affair would be ended in their one day 
 meeting a few Frenchmen who would make 
 tracks for Paris as soon as they saw them. 
 
 " And that would be the end of that war. 
 
 " The whole thing was only to last about a 
 month or so. Then France would be paralysed. 
 It was really only a matter of a little parade 
 march to Paris. That was what was commonly 
 said, and probably not much more than that was 
 thought about the matter. 
 
 " It is hardly likely that they had any sus- 
 picion of what war was, or what it might be 
 expected to develop into : hardly more than I, 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 41 
 
 at any rate ; and to me war was something vague 
 and indefinite. 
 
 " I had some suspicion, of course, that houses 
 might be burnt down, towns laid waste, fields 
 trampled into dust and human beings killed. . . . 
 
 '' But what I imagined then was only child's 
 play compared to that which I witnessed later ; 
 and I am convinced that if any of us had dreamed 
 what this war was to demand of us in hardships 
 and sufferings, of tears and misery, of physical 
 strength and superhuman spiritual endurance, 
 we would assuredly all have sat in silent dread 
 of what was coming — in spite of all our courage 
 and enthusiasm and ardent patriotism. 
 
 " But now it was all more like a pleasure trip : 
 at any rate, something that was chiefly grand 
 and splendid, something offering fine, easily- 
 won victories and the grateful acclamations 
 of a rejoicing people — a glorious adventure, 
 grand and splendid, and exciting to relate 
 some day when one reached home again and 
 friends flocked round one and listened in mute 
 admiration. 
 
 " It was fortunate for us that we took it all 
 as carelessly as we did, that we could dismiss 
 it with a song and a few shouts of overweening 
 self-confidence. 
 
 " I say ' we ' for I joined in the singing and 
 
42 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 shouting myself. There was nothing in my mind 
 any longer that made any resistance. 
 
 " You see I was amongst so many good 
 comrades, and I fell in with their mood without 
 any thought or reflection about anything. I 
 could even sometimes feel a certain satisfaction 
 in the thought that I was taking part in it — 
 a satisfaction produced and maintained by that 
 massed suggestion that must certainly be the 
 fundamental explanation of war excitement. 
 
 " If we had each been allowed to sit and nurse 
 our own undisturbed thoughts, with no shouting, 
 no cheering, no flowers, no smiling faces, with 
 none of all that whirling excitement that dis- 
 tracted our minds and troubled our senses, 
 there would hardly have been much left, I think, 
 of the cheery singing and self-confident shouting. 
 
 " Then, surely, our thoughts would have 
 turned to those to whom they found their way 
 in the beginning in the case of my old comrade 
 in the ranks — to our homes and to all those dear 
 people who were undoubtedly thinking far more 
 deeply and seriously of what we" were going to 
 than we were ourselves. 
 
 " They turned in that direction, at any rate, 
 many a time later, when we had a lonely watch, 
 when we lay tired to death and tortured in 
 soul and body in the hell of the trenches, or 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 43 
 
 when we lay like lumps of flesh that have been 
 thrown to one side, waiting for that snatch of 
 sleep which we did not get after all, because 
 the events of the day tormented our minds like 
 diabolical visions, blood-stained and horror- 
 filled to a degree that words cannot express, 
 because our language is far too bleached and 
 threadbare for the description of visions such 
 as no one can conjure up even with the wildest 
 and most bestial imagination." 
 
 ^ IV 
 
 " I was one of those who took part in the 
 storming of Liege. 
 
 " On that day I gained for the first time some 
 idea of what a horrible thing war really is, 
 whether one is fighting for one's most precious 
 and sacred rights, or only driven on because one 
 has to go. 
 
 " I shall never forget it. It is graven in my 
 mind in writing that can never be worn away. 
 It is buried there with so much else that hap- 
 pened ; and, even if I have bright and good 
 memories of happy comradeship and the gran- 
 deur of self-sacrifice to look back upon, it all 
 pales before the horrors and the wearing agony 
 
44 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 that tear into the soul like dirty fists in an open 
 wound. 
 
 " I took part in the rushing of the barbed 
 wire defences, instruments of torture compared 
 to which even crucifixion must be a joy. 
 
 " We began at once in the morning with a 
 violent drumming from our artillery. Its roar- 
 ing was terrible. The earth rocked beneath us, 
 as if the solid ground were giving way. The 
 bombs incessantly dug holes in the earth near 
 the enemy's positions. Hundreds of small 
 white shrapnel clouds hovered in the air, and 
 hundreds of others kept on coming up. 
 
 " The enemy's artillery replied. The thunder 
 of our guns blended with the roaring of bombs 
 and shrapnel falling in our lines. They poured 
 lead over us, and in between the shrieking 
 of the projectiles ajjd the thunder of cannon 
 we heard the groaning and screaming of the 
 wounded. 
 
 " ^ Fix bayonets ! ' was the order that rang 
 out, and then we rushed on in storming columns. 
 We had to force the barbed wire hindrances. 
 We had to, cost what it might. 
 
 " We had to go forward, and we did. 
 
 " I don't understand now how it was all 
 done. It was a doom's-day of yelling and 
 screaming and shouts of command, of the 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 45 
 
 growling of cannon and the shrill whistling of 
 shrapnel. 
 
 " My comrades fell round about me, but I 
 did not heed them. I was driven on, along with 
 the others, by a force stronger than myself. 
 I plunged on blindly, seeing nothing but what 
 happened right at my own feet, hardly even 
 that. 
 
 " Yes — I remember one thing : the first sight 
 that burnt itself into my consciousness. 
 
 " I saw a Belgian soldier standing upright 
 on a rampart and shooting with his machine- 
 gun into the storming-lines, rapidly and inces- 
 santly. He stuck to his post with a coolness 
 that despised death. He did not give up until 
 a bayonet thrust put an end to his life. He was 
 a hero and I admired him. Even in death his 
 hand tightly held his machine-gun. He might 
 have saved his life ; he might have sought 
 cover and been taken prisoner like several 
 others that day. But he would not. To the 
 very last his lips curved in trembling joy every 
 time he saw how he had made a clearing where 
 his bullets had struck home. 
 
 " He had only one thought, if indeed he 
 thought at all — ' I shall die and I must die, but 
 that does not matter. The only thing of the 
 least importance here is to take as many as 
 
46 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 possible of the others with me into eternity--^ 
 kill, kill, kill ! ' 
 
 " And so we rushed on — still on. 
 
 " It seemed to me once that the thousands 
 in front began to falter, but what was the use ? 
 They were pushed on by us who came behind, 
 and behind came new ranks storming on and 
 pushing forward, as if they were driven on by 
 lashing scourges upon a naked back. 
 
 " There was only one way — onward, still on. 
 
 " And on we went. 
 
 " Sometimes I stumbled, but I was kept on 
 my feet by those in front and those behind. I 
 ran as if on slippery lumps. At my feet lay 
 corpse by corpse with open mouth and staring 
 eyes — bathed in pools of blood, splashed with 
 gushed-out brains, or rent intestines — or with 
 torn bodies. 
 
 " Still we rushed on. 
 
 " I tramped away on what happened to lie 
 nearest. I put the heel of my boot in a glazing 
 eye, not to fall. I trampled steaming intestines, 
 to get a foothold for the next step. 
 
 " I heard groaning at my feet — in front, 
 behind, at my side. I saw arms stretched up 
 in fervent prayer to Heaven for mercy on the 
 anguish and the misery. I heard young men 
 scream ' Mother, mother ! ' in the death-lisp of 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 47 
 
 horror and dread. I saw arms catching at 
 arms, and comrades lying clinging to each other, 
 their faces pressed to the ground to save them- 
 selves from the trampling of heavy boots. 
 
 " To save themselves ! Before very long 
 they would be trampled into blood and strings 
 of flesh in a steaming, sticky mass of blood and 
 brains that would splash up the legs of those 
 who came after and stain them as would the 
 unheeded mud of the roads. 
 
 " Onwards and still on : 
 
 " Until we reached the barbed wire. 
 
 " The sight was appaUing — later on. At the 
 time my mind only grasped the picture as it 
 took shape hastily during the moment of our 
 onward rush. 
 
 '' It was not a barbed-wire defence any longer. 
 It was a steaming rampart of human bodies, 
 torn asunder and trampled to pieces. Stumps of 
 arms and legs, torn throats from which the 
 blood ran in a clotted stream. Faces torn in 
 cheeks and jaws and eyes. And a shrieking and 
 death-ratthng, a wailing and moaning that 
 filled my ears and mingled with our own shrieks 
 and shouts till it sounded as if the world were 
 coming to an end in fear and terror. 
 
 " But still we went on. 
 
 " We had to leap over the barbed wire, while 
 
48 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 the lead screamed about us and man after man 
 fell. We did not see where we jumped or where 
 we trod. We trampled on that wall of living and 
 dead, of ebbing life and torn bodies, as if we 
 trampled on hard, resisting lumps of earth. Some 
 were caught in the wire, fell with a shriek and 
 stretched out groping hands to save themselves. 
 They pulled and pulled, while the points dug 
 deeper and deeper into their flesh and tore their 
 clothes and limbs to rags. 
 
 " But on — still on — while one's chest perspired 
 and one's forehead steamed and every nerve 
 trembled as if it would snap. 
 
 " And at last a hand-to-hand fight. Chest 
 against chest — blows with rifle-butts — a rending 
 asunder with bayonets — a tearing to pieces of 
 mouths and eyes with the bare fists : a savage 
 fury ; an unspeakable bestiality — a seething 
 desire to murder ; and at the same time an 
 infinite, all-pervading rejoicing every time a 
 body fell. 
 
 " I remember close against my face andther 
 face distorted by hate. A pair of blood-shot 
 and blazing eyes staring into my own. A mouth 
 grinning like a death's head. Teeth glittering 
 sharp and white between open blood-red lips, 
 like those of a wild beast. A body that was like 
 a closely compressed knot of strength and savage 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 49 
 
 energy. A human being — an enemy — raging 
 with fury and hate and the lust of vengeance, 
 and with the joy of being able to slay everyone 
 that came near him. 
 
 " I saw the butt of a rifle raised in a pair of 
 trembling arms, ready to hammer my forehead 
 to splinters and crush the life out of me. I 
 heard laughter screaming into my ears and 
 rending my very soul, as though it tore my 
 nerves into rags. 
 
 " I remember jumping aside ; and a foot 
 crushing into a face of ashen paleness, staring' 
 up at me, its lips awry, like a drunken man 
 babbling some stupid coarseness. The foot 
 was mine. 
 
 " I remember a rifle-butt whistling through 
 the air and touching my arm. . . . 
 
 " And I remember how I suddenly felt as if 
 my strength increased tenfold and as if my 
 glance distinguished all the flickering beams of 
 dust in the blazing sunshine about me. The 
 blood raced through my body as if driven on, 
 quivering, stamping and pressing on the valves 
 of my heart till they smarted and ached. There 
 was a tug at my muscles as if they were tightly 
 stretched steel springs- that suddenly struck 
 out with all their compressed strength because 
 all resistance was gone. 
 
so FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " A stinging pain at the back of my neck, 
 as if my brain could not contain all that suddenly 
 rushed through its intertwined cords. 
 
 " And then a forward thrust with my bayonet. 
 I saw it glitter in the sun in a rapid flash like an 
 electric spark. I saw it plunge into a throat 
 and a jet of blood springing up like a gurgling 
 stream — hot and steaming. . . . 
 
 " A face that suddenly paled arid fell heavily 
 with a shriek. A body that swayed and sank 
 down. 
 
 " But while all this was happening, a pair 
 of eyes that for an instant burnt into mine with 
 a glare of hate, and glowing with malice and 
 cursing ; and two lips writhing as if they were 
 shrieking coarse abuse at me, as they whitened 
 under the last gasping breath. 
 
 " Then a rattling sound tore through my 
 nerves like a blunt knife — and a moment after 
 a body lay like a lump at my feet. 
 
 " It was a fight in which I had been the victor^ 
 but there was a shout : forward again ; fresh 
 blows, fresh bayonet thrusts — more bodies 
 falling ; a steam and reek of death and corpses 
 and the pouring out of horrors ; a chaos of 
 groaning and screaming ; insensate murdering ; 
 shouting and shrieking, cursing and yelling, 
 moaning and gasping in the throes of death agony. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 51 
 
 Man against man in unbridled, insane fury, with 
 but one hope, one wish, one trembling desire — to 
 murder and rend and rush on and cut down — 
 only murder, murder, murder. ..." 
 
 My friend groaned as if the effort of breathing 
 caused him pain, and there were two burning 
 red spots on his cheeks. He closed his eyes 
 and pressed his hand against them, while his 
 body sank still deeper into the chair in which he 
 sat. 
 
 For a long while he sat silent. I could see 
 that he jerked sometimes in sudden starts. 
 Then, as his eyes for an instant caught mine, 
 he said : " No, it was not the fairy-tale of our 
 childhood. But I am quite willing to admit 
 that at the time it was going on I felt nothing 
 against it. I did not think, I only slashed on ; 
 and every time I saw a man fall, I could have 
 laughed aloud and kicked him in contempt. 
 
 " I dare say I did, too. 
 
 " After all, we who escaped alive, or those 
 who died at once, did not get the worst of it. 
 But all the wounded lying moaning around us, 
 who were trampled to death without mercy 
 or pity by their own comrades — for them those 
 moments must have been appalling if they were 
 conscious. And I am afraid that must have been 
 the case with many of them. 
 
52 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " My own experience points in that direction. 
 
 " Can you picture to yourself the horror and 
 suffering those poor fellows must have endured 
 before death took them or they lost conscious- 
 ness ? What an extreme torture it must have 
 been to lie there helpless and forsaken, feeling 
 foot after foot trampling into eyes and mouth, 
 into breast and stomach, crushing down every 
 inch of life, while the agony grew and the mind 
 was tortured by the most frightful blood- 
 streaked visions. 
 
 " There is really no standard by which you 
 can measure and understand what it is that 
 happens when an attack of this kind has to be 
 carried on to its completion, regardless of cost, 
 and which is completed. 
 
 '' There was plenty of human material, as the 
 phrase goes. 
 
 " ' Human material ! ' Have you ever heard 
 of a more contemptuous and contemptible 
 expression to use of the living and thinking beings 
 who are driven on like cattle, mown down, 
 torn asunder or maimed, with the prospect 
 of dragging on wearily through a long life of 
 care and misery, burdened by a pity that 
 borders on contempt ? I cannot hear it without 
 feeling stung with indignation. It seems a 
 shameful word to use about men who do their 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 53 
 
 duty in enthusiastic joy and who give up their 
 lives in selfless devotion for a great and holy 
 cause — and that is what spurs them on — in 
 most cases. ..." 
 
 He paused awhile, then went on : 
 
 " I said before that I could have laughed 
 aloud in the midst of the commotion. I could, 
 and I certainly did, too. There was sometimes 
 a strangely compelling excitement about it. 
 
 " But afterwards — afterwards ! 
 
 " I remember the first night, when we got a 
 little rest after the attack. We lay down in our 
 clothes, flung amongst some heaps of straw 
 like flabby bundles, three or four hundred men. 
 
 " We were dead tired, yet rest was unob- 
 tainable. Some laughed and some shouted, and 
 arrogant boasting flew from mouth to mouth. 
 It was all so new still, so glorious. They had 
 done great deeds, worthy of heroes. Later on 
 most of us forgot both the great deeds and the 
 glory. 
 
 " The coarsest and most brutal boasting of 
 what each had achieved in the way of slaughter 
 was shouted from one to another. There was a 
 malicious joy in the words, but at the same time 
 there was a glowing pride, speaking of weU- 
 done work, of satisfied revenge, of justice 
 fulfiUed. 
 
54 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " I lay a long while listening before I dosed 
 off. My eyelids were as heavy as lead ; my body 
 was slack and ached all over with weariness. 
 All my muscles and sinews were like tender 
 lumps. My brain alone did not cease working, 
 and as I lay there dosing, all that I had lived 
 through during these last hours glided through 
 my thoughts like constantly-changing visions. 
 
 " I had never before had so appalling an 
 experience as this. I have seldom lived through 
 anything so satiated with horror. 
 
 " I saw it all before me again — the murdering, 
 the maimed bodies, the distorted faces, the 
 heaps of corpses that we trampled upon to make 
 way for ourselves, the glazing eyes, the smashed 
 skulls, the steaming intestines, the fragments 
 of bodies, the torn throats, all these were only 
 gathered in a rapid impression the first time I 
 saw them, but were now settled into a fixed 
 memory which I slowly lived over again and 
 dwelt upon in all its details, without the furious 
 excitement of the moment and its unthinking, 
 unfeeling suspense. 
 
 " What I now saw was only cold, naked 
 realitv, shorn of all embellishments. The horror 
 of it nearly droVe me out of my mind. I had the 
 sights before me without ceasing. Sometimes 
 it seemed to me as if I could smell the fumes and 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 55 
 
 reek of corpses and clotted blood and crushed 
 flesh where I lay. I had the shouts and shrieks 
 and the prayers for mercy and the straining 
 death-rattle tearing at my ears. I saw dying 
 eyes staring into mine with all the appalling 
 dread of torment and the terror of death. I 
 saw lips twisted in hate and heard thundering 
 curses rolling through all the ear-splitting 
 roaring and clamour. 
 
 " I groaned in horror. I felt as if I had heavy 
 stones on my chest — something crushing me so 
 that I gasped for air ; something that clutched 
 at my throat and squeezed it so that I felt as 
 if I must lose my reason. 
 
 " I possessed nothing whatever that might 
 have reconciled me to all this — nothing to tell 
 me that I ought to suffer gladly because it was 
 for something great and good, something eternal 
 and holy. There was nothing at all to shed any 
 redeeming light on the horror. There was not 
 even the excuse of hatred. 
 
 " I had only murdered — murdered until I 
 was weary ; taken the lives that came my way ; 
 destroyed as many human beings as possible. 
 
 " But why ? Who will give me the answer 
 to that ' why ' ? 
 
 " They were not my enemies. I did not hate 
 them ; I did not despise them ; I had no 
 
S6 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 revenge to gain ; I had not to administer any 
 retribution. There was only one thing that 
 could explain my conduct ; only one reason 
 could be given to justify it. 
 
 " I had done my duty ; I had obeyed orders 
 and done my best ; I had acted as I had been 
 compelled by the force of circumstances to act. 
 
 '' Of course, I had that consoling consciousness. 
 But I had had to pay a heavy price for it — an 
 appallingly heavy price. 
 
 *' I had to pay a good deal more yet before 
 my accounts were squared." 
 
 " I have read many accounts of the atrocities 
 said to have been committed. I have read both 
 our own reports and those of the other side. 
 I have also seen that they have been denied, 
 or that attempts have been made to explain 
 them away as the visions of diseased brains, 
 as fiction, or as the efforts of untruthful people 
 to make themselves interesting. 
 
 '' Yes, indeed ! Would it were so ! 
 
 " But even if there are fictions and false- 
 hoods and visionary tales amongst them, there is 
 plenty of truth left. And I do not understand 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 57 
 
 how anyone can believe that shameful and 
 revolting things have not been committed — 
 things so bestial, so coarse and horrible in all 
 their gruesomeness, that they are beyond all 
 description. 
 
 " Are there really people so simple-minded 
 as to believe, or capable of imagining, that 
 thousands and thousands of soldiers, whose 
 compassion has gradually been blunted, or 
 whose animal instincts gradually get the mastery 
 of them, because everything is placed ready in 
 their way — whose contempt for human life and 
 human suffering has at last no limit, because, 
 in hunting down their fellow men as if they were 
 unclean animals which had to be slaughtered, 
 their work has been belauded and honoured as 
 their greatest and highest achievement — are 
 there really people so simple as to believe that 
 these men have gone through all this without 
 any trace or effect being left upon their fanati- 
 cally excited minds ? 
 
 " Remember what sort of men many of them 
 were. They were not selected as you would 
 select the friends you wish to be the society 
 of your wife and your daughter of seventeen. 
 There were bad fellows amongst them, many 
 bad fellows, because there are many bad people 
 in the world. And there are far more of them. 
 
58 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 and far worse, when instincts are allowed free 
 play. Not to mention what happens when they 
 are directly spurred on — and there are always 
 plenty of ways of doing that, because there 
 is always plenty of coarseness and brutality. 
 
 " To me it seems to be so very plain. It 
 would be against all reason and common sense 
 to deny it. 
 
 " And, anyhow, denials are useless. Facts 
 speak their own forcible language. 
 
 " Just imagine what it would be if all the 
 homeless, hunted and insulted people, all the 
 violated and murdered women, all the ill-treated 
 old women and men, all the murdered children, 
 if all these could stand forth and give evidence 
 of what they have had to endure, what they have 
 had to see and to suffer. . . . 
 
 " It would be appalling, heartrending misery. 
 
 " There would be a wailing, a groaning, a 
 shrieking, and a cursing, that would make 
 humanity stand rigid in horror at what man 
 can do against man, coldly and heartlessly, 
 often with a happy smile, often with a merry 
 laugh. 
 
 " No, it is a good thing the dead are silent. 
 It is a good thing it is only paper that can tell 
 what has been done. It is a good thing there are 
 no words appalling and misery-charged enough 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 59 
 
 to describe what this war has demanded of 
 suffering and injustice, of horror and boundless 
 despair. 
 
 " I am afraid the world would become a mad- 
 house if we could hear each one shriek out his 
 or her anguish and horror, or see what each had 
 had to endure of tortures and overwhelming 
 misery. 
 
 " No, war is war. And humanity and war 
 have not much to do with each other. After a 
 while men become cruel, as war is cruel, even 
 the best of them. 
 
 " Scrape off the thin varnish of culture upon 
 us that covers the animal and you will find a 
 creature in which are instincts for evil, for murder, 
 for theft, for rapine, for incendiarism and 
 torture, for all that in times of peace can toler- 
 ably well be kept under by the discipline of the 
 law and the watchful supervision of the com- 
 munity — how it all blazes up and burns with an 
 overmastering power ! 
 
 " I have seen so much of all this. Many a 
 time I have wept in horror at all that it fell to 
 my lot to see and hear. 
 
 '' It has been said that much of what happened 
 was only a plain and just retribution — a neces- 
 sary chastisement ; an example that needed 
 setting. 
 
6o FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " This has been said, and not least frequently 
 with reference to Belgium. It has been asserted 
 that civilians fired upon us, both openly and 
 from behind ambushes. It was probably true. 
 But was that so strange ? Was it not in every 
 way perfectly justifiable ? I have never been 
 able to understand that what was done against 
 Belgium was anything but a gross assault, 
 nothing else — a violation of all right and justice ; 
 a crime for which there is no justification. 
 
 " I have been told that it has been justified 
 from the point of view of absolutely vital interests. 
 
 " It was necessary. It was the only resource 
 for the attack on France — the only possible 
 means of a quick attack on that country. 
 
 " I have, however, never heard anyone dare to 
 assert seriously that one is justified in murdering 
 one man in order to be able to kill his neighbour. 
 I should like to see how many amongst civilised 
 people would support that view in everyday 
 life ; and has the State a greater and better 
 right ? Does a crime cease to be a crime because 
 the State commits it ? I think not. Altogether 
 I cannot imagine a poorer defence of what was 
 done to Belgium than this, and I believe that 
 history will pass a sentence that knows no 
 lenience on the guilty. 
 
 " Nor do I see why there should be any 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 6i 
 
 lenience. It seems to me that the nation which 
 has perpetrated this deed stands self-condemned. 
 
 '^ Was it so strange, then, that the Belgian 
 people rose against us, when it saw how we 
 destroyed the country, laid waste the fields, 
 blew its fairest monuments to ruins, tramped 
 through the country like hordes of Huns, 
 burned down houses and towns, violated women, 
 ill-treated old men, behaved brutally to young 
 people and children ? 
 
 " Do not misunderstand me. We are not 
 the only ones who have committed vile deeds. 
 But we have certainlv committed the most and 
 the worst because we have had the greatest 
 opportunity, and because we have been filled 
 to the brim with a brutal and self-confident 
 pride, and that contempt for aU hindrances 
 which never considers the means if only the 
 object is attained. 
 
 *' I must admit that I have learnt to admire 
 this people which defended every inch of country 
 that belonged to it with such ardent and self- 
 sacrificing patriotism. I think that in the 
 way they have fought and suffered they have 
 been grand and splendid and worthy of all the 
 honour that posterity can give them ; and I 
 shall never grow weary of acknowledging that 
 when civilians sometimes took their share in 
 
62 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 defending the country they only did what was 
 right. 
 
 " We deserved no better, considering the way 
 in which we marched on. 
 
 " I admire this nation : its women, its men, 
 its youth. I admire its ardent courage and its 
 boundless devotion. I admire its honest and 
 holy hatred. 
 
 " I remember a single incident, one out of 
 many others, which gave me the firmest assurance 
 that a country in which the young men have 
 such a sense of justice, such fortitude, can never 
 decay. 
 
 " It happened during our march on Brussels. 
 We had reached one of those beautiful, idyllic 
 little towns that seemed made purposely to 
 contain industrious, good and happy people. 
 
 " We were fired upon from one of the houses — 
 anyhow, so it was positively asserted later. I 
 do not know whether there was any truth in it 
 or not ; at any rate, I am not sure that it was 
 true. 
 
 " There was always a dread hanging over us 
 wherever we went. We always felt uneasy — 
 bad consciences, of course. Much of it came, 
 perhaps, of the continual assurance that these 
 people wanted to do us all the harm they could. 
 It was said that the vanguard troops which 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 63 
 
 had crossed the frontier on August 4th had been 
 fired upon by the civiHan population ; and we 
 received orders to punish the civihans without 
 mercy at the first shot. 
 
 " We were in constant fear of attacks by free- 
 lances ; and our fear was increased by countless 
 assertions of civilian deeds of terror. I believe 
 this was said to spur our hate and our desire 
 to fight. Anyhow, I saw nothing of any atro- 
 cities committed by civilians. 
 
 " We reached the village early in the after- 
 noon and scattered over the neighbourhood 
 while we waited for a pontoon bridge to be put 
 together. 
 
 '' At first our relations with the townspeople 
 were very peaceable. They gave us what we 
 asked for and we paid honestly for what we 
 received. 
 
 " Meanwhile the bridge had been finished. 
 We mustered up and began our march through 
 the town. People stood at the windows and in 
 the doorways and looked quietly and peaceably 
 at us. 
 
 " Then it was that a shot was said to have been 
 fired suddenly. No one quite knew where it 
 came from, but it was immediately followed by 
 a violent rifle-fire from our front ranks. Our 
 vanguard stopped, the ranks got into disorder, 
 
64 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 and panic was on us at once. We fired blindly. 
 A mitrailleuse was put up at a street corner and 
 we began to fire at the houses. One gun sent 
 four shells over the town, one to each point over 
 the compass. 
 
 " When the first shot was fired it was clear 
 to the inhabitants what they had to expect. 
 Our fame had preceded us. They hid in cellars, 
 jumped over walls and hedges, and fled into the 
 country to seek a hiding-place. Many of them 
 who would not, or could not, escape were at 
 once shot in their houses where we found them. 
 
 " And then began the sacking and plundering 
 of the unfortunate town. Doors and windows 
 were smashed, furniture broken to bits, and 
 fires made with benzine in various places. Many 
 of our men rushed down to the cellars, where 
 they got drunk. They assaulted and outraged 
 the women, afterwards murdering them if they 
 bewailed their lot. They clubbed old men and 
 young with hatchets, ran them through with 
 their bayonets or split their skulls with blows 
 from rifle-butts ; fired on children or quite 
 young people and shouted and raged like 
 maniacs. 
 
 " We behaved like vandals. I am ashamed 
 every time I think of it. I burn with indignation 
 when I remember the wailing and pleading of 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 65 
 
 these unhappy people, their boundless grief, 
 their indescribable helplessness and despair. 
 
 " In the midst of the rioting a lieutenant was 
 shot. 
 
 " It was a straight and well-aimed bullet that 
 took his life, and there was no doubt whence 
 it came. At the gable-end of one of the houses 
 that were still spared stood a lad of seventeen 
 with his rifle, calm and erect as one who knows 
 he has a perfect right to do what he has done. 
 
 *' Four men were ordered to seize him. I was 
 one of them. But when he saw us approaching 
 he disappeared behind the house, and we did 
 not find him till we had climbed to the loft of 
 a building behind. He had barricaded himself 
 there behind some barrels. We caught a glimpse 
 of the rifle-barrel pointed at us as we came up 
 the stairs, and we could see his eyes like two 
 sharp glints in the semi-darkness. 
 
 " He shot one of us. The bullet struck home 
 surely enough. The man who was hit sank 
 down with a sigh, and we could hear his body 
 fall with a heavy thud against the floor in the 
 passage below. 
 
 " Then he came out with the gun in his hand. 
 He had sacrificed his last cartridge. 
 
 " He came with us quietly. He did not say 
 a word. His lips were closed in a thin straight 
 
66 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 line and his face was pale. But he held himself 
 erect and walked proudly between us as one who 
 has no thought of pleading for mercy. He was 
 as dauntless as one who knows his fate, and who 
 has made it what he wished it to be. 
 
 " He was to be shot. 
 
 " When he was placed against the wall of the 
 house his mother came running up. I heard later 
 that she was a poor widow and that he was 
 her only son. 
 
 " She screamed in terror, and her face was 
 white with horror. She threw herself on her 
 knees before the leader of the company, and, 
 clinging to his knees, she cried, ' Don't shoot 
 him ! He has done nothing wrong. I know 
 it. He has not done anything wrong ! ' 
 
 " It was a mother pleading in extreme agony 
 of soul for her child. I have never heard a voice 
 so charged with anguish. I have never seen 
 a form so twisted in despair. 
 
 " Still clinging to the leader's knees she begged 
 and implored. 
 
 " ' He is my only child — my only one — my 
 only . . . God in Heaven ! spare him ! spare 
 him ! Take me instead ! Take me ! ' 
 
 " She still lay on her knees with her face to 
 the ground, and her weeping was like a wild 
 shrieking. It was the horror-choked madness 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 67 
 
 of despair, and it tore through my mind so that 
 it nearly made me ill, and I felt as if I were going 
 to faint. 
 
 " The boy still stood against the wall, erect 
 and not moving a muscle. His face was white 
 and his eyes burned like live coals. 
 
 " Two of my comrades dragged the woman 
 away, but she went on screaming : 
 
 " ' He hasn't done anything ; he hasn't done 
 anything but what was right ! Oh, you hang- 
 men ! You murderers ! ' 
 
 ^* It was all the two could do to hold her. She 
 struggled to free herself. Her clothes were torn 
 and her hair hung about her face in wild disorder. 
 
 " The order rang out : ' Attention ! Ready ! ' 
 
 " I laid my rifle against my cheek. I felt my 
 arms shaking, and it was almost impossible for 
 me to keep hold of my gun. It weighed like 
 lead in my hand. 
 
 " At the same moment that the order was 
 given I looked at the boy. 
 
 " He stood immovably erect and proud, 
 not a muscle in his body trembled. 
 
 '' But, my God ! I shall never forget the 
 look that met us from his eyes. They blazed 
 with hate. They were the very picture of holy 
 hatred, ^those two glowing pupils. They burnt 
 into my innermost soul. They sent all of us to 
 
68 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 hell in their boundless force and penetrating 
 flame. 
 
 " ' Fire ! ' 
 
 " I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. 
 Where my bullet went I don't know. I believe 
 it went into the air or down into the ground. 
 My arm shook as if it had received a hard and 
 sudden blow. 
 
 " I don't know ; but I hope, in any case, 
 that I had no share in causing his death. 
 
 " I heard a crack and a dull thud, and when I 
 opened my eyes again the boy lay prostrate 
 on the ground. At the same moment his mother 
 managed to free herself. The two soldiers who 
 had held her tumbled back. The next instant 
 she lay over the body of the boy. 
 
 " She flung her arms about his neck and buried 
 her face in his fair hair. 
 
 " I could hear her moaning : 
 
 " ' My darling boy — my darling ! Oh, you 
 murderers ! You murderers ! ' 
 
 " Then someone kicked her and another 
 killed her with a bayonet thrust through her 
 back. 
 
 " Such in the main was that experience. 
 " One might perhaps be tempted to say that, 
 in times like these, the death of a youth is not 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 69 
 
 of very much consequence, when hundreds of 
 thousands of young men in the full vigour of 
 health have to suffer death, and when other 
 hundreds of thousands are bereft of their homes, 
 their future, their children, their fathers or bread- 
 winners. 
 
 " I admit it. He was only a boy of seventeen ; 
 and what is a boy of seventeen amongst hundreds 
 of thousands ? There were many who were not 
 even so mildly treated as he, or had so easy a 
 death. So perhaps he is not more to be pitied 
 than so many others ; nor, perhaps, is his 
 mother. 
 
 " She had the happiness — perhaps the greatest 
 she could have — of being united in death with 
 her boy. 
 
 " But you will understand how such an inci- 
 dent can torment one's mind, when it seems that 
 what the boy did — from an average human point 
 of view — was only common right and justice. 
 
 '' Every time I see a bright and plucky- 
 looking boy, this Belgian boy's fate stands out 
 firmly chiselled in my consciousness. I live 
 through each moment of that time ; I see again 
 that white, pale face, on which the calm was 
 that of cold, immovable justice, when justice 
 has been consummated. 
 
 " I remember that in that little Belgian town 
 
70 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 there was a boy, a brave and dauntless boy, 
 whom the war had transformed into a hero and 
 the protector of the imperishable rights of his 
 home and country, and who flung his burning 
 hate in our faces — a hate that wished us all 
 the torments of life and death and eternity in 
 return for that which we had had a share in 
 doing. 
 
 " It is a heavy burden to bear, a heavy hate 
 to have dragging upon one all through life. 
 
 '' And it is just as hard and heavy, even though 
 I could not act otherwise, because duty bade me 
 act as I did. 
 
 " But what about those who bear the original 
 blame ? What about them ? " 
 
 VI 
 
 " I received my first letter from home when 
 I was in the trenches in Flanders. I cannot say 
 that I had been longing very much for it. The 
 events of the day had somehow pushed my 
 home into the background, driven it into an 
 out-of-the-way corner of my mind, and my 
 thoughts rarely strayed thither. 
 
 " Everything was concentrated mostly on the 
 incidents of each day and on all that the war had 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 71 
 
 taught me. These thoughts were my companions 
 by day, and they were with me in my dreams. 
 They filled my mind to its innermost recesses 
 and did not leave room for much else. 
 
 " Sometimes it seemed to me that I had no 
 past — as if my life had only begun on the day 
 the war began. 
 
 " If it happened now and then that my 
 thoughts tried as if by force to bring joyful 
 memories, the picture of home, or the faces of 
 those dear to me, into my consciousness, it was 
 at once thrust aside by one incident or another 
 of the war, and always by something that tor- 
 mented me and that hurt. It torments me and 
 hurts this very day, and will never leave me until 
 death shuts it out and locks the door. 
 
 " Perhaps there is a kind of mercy in it. 
 I believe it was fortunate for me that everything 
 at that time was overshadowed by the day and 
 the moment. If my thoughts had been full of 
 longing for my people at home and my anxiety 
 for them, I don't know how I should have 
 endured it all. 
 
 " I remember that I looked at the letter with 
 a certain start of wondering curiosity, a sort of 
 uncomprehending surprise ; but only until I 
 had opened the letter and read the first lines. 
 
 " ' My own dearest friend,' it began. 
 
72 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " What wonderfully sweet and hushed words ! 
 What a world of gentleness and calm did they 
 not contain ! What a strange contrast to the 
 hate and brutality that ever since the storming 
 of Liege had overshadowed everything around 
 me every single hour of the day and night ! 
 
 " This feeling grew stronger as I read the 
 letter through. 
 
 " I suddenly looked into a quite different 
 world — a world which I had all but quite 
 forgotten ; a language of sweetness and song, 
 of pure and beautiful cadences. As I read it 
 seemed to me as if I could see my dear old 
 mother sitting in the twilight and hear her 
 singing softly, as she was wont, while my 
 fiancee joined in and my father's eyes grew 
 dim with longing for that which all our hearts 
 desired. 
 
 " Suddenly I saw the fields before me ; the 
 garden, the blue fjord ; the green forests and 
 the white ribbon of the road with its border of 
 wide-crowned poplars that gave forth a strong, 
 sweet scent ; the old farmhouses with their 
 thatched roofs and the white out-buildings 
 shining in the sun ; the quiet, gentle and homely 
 people and the merry, chattering children. 
 
 " I saw more than that, much, much more. 
 I saw everything that had been dear to me and 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 73 
 
 that had had a place in my heart. I Hved my 
 childhood over again and my youth. I searched 
 out all those hours that had given me happiness, 
 I polished up all those memories that had begun 
 to get rusty. I was far away at last, both in 
 time and in space. 
 
 " My dear man, I was at home ; and I under- 
 stood then, to the very root, for the first time in 
 my life, what home means, and what a marvel- 
 lous, beautiful, and precious gift a happy home 
 is. 
 
 " This little unpretentious letter, that in 
 words did not tell me very much except ordinary, 
 everyday incidents, became for me one of the 
 most beautiful things I had ever known : the 
 purest joy that had ever made my heart beat 
 or caused my eyes to grow dim. 
 
 " I hid it in my breast, close against my 
 skin. For many a long day it was my refuge 
 when I wanted to forget the present. 
 
 " I also kept the few other letters that reached 
 me whilst I was away. I keep them still as a 
 sacred treasure. They are both black and frayed 
 and not fit for fine ladies' fingers to touch, 
 but they have been of more comfort and fuller 
 joy to me than all the riches of the world could 
 have been. 
 
 " But what else shall I tell you about the 
 
74 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 time that I spent in those trenches ? Where 
 shall I begin and where shall I end ? It was all 
 one long chain of privations and disgusting inci- 
 dents, and an unceasingly wearing strain, that 
 drove many of my comrades mad, and that wore 
 my body and my nerves with a mercilessness 
 that you have no need to ask me about. You 
 have only to look at me to know. Do I now 
 look like a man whom life has handled with 
 velvet gloves ? And yet I think that I set out 
 with a healthier body and a sounder mind than 
 most. 
 
 " The actual everyday life there was not 
 really the worst part of what one had to 
 endure. You gradually get used to the growth 
 of a stubby beard on your face, and to the dirt 
 caked on your body. You can get used, too, 
 to the cold, and to being soaked through by 
 the rain for days, and having to wade in clayey 
 mud far above your knees from morn till eve 
 and through the night as well ; and to sleep 
 at night, if you can, while the lice nibble and 
 the rats keep you company. 
 
 " In a way these things are trifles, mere 
 details. 
 
 " You can also get used to hardly ever seeing 
 the sun in those narrow, tortuous ditches and 
 dens, and you get used both to hunger and thirst 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 75 
 
 when necessary. In short, you quickly get used 
 to all that which is, after all, nothing but purely 
 physical discomfort. 
 
 *' No, it is the deadly monotony and yet the 
 incessant watchful strain ; a certain paralysing 
 inactivity coupled with the consciousness that 
 you can never for a moment feel safe. 
 
 " That was what sometimes wore one's nerves 
 to rags. 
 
 " Bombardment was not even the worst 
 part of our life. You quickly get used to that 
 when it goes no further than the ordinary, daily 
 kind. Your hearing is sharpened to an incredible 
 degree of acuteness. You learn how to judge of 
 distance and direction by sound. You know at 
 last, with astonishing accuracy, where a shell 
 will burst ; and if now and then one carries off 
 a few of your comrades, you accept it as quite 
 a commonplace affair. 
 
 " After a time human life came to be regarded 
 with great indifference. I had seen so many fall 
 and die, that death no longer made any strong 
 impression upon me. It had become a matter 
 of course — something included in the routine 
 of the day. 
 
 " But life in the trenches demanded watch- 
 fulness, not only when the bombs came shrieking 
 at us, or aviators circled over our heads, but 
 
76 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 also when, hour after hour, our eyes peeping 
 just above the edge of the trench through a 
 slit between two sandbags, we had to stand and 
 stare into the night on the look-out for those 
 who were sometimes lying only fifty yards away 
 from us. 
 
 " We never knew when they would suddenly 
 attack us. We never had either rest or peace. 
 Just as we tried to get a little rest for a dead- 
 tired body and worn-out nerves, we would be 
 called out ; and then to pull ourselves together 
 had to be a matter of seconds. Weariness and 
 over-wrought nerves had to be conquered on the 
 instant. We had to keep at it with sound senses 
 and all our muscles strung tight — for hours, 
 perhaps, and that, too, often many times in the 
 course of twenty-four hours. 
 
 " It was this everlasting uncertainty and 
 uneasiness that preyed on one's mind and often 
 made the happiest and most cheerful among 
 us silent — myself not least. 
 
 " The others had at least something to buoy 
 them up. 
 
 " They had the consciousness that they were 
 serving a cause that meant future and father- 
 land to them. They faced an enemy. They 
 lived and suffered for an idea that absorbed 
 and inspired them. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 77 
 
 '' I lived and suffered for nothing beyond 
 the fact that I had to live and suffer where I 
 was, until a bullet struck me some day ; or until 
 I was worn out and ripe for an asylum or a 
 hospital like so many of the others. 
 
 " I was the silent Dane — so many comrades 
 said. My captain said so, too. I was the only 
 Dane in my division. There had been five of 
 us, but the others were long since gone. Death 
 took three of them as early as Liege. One day 
 a bomb found out the fourth. Nothing was left 
 of him but a few scraps of flesh and some bits of 
 his uniform. 
 
 " I knew that I was liked among them. Per- 
 haps they did not always understand my silence. 
 But they saw that on every occasion I had done 
 my duty to the utmost. 
 
 " I even earned the Iron Cross because I 
 rescued a little subaltern — a small, jolly and 
 bright nineteen-year-old Berliner ; an only child ; 
 a cheerful and enthusiastic soul, as eager as a 
 terrier. 
 
 " He had collapsed under a bullet wound in 
 his thigh. He lay about twenty yards from our 
 trench, and would certainly have bled to death 
 if I had not crept out of the trench and crawled 
 up to him while we were still under fire from the 
 enemy'sjpositions. 
 
78 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " I got him up on my back, his arms round 
 my neck, and, crawling along on all fours, I 
 managed to bring him safely back to our trench. 
 
 " Neither he nor I took any harm on the way. 
 A bullet struck like a hammer against the heel 
 of my boot, but that was all it had to say to 
 me. 
 
 '^My comrades cheered and greeted me with 
 a song. They sang ' There is a fair land,' not the 
 words, for they did not know them, but the 
 tune. They knew that was Danish. 
 
 " I have seldom been so happy as I was then. 
 When the Iron Cross was given to me and my 
 comrades cheered and presented arms, it seemed 
 nothing at all in comparison with those loved 
 sounds, in the tune of the Danish song, that 
 brought the tears to my eyes and thrilled me 
 with emotion. 
 
 " I heard later that the little lieutenant had 
 had to lose his leg. But his life was saved, and 
 his mother sent me a beautiful letter of thanks. 
 
 " I do not mention this as a piece of heroism. 
 Do not misunderstand me — I do not wish for 
 any glorification. It is only a very small trifle 
 amongst thousands of incidents, far finer, far 
 nobler, and stamped to an exalted degree with 
 the grandeur of self-sacrifice and contempt of 
 death. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 79 
 
 " I only mention it because I am very anxious 
 that you should understand that I took my duty 
 seriously, and that I strove fairly and honestly 
 to serve the country I belong to, even though 
 it does not possess my heart and never can — 
 now less than ever, by the way — and even though 
 I could not serve it with the ardent and self- 
 effacing devotion of patriotic enthusiasm. 
 
 " What then was the worst of the life in the 
 trenches ? 
 
 " Those hours were the worst in which we 
 tried to get rest and could not ; or when we lay 
 dreaming, or saw how the others were tormented 
 by nightmare. 
 
 " It was a scene that was repeated time after 
 time, and it was always equally distressing and 
 gruesome, because most of us knew what it was 
 to suffer those torments. 
 
 " You would suddenly see two comrades, 
 who had up till then been sleeping quietly side 
 by side, become restless and begin to toss about. 
 Then you would hear some abrupt shouts, that 
 quickly turned into hoarse shrieks, and in a 
 short time you would see them roll over and 
 fight with their fists at each other's eyes, or 
 mouth or temples, wherever the blow might 
 happen to fall. You would see them seize one 
 
8o FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 another by the throat in a passionate strangling 
 clutch, and hear them groaning and gasping 
 until at last you succeeded in waking and parting 
 them. 
 
 " The last was often a difficult matter. Even 
 in a semi-wakened condition they often con- 
 tinued the assaults with a brutahty and rage 
 for which a peaceable third party had to suffer 
 when intervening to prevent them from doing 
 each other a serious injury. For it happened 
 sometimes that a man was choked by the frenzied 
 clutch of another at his throat. 
 
 " In their dreams they would imagine that 
 they had been wounded and that they were lying 
 on the field, waiting for the ambulance. Then 
 suddenly they caught sight of an enemy lying 
 beside them and staring at them. His eyes 
 were full of malice and hate, and they could see 
 his fingers, in spite of his agony, fumbling for 
 his revolver. Even as a fellow-sufferer on the 
 battlefield he could not control his hate. There 
 was no other resource then but to throw oneself 
 upon him and render him powerless to do harm. 
 If one of the two had to lose his life, it had 
 better be the other fellow. 
 
 " That, in its bare outline, is the story of the 
 dream. It was terrible. I have had that dream 
 myself and have often been in its grip, and every 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 8i 
 
 time I have panted with excitement for a long 
 time after and felt as if the valves of my heart 
 were going to burst, and as if stinging blows 
 were being struck on the nape of my neck. 
 
 " Now imagine having this dream, this horrible 
 nightmare, two or three times, perhaps, in the 
 course of a night, and you will understand that 
 we were always in a state of uneasiness and 
 misgiving when seeking sleep and rest, and that 
 we would do anything to keep ourselves awake 
 rather than fall into the horror of such dreams. 
 
 " There was another dream, though, that 
 taunted many of us and which in its weirdness 
 and mercilessness must have ruined the nerves 
 of many for the rest of their lives. You see, when 
 some dream vision or other had once established 
 itself in one's consciousness it would keep on 
 returning night after night for a long, long time ; 
 and of course matters were not improved by 
 our telling our dreams to each other. They 
 often dominated our minds even when awake 
 with a violence impossible to shake off. Besides, 
 what is there to talk about in a trench through 
 the long night-watches if you don't talk about 
 the very things that haunt you more than 
 anything else that happens ? 
 
 " This dream was something like this : — 
 
 " You would imagine that you suddenly woke 
 
82 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 up and found yourself quite alone in the 
 trench. Round about you the bombs were 
 working their work of destruction and your 
 comrades had quietly retired to a safer 
 position. 
 
 " Looking out across the country through 
 the veil of a grey rain-clouded night, you would 
 see the bombs ploughing up the earth and 
 flinging it into the air in huge smoking columns. 
 Their crashing tore at the drums of your ears. 
 Suddenly the sharp fan of a searchlight would 
 cut across the trench, and the blood vessels 
 of your eyes would feel as if they were bursting 
 under the piercing white gleam. In its glare 
 you would see the mutilated bodies of your 
 comrades about you — fragments of limbs, 
 smashed skulls, faces distorted by terror and the 
 throes of death. 
 
 " You felt overcome with the eerieness of the 
 solitude and darkness. 
 
 " You grew afraid of the loneliness and the 
 darkness in the trenches ; for it is only the know- 
 ledge that you have the companionship of your 
 comrades that enables you to keep up your 
 courage at any time. The least unfamiliar sound 
 makes you start, and your body stiffens while 
 perspiration oozes out of your every pore. 
 
 " It sounds childish, perhaps, but a rat 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 83 
 
 rushing in between your legs is enough to bring 
 out the beads of perspiration. 
 
 " Then you try to find the others. You 
 stare for a moment over the breastworks, 
 but you see only the grey night and the 
 flash from far away when a bomb is flung 
 out. 
 
 " After that you grope your way through the 
 darkness of the trench. You fall full length 
 over a body and feel your way about you. You 
 get your hand full of blood from burst intestines, 
 or you feel the sticky mass of brains gluing your 
 fingers together ; or your hand pushes into an 
 open mouth, and the scraping of teeth against 
 your skin makes your blood run cold through 
 and through. 
 
 " You crawl on — over dead bodies. You 
 perceive the acrid smell of coagulated blood 
 and the exudations of death. 
 
 " At last you are on the level ground again. 
 You get up and grope on. 
 
 " But in a little while the same thing is 
 repeated. Again you fall — again you grope 
 your way among dead bodies. Now and then 
 you hear a groaning and a pleading for water, 
 or you feel a hand fumbling about your leg or 
 your arm, or sliding over your face. You jump 
 up and run away, terror tearing at all your 
 
84 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 nerves until you fall again, and the same thing 
 is repeated once more. 
 
 '' By this time your reason is almost paralysed 
 with terror. You feel every pulse hammering. 
 You could scream — sometimes you do. You 
 tear at your clothes to give your terror some 
 outlet and relief. You scratch yourself till the 
 blood comes, digging your nails deep in your 
 cheek or your forehead. You hammer at your 
 temples to drive the visions away. 
 
 " Then you grope your way round a turning. 
 
 " The searchlight suddenly flashes length- 
 ways down the trench. You see a body 
 supported by the wall of the trench, standing 
 upright before you. The glazed, dead eyes are 
 staring at you, the lips grinning in the rigidity 
 of death. The blood is trickling from a wound 
 in the temple and pours down the pale cheek, 
 made still paler by the cold rays of the search- 
 light. 
 
 " It grows dark again. You continue groping 
 — on, still further on. You are now haunted by 
 fear and horror to the verge of madness. You 
 feel you are stumbling over corpses — heaps of 
 dead and mutilated bodies. You are tired ; your 
 limbs fail you, you cannot keep up any longer, 
 and at last you sink down, wearied and tortured 
 to death. You plunge your hands up to the 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 85 
 
 wrists into a ripped-up stomach that is still 
 warm. You scream wildly and loudly — a pierc- 
 ing scream that seems to rend your throat. . . . 
 
 " And then you awake. 
 
 " But you do not wake up to relief. 
 
 " All the wild visions continue to hammer at 
 your mind. Their maddening pictures are still 
 in your consciousness, and every time you are 
 overpowered by weariness you glide back into 
 the terrors of the dream. 
 
 " Then comes the wearing struggle to keep 
 awake and give your thoughts another direction. 
 But it is nearly always impossible. The dream 
 has sunk far too brutally and deeply into your 
 mind. You live through it with your eyes 
 wide open, while you try to fix your glance 
 upon some point or other in order to drive it 
 away, but you very seldom succeed. 
 
 " Merciful daylight alone brings peace, but 
 at the same time it brings an overwhelming, 
 almost unconquerable exhaustion, a mental 
 collapse, a nervous system so worn out and 
 tender that you are not far from madness or 
 from that extreme state of despair that leads 
 to suicide. 
 
 " That is the horror of the trenches — far 
 more terrible, far more destructive, than fight 
 ing, or bombs or mitrailleuses, or the tense and 
 
86 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 staring watchfulness of the long hours of the 
 night ; far worse than the misery of the muti- 
 lations, the screams and the moans, and the 
 panting rattle when a life is extinguished by a 
 merciful death." 
 
 VII 
 
 " During the first part of December I was in 
 a trench in the foremost line on the Russian 
 front. We had a peaceful time. The Russian 
 attacks were neither fierce nor frequent. They 
 amounted mostly to small, hurried sorties or 
 encounters between outposts or patrols. There 
 were, too, only very few of those sudden, local, 
 small engagements that come when you least 
 expect them, and which as a rule never lead to 
 anything but a few men on either side being 
 wounded or killed. 
 
 " And yet it was an appalling life, during the 
 close upon three weeks that I was there. 
 
 " It was rather more than four miles to the 
 relief company, which had its headquarters in 
 an old forester's house, long since deserted by 
 its inmates, and of which only a roomy barn 
 was fit for human habitation. Everything else 
 had been burnt to the ground. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 87 
 
 " The few troops stationed there for relief 
 duty were not much good. They were worn 
 out with hunger and cold. 
 
 " It fell at last to our lot to do the relief duty. 
 
 " We starved and froze, tiU at last we were 
 nearly crazy and quite indifferent about every- 
 thing. 
 
 " Starvation was not the worst, perhaps, of 
 what we had to endure. You can get used to a 
 great deal in that direction. I have had to live 
 for about a week on frozen turnips which we 
 thawed at a wretched little trench stove, and 
 I had nothing to drink but snow. 
 
 " It was all right during the first three or four 
 days. We even found it rather good fun ; 
 it was a new experience. But we found it 
 hard to get through the last few days. And yet 
 it was child's play to all the rest. It had this 
 redeeming feature about it — it gave our dreams 
 a quite different direction. 
 
 " We dreamed about food. 
 
 " You might feel tempted to laugh at these 
 dreams, in which one saw before one a well- 
 provided table and smelt the pleasant odour of 
 food, striking upon one's senses like a provoking 
 wave — one simply wallowed in a state of happy 
 comfort and content. You prepared to take 
 your place at this gorgeous table ; and suddenly 
 
88 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 it vanished and you only saw a gigantic earth- 
 grimy turnip, Hke a face grinning at you in 
 mockery and scorn. 
 
 " Or you would see other beautiful sights, 
 all concerned with food, but they, too, always 
 vanished at the moment of realisation, and you 
 would wake up with a straining, smarting feeling 
 in your diaphragm, an unbearable thirst, a sensa- 
 tion of giddiness, and an overpowering weariness. 
 " But, as I said before, hunger is not the worst 
 thing. You get over that when you are healthy 
 and strong. 
 " But the cold ! . . . 
 
 " Try to imagine these ditches, just broad 
 enough for two men to squeeze past each other, 
 and just deep enough for you to be able to hide 
 your head below the edge. Then try to imagine 
 what it is to live there through the nights and 
 days of the worst part of a Russian winter, 
 inactive, and yet compelled to be continually 
 wakeful. 
 
 " There was no protection but that which 
 one's clothes could give and the slight shelter 
 afforded at night by the holes dug into the sides 
 of the trench and lined with straw that gradually 
 crumbled into dust. 
 
 " Sometimes the wind swept like a razor along 
 the flat bottom of the trench, and the frost bit 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 89 
 
 both one's hands and face. At last, in spite of 
 mittens, one's hands were like torn strips of meat. 
 The lobes of one's ears hung in rags, the lips had 
 deep cracks. 
 
 *' One's eyes, however, had the worst of it. 
 They suffered terribly from the glare of the 
 snow ; and not least at night, when one had to 
 stand for hours staring out over the white snow- 
 cover and take note of everything that might 
 happen both far and near, as far as one's sight 
 could possibly reach. 
 
 " Sometimes it felt as if the apple of one's 
 eye were scratched with sharp needles. The 
 tears blinded and smarted, and their course 
 over one's cheeks made one feel as if the flesh 
 were being torn from one's face in long strips 
 right to the very bone. 
 
 ** There were many men whose sight was 
 destroyed for life during that winter in Russia. 
 Many went home blind from those trenches, 
 broken, despairing, horror-stricken. Three men 
 in my company shot themselves in the horror 
 of blindness. 
 
 " It was not always the optic nerve, however, 
 that was destroyed. Sometimes blindness was 
 caused by a paralysis of the eyelids — a paralysis 
 which, it was found later, could sometimes be 
 cured by electric treatment. 
 
90 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " And then, when the snow began to fall ! 
 
 " It would come sweeping over the flat 
 country so that for days you were imprisoned 
 in a world of whipping and whirling white and 
 could not see your comrades at a distance of a 
 few yards. Hour after hour you had to stand 
 with your back against it and let it sweep and 
 shriek around you, while the wind and the frost 
 tore your flesh into strips. Or you might squat 
 down and let the snow cover you until you 
 collapsed, and you had suddenly to gather up 
 all your energy and rouse yourself if you did not 
 mean to sit and be frozen into eternity. 
 
 " Nothing is so terrible as cold in the inactivity 
 of a trench. You know what a mental and 
 physical discomfort it is, and how dull and 
 apathetic it makes you feel to go about even in 
 a slight state of chilliness. Imagine, then, living 
 on day after day, without respite, feeling as if 
 your body were a lump of solidly-frozen meat, 
 and your bones aching as if they were going to 
 crack. 
 
 " And then those long, long nights when you 
 tried to get rest and warmth and neither rest 
 nor warmth was to be had ; when each single 
 limb ached as if your whole body were one 
 single, painful boil ; when sores and cracks 
 were torn and rent, and you could not make an 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 91 
 
 effort to move because the cold took away all 
 your strength and energy. 
 
 " Then from time to time came the struggle to 
 keep oneself awake in spite of weariness and 
 hunger, because one knew only too well that, 
 once under the dominion of sleep, there was little 
 probability of ever waking again. Not infre- 
 quently, in the early morning, we found a com- 
 rade frozen to death by our side, wrapped in 
 the oblivion of a merciful death. Frostbites, 
 too, ^yhich as time went on destroyed one 
 limb or another, and made a man a pitiable 
 object for the rest of his life, these were not 
 unknown during that winter in the trenches in 
 Russia. 
 
 " Not everyone had bodily strength or 
 spiritual energy enough to keep him from being 
 overmastered by that feeling of utter apathy 
 about everything which was the road to death. 
 For there lies grave danger. There comes a time 
 when men feel as if all suffering were over, all 
 pains gone ; moments come when they feel all 
 aglow with happiness and warmth and well- 
 being, and when the fairest sights and most 
 vivid colours appear before their eyes. 
 
 " But it is in such moments as these that it 
 becomes absolutely necessary to shake off the 
 pleasant impression and to summon all one's 
 
92 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 powers and energy. He who cannot do this, 
 who cannot master himself enough to force his 
 mind back to the harsh reaHty, the old weariness 
 and pain, must inevitably fall a prey to death. 
 
 " We were relieved the day before Christmas 
 Eve, and as far as I was concerned it was high 
 time. I was almost overcome by cold and 
 hunger. My eyes could no longer bear the painful 
 glare of the snow and the long nights of anxious 
 gazing over the shining white plains, or through 
 the bewildering grey of the snow fog. My hands, 
 too, and my face were covered with sores. 
 It was an utterly indescribable joy to change one's 
 clothes, and to get rid of the dirt and vermin. 
 The Hce had bitten us badly ; hair and scalp 
 were full of them. It was glorious to cover one's 
 face and hands with vaseline, so thickly that it 
 melted off in greasy drops. And oh! the joy of 
 getting some decent food again, and the prospect 
 of sleeping snugly on a delightful heap of straw, 
 even though fully dressed, and with a bundle of 
 thorn branches for a pillow! . . . One learns 
 to appreciate keenly everything that concerns 
 bodily comfort. One's thoughts are occupied 
 almost entirely with food and sleep ; everything 
 else quickly becomes a weariness. Nothing 
 outside oneself can arouse or retain any interest. 
 Everything is a trifle compared to the question 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 93 
 
 as to whether there will be a chance of getting 
 enough to eat that day, or whether there will 
 be a chance of sleeping heavily through the hours 
 like some weary animal. 
 
 ^' On Christmas Eve the Christmas letters and 
 parcels were handed round. They arrived late 
 in the evening by a motor car from the nearest 
 town, which was over nine miles away. The 
 car had made a laborious journey through a 
 bare and devastated country, where the roads 
 were deep in snow, and all tracks were obscured, 
 and then through a thick wood, gloomy and 
 wild, so torn by shells, that tree-tops and great 
 trunks lay in a tangled confusion wherever it 
 had to pass. 
 
 " The gifts were received with a joy that moved 
 the men to tears. We were as happy and merry 
 as children, and the happiest of all were those 
 who had a letter from home. They wandered off 
 into the solitude of the forest, each going his own 
 way, and we did not see them again for hours. 
 
 " For those who had neither a letter nor any 
 other message from their own home there were 
 gifts from total strangers, kind souls who sent 
 some touching little word of greeting as well : 
 ' To our brave and blessed soldiers in the grey uni- 
 forms ; ' . . . 'To our best friends, wishing them 
 a happy Christmas ;'...' From a little girl to 
 
94 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 one of the heroes of the Fatherland ;'...* From 
 a happy mother ;'...' From a mother who 
 has no one left ;'...' From one whose dearest 
 has given his life for the Fatherland.' 
 
 " Such were the greetings. And the gifts were 
 gifts of love. 
 
 " These are dull words when one reads them 
 in print in a newspaper. They sound like 
 affectation. But those who have received a little 
 gift like this with a greeting from a total stranger, 
 and felt the love which prompted it, those who 
 have seen how a little packet of tobacco, a few 
 rolls of plug, a cake of chocolate, a pipe, or 
 whatever the little thing might be, can gladden 
 some man's existence at the front, and suddenly 
 bring a new beauty and joy into life, filling it 
 for a time with new colour and new meaning — 
 those understand not only the purity, the deep 
 feeling, and the tenderness which are expressed 
 by such gifts of love, but also how deeply they 
 sink into the heart of the man who receives 
 them. 
 
 " I have seen my comrades stand and gaze at 
 some such little gift and greeting as if they held 
 some glorious and unexpected treasure in their 
 hands. I have myself experienced that delight- 
 ful and overwhelming feeling. It is an almost 
 indescribable joy, because one's first and fairest 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 95 
 
 thought is an overwhelming rush of tender and 
 silent gratitude to those strangers who have sent 
 their good wishes and hopes not only to their 
 own nearest and dearest, but also found it in 
 their hearts and minds to make others glad as 
 well. I have seen tall, strong men, who did not 
 easily express their feelings as a rule, stand and 
 weep with some such little gift in their hands. 
 I have seen them, by stealth or openly, press it 
 to their lips, as if it had been sent to them by 
 their dearest on earth, as if it were a tender and 
 touching message from one heart to another. . . . 
 " In the trenches behind the front, men are apt 
 to revert to the primitive condition both for 
 good and evil. All their feelings come to the 
 surface, brutalities and sympathies alike, love, 
 the sense of unity, the passion of hatred. They 
 become easy to understand and easy to see 
 through. There are few who can keep up the 
 disguises of civil life. Everyone is laid open and 
 turned inside out before he is aware of it. Early 
 and late, every man sees into his neighbour's 
 innermost soul, laid bare to his gaze. But no 
 one is surprised at his neighbour's soul, and no 
 one is ashamed of his own. 
 
 " The noisy and overbearing arrogance, which 
 was noticeable during the first months among 
 those who had been in the war from its beginning. 
 
96 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 gradually disappeared, giving place to a heavy 
 and weary realisation of the fact that no one 
 knew when all this horrible business would end, 
 or indeed what the end of it would be ; and at 
 the same time we all became more and more like 
 one another. Our thoughts and feelings were all 
 the same. As soon as I knew what I felt or 
 thought myself under any given circumstances 
 I also knew exactly what was passing in the 
 minds of the others. Thus by degrees we talked 
 less and less to one another, and often avoided 
 one another, each seeking privacy for himself. 
 That was always pleasanter and better and 
 happier than the society of our comrades, which 
 generally resolved itself into nothing but a silent 
 gazing into space. 
 
 " Now and then there was a little music to en- 
 liven us in the trenches or at the front. And 
 naturally there were here and there merry 
 natures, who could make the others smile and 
 laugh. But all soon froze again, and turned to 
 bitterness and discomfort. I know very well 
 that quite a different description of things was 
 given in many of the letters home. I have 
 written that kind of letter myself. I have written 
 descriptions of many hours spent with good and 
 cheerful comrades and of amusements, of con- 
 tentment, and that the whole thing was not 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 97 
 
 so very trying, when you come to the point, 
 so long as you understood how to adapt yourself 
 to it. 
 
 "Yes, exactly; pious lies, every one of them. 
 A constant stream of pious lies has flowed home- 
 wards from the front during this year of war, 
 and that, too, not merely on account of the 
 censor. How could it be otherwise ? Who 
 would have the heart to make those at home 
 more sad and anxious than they were already ? 
 
 " No, indeed. So it was best to describe the 
 whole thing in cheerful colours. To us it was 
 all the same. The days were neither better nor 
 worse for us. But perhaps we might be able to 
 give those at home a few brighter hours, and help 
 them to keep up their courage. And was not 
 that well worth a handful of pious lies ? 
 
 " In the afternoon we decked our Christmas 
 trees. One inside the barn for those who were 
 too much exhausted to stir ; and one out in the 
 snowy forest a short distance from the keeper's 
 hut. People had sent us ornaments and little 
 candles, while for the tree itself we chose a little 
 snow-sprinkled pine — which was growing alone 
 in an open space, encircled by venerable old 
 trunks. 
 
 " It stood there, as if it had been expressly 
 waiting for us and for our Christmas Eve. 
 
98 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " As the darkness came on, two or three 
 hundred men gathered round the tree. Over us 
 was a clear, starry night without a single cloud 
 to mar the endless depth of its dark blue. Around 
 us stood the silent forest, pure and white, with 
 the pale moonbeams showing against the stems 
 of the trees. 
 
 " It was a delightful and an absorbing sight 
 for us all — this Christmas tree in the silent forest, 
 where the only sound to be heard was the 
 creaking of our footsteps on the snow ; all these 
 various colours and all these tiny lights amid the 
 white painting of the snow. 
 
 " It made us all quiet and silent. It led at 
 once our thoughts and hopes far, far away — 
 home to those dear rooms, where the bright 
 Christmas tree of our childhood had stood, and 
 where our Christmas happiness had filled every- 
 one and everything with joy and with the ten- 
 derest feelings of the heart. We all stood with 
 bent head : there were no words heard, nor any 
 exclamations of pleasure ; only a sound as of 
 a weary sigh was breathed through the silent 
 air. Or perhaps it was only a quiet whisper 
 among the old branches. A stirring of the night 
 amid its winter's dreams. A deep and profound 
 seriousness was seen on every face. There were 
 lips which trembled. There were hands which 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 99 
 
 were laid over eyes ; there were hands whch 
 clasped each other in the pressure of warm 
 friendship, or in the silent comradeship of 
 memory. There were arms that found their 
 way about a comrade's neck. 
 
 " Then our captain stepped forward. His 
 head was bent, and his eyes were fixed upon the 
 snow at his feet. His Ups were tightly pressed 
 together, as though they held back some thought 
 he would not utter. 
 
 " Then suddenly he straightened himself up 
 and looked away in front of him as though he 
 saw something beautiful far away in the sky. 
 
 " His lips quivered as he asked us if we would 
 sing the hymn, ' Stille Nacht, heiUge Nacht.' 
 
 " He led us in our singing ; his voice sounded 
 above all the others. It was so clear and strong : 
 it sounded so touching and so sweet with the 
 quiver in its tones. But there was no one else 
 who sang properly, and the music dwindled 
 away by degrees. At last it was only an indis- 
 tinct humming. Sometimes it sounded as if 
 only the captain were singing, and at last, his 
 voice also became only a murmur. 
 
 " The last verse melted away to nothing. 
 
 " Then he spoke a few words to us about 
 Christmas. But they were short. He began 
 in a clear, powerful voice, with that distinct 
 
100 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 utterance which a soldier acquires from years of 
 command. But it soon began to tremble, and 
 when he spoke of home and the dear ones who 
 at that very moment were thinking of us here, 
 and not of their own peaceful Christmas, he was 
 overcome by emotion. He bent his head and 
 pressed his hand against his eyes ; his words, 
 when he began the prayer, ^ Our Father, which 
 art in Heaven,' were thick with tears and 
 passed quickly to a sobbing ' Amen.' 
 
 " We all remained standing with bent heads. 
 Here and there could be heard a deep sigh or a 
 nervous cough, when the prayer was over. There 
 were many who wept, and no one sought to hide 
 his feelings. Why should he ?' All our thoughts 
 were going the same way — to home and to all the 
 dear ones, whether to wife and child, to father 
 and mother, to whomsoever it was, whose 
 thoughts in that moment were turned towards 
 us in hope and fear. 
 
 " Then by degrees one after another began to 
 go away. A little nod to a comrade, a clasp of 
 the hand, a last look at the lights and colours of 
 the Christmas Tree. And then away from it 
 all, to be alone with one's own thoughts. 
 
 '* More and more of the men went slowly 
 away — some, farther into the forest by silent 
 and lonely paths ; others, out upon the open plain. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT loi 
 
 " I was one of the last to go. I watched the 
 pale gleam of the little candles die away in the 
 night. At last I felt the loneliness round me 
 like a torment. But nevertheless I could not 
 make up my mind to be with the others. I sought 
 seclusion, as they did. I found it at the edge of 
 the forest by an old stone dyke. I could see far 
 over the flat country, white with snow as far as 
 the eye could reach. I fancied I could see a glow 
 far away, of something burning, hke the spark of 
 a glowworm by the edge of a ditch on a summer's 
 night. I saw the beam of a searchlight pass 
 over the first line trenches. And was not that 
 the flash of a bomb, that blazed up and dis- 
 appeared again ? Even on the holy eve of 
 Christmas the horrors of war were still there. 
 I turned my eyes up to the sky, and scanned the 
 vault of heaven from one horizon to the other. 
 Far to the northward, over my home by the 
 fjord, there was the same vault of heaven, the 
 
 same stars. My home I closed my eyes and 
 
 saw it all before me. The Christmas tree on the 
 parlour table — father and mother each sitting 
 in a corner, and round the tree, twenty poor 
 children from the parish, singing and dancing, 
 as our custom always had been, right on from 
 the days of my grandfather. 
 
 " I heard mother sing ' A Child is born in 
 
102 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 Bethlehem,' in her sweet, cheerful voice, which 
 seemed to well out from the very depths of her 
 heart. I heard father's deep bass joining in, 
 and I saw his smile, which was never so bright 
 and beautiful as on that evening, when he could 
 make children really happy. 
 
 " I felt so deeply, overwhelmingly distressed. 
 
 " Do not misunderstand me ; this distress had 
 nothing to do with myself, or with my position 
 at the moment. I was all right. I wanted for 
 nothing : my life had been preserved. I could 
 keep Christmas in peace. 
 
 " There was nothing amiss with me. But I 
 was distressed nevertheless, and distressed as I 
 have seldom been over anything. I felt it the 
 whole time like a pain, like a torment, like 
 something that could make me weep and sob 
 helplessly. They were sitting there at home in 
 the old farm by the fjord, on the holy, peaceful 
 eve of Christmas, when never before had there 
 been anything but joy and gladness for them ; 
 but now their hearts were full of anxiety and 
 anxious questions rose to their lips. What could 
 be happening to me? . . . Was I still alive ? . . . 
 Or was I lying dead and cold in the trenches or 
 on the open plain? ... Or was I lying wounded 
 and helpless on some hospital bed? . . . 
 
 " Must it not be so ? Must not their thoughts 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 103 
 
 and their questions be such as these ? Such 
 must they be on this evening, and such must 
 they have been every day and every hour since 
 I left my home. 
 
 " But they could get no answers to their 
 questions. They could not get to know anything, 
 however deeply they longed and prayed. Not 
 even on the holy eve of Christmas could they 
 know anything about the son whom they both 
 loved so utterly, and who had been the joy of 
 their lives, not least on every Christmas Eve, 
 when heart meets heart so readily and when all 
 human goodness and lovingkindness wells forth 
 from its pure springs. 
 
 " Imagine what suffering it must mean to 
 them, sitting there with thoughts of suspense in 
 their hearts, and words of suspense on their lips. 
 I hear my dear old mother say quietly, ' God 
 only knows how it is with our boy to-night, 
 father.' I see her eyes seek my father's. I see 
 them grow dim. I see my father get up and go to 
 her and lay his arm about her shoulders, re- 
 assuring her, while his lips tremble : ' You will 
 see, little mother, the good God is protecting him.' 
 {. " I understand how sudden terror and alarm 
 fill their hearts. How they tremble with emotion. 
 How the bitter thought that I may perhaps be 
 dead, wears them out and tortures them. 
 
104 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " They are both thinking of it. They think of it 
 so much that they almost feel they know it. 
 But neither of them dares express the thought 
 for fear of alarming the other. And so by degrees 
 the dread of it grows stronger and stronger in 
 their minds. It fills everything. It overcomes 
 everything. It torments them and wears them 
 out with its horror. But nevertheless they 
 clasp each other's hands, in a beautiful and com- 
 forting fashion, while they whisper, dreading all 
 the while that it may be otherwise : ^ Yes, yes, 
 the good God is protecting our boy.' 
 
 " These were -my thoughts that Christmas 
 Eve before the Russian front. I believe they 
 were true thoughts. Thus must things have been 
 in my home, and in many others besides. 
 
 " But who can understand the painful help- 
 lessness, the grief, the torment that fills one's 
 mind when one has come at last to realise what 
 those at home must be suffering every moment 
 and every hour of the day, because they know 
 nothing — nothing ? 
 
 " They have hope to support them and prayer 
 to lean upon ? Yes, indeed. No, they have 
 nothing at all ; for neither hope nor prayer can 
 give them sure comfort for more than a brief 
 minute. 
 
 " No, they have only one thing left. The 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 105 
 
 most terrible of all. Suspense. Terror. Despair. 
 Hopelessness. 
 
 " I had never realised it all, until that silent 
 Christmas Eve. It was only then I fully under- 
 stood what a terrible existence it must be for 
 those at home. I hardly know, but it seems to 
 me that this is one of the saddest things which 
 war brings in its train. 
 
 " It is almost worse than the nightmares and 
 the hunger, the wounds, the groans and the 
 misery all round one. 
 
 " I assure you, when in some lonely hour one 
 probes that feehng to its depth and permits it 
 to develop to its full extent in one's imagination, 
 it wears one out and haunts one more than 
 most things, because there is no remedy nor help 
 nor comfort for it. It is nothing but a mighty, 
 despairing, all-overwhelming sense of helpless- 
 ness. It can torture. It can bring heartache. It 
 can sometimes trouble a man till he loses his 
 reason. 
 
 " One feels sometimes that one must shout, 
 until one's voice cracks, and the cry is heard over 
 the whole world : * Yes, — I am alive, you dear 
 ones, alive — alive ! ' " 
 
io6 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 VIII 
 
 " On the East front I took part in the great 
 offensive against the Russians. My old comrade 
 was there also ; he was still alive. But there were 
 many new faces in my division. The bloody days 
 before Liege, the horrors of the fight through 
 Belgium, and the long strife in the trenches of 
 Flanders, had cost many men their lives or their 
 reason. 
 
 " But many more were thinned out, before 
 my turn came, one day in the Argonne in the early 
 spring. 
 
 " I remember how Belgium was laid waste. 
 But to tell the truth, things were much the same 
 in East Prussia. Before the invasion, it was 
 in many parts a melancholy country. But it 
 looked more pitiable than ever, as we marched 
 through it, with the Russians retreating before 
 us. Trampled fields, ploughed up by shells, 
 burnt farms, property wantonly injured or 
 destroyed, towns in ruins and human beings in 
 despair, robbed of all they had, their happiness, 
 their joy, their future. It was an indescribable 
 scene of misery and woe. But at the same 
 time it was exceedingly touching to see how the 
 greater number of the people clung to the 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 107 
 
 devastated home, whose master was probably in 
 the fighting Kne, if he were not already killed. 
 The wretched hovels and the ruined farms 
 still sheltered human creatures, who did their 
 work as best they could, and hid themselves 
 from the night and the rain in some cramped 
 space, between half-charred boards and ends 
 of beams, or whatever they could find to 
 hand. 
 
 " It was misery. It was poverty. It was 
 wretchedness. But it was home — the one fixed 
 point in their existence. If they once forsook 
 that, they were exposed to the merciless uncer- 
 tainty of life. So they clung to it obstinately 
 and faithfully in spite of all they had to bear 
 and suffer, both when the Russians advanced, 
 and when they retreated. Among their other 
 miseries they had also learnt to know famine. 
 When the Russians advanced, they did not 
 leave much behind. Many a time these people 
 begged our last slice of bread from us, to stay 
 the worst of their hunger. 
 
 " We gave to them willingly. I felt at times, 
 that their lot was far worse than ours. We 
 indeed might lose our lives in many different 
 ways, and we also knew what it was to be 
 hungry. But we had not to listen to our children 
 crying for food, or see our tiny infants sicken 
 
io8 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 and die because there was no milk to be had 
 and the mother's breasts were empty. 
 
 " I can well understand why wherever we 
 came, the people greeted us as their deliverers. 
 " I understand their joy and their often bound- 
 less gratitude in word and deed. I understand 
 why the old men and the trembling women 
 so often fell upon our necks with tears of 
 joy. 
 
 " It must be heart-breaking to see the plot 
 of ground you love laid waste and trampled 
 down, without being able to do anything to save 
 it. It must be still more heart-breaking to see 
 the home that you have cherished devoured by 
 flames, and then, on dark and stormy nights, 
 taking your children by the hand or on your 
 back, and followed by terror-stricken women and 
 bewildered old people, to flee from that home 
 and wander along toilsome roads to uncertainty, 
 in company with hundreds of others who know 
 just as little where to go for help or safety. 
 
 " We met many such crowds of homeless 
 wayfarers on our march, people who could 
 hardly drag themselves along for hunger and 
 cold and terror. 
 
 " There were miserable carts drawn by miser- 
 able, starved horses and wretched bits of 
 furniture, piled up anyhow in haste and fear. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 109 
 
 There were people huddled together under the 
 lee of a hedge or in a wood, or sheltering in the 
 holes they had dug into banks of earth or dykes, 
 wrapped in rags, starving with cold and still 
 terror-stricken. Men gazing towards the homes 
 from which they had fled, looking in bewilder- 
 ment and despair at the downtrodden and 
 ruined country ; women lying down and trying 
 to warm their little ones at a naked, impoverished 
 breast, or groaning in misery and hopelessness 
 over the dying eyes of a child ; old men and old 
 women with only one wish in the world — the sum 
 and substance of their prayers from hour to 
 hour being that God would take them away from 
 all this misery, which they could not in the least 
 comprehend and which they had not strength 
 enough to bear. 
 
 " And what appalling things they told us, 
 in trembling voices and shaking with sobs ! 
 
 " Not only their homes, their domestic animals 
 and their furniture had been harried by fire and 
 sword — it cannot be otherwise in war, I suppose, 
 for it has no mercy. 
 
 " It had been here as it had been in 
 Belgium — the soldiers were intoxicated with 
 savagery and the lust of destruction. In such 
 an army there may be a thousand scoundrels 
 amongst a hundred thousand decent men ; 
 
no FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 but scoundrels create new scoundrels, drink 
 begets coarseness, and coarseness begets violence. 
 Old men are mocked and tortured, women 
 outraged without mercy, and innocent little 
 children are made to suffer without pity. Men 
 have to pay for their hate and their defiance, 
 even though honest and justifiable, with military 
 retribution, merely because one of them has been 
 imprudent. He has stirred up and set ablaze 
 passionate instincts that no one can quench. 
 
 " I knew what might happen — I had been 
 through the whole affair in Belgium. I knew 
 from experience all that they told me, and a 
 great deal more. . . . But I can assure you now, 
 and I shall dare to say it on the day I have to 
 stand before my Eternal Judge, I have never of 
 my own impulse harmed any civiUan ; I have 
 no murder or other deed of shame on my 
 conscience. The guilt of whatever I have had 
 a share in doing is entirely on the heads of those 
 who could demand it of me. They could demand 
 of me that I should do my duty and whip me 
 into doing it, or shoot me if I refused. I had 
 long since sworn loyalty to the colours. That 
 oath is sacred, like any other oath. And I was 
 a subject of the country I served and had to 
 serve. 
 
 " That being so, may I not be allowed to say 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT in 
 
 that while I was appalled at what I now saw, 
 I was at the same time filled with a certain 
 satisfaction. It appalled me because all horror 
 appals, yet at the same time there was a certain 
 satisfaction about it, because I saw in it a just 
 retribution for all that we had done in Belgium — 
 a mild and very lenient retribution, by the way. 
 " Don't you think one may be allowed to 
 say that without being stamped as cruel and 
 merciless ? 
 
 " There is, amongst my Russian experiences, 
 an incident which I shall always be glad to 
 cherish with the warmest gratitude, because it 
 represents to me what we mortals usually call 
 Nemesis — ^that is, chastising justice, or whatever 
 name you prefer to give it. 
 
 " I call it the judgment of God because it 
 seemed as if there was a leading and guiding 
 hand in it — a hand that struck one who was 
 guilty and gave atonement for two whose Uves 
 had been taken. 
 
 " The rearguard to which I belonged — I think 
 we were only a couple of thousand men — had 
 been billeted for a ' day in a fairly large village 
 not far from the Russian frontier. It was one 
 of the first places to be laid waste. There were 
 not many farms or houses left that were not in 
 
112 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 ruins. The cattle had been taken and the corn 
 trodden down. Many homes were quite deserted, 
 and no one knew where the inmates were. 
 Besides, who could know at such a time, when 
 each one had enough to do to save himself and 
 those belonging to him. Perhaps they were dead ; 
 perhaps terror had driven them to madness ; 
 perhaps they had dragged themselves along, 
 weary to death, in the train of the fleeing crowds 
 and had fallen by the wayside in a ditch or at 
 the edge of a forest, left behind by the others 
 who continued their insensate flight and took heed 
 of naught but themselves and their own affairs. 
 
 " Perhaps they lay by the roadside gazing 
 towards the home that was now a ruin, at the 
 fires blazing over the flat country, and up to the 
 heavens where it seenied to them that every- 
 thing was forgotten — mercy, goodness, justice. 
 
 " Perhaps they murmured a prayer, the last, 
 the very last, and then lay down and waited 
 for what was to come — for silent, reconciling 
 death, that would bring them peace and allevia- 
 tion for all that they had not been able to endure 
 in a world that seemed to them to have been 
 quite forsaken by God. 
 
 " I know that old men were found with their 
 hands folded on their breasts and the reconciHng 
 peace of death on their wasted, rigid faces. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 113 
 
 " I know that young women were found with 
 their infants pressed close to their bare breasts, 
 as if trying to give them their last warmth, until 
 they had both gone into the land of everlasting 
 peace, slain by cold and hunger and terror. 
 
 " In one of the poorest of the small houses in 
 the village lived a young woman. She had been 
 beautiful, as women in villages often are, a 
 radiant figure of health and strength, with the 
 perfume and sweetness of the fields and their 
 sunshine on her lips and in her eyes. She seemed 
 to be about half-way through her twenties. 
 But now her face was drawn and pale, and she 
 dragged herself wearily about as if she were ill. 
 
 " I remember her home distinctly. It had 
 been a little six-windowed thatched house near 
 the end of the village. Two of the windows 
 belonged to a room with an alcove and the 
 kitchen. The other part of the house had been 
 allotted to the cow, the pigs, and the hens. 
 
 " It was now almost in ruins. The roof was 
 gone, the woodwork charred, and the walls had 
 tumbled down in a crumbling heap where the 
 animals had been. Only the little room with the 
 alcove and the kitchen were intact, but the 
 window-panes were smashed, the door battered 
 in, and rags had been stuck in here and there as 
 a slight protection against wind and weather. 
 
114 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " Behind the house there was a small, down- 
 trodden garden, hedged about with a dyke of 
 willows and elders. 
 
 " On the day when the Russians entered the 
 village they ravaged it with fire and sword in 
 their savage exultation. It was said that many 
 of them were drunk. However that may have 
 been, they forced their way into farmsteads and 
 houses, took what there was of cattle and fodder, 
 smashed everything to bits here and set on fire 
 there, and did not deal gently with the women 
 in the houses. 
 
 " The little house at the end of the village was 
 also visited by a soldier. He stormed and raged 
 and shouted and spared nothing of the little 
 that could be spared. Finally he threw himself 
 upon the young wife and tried to take her by force. 
 
 " Then the husband rushed upon him to save 
 his wife's honour. He did not succeed, and it 
 cost him his life. He fell within the room, 
 killed by the blow of a sword on his head. 
 
 " The soldier's savagery increased, and at last 
 it completely mastered him. He kicked the 
 young woman till she was nearly beside herself 
 with terror, and stabbed her little boy, who was 
 lying in the bed, with a bayonet thrust. 
 
 " Then only, and not till then, was he satisfied 
 with his achievements, 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 115 
 
 " The poor woman buried her husband and 
 child the next day in a corner of the garden and 
 covered the little mound with flowers. 
 
 " There was no one who could have helped her 
 to give them Christian burial. It then became 
 clear to everyone that she had lost her reason. 
 She went about muttering continually, with a 
 remote and strange look in her tear-worn eyes, 
 that sometimes looked as if they were blind. 
 She would often sit for hours on the garden dyke 
 beside the grave of her husband and child. 
 
 " It was extremely sad and pathetic, and heart- 
 rending, to see her sitting there, sometimes till 
 late at night, as if she were waiting for the two 
 to come back. 
 
 " Sometimes she would lie down on the grave, 
 pressing one cheek against the ground, and she 
 would lie a long time like that — sometimes until 
 she fell asleep. If anyone asked her why she 
 lay there she stared vacantly with a pair of 
 bewildered, tear-bright eyes and answered 
 through her sobs that she could hear her little 
 boy crying and calling to her. 
 
 " Every time a convoy- of prisoners passed 
 through the village she was seized with restless- 
 ness. She was eager and quick in her movements 
 and she stood staring intently at those who 
 passed by. 
 
ii6 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " It seemed as if she were looking for one 
 particular face amongst the many hundreds, 
 but when they had passed by she collapsed again 
 and dragged herself back to the house, or out 
 to the dyke and the mound in the corner of the 
 garden. 
 
 " Towards evening, on the day that we had 
 entered the village, I was standing outside her 
 house with one of my comrades. She was going 
 about that evening moaning as she had never 
 moaned before. Her hair was hanging in matted 
 strands about her face, and her clothes were 
 nothing but torn rags. It seemed as if she 
 had torn them in her horror. 
 
 " All the time she went on murmuring, between 
 her moans : ' My lovely little boy — my lovely 
 little boy ! . . . ' 
 
 " Now and then she clenched one hand in 
 the other or struck them both against her fore- 
 head. 
 
 " While we were standing by looking at her 
 my lieutenant came up. He tried to soothe her 
 and patted her shoulder, but every time he 
 touched her she shuddered and seemed to shrink 
 in sudden terror. 
 
 '"' ' My poor little boy ! ' she moaned. ' They 
 killed him. He was only six years old and was 
 lying in his bed. " Pray to God," I cried to him ; 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 117 
 
 '' pray to God." I was lying on the floor by his 
 bed and saw him fold his hands in prayer, while 
 he gazed at me in terror. 
 
 " ' But he who was standing over him did not 
 spare him. He stabbed him in the breast with 
 his bayonet, and he kicked me along the floor. 
 My husband was lying murdered on the door- 
 step ; his face was red with blood ; his forehead 
 was cut open.' 
 
 " Her words came in rapid, violent gasps, 
 while she pressed her hands against her eyes 
 as if to shut out all the horror she saw before 
 her. 
 
 " * But there is justice in the world,' she 
 screamed. ' There is justice. I shall find him ; 
 I shall find him ; I shall find him ! . . . ' 
 
 " Then she grew a little calmer, and the 
 lieutenant and I stood whispering to each other 
 about what we had just seen and about what 
 we had heard about her. 
 
 " Some time after a convoy of prisoners passed 
 by. There were about two hundred men. 
 
 " The instant the young woman saw the 
 prisoners she rushed out on the road. Meanwhile 
 my captain had come up, too. He stood by her 
 side and closely watched her movements. She 
 looked Hke an animal ready to spring. Every 
 muscle was tense, every nerve tightened, and 
 
ii8 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 meanwhile her eyes scrutinised the prisoners as 
 they passed by. 
 
 " There was a strange, penetrating force in 
 her eyes. They burned Uke live coals. They 
 flashed like rapiers. 
 
 " Suddenly she rushed out and almost threw 
 herself upon one of the prisoners in the convoy. 
 It stopped, and as she clenched her hands 
 threateningly in the air she screamed in mingled 
 exultation and agony : ' It's he ! It's he ! I 
 knew I should find him ! ' 
 
 " At first the captive soldier stared at her in 
 surprise. Suddenly a wave of deep red suffused 
 his face, and then he turned ashy grey and bent 
 his head. It looked as if he were slowly sinking 
 on his knees. 
 
 " The young woman went on crying : ' It's 
 he ! It's he ! I knew I should find him ! ' 
 
 " At last she laughed wildly, a laugh that was 
 more like a mad shriek, and then collapsed on 
 the roadside while the froth oozed through her 
 tightly-closed lips." 
 
 My friend ceased speaking for a moment, and 
 I felt a prickling and tinghng all over me. It 
 was emotion and uneasiness both in one. 
 
 I looked at him. His eyes had suddenly 
 become bright and clear, and there was a smile 
 about his narrow lips of mingled sadness and joy. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 119 
 
 " I will not tell you anything more about it," 
 he then said. " I will not go further into what 
 happened. I will only add that half an hour later 
 that man was no longer among the living. 
 
 " We shot him, 
 
 " Was it honourable and just ? Is it never 
 permissible to shoot a prisoner ? Perhaps — 
 perhaps not. I don't wish to dispute about it 
 with anybody. In this case that question does 
 not interest me in the least. I don't care whether 
 it was lawful or not. 
 
 " I will only honestly and openly declare that 
 to me this little incident stands out, amongst all 
 the appalling things I saw, as something infinitely 
 beautiful and exalted. 
 
 " I felt that at that moment I had seen cold, 
 stern Justice face to face." 
 
 IX 
 
 " Towards the spring my regiment was again 
 sent to the Western front. We were to strengthen 
 the position in the Argonne. It was a slow 
 journey from east to west, and it made me a 
 good deal wiser while it lasted. 
 
 " Above all, I began to understand fully 
 that my comrades were growing tired. Their 
 
120 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 enthusiasm and their fighting ability were not 
 lessened, perhaps, when matters were really- 
 serious ; neither, perhaps, had their hate cooled. 
 I will not assert anything, one way or the other. 
 But their overweening self-assurance was broken. 
 
 " They had learned to look soberly at things. 
 They understood that victory was still a long 
 way off — if, indeed, victory were ever to be won. 
 They had grown silent and thoughtful. 
 
 " I found it very natural. There was not 
 much to talk about, and there was nothing what- 
 ever on the journey to kindle their enthusiasm. 
 
 " There was nobody along the railway line 
 to cheer us or wave flags, nor was there anyone 
 at the stations to give us flowers or fruit. There 
 was no rejoicing anywhere. 
 
 " On the other hand, we saw many women 
 dressed in mourning, and there was an atmosphere 
 of gloom and depression about every place we 
 came to. The day's work went on behind a veil 
 of mourning. 
 
 " The boisterous jubilations and the boundless 
 confidence were gone. In every place that we 
 arrived at everybody and everything seemed to 
 bear an imprint of weariness and anxiety as to 
 what the future might bring. 
 
 " We noticed it not least in the various places 
 where we stopped, where officers or men had been 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 121 
 
 home on furlough and who were now returning 
 to the front. 
 
 " There was no joy and pride, and there was 
 no faith and enthusiasm, in those who had come 
 to see them off. There was not so much as a 
 flower. 
 
 " Instead there was gloomy apd weary grief. 
 Most of the women's faces were pale and thin. 
 The eyes had that washed-out look that tells 
 of long sleepless nights, and of days crawling 
 along in uncertainty and anxiety from hour to 
 hour. On the children's faces there was uncon- 
 cealed complaint that their father was leaving 
 them again, and that they had to go back again 
 to the slow, dull days, in which they never saw 
 their mother's smile or their mother's happiness, 
 and in which every letter from the father they 
 loved only gave rise to new anxiety and new 
 uncertainty. 
 
 " And what of that parting smile that some- 
 times struggled out on a pale, sad face ? It 
 was a smile wrapped in despair and silent com- 
 plaint, and charged with anxiety and troubled 
 thoughts. 
 
 " In the last hurried embrace and in the last 
 trembling hand-clasp there was a sort of tacit 
 mutual consciousness that the parting was for 
 ever. 
 
122 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " There were more tears and deeper grief than 
 beside an open grave that holds one whom you 
 have loved very deeply. 
 
 " Many women fainted when the train began 
 to move away. The little courage and the little 
 mental control left to them so long as they 
 could hold their dear one in their arms and feel 
 his living body against theirs vanished the 
 moment he was beyond their reach. 
 
 " It was mournful to see, and it saddened our 
 thoughts. Can you wonder at it ? 
 
 " Many of us remembered the clamorous 
 and ardent exultations when we first set out, 
 the cheering, the enthusiasm, the stirring 
 shouts, screaming out hate and assurance of 
 victory. 
 
 " And now this contrast. This loud-voiced 
 or only half-suppressed despair. These faces 
 that spoke of grief, of sleeplessness, of care, of 
 the scarcity of daily bread, even of hunger some- 
 times. All this silent plaint of longing that never 
 quite found a voice, of hopes so often dis- 
 appointed, of prayers so oft unheard. 
 
 " I could see the impression it made on my 
 comrades, and how their thoughts were with 
 their own people during most of the time. 
 
 " Many were the lips that quivered and the 
 eyes that were dimmed. Head after head was 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 123 
 
 silently bent, and many a sigh found its way- 
 through firmly-closed lips. 
 
 *' Arrived at the Argonne, we were sent out 
 to a position on a height. There was only a 
 narrow, marshy slope between the enemy's 
 position and ours. 
 
 " We were ordered out in the evening and 
 spent a cold and foggy, damp night in some 
 holes dug the night before. Why we had to be 
 there, of all places, none of us understood. The 
 position was not even half prepared. 
 
 " We had calculated on getting away the next 
 morning, but we were ordered to stay there the 
 whole day, and were told that it was important 
 that the hostile observers, especially the aviators, 
 should not discover the position. There must be 
 no putting up of heads — still less of the upper 
 part of the body. If aviators appeared over the 
 position, nobody was to stir an inch. 
 
 '' If, at that, we had had only fairly convenient 
 holes to stay in ! But they were narrow, half a 
 yard deep at the most, with a little earth in 
 front. You could neither sit nor lie down, yet 
 as the day slowly approached you tried to lie 
 down, first one way and then another. At last 
 you had to make the best of your lair, such as it 
 was. One man had doubled his knees up under 
 
124 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 his chin ; another looked like a broken safety- 
 match ; a third had stretched his legs straight 
 out, but had to stoop forward to keep his head 
 from being seen. And there was nothing to lie 
 down on or sit on but the hard damp stone 
 flooring, and our overcoats were soaked through 
 by the night mist. Our limbs were stiff and 
 cramped after lying there all night. We shook 
 with cold — it only remained for the enemy's 
 artillery to begin firing. 
 
 " And at about nine o'clock in the morning 
 it did begin. 
 
 " In the course of an hour they had fired so well 
 into our position that they evidently knew with 
 astonishing exactness where the holes were, and 
 they sent their volleys at intervals of varying 
 length. First one to the right ; then, in mad 
 haste, one of eight rounds to the left ; then one 
 in the middle. Up and down the row — backwards 
 and forwards — backwards and forwards. 
 
 " We had hardly heard the shot fired ere 
 the projectile struck its objective with a terrific 
 crash. There was no means of defending oneself 
 against them. They came tearing on, crafty, 
 and screaming, and sent terror through all 
 one's quivering nerves. 
 
 " It gradually strained one's mind tp madness 
 to sit there in the same position in the same 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 125 
 
 miserable little hole, while all one's limbs were 
 aching and racked with pain. 
 
 " It tore at the threads of one's nerves to sit 
 there and wait for the invisible projectiles, 
 whose coming one did not suspect until they 
 were actually in one's midst. 
 
 " Thoughts almost howled through one's brain. 
 The shells were striking the left wing now — whose 
 turn would it be next ? — how long would it be 
 before the next volley came ? — there — now — no, 
 it went somewhere else — but now — they have 
 come this way again — you can't see them ; 
 but the drums of your ears are torn, and earth 
 and stones fly screaming about you. You crouch 
 down, cover yourself, shielding yourself with 
 your arms, while all kinds of thoughts chase 
 each other through your mind. 
 
 " It's over again now — but next time you'll 
 be done for — or perhaps not yet — the last one 
 struck a little further off — it's a miracle though, 
 that you are still alive ; but you mustn't hope — 
 mustn't hope — the day is long — who knows 
 whether you won't have to stop here for ever ? 
 
 *'Then a volley strikes again — roaring — 
 thundering — the earth trembles around you. 
 It is as if it would be blown into atoms and flung 
 into the ether like dust. 
 
 ** Then you suddenly shriek in terror : * No, 
 
126 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 no ! I will live ! . . . I will see all of them at 
 home again ! . . . God, God, help me ! 
 help me ! for their sakes — only for their sakes ! ' 
 " Perspiration streams from every pore. One's 
 sight is dizzied. There is a hammering as if 
 with a mallet at the back of one's neck. 
 
 " Then it is quiet for a little while, half an 
 hour perhaps. But the day is long ; it is perhaps 
 not more than two o'clock yet. You fumble for 
 your watch ; it is only twelve ! Perhaps this 
 hell is to go on for six or seven hours yet. 
 
 " Then you count the minutes. ' One — two — 
 three — four.' How endless such minutes are ! 
 how slowly, how terribly slowly, the time crawls . 
 along ! 
 
 " You get more and more tired of sitting in 
 this cramped position. One limb after another 
 feels thick and swollen and painfully tender. 
 For a moment you try to straighten yourself, 
 but then the volleys begin again. 
 
 " ' Ambulance ! ' cries some one in terror ; 
 * ambulance ! ' ~ 
 
 " Then there is a sound of groaning and gur- 
 gling that runs through your chest like the stabs 
 of long knives, and a last horrible, rattling 
 shriek, ^ Ambulance ! Help me 1 Help me ! ' 
 
 " But no one is able to help, not even the man 
 lying only three paces away. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 127 
 
 " Then again some one cries, ' Ambulance ! 
 ambulance ! Help ! help ! ' 
 
 " Three or four men pass the call further on 
 along the line. It gives comfort for a moment, 
 perhaps. But it is hopeless. 
 
 " Suddenly three shells explode simultaneously. 
 Then it seemed as if the earth opened under you 
 and all its banks and slopes were rushing down 
 in a rolling, shattering, crashing chaos. You 
 cannot see anything, neither the ground nor the 
 sky, for earth and tree-roots and stones are rising 
 amid tremendous columns of smoke like the 
 mighty outburst of a volcano. 
 
 " And now the earth sinks with a singing hiss. 
 A little way off I see two men buried beneath 
 the debris. Some time after I see the earth 
 moving a little, like the crust of the ground when 
 a mole is pushing its way up. Slowly a body 
 appears. The face is streaming with blood. The 
 frightened eyes stare helplessly round. The hands 
 grope in the air as if looking for support. Then 
 the head sinks, face downwards, to the ground. 
 I hear a half-suflEocated scream, which is drowned 
 in the crash of a new shell. The man is dead. 
 
 " The other one remained buried. 
 
 " It goes on like that all day long. Weariness, 
 fear, horror, tear at one's body and one's nerves 
 till one is almost out of one's senses. One's body 
 
128 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 is like a throbbing and suppurating boil, one's 
 brain like a continually-aching lump. One's 
 eyes water. One's heart pumps the blood out 
 and in till it is sore, and till one can hardly 
 breathe. One's throat feels as if it were torn into 
 strips. A hundred times in the day one has 
 suffered the burning agonies of the fear of death. 
 
 " At last the firing stops. Dusk is gradually 
 beginning to fall. Only a single shell still finds 
 its way to us and reaps its harvest. 
 
 " You get up. You feel as if your limbs had 
 been hammered with mallets. At first you find 
 it difiicult to stand on your feet, but gradually 
 the blood begins to circulate again. Some men 
 run to and fro in front of the holes to warm 
 themselves ; others seek out the wounded. The 
 stretcher-bearers have plenty of work to do. 
 One by one they take the wounded away, using 
 the brown tent canvas as stretchers. 
 
 " You hear a quiet moaning, a whimpering 
 complaining. Here and there some man hobbles 
 along with his arms round the necks of two 
 comrades. One of his legs is only a stump, or 
 it hangs loose and drags after him. 
 
 " In many holes you still find a silent, huddled- 
 up form. 
 
 " ' Hullo, comrade ! ' you call to him. He 
 does not move. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 129 
 
 " ' Are you asleep ? Anything the matter ? ' 
 
 " Still no answer. 
 
 " Then you kneel down to shake the silent one 
 awake. His hand is wet ; his forehead red. It 
 is blood. He is dead. 
 
 " Over there sits a man babbling foolishly. 
 His hair was black this morning. It is now as 
 white as snow. He sings a stupid song, spits 
 now and then like a baby slobbering, and babbles 
 again and makes faces as if he were mocking 
 at something. Then he laughs, brutally and 
 loudly. He has gone mad. 
 
 " The day's horrors have robbed him of his 
 reason. 
 
 " Two of his comrades go to him and pick him 
 up. He babbles again and collapses like a limp 
 rag. The stretcher-bearers arrive and take him 
 away. 
 
 " I hear his babbling and brawling further 
 off, and see him strike out his arms as if he had 
 suddenly been seized with a wild and uncon- 
 trollable rage. 
 
 "He is only one out of very, very many who 
 met the same awful fate in the horrors of bom- 
 bardment or the hell of the trenches. Their fate 
 is worse than death. 
 
 " I stand looking after him awhile. Then one 
 of my comrades comes and puts his arm round 
 
130 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 my shoulder. He shudders as if with cold, and 
 his face is still drawn after all the scenes of 
 horror. 
 
 " ' Better two years in gaol than another day 
 like this,' he says. 
 
 " I nod, and we silently press each other's 
 hands. 
 
 " Then we are ordered to form up and march 
 to the nearest line of trenches. 
 
 " At the same time the relief for the night 
 and the next day have come up, and while the 
 dead are being carried away the others creep into 
 the holes. 
 
 " They see what awaits them. They are silent. 
 • • • • • 
 
 " Night brought us no rest, however. A couple 
 of hours after we had got into position in the 
 trenches the enemy began to storm them. 
 
 " It was one of those attacks that do not lead 
 to anything. 
 
 " It began by shelling the holes, but that did 
 not last very long. Then they came swarming 
 from the other side of the marsh, and the handful 
 of people in the holes were no use. They were 
 knocked over and cut down in a few minutes. 
 
 " I understood less than ever why they had 
 to be there at all. 
 
 " Then they made for our trench. They came 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 131 
 
 straight on with bayonets fixed. They hurled 
 hand-grenades at us. The earthworks crashed 
 and tumbled about us whilst our machine-guns 
 ploughed deep into their ranks. But it was to no 
 purpose. There was a fury about their attack 
 that nothing could stop. They ran through our 
 barbed wire defences as if they had been made of 
 sewing-cotton. Our trenches were a chaos of 
 earth and sand-bags and fragments of beams. 
 You could neither see nor hear. The whole thing 
 was a roaring, clamorous, simmering confusion. 
 The air resounded with half-choked screams and 
 the moans of the dying, with shouts and yells 
 and oaths. 
 
 " Finally we went for each other with bayonets 
 — or our bare fists. I chanced to see one of my 
 comrades seized by the throat and strangled, 
 and then thrown aside Uke a carcass. Another 
 was kicked in the stomach, and fell with a roar 
 and a catching gasp. 
 
 " Then we fled in mad flight. None of 
 us stopped to think. We only wanted to seek 
 cover — only cover again. We stumbled over each 
 other — fell — could not rise again. One man had 
 his skull smashed with a blow from a rifle-butt ; 
 another was run through his back with a bayonet. 
 And the hand-grenades kept on crashing about 
 us. Bodies were torn and limbs rent asunder. 
 
132 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 The air was like one sounding string of cracking 
 and crashing, of shouts and yells, of roars and 
 moans. 
 
 " Not till we had reached the next line of 
 trenches did we get any rest — the few of us who 
 were left. 
 
 " The enemy slowly withdrew to our deserted 
 position. But still the hand-grenades were 
 hurled at us. 
 
 " We could hear them shouting their victorious 
 ' Hurrah ! ' and their scornful * Bpche ' as we 
 were almost fainting under the furious heat of 
 the attack and the horror of the retreat. 
 
 " Around us could be heard the moaning of the 
 wounded. Looking through the embrasures 
 through the underwood with its split and broken 
 trees, we could see that it was filled with dead 
 bodies like bundled-up rags. In between the 
 crackling of the machine-guns we could hear 
 cries for help. We could see figures attempting 
 to rise, but sinking back and remaining, struck 
 by a merciful bullet or collapsing with a last gasp. 
 
 " We could not go to their aid. We were still 
 under fire from the foe. 
 
 " Our captain was lying a little way in front. 
 He was in a half-sitting posture with his face 
 towards us. Blood was streaming down his 
 forehead, and he was stretching out one arm. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 133 
 
 The bright moonlight rested upon his face and 
 made its outUne sharp and clear. We could see 
 one or two others by his side, also groping about 
 with their hands. Their teeth gleamed white, 
 like those of a beast of prey in a fury. 
 
 " They were tortured by thirst. 
 
 " My old comrade of the ranks seized some 
 field flasks and crept over the breastworks. 
 
 " We watched him in a fever of suspense. 
 He crept out, flat on the ground, dragging the 
 flasks after him in one hand. A volley from a 
 machine-gun swept towards him. We ducked 
 hastily and heard the bullets whistling over our 
 heads. 
 
 " After a little while we again looked through 
 the embrasures. He had now reached the cap- 
 tain and the two others and held out the flasks 
 to them. They drank in eager gulps and then 
 quietly lay down again. 
 
 " Then he crawled further on. There were 
 others who were given to drink, until the flasks 
 were empty. 
 
 " He crawled back, still flat on the ground, 
 dragging himself backwards with his hands. We 
 stared at him in breathless suspense. They 
 must have noticed him on the other side, for a 
 couple of volleys more swept after him, but 
 missed him. 
 
134 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " He had now reached the breastworks and 
 the lower part of his body was hanging down the 
 wall of the trench. Then he raised his head and 
 shoulders a moment to look round. 
 
 '* There was another volley. We ducked, and 
 at the same moment heard a half-choked scream. 
 His body fell heavily in a heap, down to the 
 bottom of the trench. 
 
 " I jumped over to him, lay down by his side, 
 and raised his head. 
 
 " A stream of blood was trickling from his 
 right temple. His eyes shone and glowed as if 
 he were looking at something bright and beauti- 
 ful. They rested in a hasty gleam in mine as if 
 in thanks and a hurried farewell. Then his 
 eyelids closed and his head fell back powerlessly. 
 A few swift twitchings sped over his face and 
 round his lips. They grew at last into a smile. 
 
 " Then he suddenly opened his eyes and looked 
 at me, but his glance was now fading and distant 
 — restless like that of a frightened child. 
 
 " He breathed quickly three or four times and 
 then I heard him whisper as he turned his face 
 with difficulty to mine : 
 
 " ^ Remember — home. . . . ' 
 
 '' There was a last panting sigh. His face 
 twitched in a hasty, trembling grimace. 
 
 " He was dead. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 135 
 
 " He died like a hero. I do not think it is too 
 much to say that. He was a hero in his faithful 
 helpfulness of comrades who were fainting for 
 something to drink. 
 
 " True, it meant neither life nor death to any 
 of them. They were already doomed. But 
 I believe he brightened their very last moments 
 and softened the sting of death. 
 
 " It was thoroughly fine and warm-hearted, 
 infinitely great and good of him to do what he 
 did. 
 
 " I did not forget my promise. I wrote to his 
 wife, and I wrote as I had promised to write. 
 I told her that he had died like a hero — that was 
 what his little daughter was to read about him 
 some day when she was old enough to understand 
 and to be proud of it. 
 
 " Yes — he had a hero's death. He had a 
 somewhat slow and heavy mind ; he did not think 
 very deeply about the problems of either life or 
 death. But he offered up his life to sweeten the 
 hour of death for others. 
 
 " Is not that enough to make a hero's wreath 
 about the brows of a poor and faithful Branden- 
 burg peasant ? I think so. 
 
 " Anyhow, it seems to me that many have 
 been made heroes for far less than that. 
 
136 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " My old comrade's death made a very strong 
 impression on me. It sounds strange, perhaps, 
 when one has seen hundreds and hundreds fall 
 and die around one, and seen it with that 
 indifference that comes at last from habit. 
 
 " Nevertheless the impression was deep and 
 strong. 
 
 " The others had died, too. Quite true. But 
 whom did they leave behind ? Who wept over 
 them ? A father perhaps, or a mother. A 
 wife and Uttle children. Probably. Yet it 
 was not the same, for I did not know their 
 hearts. 
 
 *' But I knew the beautiful and hidden cord 
 that bound my old comrade to his wife and little 
 daughter. He had spoken of them with such 
 warmth and tenderness — so lovingly and faith- 
 fully. They were the sole joy of his toilsome life, 
 as he was theirs. She was so happy in him, and 
 believed so firmly that he would come home again 
 to her and their little girl. And then the future 
 was before them — a long, long future in love and 
 in labour shared, and in mutual faithfulness 
 and common care of their little child. 
 
 " Every single hour since he left home she 
 would surely dedicate to him. His image had 
 been woven into all her prayers and all her hopes. 
 She had toiled and laboured to keep their little 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 137 
 
 home together, and to show him, when he came 
 back, the worth of her love and loyalty. 
 
 " And one day she received the message that 
 he was dead. . . . True, he had died hke a 
 hero — yet he was dead. 
 
 " And death is death, even though memory 
 adds hero to the name. The happiness and 
 future of two people is for ever lost. 
 
 " Those were the thoughts that constantly 
 returned to me whenever I remembered my old 
 comrade. And when I think of him I always see 
 that uneasy, dying glance and hear him whisper- 
 ing the quiet words, the last he uttered : 
 
 " ^ Remember — home. . . . ' 
 
 " At those times I ask myself what were the 
 thoughts which at that moment sped through his 
 mind : whether they were of grief — of dread — or 
 of happiness, because he had been warm-hearted 
 and kind ; or whether everything had been 
 gathered into one bright and happy picture of 
 the little home and those two who were so tenderly 
 dear to him. 
 
 " Can you answer me ? Who can ? 
 
 " Is death in battle a joy, or is it a terror ? 
 
 " Would you not give years of your life to 
 know what was behind that dying glance, or 
 that last sigh that formed the boundary 
 
138 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 between life and death for one who was dear to 
 you ? 
 
 " Imagine what it would be if you knew 
 positively that it had been the purest and 
 brightest joy. Would not your memories be 
 twice as beautiful and ten times as happy ? " 
 
 X 
 
 " It is surprising how little you think of 
 death when you live side by side with it every 
 day. 
 
 " One would imagine, I suppose, that most of 
 one's quiet hours would be occupied with the 
 thought that one might the next moment be 
 lying dead or maimed or wounded, as has 
 happened in the course of time to so many of 
 one's comrades. 
 
 " It is not so, however. I have never feared 
 or expected death less than during the eighteen 
 months I was at the front — and sometimes in 
 the hottest engagements. 
 
 "It is only during the hours when you are 
 lying in a trench and cannot shield yourself at 
 all, while the shells are crashing about you and 
 ploughing up everything, that you sometimes 
 think that the next minute your turn will perhaps 
 come. But only then. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 139 
 
 " Apart from that you take life pretty care- 
 lessly. You duck your head ; you jump to 
 one side or throw yourself flat on the ground. 
 Sometimes flying earth and stones and splinters of 
 wood are hurled at you. You see others die ; 
 you see others maimed. 
 
 " Yes, quite so. Death can take all the others. 
 But it is not coming to fetch oneself. 
 
 " It can be the most awful agony to lie in a 
 trench and endure all its torments, or those of 
 a bombardment. It can be a hell of horror. 
 
 " But it has scarcely anything to do with the 
 fear of death. 
 
 " You grow fatalistic. You firmly fix in your 
 mind the idea that you will not die ; and at last 
 this grows into a conviction that you cannot 
 die. At any rate, that was the case with me ; 
 and I think, on the whole, that this was the case 
 with all of us. If it were not, fear alone of the 
 death that was lurking to spring on us at any 
 moment would turn every army into a flock of 
 frightened children ; and an army is not com- 
 posed of such. 
 
 " On the contrary, most men do not lack 
 courage — the courage that springs from a happy 
 and cheery carelessness with regard to death, 
 and a blind, simple faith that anyhow death has 
 no message for oneself. 
 
140 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " There is really only one case in which 
 the fear of death suddenly grips you with a 
 trembling violence and almost paralyses your 
 mind. It is when — after some time of rest, 
 during which your mind gradually recovers 
 some of its balance — you have to prepare your- 
 self to go into immediate attack. 
 
 " Not the first attack you take part in. But 
 later, when you have become thoroughly 
 acquainted with the horrors of an attack and 
 understand what endless misery and suffering 
 it spreads around it — and still more when you 
 have experienced the awful spiritual shock 
 caused by a repulsed attack and still more if 
 that attack ended in defeat and rout. 
 
 " Then a shaking and helpless dread may 
 sometimes steal over you. It feels like a stran- 
 gling grip round the throat ; your heart and chest 
 hammer as if the blood were going to burst all 
 your veins. 
 
 " There is only one thing then that gives 
 relief — alcohol ; and there are many who resort 
 to it. 
 
 " In civil life there is such a thing as drinking 
 oneself into courage. It holds good no less in 
 war. Sometimes great quantities of spirits 
 were consumed before one of the big attacks. 
 Many a time men drank to the point of stupe- 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 141 
 
 faction. But anxiety was quelled, while at 
 the same time animal instincts were stirred to 
 blood - heat ; and that was the object to be 
 attained. 
 
 " By this I do not mean to speak disparagingly 
 of personal courage and enthusiastic disregard 
 of death. I have seen many a brave and fearless 
 deed. But I have also seen other things, and I 
 am sure that I am not getting on the wrong side 
 of the truth in saying that a good many victories 
 were gained in a fog of brandy fumes. 
 
 " There was always plenty to be had of that 
 kind of thing on the days of big attacks. 
 
 " It produced men who dashed on blindly. 
 It endowed them with the gore-dripping grace of 
 fury and brutality. It heated all their savage 
 instincts to boiling-point. 
 
 ** The fact was that gradually those whom 
 one may call the veterans, the old set, had grown 
 tired, not only physically, but mentally too. 
 
 " So long as you go forward at a furious pace 
 and all the walls of Jericho tumble down, it is 
 enough to keep your courage up and your 
 ardour ahve. 
 
 "But when the time comes in which you have 
 also to feel the crushing sense of defeat, and 
 moreover — even under the brightest conditions, 
 in which you cannot see any prospect of an end 
 
142 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 to it — when weeks grow into months and months 
 into years, and you get no further — well, then it 
 is very human, I think, and easy to understand, 
 that courage breaks down and enthusiasm and 
 grandeur fade into a gloomy and tired wish 
 that it may all soon be over, no matter what the 
 result is to be. 
 
 " I have heard that kind of talk so often 
 and everyone will be able to understand it. 
 
 " It is the same in war as in daily life ; there is 
 always a stage at which many cannot,, either 
 physically or mentally, bear any more, and when 
 all outward claims are made in vain. 
 
 " * I pray to God, night after night, that it 
 may soon be over. And now they are starving 
 at home into the bargain, poor souls ! . . . ' 
 
 " When, therefore, a chaplain once said — and 
 this is the naked truth — that it was clear even 
 to Luther that God was our God — solely and 
 entirely our God — and in proof of it referred to 
 the first line of Luther's well-known hymn : 
 *Ein' feste Burg ist unset Gott ' — our God — 
 a God for us alone — it angered me to think 
 that a man, about whose Christian faith I had 
 otherwise no reason to doubt, could permit him- 
 self such distorted thinking — such blasphemy. 
 
 " On the other hand, I do not think that most 
 of my comrades saw how distorted it was. God 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 143. 
 
 had really become their God, and cared for us 
 and our affairs and our families, and left the 
 others to take care of themselves. 
 
 " They said so honestly, in full earnest. They 
 believed it with that force of conviction that 
 nothing can shake. 
 
 " To them the war was really God's judgment 
 on their enemies, a judgment which it was their 
 mission to carry out. 
 
 " I remember that my new rank comrade 
 and I talked about it one Sunday night, while 
 we were on outpost duty together at the edge of 
 a forest in the Argonne, and gazed up at the 
 unfathomable depths of the blue and star- 
 strewn sky. 
 
 " Thoughts of that kind come into your mind 
 so easily on a night like that. 
 
 " ' God has now shown again that He is 
 ours^ he said. ^ He has given us a victory yonder 
 on the eastern side. We have taken Riga and 
 nearly two-hundred thousand Russians. We 
 shall go straight to Petersburg now.' 
 
 " He was a young schoolmaster from Mecklen- 
 burg. He had got hold of one of the many 
 extraordinary reports of victories that often 
 ran their course along the front, and which came 
 no one quite knew whence. 
 
 " ' Don't you think we should keep God 
 
144 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 outside that ? ' I answered. ^ On the whole, 
 I think we have far too much to do with God. 
 It sometimes sounds like blasphemy.' 
 
 *' He looked at me in astonishment, and then 
 said : 
 
 " ' You don't believe, perhaps, that God is 
 on our side, that we are the rod of chastisement 
 over the others because of their sins and their 
 immorality. 
 
 " ^ Rip up their stomachs — smash in their 
 skulls. . . \ We serve God in that way. That is 
 our divine service.' 
 
 " I remember smiling, and he looked at me with 
 almost an indignant glance when I answered 
 after a little while : 
 
 " ' To tell you the truth, I don't think God 
 interferes in that kind of thing. He is neither 
 with " wj" nor with the others.' 
 
 " He was silent a while. Then he said, and 
 there was something like mockery in his voice : 
 
 " ' Oh, well, of course — you are a Dane. I had 
 forgotten that, to tell you the truth.' 
 
 " I had a hot answer on my lips. It was the 
 first time anyone had spoken of my nationality 
 in that way. 
 
 " But I held my tongue. For if this was the 
 man's conviction, it was no use talking to him ; 
 and it could not make me either better or worse. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 145 
 
 " I must add, however, that he immediately 
 begged my pardon for his words. He did not 
 mean any harm, he said. They had slipped out 
 of his mouth unawares. 
 
 " ' I have the highest respect and esteem 
 for all of you,' he said at last ; * we all have. It 
 must be hard for you and your compatriots — 
 having to ... ' 
 
 " I could have hugged him for those words. 
 They seemed to me like a mark of distinction on 
 my breast. 
 
 *,* He was hit by a shell the next day and died 
 immediately after. Two days later my turn 
 came." 
 
 My friend ceased speaking a while. He closed 
 his eyes, and at the same moment a quick 
 trembling passed over his grey face. Then he 
 smiled — a somewhat faint and tired smile. It 
 looked as though joy and pain met at the same 
 instant in his mind. 
 
 Then he continued : ' 
 
 " It was one of the first days of real spring 
 in the Argonne. 
 
 " We had had a comparatively quiet and 
 peaceful time for about a week. There had been 
 a few skirmishes here and there, but otherwise 
 the days had slipped by under incessant artillery 
 fire. 
 
146 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " The weather was glorious. A richly 
 perfumed, vigorous French spring, with the 
 most beautiful blue skies and mild, soft 
 nights. 
 
 " It was saddening, though, to feel the coming 
 of spring over this devastated country : villages 
 in ruins ; fields torn up by shells or trampled 
 down and as barren as stones, and woods torn 
 and shattered as if a gigantic scythe had mown 
 them down and fires had scorched away the 
 undergrowth. 
 
 " For one who has grown up close to the soil 
 and seen its generous bounty, and who has 
 grown to love every single little fertile mound, 
 it was heart-breaking to see how this country 
 had been maltreated, and how homes and 
 affection and human happiness had been blighted 
 and laid waste. 
 
 " Those who are guilty will have a heavy 
 reckoning to pay some day, when they have to 
 settle their accounts with God. 
 
 " And there will be many who will not grant 
 them a moment's peace or mercy. 
 
 " I had had a horrible night. A nightmare 
 of horrors had torn at my mind. From midnight 
 to dawn I had had a painful struggle to keep 
 myself awake. But it was not much use. An 
 incident I had witnessed on the eastern side had 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 147 
 
 come back to my remembrance, and I could not 
 get rid of it again. 
 
 " It was not nearly so terrible, perhaps, as 
 many of the other things I had seen, but it has 
 caused me more pain than most of them. 
 
 " One morning I received orders to com- 
 mandeer twelve horses in the course of the day. 
 Commandeering is not a cheerful job. But what 
 does that matter ? An order is an order. I was 
 allowed to take four men with me, and we set 
 off on our uncertain quest in the occupied 
 district. 
 
 " I shall never forget that day. 
 
 " It was already noon, and still we had no 
 horses. Wherever we went the population was 
 in the most miserable plight. Moreover, most of 
 them had fled, and those who were still left on 
 the farms could hardly hold themselves up for 
 hunger ; and I could not bring myself to take 
 the horses from the carts of the refugees. 
 
 " At one farm the owner took us into the 
 sitting-room and ranged himself, his wife, and 
 his eight children in a row like organ-pipes. 
 Then he bared his chest and asked me to stab 
 him and put an end to their misery. 
 
 " What was I to do ? I had not been taught 
 to be hard-hearted. I had not the courage to 
 rob the man of his last possession — a poor, 
 
148 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 skinny horse that was to drag him and his 
 family on their mournful flight from their home. 
 
 " We left them and went on. 
 
 " I managed, however, to collect eleven horses 
 in the course of the afternoon. One was still 
 wanting. 
 
 " By that time it was late and we were think- 
 ing of giving up our quest. But just as we had 
 decided to go back a one-horsed vehicle came 
 along the road. The horse was a powerful 
 chestnut, the very one I wanted to complete the 
 dozen. 
 
 " We stopped the man who was driving the 
 cart and looked at the horse. At the same time 
 we noticed pillows and quilts and several other 
 things sticking out from beneath the canvas 
 cover. 
 
 " The man was alone in the cart. It seemed 
 he had no family. Apparently he was quite 
 alone in his flight from home. 
 
 " When he understood that I meant to take 
 his horse he broke into hard, bitter sobbing. 
 
 " It is a terrible sight to see a man weep. But 
 he made no sign of attempting to prevent us 
 from taking the horse ; nor did he plead with us. 
 
 " He only threw the cover aside. 
 
 " What I saw underneath made my blood 
 run cold, and I gasped for breath. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 149 
 
 " There, in the cart, resting amongst the 
 pillows, lay a young and beautiful woman, but 
 she was dead. The Madonna face was wreathed 
 in thick, fair, golden hair, flowing down over her 
 shoulders and her naked breast. In one arm 
 she held a newly-born infant, pressed closely to 
 her bosom, as if she would even in death protect 
 it from life's harm. 
 
 " The light of the setting sun fell softly on the 
 pale face and tinged it with a strange, living hue. 
 At the same time it revealed to us the despairing 
 pain in the features. 
 
 " She had been confined and had died on the 
 road during their flight, she and the child. 
 
 " Is not that awful to think of ? And yet it 
 is only one of the quiet, unknown incidents out 
 of many thousands. 
 
 " It was the sight of this man's silent, fathom- 
 less grief, and it was the dead woman and the 
 little newly-born child that stood before me 
 continually aU night until the day dawned. 
 
 " What an awful experience for that man ! 
 What a fate for a wife and mother 1 What an 
 ending to all that she must surely have looked 
 forward to with joy, and which must un- 
 doubtedly have made up his and her happiest 
 thoughts and longings for many days ! 
 
ISO FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " And then, tortured to death by fear and 
 horror, to bring forth her child in a jolting cart, 
 during a flight from a ruined home ! " 
 
 My friend was silent a little while and looked 
 at me. There were tears in my eyes, but I tried 
 to hide them. 
 
 He smiled quietly. , 
 
 Men may always be allowed to weep over 
 the sorrows of others. It is only over their own 
 that they may not. Yet, after all, there are 
 moments when they cannot refrain even then. 
 
 There have been many in which I could not. 
 
 Then he went on with his story. 
 
 " Towards morning our peace and quiet came 
 to an end. The enemy began a hot and incessant 
 bombardment. It went on for eight hours with- 
 out ceasing. Our barbed wire entanglements 
 were snapped asunder like cobwebs, and our 
 trenches were at last nothing but a confused 
 heap of earth and scraps of beams. It was 
 difHcult at length to find cover. From all over 
 came screams for help. But there was no one 
 who could help. Each one had enough to do 
 to look after himself. 
 
 " Then they began to attack us all along the 
 line — the greater part of five hundred yards, I 
 believe. Their hand-grenades came flying at us 
 like hailstones. They did not, however, manage 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 151 
 
 to come up to our trenches. Our machine-guns 
 stopped them, and their line began to falter. 
 
 " We went at them with the bayonet. It was 
 a savage and reeking hot encounter. We had 
 been heated by the violence of the bombardment. 
 It was a furious brutality that knew neither 
 mercy nor lenience : a bestial raging with 
 bayonets and rifle-butts and bare fists, a roaring 
 and howling chaos, that carried away one's 
 reason and senses. 
 
 " I had my right arm splintered by a blow 
 from a rifle-butt a little below the elbow. 
 
 " It cracked like match-wood. The stump 
 hung dangling in a few strips of flesh. I fell 
 down at the same moment, while a hot tingling 
 ran right through me, a sweet and glorious 
 dizziness, and a surging up of beautiful and 
 shining colours before my vision. 
 
 " But after that I don't remember much more. 
 It only seemed to me that, all of a sudden, every- 
 thing was quiet around me, hushed and gentle. 
 And I felt no pain — only a happy, peaceful calm 
 and a tickling kind of warmth through my breast. 
 
 " How long I lay in this semi-conscious state 
 I don't know. When I had recovered a little 
 I felt an unbearable pain in my arm, and some- 
 thing tugging at my uninjured hand in short, 
 excited jerks. 
 
152 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " I turned my head and saw a young, pale face 
 close to mine, and two light, burning eyes, clear 
 and shining, gazing into my own. 
 
 " They belonged to a lad of about seventeen 
 or eighteen. The outlines of his face were still 
 soft and child-like, and there was the soft 
 down of first youth about his lips. His breast 
 was bared and one hand was still convulsively 
 clenched against his throat. Blood was trickling 
 out between his fingers and flowing down in a 
 thickened stream over his chest. 
 
 " Suddenly he jerked himself over towards 
 me, gripped my hand in both his own and gazed 
 at me. His face, which was drawn with pain, was 
 all at once suffused with a happy smile, and I 
 heard him whisper, in a voice that trembled with 
 
 joy: 
 
 " ' Then you have come, after all, dear little 
 mother — you have come. . . . ' 
 
 " His smile grew. His eyes almost laughed 
 for joy. A little fainter, in a little more of a 
 whisper, came the same words again : 
 
 " ' Then you have come, after all, dear little 
 mother — you have come. . . . ' 
 
 " I leaned over to him, so far that I could touch 
 his forehead with my lips. I kissed him on the 
 forehead, which was cold and damp with sweat, 
 and whispered into his ear : 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 153 
 
 " * Yes, my darling boy ; your mother is here 
 now. . . . ' 
 
 " I felt two hands gripping mine till it almost 
 hurt, and again I heard a quiet whisper, which, 
 however, I did not understand. 
 
 " I remained there with my lips on his fore- 
 head, until I heard his last sigh and a quiet, 
 breaking gurgle. 
 
 " Then I looked at his face. The open, glazed 
 eyes gazed upwards as if they looked far away 
 at something beautiful and glorious, and about 
 the soft, yielding boyish lips there was an 
 expression of infinite rapture. 
 
 " But then, his mother had been with him in 
 the hour of his death and had kissed him on his 
 forehead." 
 
 My friend's lips trembled, and his eyelids 
 quivered. 
 
 Then he said quickly, as if he wanted to banish 
 that remembrance as quickly as possible : 
 
 " After that I don't remember anything more 
 of what happened to me, until the day when I 
 recovered consciousness in a hospital in one of 
 the towns on the Rhine." 
 
1 54 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 XI 
 
 " I remember my waking up at the hospital 
 very clearly and distinctly. 
 
 " It was like a beautiful dream. 
 
 " I felt a soft, warm hand on my forehead. I 
 saw a pale and gentle woman's face bending over 
 mine and a pair of kind blue eyes trying to meet 
 my glance. As our eyes met I heard her say, in 
 a sweet, low voice, as tender as a happy mother's : 
 
 " ' That's right, my dear. You'll soon be 
 better now. Just you wait and see.' 
 
 " I looked about me. I did not quite under- 
 stand where I was. My brain was tired, my head 
 heavy. And everything about me seemed so 
 strange and unfamiliar. 
 
 " It was so white ; so light ; so quiet. 
 
 " I felt a pain near my shoulder-blade and 
 tried to alter my position a little. 
 
 " Then I understood that my right arm was 
 gone. 
 
 " I could feel that I turned pale, and a burn- 
 ing and tingling sensation ran right through 
 my body. Things swam and flickered before 
 my eyes, and I felt as if I were going to swoon. 
 
 " Then I caught the young woman's eyes. 
 
 " She looked at me with such a warm and 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 155 
 
 comforting smile, as she took my hand and 
 stroked it between her own, and said : 
 
 " * There, there, my dear boy ! You really 
 must not go and be ill again, you know.' 
 
 " I had to close my eyes. The perspiration 
 lay like steam on my forehead, and I felt that 
 even through the closed lids the white light in 
 the room tore at my sensitive nerves. 
 
 " Again I felt her soft and gentle hand on my 
 brow and a warm pressure of the hand that 
 kept a firm hold of mine. 
 
 " There was safety : a wonderful, happy safety ; 
 an all-pervading feeling of being happily and 
 safely away from all those other things that I 
 had been through. 
 
 " What an extraordinary contrast between 
 there and here ! 
 
 " There : — Malice, Savagery ; Hate — the fury 
 of all evil instincts ; the lust of brutal 
 thoughts. 
 
 " And here : — Gentleness ; Peace ; Mercy — 
 a warm and gentle woman's hand against a hot 
 forehead ; tender words as to the child that one 
 loves above everything and everybody. 
 
 " It was both beautiful and beyond under- 
 standing. It made my chest heave, and I felt 
 the tears smarting under my eyelids. 
 
 " The young woman continued standing beside 
 
iS6 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 my bed with my hand in hers. And not till 
 now did I really begin to notice her. 
 
 " She was quite young — probably not more 
 than twenty-two. Her hair was brown and lay 
 chastely over a white brow. Her face was pure 
 and soft in every feature, but sometimes there 
 were lines of deep sadness about her lips, and 
 her eyes would change in swift gleams to and 
 fro, from happy gentleness to sudden melan- 
 choly, as when rapid little clouds come and go 
 before the sun. 
 
 " She said nothing. She had laid down my 
 hand and was gently smoothing my pillow. 
 She did it as if she were making a baby com- 
 fortable in its cradle. 
 
 " Then she smiled quietly. I nodded brightly 
 to her and took her hand. 
 
 " She nodded back to me and said : 
 
 " ' You did have a bad time, didn't you ? 
 We were really afraid to hope that we might 
 keep you. You have not been yourself for 
 nearly a fortnight. But I think we may hope 
 you have got over it now. And in a short time 
 you will be able to go home.' 
 
 *-''Home!' 
 
 " The word burnt itself violently into my 
 mind the instant I heard it. 
 
 " To think that perhaps in a short time I 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 157 
 
 could go home ! . . . Yes, exactly. ... Of 
 course. When one's right arm is gone one is 
 not of much use for the business of war. 
 
 " At that moment it seemed to me that I had 
 been singularly fortunate, and that I had paid for 
 the good fortune by doing my duty to the last. 
 
 " Paid in full, therefore. We were quits. 
 
 " I know that I lay there smiling happily at 
 the thought. In my mind's eye I saw, sketched 
 in rapid outlines, everything connected with 
 my home, from the greatest to the least, and it 
 filled me with a trembling joy. 
 
 " The young nurse's eyes rested tremblingly 
 on mine. 
 
 " ' You look quite happy,' she said. 
 
 " She looked at the engagement ring on my 
 hand. 
 
 " ' You are engaged — married perhaps ? 
 Where do you come from, by the way ? ' 
 
 " I glanced at her hands, quite unconsciously. 
 I saw a thin, plain ring on her third finger. 
 I answered : 
 
 " ' Engaged. And my home is in North 
 Schleswig. I am a Dane.' 
 
 " I said it very quietly. 
 
 " She said nothing for a while. Then she 
 nodded, and said, in a voice trembling with 
 gentleness : 
 
iS8 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " * Then I understand why you are looking so 
 happy. I am very glad for your sake, and for 
 hers.' 
 
 " I seized her hand and kissed it. I understood 
 now that I was allowed to be happy. 
 
 " I looked at the ring on her finger and then 
 at her. 
 
 " The smile faded away from her face. The 
 soft lines disappeared in sadness, and her eyes 
 blinked. 
 
 '' ' He fell at Liege,' she whispered softly. 
 * He was only two-and-twenty. His father is 
 gone, too, and his brother. And my two 
 brothers. We are only women left now. It i« 
 a hard time.' 
 
 " I bent my head and closed my eyes. 
 
 " Such great grief and so good to others ! So 
 self-forgetting ! So generous in love ! 
 
 " But then, only women can be like that — 
 women who have loved and have therefore 
 been taught the value of love, and what joy a 
 kind word and a warm, gentle hand on a restless 
 brow is to one in pain ! 
 
 ** ' Now you must rest,' she said. ' You can't 
 bear very much yet. I am so glad you are 
 getting well now.' 
 
 " Then she went on to another bed. She gave 
 me a little friendly, parting nod, and I followed 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 159 
 
 her with my eyes. Her step was as light and 
 buoyant as that of a young girl whose life has 
 been nothing but sunshine. 
 
 " She had smiles and kindness to spare for 
 all of us suffering ones. And she had only bitter 
 grief herself. 
 
 " I looked about me to see the room in which 
 I was lying. I had had no opportunity of doing 
 so before. 
 
 " It was large and bright and white. I heard 
 later that it had been a ballroom before it was 
 turned into a hospital. It stood in a big park. 
 From where I lay I could see the tops of some 
 large trees and far away some mountains loom- 
 ing blue in the sunny haze. 
 
 " The ceiling was vaulted and white, and two 
 heavy candelabra threw a golden and festive 
 glitter over the room. Round the cornice there 
 was a frieze of dancing cupids, and satyrs play- 
 ing on reed pipes. 
 
 " A bright and beautiful home for happiness 
 and the joy of life. 
 
 " It had other inmates now than gay men and 
 laughing women. 
 
 ^' Three rows of beds stood lengthways down 
 the room — two hundred altogether, I heard 
 afterwards — and they were all occupied. 
 
 " So much misery gathered in one place ! So 
 
i6o FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 many maimed and crippled men in the prime of 
 life! 
 
 " I could just see the nearest ones. I had not 
 strength enough yet to move in the bed. But 
 what I could see was quite sad enough. 
 
 " Not far from me a man was sitting up in 
 bed while two nurses supported his back. His 
 chest was bare. He was tearing his linen to 
 pieces with violent tugs. His hair was shining 
 white. A terrible night in the trenches, of course. 
 Twelve hours under incessant fire from machine- 
 guns and no possibility of a moment's rest. 
 Every minute a nerve-wearing watchfulness in 
 keeping under cover — twelve hours in terror of 
 death, perhaps. 
 
 " At any rate, it was said that that was what 
 had made him white. 
 
 " He had a bullet wound in his chest, and was 
 nearing his end. His face looked almost green. 
 Now and then he screamed, and his piercing 
 shrieks rang through the room. 
 
 " I turned my head away ; I could not bear 
 the sight. It suddenly pressed all the horrors 
 of remembrance into my mind. 
 
 " I looked in the other direction. 
 
 " A little way off lay a man fumbling at the edge 
 of the sheet with his fingers. He had bandages 
 over his eyes and down over his nose. It was said 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT i6i 
 
 his eyes had been blinded and his nose was only 
 a gaping wound. 
 
 " All the time he lay moaning, unhappy like 
 a child in agony. 
 
 " * What will my little mother say ? . . . ' 
 
 " The sights that met one's gaze in this ball- 
 room were not cheerful. Nevertheless — there 
 was peace. Peace I And there were gentle 
 women with kind words and soft hands. There 
 was hope yearning for life, even though it might 
 be dreary and hard enough for most of us, and 
 even though we did not go out again in possession 
 of all our limbs or with our old strength. 
 
 " They clung to life, all of them. Most of 
 them with an unwavering confidence in good 
 coming out of it all ; many with smiles and 
 childlike happiness, even though the future 
 held out only a pair of crutches or some other 
 physical misery. 
 
 " Now and then there was one with hopes of 
 going to the front again — sometimes not only 
 with hopes, but with eager, ardent longing. Hate 
 was still vigorous and hot ; confidence in victory 
 still unshaken and strong. 
 
 " Man is strange. . . . 
 
 " But it has to be like that, I suppose. You 
 have to feel like that, of course, when you are 
 convinced that you are suffering and striving 
 
1 62 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 for some great end, something that has made a 
 covenant with the future and eternity, and every- 
 thing that you cherish with every fibre of your 
 being. 
 
 " Something that must not be lost — something 
 far beyond time and reason. 
 
 " It was not always like this, however, for 
 those who had gained their experience of the 
 hell of the trenches and were still out there and 
 suffering in them. 
 
 . • • • • 
 
 ^ " I had a very happy time during those months 
 I spent in the hospital — happy both while I 
 was still confined to bed, and, later on, when I 
 was allowed to be up and go out. 
 
 " We all met with such great kindness — often 
 with such touching and unselfish love. It was 
 not only the nurses and doctors who did every- 
 thing they could to be kind to us. There were 
 many people, complete strangers to us, who 
 showed us all the warmth a good and kind heart 
 can hold. 
 
 " Quite young, blushing little girls brought us 
 flowers and fruit from their fathers and mothers. 
 They came timidly and quietly, yet it made 
 them very happy to be able to bring us a message 
 from the spring and the sun outside. From 
 life. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 163 
 
 " Women came, young and elderly — mostly 
 elderly women ; and nearly all of them were 
 dressed in mourning. They spoke but rarely 
 of their sorrows. But their black garments and 
 their long, black veils told a sufficient tale. 
 
 " There was something pathetically sad about 
 them, but at times a soft and gentle smile shone 
 through the sadness. It was as if they felt proud 
 to think of those for whom they wore mourning — 
 as if their black attire was a mark of distinction, 
 their Iron Cross ; something that told everyone 
 that they had offered up their share for the 
 Fatherland. 
 
 " They went about so quietly amongst the 
 beds : spoke kind and friendly words ; stroked 
 a feverish brow ; smoothed the pillow of a rest- 
 less one with maternal tenderness. 
 
 " There was never any reflection on their faces 
 of all the sad things they saw. There was always 
 the same gentleness, always the same kind smile 
 tinged with sadness, that comforted and gave 
 sympathy at the same time. 
 
 " Nearly every day during the time I was in 
 the hospital a middle-aged, grey-haired lady 
 came to my bed. Her face was pale, almost 
 white, but it was beautiful and had an expression 
 of touching kindness. Her eyes were bright and 
 gentle, but had in their depths that great 
 
i64 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 warmth that speaks of a tender heart easily 
 moved. 
 
 " She gave me many good gifts — flowers, 
 sweets, and cigars ; and every time she looked 
 as kindly and tenderly at me as if I had been her 
 own child. She stroked my hair and forehead, 
 and patted my hand at parting, every time she 
 left. 
 
 " She could not have been kinder or gentler 
 if she had been my mother. 
 
 " She hardly ever said anything but the same 
 words : 
 
 " ' Well, thank God, you are getting on well, 
 my dear boy. You are looking quite brisk and 
 well to-day.' 
 
 " Yes — how did I look, I wondered ? 
 
 " There was something I felt a desire to know. 
 I had not seen my face in a glass for many a day. 
 
 " I was allowed to look one day, and I shud- 
 dered at what I saw. 
 
 " The white hair at the temples ; the 
 emaciated face ; the grey, sallow skin, stretched 
 like parchment over the bones ; the staring 
 eyes ! . . . 
 
 " A burning tingle ran through me. 
 
 " Was that I — that wasted face ! I threw 
 away the mirror and seized my head in my 
 hand. I felt as if I were going to be ill. I had 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 165 
 
 choking sensations, and the perspiration stood 
 out on my forehead like dew. It was a ghost 
 I had seen, and not a man of flesh and blood. 
 
 " A face I did not know at all. 
 
 " Imagine not being able to recognise your 
 own face ! 
 
 " It is harrowing ; appalling. I can feel the 
 terror running through me every time I am 
 reminded of it ; and even now, when I look at 
 my face in a glass, I have something of the same 
 feeling, although I have gradually become 
 used to seeing how the torments of the trenches 
 and the sufferings of fever can waste a face 
 for many a long day. 
 
 " Ah, well, well 1 There are many white lies. 
 Thank God there are ! 
 
 " The old lady's words about my looking quite 
 brisk and well were of that kind. But I was 
 grateful to her for them all the same. 
 
 " It was her heart that spoke. What did it 
 matter, then, that she lied with her lips ? 
 
 " I did the same thing one day to her, and I saw 
 that it made her happy. 
 
 " She asked me in a somewhat anxious, waver- 
 ing voice, trembling with hidden uneasiness : 
 
 " * Do you think that those who are killed in 
 action suffer much, even if they don't die at 
 once ? ' 
 
i66 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " I looked at her eyes. They were pleading 
 pathetically for a ' No.' 
 
 " ' They don't suffer at all, madam,' I said. 
 ' Death in battle is an easy and happy death. 
 They pass away in joy. It is all rapture and 
 exultation. . . . ' 
 
 " She looked at me intently, as if she doubted 
 for a moment the truth of my words. Then a 
 look of confident happiness passed over her 
 face and as she pressed my hand, she said : 
 
 " ' Yes ; it is so, isn't it ? They pass away 
 in rapture and joy. It always makes me so 
 happy.' 
 
 " After I had been a couple of months in the 
 hospital I was allowed to rest outside. My arm 
 had been healed some time. It was nervous 
 trouble that kept me in bed and in the sick- 
 room. 
 
 " I could not get my strength back. All that 
 I gained during the day the nights took away 
 again with their evil dreams. I have told you 
 about them. They tore at one's mind with 
 endless brutality. Shrieks and moans and 
 frightened cries might be heard at any hour of 
 the night in the large room. 
 
 " It is impossible to grasp how even the 
 smallest event sinks into one's mind, and how 
 even one's dream-life can find them all out. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 167 
 
 And always the worst — always the most pain- 
 ful. 
 
 " My first day outside in the beautiful park 
 round the hospital was a wonderful experience. 
 
 " Simply to breathe the air — it flowed like a 
 hot and sweet stream into my lungs, which had 
 for so long been filled with the stench of iodine 
 and carbolic. It almost hurt me to breathe. 
 I swallowed it in big draughts like a drunkard, 
 until I was nearly giddy and ill. 
 
 " And then this luxuriance around me — the 
 colour and perfume of the flowers, the warming 
 sun that made one so pleasantly tired ; the 
 mountains with their look of fairy-tale mystery, 
 fading away in distant blue shadows. 
 
 " Nothing had been destroyed. Nothing had 
 been trampled down. Nothing had been laid 
 waste. 
 
 " Everywhere was blossoming and growing 
 life, tended by careful hands, cherished with 
 the solicitude of a lover. 
 
 " It was a marvellous contrast, which I could 
 hardly grasp, but which made me very happy. 
 
 " I spoke very little to my comrades. There 
 was enough in all that I saw about me to fill 
 my mind with joy. 
 
 "The name that had been given me, *The 
 Silent Dane,' followed me here too. It was the 
 
i68 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 nurse who told me one day when calling me 
 by it. 
 
 " I could not avoid, though, seeing the 
 misery about me. The poor blinded ones, 
 groping their way and leaning on the arm of a 
 comrade or a nurse. Young men, mere children 
 sometimes, dragging themselves along on crutches 
 or hobbling about with the aid of two sticks on 
 stiff, limping legs. Men tottering about on two 
 stumps hardly reaching to their knees. 
 
 " But why go into further details about 
 this misery ? They were all maimed and 
 crippled : people who were marked for life — 
 heroes now — true heroes. But for how long ? 
 
 " The day is bound to come when the hero 
 and the halo about his name have faded and you 
 will see in him who suffered for his country only a 
 poor cripple who awakens your pity and causes 
 you discomfort. 
 
 " Life is not more merciful than that, and 
 not more grateful. 
 
 " Yet how happy they all were ! Even those 
 who, it seemed to me, were nothing but absolute 
 wrecks and of no good whatever any more in 
 life. They chattered like children. They laughed. 
 They joked like irrepressible boys. They sang. 
 They sat on the benches and enjoyed the luxury 
 of letting the sun bake their bodies. 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 169 
 
 " I did not understand them. But that was my 
 fault, of course. I forgot to think of myself. 
 
 " For what was I but such another poor 
 cripple, a maimed creature that would perhaps 
 never accomplish anything of value in life when 
 it really came to the point. 
 
 " And yet I was happy myself — fervently 
 happy. Why deny it ? And I longed so un- 
 speakably for the day when I was to see my own 
 countryside and my home again. 
 
 " I have never known such longing as I had 
 during the time I was in hospital. 
 
 " I longed like a child — to tears, sometimes. 
 
 " I longed for everything that was dear to 
 me away yonder : the blue fjord ; the woods, 
 the farm, and the garden and the fields ; the 
 language ; those dear, beautiful sounds. 
 
 " First and last — those dear, beautiful sounds : 
 my mother-tongue and that of my father and 
 my forefathers. 
 
 " ' Sweet in joy and sweet in sadness,' as we 
 sing and croon about it." 
 
 My friend looked at me and nodded quietly. 
 
 " Ah, well ! You don't understand that, 
 I suppose. Not altogether, at any rate," he 
 added. 
 
 " I earnestly hope you may never come to 
 understand it — as we do,^'* 
 
170 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 XII 
 
 "The day I went home was terribly long. 
 It seemed to me as if my journey would never 
 come to an end. The journey was painful, 
 too, as well as long. There were so many people 
 who asked questions. They ferreted. They 
 persisted in their ferreting to the point of 
 impertinence. And those who did not ask 
 questions scrutinised me offensively or gave me 
 pitying looks. 
 
 " At last I had to shrink into a corner and 
 pretend to be both deaf and blind, to escape 
 from all that inquisitiveness and that obtrusive 
 pity which I found so extremely objectionable. 
 
 " As I approached my home country and 
 changed on to the little crawling local railway, 
 I was so deeply stirred that I could have wept. 
 My lips quivered and my breast was as empty 
 as if all the air had been pumped out of my 
 lungs. 
 
 " As the train glided into the small station 
 I pulled down the window and looked out. 
 
 " It was all so joyously familiar. The name 
 with the foreign, snarling sound. The station- 
 master, erect and stiff, like the old non-commis- 
 sioned officer with a big German beard that he 
 was. The flowers on the window-sills of the 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 171 
 
 station-house. The faces of the station-master's 
 wife and children against the window-panes. The 
 smell of asphalte from the sun-baked platform. 
 
 " And over there — why, that was my father, 
 my dear, dear old father ! He seemed to me 
 to have aged a good deal. His broad back, 
 which before had been so straight and so proudly 
 erect, was bent and tired ; and his face looked 
 worn as if after a long illness. 
 
 " His glance went down the train from 
 carriage to carriage. I waved my hand to him 
 and called out : 
 
 " ' Father ! ' 
 
 " He turned at the sound and stared at me a 
 moment. 
 
 " At first a startled look seemed to pass over 
 his face. A sudden wonder, as when you see 
 something you have not expected, and then it 
 seemed to me that he tottered backwards a 
 step or two when he understood who it was that 
 had called. He bent his head and pressed 
 his hand to his eyes. 
 
 " I think he was weeping. 
 
 "Then I jumped out of the carriage, and the 
 next instant I was beside him. 
 
 " He threw his arms round my neck and kissed 
 me fervently on both cheeks as he whispered 
 in a trembling voice : 
 
172 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " ^ Oh, thank God we've got you back again ! 
 Welcome home, my dear boy — welcome — 
 welcome ! Thanks be -to God from your mother 
 and me and all of us 1 my God, my God ! — 
 it has been a hard time ! ' 
 
 " He shook me as you shake a friend in 
 exuberant joy. And then he took my arm. 
 ' Why, I could not recognise you at first,' he 
 said with a little smile. ' You have changed 
 — somewhat. . . . But on the whole you are 
 looking quite well.' 
 
 " ' Yes, am I not ?' I said. ' Quite well— 
 I think so myself.' 
 , " I smiled. 
 
 " I remembered that that was what they 
 always said at the hospital. 
 
 " How alike words are when they are meant 
 to comfort and cheer ! How simple - minded 
 people are — both those who give and those who 
 receive comfort ! 
 
 " Then we drove along the road to my home, 
 and in thirsty eagerness my mind drank in all 
 the old, familiar and beautiful luxuriance : 
 the white road with the perfume of the poplars ; 
 the hedges with the wild roses ; the white- 
 washed, thatched farmsteads ; the bright, 
 summer gleam of the blue fjord. 
 
 " It was all just the same as when I left home 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 173 
 
 nearly two years ago — so it seemed to me, at 
 any rate. I could not see any change. 
 
 " My father had sat silent awhile and had 
 now and then stolen a glance at me, and I 
 understood why. He had to feel at home with 
 my face first before he could feel quite at home 
 with myself. He was never at any time one to 
 speak much, by the way. 
 
 " We drove past one of the big farms. The 
 house stood close up to the road, and looked 
 so peaceful, so bathed in sunshine ; and the 
 blossoms from the fruit trees sprinkled their 
 pure white snow over the bright lawns. 
 
 " ' The farmer in there fell last September,' 
 said my father; 'and his two sons are also 
 gone. There are no more men left now in that 
 family.' 
 
 " I turned round and looked towards the farm- 
 stead. 
 
 " Was not the blinking of the sun in the bright 
 window-panes like the brightness of eyes dew^ed 
 with tears ? Did not the sprinkled apple- 
 blossoms on the bright lawns look like flowers 
 on freshly-dug graves ? 
 
 " It seemed so to me. It seemed to me also 
 that the country looked different and unfamiliar 
 in all its homeliness. The sunshine and luxuri- 
 ance were there ; the woods and the fjord and 
 
174 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 everything ; the old farmsteads, the fertile 
 fields ; and yet . . . 
 
 '' Soon after we were up on a hill and could 
 see far away over the countryside and out to the 
 fjord and the downs on the other side. 
 
 " My father sat pointing with his whip to the 
 houses and farms round about. 
 
 " ' The husband is gone over there, and yonder 
 the son. Both sons from that place are gone. 
 And over there they have lost a son-in-law — 
 you know, the one who had just got married. 
 At the farm yonder the husband came home a 
 cripple last Christmas ; and the son in that one 
 is blind.' 
 
 " His hushed and mournful words spoke of 
 nothing but death and grief. There was scarcely 
 a farm or a house the door of which was not 
 marked with the cross of death, or in which 
 mourning or disablement had not a home. 
 
 " I looked out on the sunny country. Its 
 colour seemed to have changed. There was 
 plenty of sunshine, but there was no joy in its 
 radiance. There was growth and luxuriance 
 enough, but there was no smile on its opulent 
 abundance. 
 
 " The light summer breeze played amongst 
 the tops of the poplars, and through the flower- 
 ing hedgerows, over the varying chequers of the 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 175 
 
 fields, and along the gaily-coloured ditches by 
 the wayside. It threw stripes on the blue fjord 
 and frolicked in and out of the ripening corn. 
 
 " But it was not like the cheery humming 
 of the summers of old. 
 
 " It sounded like a plaintive sighing, like a 
 fear-stricken sobbing, stealing along by field and 
 farm and whispering about grief and want and 
 longing to every blade of grass, every leaf, every 
 flower, to every little clucking ripple on the blue, 
 shining water. 
 
 " I saw it so distinctly now ; and I under- 
 stood it. 
 
 '^ There was no pageant of summer here, on 
 this countryside. It was a land in mourning. 
 The glitter of tears was in the gleams of the sun, 
 and wailing in the whispers of the summer breeze. 
 
 " It was not joy that met me at my home- 
 coming. It was not my old, beautiful country 
 that took me into its arms with a smile. It was 
 a silent and weary land, in which there was 
 weeping behind closed doors, and in which the 
 nights were full of a restless, trembling fear and 
 all the unfathomable misery of a terrible and 
 merciless time. 
 
 " I had left so much evil and misery behind 
 me ; I had come home to still greater evils, still 
 deeper misery. 
 
176 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " I had come home to those who had to hear the 
 soTTOZOS. And that is harder, infinitely harder, 
 than to suffer death or see others suffer it. 
 
 " For sorrow never ceases. There are always 
 tears in its eyes. 
 
 " As we drove into the yard I caught a ghmpse 
 of my mother at the door, but she disappeared 
 again, before I had had time to nod to her. 
 
 " M-Y fiancee was standing in the middle of the 
 yard. Her face had not the same bright gentle- 
 ness as before. About her features and on her 
 lips there were the same sad and mournful lines 
 that I had sn oeen the faces of the women in the 
 hospital. She, too, was stamped with the daily 
 silent longing and uncertainty, the nightly dread 
 and heart-ache. 
 
 " She seemed to me to look old. And she was 
 not yet twenty-two. 
 
 " She threw her arms round my neck, almost 
 before I had reached the ground. She said 
 nothing. She only cried, clinging closely to me 
 and hiding her face on my shoulder. 
 
 " ' Well, you can recognise him, it seems,' 
 said my father. ' It was all I could do — just 
 at first. . . . ' 
 
 " She looked at me, and then turned to my 
 father as she said : 
 
 " ' I knew that he would look like that — that 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 177 
 
 was how I always saw him. In my thoughts 
 by day and my dreams at night.' 
 
 " Then we went into the sitting-room. 
 
 " My mother was standing by the table. She 
 was pale and there was a frightened and 
 despairing look in her eyes. 
 
 " She gazed at me for a moment as if in terror. 
 Then she sank down upon a chair and hid her 
 face in her hands. 
 
 " ' Is that my boy — is that my boy ? . . . ' 
 
 " It sounded like a heart-broken wailing. I 
 saw that she was sobbing. I perceived that my 
 face had frightened her ; the empty sleeve too. 
 
 " I went over and knelt down before her, 
 putting my arm round her waist and my head 
 in her lap. 
 
 " I had always done that as a boy when she 
 was grieved about anything. 
 
 " Then I felt her hand gently stroking my 
 head. How soft that hand was I What a bliss- 
 fulness there was in that quiet, gentle stroking ! 
 
 " Is there anybody who knows how to caress 
 like a mother ? Is there anything in the world 
 that holds such rapturous joy ? . . . 
 
 " After a little while she took my chin in her 
 hands and raised my head. Our eyes met. 
 Hers were soft and shining — a fathomless deep 
 of love to gaze into. 
 
 F.r, H 
 
178 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 '^ Her face was grey and there was a quivering 
 about her firmly-closed lips. But I could see 
 that she was happy — silently, speechlessly 
 happy. 
 
 " I felt her lips on my forehead. It was like 
 a great solemnity to me. And then she said in 
 a soft whisper : 
 
 " ' My own big boy — my own big boy — thank 
 God for ever that I have you back again ! ' 
 
 " A sad little smile passed over her face, and, 
 as if she felt a desire to say something showing 
 a little of her warm-hearted and charming 
 humour, she added between smiles and tears : 
 
 " ^ But you are not such a handsome boy as 
 when you went away.' 
 
 " Then she broke down and bent her face over 
 mine. 
 
 '' That was my home-coming. I had looked 
 forward to it and it had given me all the happi- 
 ness I could wish for. It was neither boisterous 
 nor efiusive. It was wrapped in sadness. But 
 it held all the deep and calm affection that needs 
 no other expression than a glance or the stroking 
 of a trembhng hand to find its way to the best 
 and richest depths in one's heart. 
 
 " In other ways, however, I had not come 
 home to happiness. 
 
 " It was a grief-laden country and a grief- 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 179 
 
 laden people. I am certain there was not one 
 home in which there was not weeping over a 
 life that had been taken, or a body that had been 
 maltreated. 
 
 " And at the same time there was extreme 
 distress. 
 
 " What were they to do in all the little poverty- 
 stricken homes that had lost their bread-winner ? 
 They could only suffer. They could do nothing 
 but sit day after day with tear-laden eyes and 
 stare into a misery that grew deeper and deeper 
 and more and more hopeless. 
 
 " People helped them as well as they could. 
 They comforted each other, and did their best 
 in kind words and friendly gifts. But it was only 
 a poor consolation for all that had been lost. 
 
 " And no one could do anything for the long, 
 sleepless nights and the grief-laden days. 
 
 " Sometimes I went with my father to visit 
 a little cottage near by. We knew the people, 
 as both the husband and wife had been in our 
 service some years before. But the man had been 
 at the front since the beginning of the war, and 
 the wife had to look after everything at home, 
 including his mother, who was old and an invalid. 
 
 " The old grandmother sat in her corner all 
 day long reading her Bible, a wedding gift with 
 silver clasps, and there were not many hours in 
 
i8o FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 the day when the tears did not well up in the 
 young wife's eyes. 
 
 " How she would gaze at her boy sometimes ! 
 It looked as if she were seeking in his face com- 
 pensation for him whose fate was never out of 
 her thoughts. 
 
 " I can imagine her nights, how each waking 
 minute would be a prayer for him and his life — 
 she told me so later. She had prayed in deepest 
 anguish ; and every time she looked at me, and 
 the marks of war I carried upon me, a shudder 
 of horror ran through her. 
 
 " It was not always death, perhaps, that she 
 dreaded most. It was the uncertainty that 
 tormented her. The sufferings he might have 
 to endure. The pain he might have to bear. 
 And this — that perhaps he would be buried in the 
 soil of a strange land, without her ever being 
 told where. 
 
 " There had been one single card from him 
 from the Eastern front. He was quite well, he 
 said, and was in good spirits. 
 
 " It was his first and last greeting. 
 
 " That was how the days went by in that 
 home. There was quiet whispering about the 
 day's work, and then silence. Their fear was 
 never put into words, but they understood each 
 other just the same. In little pressures of hands 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT i8i 
 
 when they passed each other they gave the Httle 
 comfort that warmed their hearts and soothed 
 them a little while. 
 
 "Then one afternoon my father and I were 
 sitting with them. 
 
 " We sat looking out at the fields, bathed in 
 sunshine, at the twisting road, gleaming white 
 against the green. 
 
 " It had been very lonely on the road all day. 
 Altogether it was always lonely on the roads. 
 
 " While we were sitting there we saw the village 
 magistrate coming up, walking heavily, as he 
 had done of late. He had to bring so many sad 
 messages. 
 
 " When the young wife saw him coming she 
 jumped up with a start and held her hand to her 
 heart, and her face turned sallow and pale. 
 
 " ' It's coming now,' she whispered. ' It's 
 coming.' 
 
 " The old grandmother looked fixedly at her 
 from her corner. 
 
 " ' What is coming ? ' she asked. But she 
 got no answer. 
 
 " Then the young woman turned to the door. 
 Her eyes stared, like those of one who sees every- 
 thing about him falling into ruins, and she 
 pressed her clenched hands to her temples. 
 
 " We could hear the rattling of the latch on 
 
i82 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 the outer door, but we did not move. We sat 
 silent with bated breath. There were heavy 
 footsteps in the passage, and we heard the quiet 
 clearing of a throat. 
 
 " The next moment the magistrate opened the 
 door and came into the room. 
 
 " The young wife stretched her hands out to 
 him as if in prayer. She wanted to ask him a 
 question. But the words could not find their 
 way through her lips. He was silent, too, as he 
 looked across at the old grandmother, gazing 
 up from her Bible. 
 
 " She passed her hands quietly over her eyes, 
 and as a look of quavering fear came into the 
 old, life-worn face she asked : 
 
 " ' Is Hans . . . ? ' 
 
 " She said no more. Then the young wife 
 moved heavily, almost fainting, across the floor, 
 fell on her knees before her mother-in-law, and 
 hid her face against the Bible lying in her lap. 
 
 " Standing beside the door the magistrate 
 whispered : 
 
 " ' Yes, he is — a long time ago — in Russia.' 
 
 " My father drew the boy close to him and 
 patted his cheek. He looked up with frightened 
 eyes, and then his glance went to his mother and 
 his grandmother, who whispered, as she stroked 
 the hair of her daughter-in-law : 
 
FORCED TO FIGHT 183 
 
 " ' The Lord gave — the Lord hath taken. 
 The Lord gave — the Lord hath taken.' 
 
 " I can see it all before me still," my friend 
 said quietly. " I think I would rather go through 
 the horrors of war again than the hours of grief 
 that came after them. 
 
 " After all, is there anything sadder than this 
 — that one whom you have loved with all your 
 heart has been swept away like a straw before 
 the wind ? 
 
 " It meant so infinitely much for one — so 
 infinitely little for the whole. 
 
 " That is only one little picture from my 
 countryside. But Hke many others it is deeply 
 engraved in my mind. And it is filled with 
 the same pain. 
 
 " And, taking it altogether, what sort of a 
 generation, I wonder, will it be that survives 
 the war in my old country ? There will not be 
 a single joy left for it. There will not be one 
 single smile of happiness. 
 
 " Every home will have the memory of its 
 dead to cherish. Every home will have its heavy 
 sorrows to bear. And none of them have that 
 great and beautiful background of suffering that 
 reconciles one both to grief and death-^or 
 that softens them, at least. 
 
1 84 FORCED TO FIGHT 
 
 " All of them live and suffer there, under the 
 hard yoke of duty. There is a halo of glory about 
 many names, but there are also streams of tears. 
 
 " And the lives of the future have to be lived 
 under the pressure of all the horrors they have 
 had to see and endure. It will be a generation 
 with sad hearts and many diseased thoughts — 
 both among those who were in the war^and came 
 through it as well as among those who were at 
 home. 
 
 "An impoverished generation — a joy-forsaken 
 generation. 
 
 " They called me ^ The Silent Dane.' 
 
 " They were right. 
 
 " But all the others — what about them ? I 
 wonder if they will not be called by that name, 
 too ? I think so. 
 
 " I think there will be great and inconsolable 
 silence where there was before so much strength, 
 so much happiness, so much faith, and so many 
 fair hopes. 
 
 " ' The Silent Dane.' 
 
 " Isn't it so ? I think that is the name they 
 should all have. 
 
 " For memory needs quiet for its happiness. 
 And great sorrows have no words." 
 
 THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 
 
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