"There is a great fundamental difference between the spirit of Germany and the spirit of the Allies, and the whole world has recognized it.
With the Allies there has been no boasting, even now when they realize that the top is reached and this war is on the down grade. There is determination, but there is no c.o.c.k-sureness, no goose-step. There is no insolence.
"Why, in the last a.n.a.lysis, is the whole world against Germany? Because of her insufferable insolence. It is an insolence which has been fairly bred in the bone of every German soldier. I can give you a little concrete instance. My daughter-in-law had been serving in one of the Paris hospitals ever since the war broke out. She was finally placed on a committee which was to meet the trainloads of wounded soldiers when they first arrived.
"In one of the cars one day there was a wounded officer, a German. He spoke no French, and a young French Lieutenant, very courteous, was trying to make him understand something. My daughter, too, had no success. Finally a young German, a common soldier who was in the same car, said to this German officer: "I am an Alsatian; I can interpret for you."
""How dare you!" And the German officer turned to him in perfect fury.
"How do you, a common soldier, dare to speak to me, an officer!" And with that he struck the Alsatian full in the face with what little strength he had left.
"Now there is an example of the att.i.tude to which the German military has been trained.
"On another occasion, when a French officer, after one of the battles, came courteously to the commanding German officer of the division and said, "Sir, you are my prisoner," the German spat in his face. That is all very dramatic and you may say that he showed much spirit, but you could hardly call it a sporting spirit, surely not a civilized spirit.
"It is this domineering spirit that the whole world is resenting.
Nothing that Germany can do through her well-organized press agents can conceal that insolence which has been a continuous policy for many years. American opinion is almost unanimous in its opposition to Germany for this one reason.
"Sir Gilbert Parker recently sent me a whole bundle of papers asking me to judge England"s case fairly and ask my friends in America to do the same. I wrote back and asked him: "Why do you waste stamps sending evidence to America? America has the evidence, and if there has been any anti-English feeling in America, von Bernstorff and Dernburg long since demolished it."
"The world has never witnessed anything so far-reaching as this policy of insolence. Men who in daily life are cultured and fine, whose ideals are high and n.o.ble, who have achieved names for themselves in literature, art, and science--we all have many friends among them--have become unconsciously tinctured with this policy. They are intelligent men, but, by the G.o.ds, when they get on this subject of Germany"s place in the sun, they become paranoiacs! This idea of their pre-eminence has become a disease with Germany. Germany is actually sick with it, and the medicine that will cure her will be pretty bitter.
"I see that George Bernard Shaw presumes to announce that this policy of insolence, this extreme militarism, has been just as prominent in England and in France. Mr. Shaw is great fun and very wise about a lot of things; moreover, he has lived in England a great deal longer than I have, but just the same he is dead wrong when he makes such a statement.
I have many old friends in the army and the navy, many in politics, and some of them are of the p.r.o.nounced soldier, the militarist type. Not one of them would ever dare to write such a book as Bernhardi has written, and I don"t believe there"s one of them that would take any stock in a man like Nietzsche. Mr. Shaw is dead wrong here; worse than that, he is writing nonsense.
"We live from day to day hoping that the end will be the absolute annihilation of the militarist principle, this get-off-the-earth att.i.tude.
"And what has all this," concluded Mr. Smith suddenly, "to do with art?
I"m sure I don"t know. No one is thinking about art now."
"But you haven"t told me where your sympathies are in this war, Mr.
Smith."
"Hey? I don"t have any sympathies, as you see. I"m neutral as President Wilson bids me be; I don"t care who licks Germany, not even if it is j.a.pan."
*The Helpless Victims*
*By Mrs. Nina Larrey Duryee.*
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 9, 1914.]
Hotel Windsor.
DINARD, France, Sept. 1, 1914.
_To the Editor of The New York Times_:
This is written in great haste to catch the rare boat to England. The author is an American woman, who has spent nine happy Summers in this beautiful corner of France, where thousands of her compatriots have likewise enjoyed Brittany"s kindly hospitality.
Yesterday I saw issuing through St. Malo"s eleventh century gates 300 Belgian refugees, headed by our Dinard Mayor, M. Cralard. I try to write calmly of that procession of the half-starved, terror-ridden throng, but with the memory of those pinched faces and the stories we heard of murder, carnage, burning towns, insulted women, it is difficult to restrain indignation. They had come from Charleroi and Mons--old men, women, and little children. Not a man of strength or middle age among them, for they are dead or away fighting the barbarians who invested their little country against all honorable dealings.
Such a procession! They had slept in fields, eaten berries, carrots dug from the earth by their hands; drunk from muddy pools, always with those beings behind them who had driven them at the point of their bayonets from their poor homes. Looking back, they had seen flames against the sky, heard screams for pity from those too ill to leave, silenced by bullets.
Here are some of the tales, which our Mayor vouches for, which I heard:
One young mother, who had seen her husband shot, tried to put aside the rifle of the a.s.sa.s.sin. She was holding her year-old baby on her breast.
The b.u.t.t of that rifle was beaten down, crushing in her baby"s chest. It still lives, and I heard it"s gasping breath.
Another young girl, in remnants of a pretty silk dress, hatless, her fragile shoes soleless, and her feet bleeding, is quite mad from the horrors of seeing her old father shot and her two younger brothers taken away to go before the advancing enemy as shields against English bullets. She has forgotten her name, town, and kin, and, "like a leaf in the storm," is adrift on the world penniless.
I saw sitting in a row on a bench in the shed seven little girls, none of them more than six. Not one of them has now father, mother, or home.
None can tell whence they came, or to whom they belong. Three are plainly of gentle birth. They were with nurses when the horde of Prussians fell upon them, and the latter were kept--for the soldier"s pleasure.
There is an old man, formerly the proud proprietor of a bakery, who escaped with the tiny delivery cart pulled by a Belgian dog. Within the cart are the remains of his prosperous past--a coat, photos of his dead wife, and his three sons at the front, and a bra.s.s kettle.
I heard from an aged man how he escaped death. He, with other villagers, was locked into a room, and from without the German carbines were thrust through the blinds. Those within were told to "dance for their lives,"
and the German bullets picked them off, one by one, from the street. He had the presence of mind to fall as though dead, and when the house was set on fire crawled out through a window into the cowshed and got away.
Now, these stories are not the worst or the only ones. Nor are these 300 refugees more than a drop of sand on a beach of the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment in like case. They are pouring through the country now, dazed with trouble, robbed of all they possess.
Who can help them, even to work? No one has money. Even those rich villa people, Americans, are unable to pay their servants. There is no "work" save in the fields garnering crops, for which no wages are paid.
Their country is a devastated waste, tenanted by the enemy, who spread like a tidal wave of destruction in all directions. We take the better cla.s.s into our homes, clothe them and feed them gladly, that we may in a minute way repay the debt civilization owes their husbands, sons, and fathers. France, too, is invaded, and now thousands more of French are homeless and penniless.
We in this formerly gay, fashionable little town see nothing of the pageantry of war--only its horrors, as trains leave with us hundreds of wounded from the front. In their bodies we find dumdum bullets, and we hear tales which confirm those of the refugees.
Will America help them? I, an American woman, could weep for the inadequacy of my pen, for I beg your pity, your compa.s.sion, and your help. Not since the days of Rome"s cruelty has civilization been so outraged.
I beg your paper to print this, and to start a subscription for this far corner of France, where the tide of war throws its wreckage. The Winter is ahead, and with hunger, cold, lack of supplies, and isolation will create untold suffering. Paris, too, is now sending refugees from its besieged gates. Every corner is already filled, and hundreds pour in every day. The garages, best hotels, villas, and cafes are already filled with "those that suffer for honor"s sake." The Croix Rouge does splendid work for the wounded soldiers, but who will help these victims of war? Fifty cents will buy shoes for a baby"s feet. Ten cents will buy ten pieces of bread. A dollar will buy a widow a shawl. Who will give?
Deny yourselves some little pleasure--a cigar, a drink of soda water, a theatre seat--and send the price to these starved, beaten people, innocent of any crime.
You American women, who tuck your children into their clean beds at night, remember these children, reared as carefully as yours, without relatives, money, or future. They will be placed on farms to do a peasant"s work with peasants. These women bereft of all that was dear face a barren future. These aged men antic.i.p.ate for their only remaining blessing death, which will take them from a world which has used them ill.
America is neutral. Let her remain so, but compa.s.sion has no nationality. We are all children of one Father. Send us help. These poor creatures hold out to you pleading hands for succor.
NINA LARREY DURYEE.
P.S.--I beg you to publish this. I am the daughter-in-law of the Gen.
Duryee of the Duryee Zouaves, who fought through our civil war with honor. Our Amba.s.sador, Mr. Herrick, and his wife know me socially. Any funds you can gather please send to M. Grolard, Marie de Dinard, Munic.i.p.ality de Dinard, Ille-et-Vilaine, France, or to Le Banque Boutin, Dinard, France.
*A New Russia Meets Germany*
*By Perceval Gibbon.*
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 26, 1914.]