Are We Always Chivalrous?
It will only be making the amende honorable if we do our best now to spread reports of good deeds of the enemy, for in the early stages of the war we deliberately deleted them from messages, and we have certainly done a great deal to conceal them ever since. Writing to the Times in October, 1914, Mr. Herbert Corey, the American correspondent, said: “The Times leader quotes the Post as charging that I ‘flatly made the charge that dispatches had been altered for the purpose of hiding the truth and blackening the German character.’ I do not recollect this phrase. I did charge that dispatches of German atrocities were permitted to go through unaltered, and that sentences in other dispatches in which credit was given the Germans for courtesy and kindness were deleted. I abide by that statement.”
There have been many angry references to unfair German attempts to influence neutral opinion. A letter such as Mr. Corey’s makes me able to understand why some neutrals have accused England of the very same unfairness. There is other testimony to the same effect. Mr. Edward Price Bell, London Correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, has, in a pamphlet published by Fisher Unwin, indicted the British censorship in the following terms:
I call the censorship chaotic because of the chaos in its administration. I call it political because it has changed or suppressed political cables. I call it discriminatory because there are flagrant instances of its not holding the scales evenly between correspondents and newspapers. I call it unchivalrous because it has been known to elide eulogies of enemy decency and enemy valour. I call it destructive because its function is to destroy; it has no constructive function whatever. I call it in effect anti-British and pro-German because its tendency—one means, of course, its unconscious tendency—often is to elevate the German name for veracity and for courage above the British. I call it ludicrous, because it has censored such matter as Kipling’s “Recessional” and Browning’s poetry. I call it incompetent because one can perceive no sort of collective efficiency in its work. And because of the sum of these things I give it the final descriptive—“incredible.”—Daily News, January 7, 1916.
There is no doubt that people often fear to tell of German good deeds. An acquaintance of mine told me that his boy got decorated for bringing in a badly wounded comrade from near the German trenches. A little shamefacedly my informant went on: “I don’t mind telling you, but I shouldn’t like it to be known generally here, that I know the Germans act well sometimes. My boy wrote he would have had no chance, but he heard the Germans give the order to cease fire.” My informant evidently feared the neighbours would call him pro-German if he told this to them, but he thought he might venture to tell a pacifist.[53]
One notices this fear sometimes in rather amusing ways. In a railway compartment with me were a loud-mouthed patriotic woman “war-worker” and a mere soldier back from the front. I’m afraid I got a little at loggerheads with the war-worker, who adopted in argument a kind of furious grin which revealed a formidable row of teeth that in my mind-picture of her have become symbolically almost gigantic. I turned for relief to the mere soldier, and while the train was moving we had a pleasant dip into soldier philosophy. “I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s good and bad everywhere,” he said. “I’ve known bad Germans, and I’ve known Germans to look after our wounded as well as a British Tommy could look after his chum.” There was more to this effect, but whenever the train stopped and our voices became audible to others, we were silent. The fear of that row of teeth was, I think in both our hearts, and I could see the mere soldier looking timid before them.
Fair play to the enemy’s character is a concession not quite so easy to the average Englishman as he supposes. “The Anglo-Saxon race has never been remarkable for magnanimity towards a fallen foe.” Just now, when we are inclined to be almost afraid of the excess of chivalry which possesses us, there may be useful corrective in these words of Lieutenant-General Sir William Butler, K.C.B. There has been much searching of old history books of late to find out what was said in the days of Tacitus against the Germans.[54] (What Tacitus said in their favour is not considered.) Perhaps on the other side there are investigators searching their history books for ancient opinions of the English. “Strike well these English,” said Duke William to his Normans, “show no weakness towards these English, for they will have no pity for you. Neither the coward for running well, nor the bold man for fighting well will be better liked by the English, nor will any be more spared on either account.” Butler approved this verdict. We shall not readily agree with him. Yet he did not speak without cause: he had known an English general kick the dead body of an African King, who “was a soldier every inch of him,” and he had known the colonists spit upon an African chief brought bound and helpless through Natal. (“Far Out,” p. 131.) I believe myself there is a great and ready generosity in the hearts of the English people, but he must surely be a man invariably on the “correct” side who has not more than once come across the official Englishman who could be a bully to those in his power.