More Christmas Incidents.
Let us take one or two more of the Christmas experiences as quoted by Mr. Edward Carpenter, in his book, “The Healing of Nations”: “Last night (Christmas Eve) was the weirdest stunt I have ever seen. All day the Germans had been sniping industriously, with some success, but after sunset they started singing, and we replied with carols. Then they shouted, ‘Happy Christmas!’ to us, and some of us replied in German. It was a topping moonlight night, and we carried on long conversations, and kept singing to each other and cheering. Later they asked us to send one man out to the middle, between the trenches, with a cake, and they would give us a bottle of wine. Hunt went out, and five of them came out and gave him the wine, cigarettes and cigars. After that you could hear them for a long time calling from half-way, ‘Englishman, kom hier.’ So one or two more of our chaps went out and exchanged cigarettes, etc., and they all seemed decent fellows.”
Again. “We had quite a sing-song last night (Christmas Eve). The Germans gave a song, and then our chaps gave them one in return. A German that could speak English, and some others, came right up to our trenches, and we gave them cigarettes and papers to read, as they never get any news, and then we let them walk back to their own trenches. Then our chaps went over to their trenches, and they let them come back all right. About five o’clock on Christmas Eve one of them shouted across and told us that if we did not fire on them they would not open fire on us, and so the officers agreed. About twenty of them came up all at once and started chatting away to our chaps like old chums, and neither side attempted to shoot.” Another soldier relates how his comrades and the Saxons opposed to them sang and shouted to each other through the night. He goes on, “When daylight came, two of our fellows, at the invitation of the enemy, left the trenches, met half-way and drank together. That completed it. They said they would not fire, if we did not; so after that we strolled about talking to each other.”
On Christmas morning, elsewhere. “We mixed together, played mouth-organs and took part in dances. My word! The Germans can’t half sing part songs! We exchanged addresses and souvenirs, and when the time came we shook hands and saluted each other, returning to our trenches. I went up into the trenches on Christmas night. One wouldn’t have thought there was a war going on. All day our soldiers and the Germans were talking and singing half-way between the opposing trenches. The space was filled with English and Germans handing one another cigars. At night we sang carols.” Another records how souvenirs and food were exchanged, and how jollification and football were indulged in with the Germans. But “next day we got an order that all communication and friendly intercourse must cease.” The Germans had said frankly they were tired of the war, the English soldiers wished to be their friends, but far away were a few elderly men who wanted the fighting to go on.
Into what depths the need of exacerbating hate may lead one is shown by the following extract from a telegram headed, “British Headquarters, France,” which I take from the Daily News of December 23, 1915:
No doubt the Bosches will have plenty of Christmas trees, as they did last year, but, without attaching too much credence to the reports of an increasing difficulty in maintaining their rations. I think it is quite safe to say that they will fare very much more frugally than our own men. But may not their own consciousness of the fact result in an outburst of “strafing?” The principle that the next best thing to not getting well served yourself is to spoil the other fellow’s enjoyment is a good sound Hunnish axiom. There will certainly be no amenities nor anything in the nature of a truce so far as the British are concerned. All ranks are bidden to remember that war is war and that the Germans invariably have some sinister motive in all they do, especially under the guise of a gush of friendly sentiment.—Reuter.
The last sentences must surely, in any generous heart (if the moral destruction of war has left us such), produce a feeling of acute shame. In all the multitude of truces that occurred at Christmas, 1914, I have not seen a single case of German treachery reported. What is it that is feared in the truce? “In some places,” said a German officer, “we have had to change our men several times. They get too damn friendly.”[50] “If we don’t take care,” said an English officer that Christmas, “there will be a permanent peace without generals or c.o.’s having a say in the matter.” Is that thought really more terrible than the thought of unnumbered shattered bodies and hopeless hearts?
How ineffectual so far are all European attempts at democracy! Carlyle’s satire about the thirty men of Dumdrudge called out, they know not why, to kill thirty men from a Dumdrudge elsewhere is not referred to in these days; but it still expresses the essential absurdity of wars.
Here is an extract from the Labour Leader of August 19, 1915:
My friend must not be identified. But here is an incident he told me I can safely relate. During the unauthorised Christmas truce of eight months ago so chummy did a British officer and a Saxon officer become that the Saxon officer gave his enemy “an invitation to visit him in Germany at the end of the war,” and “stay as long as you like,” he added. The British officer is still carrying the address in his pocket in the hope that one day he may be able to accept the invitation.
The Labour Leader is much disliked by the orthodox of England, as is the Vorwärts by the orthodox of Germany. It seems to me that both may be rendering a fine service to the cause of humanity, and one may surely say this without implying complete agreement with the opinions or the policy of either.