Our Common Humanity.
Here is a letter found on one of the German dead, a man with “a good face, strong and kindly,” so wrote the Daily Mail correspondent. “My dearest Heart,” runs the letter, “when the little ones have said their prayers and prayed for their dear father, and have gone to bed, I sit and think of thee, my love. I think of all the old days when we were betrothed, and I think of all our happy married life. Oh! Ludwig, beloved of my soul, why should people fight each other? I cannot think that God would wish it....”
Here in this leafy place
Quiet he lies;
Cold, with his sightless face
Turned to the skies;
’Tis but another dead:
All you can say is said.
Carry the body hence;
Kings must have slaves;
Kings rise to eminence
Over men’s graves;
So this man’s eyes are dim.
Cast the earth over him.
What was that white you touched,
There by his side?
Paper his hand had clutched
Tight ere he died?
Message or wish, maybe?
Smooth out its folds and see.
***
Ah! That beside the dead
Slumbered the pain!
Ah! That the hearts that bled
Slept with the slain!
That the grief died. But no!
Death will not have it so.
These words of Austin Dobson were written of a French sergeant in an earlier war, yet they serve equally well for the German soldier in this. Strange that we leave it to the dead to prove their brotherhood and ours.
Philip Gibbs tells us how in a German dug-out he picked up some letters. “They were all written to ‘dear brother Wilhelm,’ from sisters and brothers, sending him their loving greetings, praying that his health might be good, promising to send him gifts of food and yearning for his home-coming.” They were anxious, for here had been no news for some time. “Every time the postman comes we hope for a little note from you.” Can any generous heart think of that anxious waiting unmoved? Shall we children of one Life wait till we have wholly darkened each other’s homes, and then call our handiwork peace?
But by that time, by the judgment of God, our eyes will be opened.
We who are bound by the same grief for ever,
When all our sons are dead may talk together,
Each asking pardon of the other one,
For her dead son.[52]
It is we at home who seem to yield only to this dread proof. With the fighters it is often different, as we have seen, and though the stories savour of repetition, the repetition is surely worth while. I have aimed here at no literary production, but simply at a collection of facts that may reach the heart. “We sing,” said a soldier from Baden, “to the accompaniment of the piano—especially during the interval for dinner. We have indeed entered into a tacit agreement with the French to stop all fire between 12 and 1 o’clock, so that they and we might not be disturbed when we feed.” (Zeitung am Mittag, as quoted in the Daily Chronicle, November 10, 1914.) “One of our teachers, a lieutenant in the R.F.A., who has been out most of the time, had a few days’ leave some weeks ago. He said to the school, assembled to do him honour, ‘Boys, do not believe the stories you read about the Germans in the newspapers. Whatever they may have done at the beginning of the war, the German is a brave and noble soldier, and after the war we must be friends.’” (From a private letter.) A soldier writes that a diary he kept was blown to bits by a shell. He gave what remained of it to a wounded German who pleaded for it. He had met many German Socialists in the fighting. “It is a blessing to meet such men and amid all the slaughter brought about by our present system, it seems heaven upon earth.” (Labour Leader, June 24, 1915.)