II.
The day had not long dawned when I awoke so cramped and stiff that I could hardly move, but still refreshed by much-needed sleep, and above all free of the previous night's headache. My sentry, who had also slept well, was good enough to ask how I felt, and said we were going to Aachen, but he could not or would not say if this was to be our ultimate destination.
We reached Aachen about 8.30, and a more miserable morning could not be imagined. It had evidently rained hard all night, and the downpour showed no signs of abating.
Looking out at the pretty little town half hidden in the mist that hung over the wooded hills, I was wondering if this was to be our journey's end, when I saw what looked like two British officers walking along the station road. There was no mistake about the British warm coats! Of course they were Germans, who doubtless found the British uniform more suited than their own to the steadily drenching rain.
Our journey was not, however, to finish here, for soon the sentry, who had been standing in the corridor, came back and said that we had to change and get into another train.
When lifted down on to the platform I was too stiff to walk even with the crutches, and had to be taken across the station on a stretcher. There were several other stretcher cases—about ten or twelve—but the majority managed to hobble along by themselves.
We were a most miserable-looking party; all the men, both British and French, were dressed in French uniforms, and one or two, whom I spoke to, said that they had had no food since leaving Cambrai.
The train into which we were now being packed was of a more antiquated type than the one we had left. A very narrow corridor ran down the centre of the coach, the narrow wooden seats on each side being made to hold four people. It was with great difficulty that I crawled along the corridor through the crowd of wounded soldiers, mostly French, who, too miserable, too hungry and too cold for speech, were trying to huddle together as well as their wounded condition would allow.
The corridor led into a carriage with four very narrow wooden seats, which were occupied by four British soldiers and one stout sentry. This was to be my accommodation for the rest of the journey. I pointed out to my sentry, who had followed me from the other train, that it was impossible for me to travel otherwise than lying down, and that even for able-bodied passengers the carriage was overcrowded. Also I demanded anew to be allowed to travel with the French doctor, whom I now saw being escorted along the platform to the rear end of the train. My protest was of no avail, and on inquiring who was the officer in charge of the train, I was told it was the doctor who had refused the aspirin, so concluded that further expostulation would be useless. My luggage, consisting of a small canvas portmanteau and a brown paper parcel with the sausage, &c., was now brought along, and took up what small space remained in the carriage.
We were now five wounded men and two very corpulent sentries, and the problem of how to divide the available space presented some difficulty.
Two of the men, like myself, were unable to travel in a sitting position. We had four seats, one of which was more than occupied by the two sentries. The other three had to be given to those who could not sit up, and so the remaining two men had to lie on the hard floor.
Although all these men had been very severely wounded, and were still in great pain, they had no thought for themselves, but insisted upon doing everything that they could to settle me as comfortably as possible. My bag was put at the end of a corner seat, and, making a pillow with my greatcoat, I was able to get into a half sitting, half lying, and by no means comfortable position, but the best that could be done under the circumstances.
A British Tommy's cheerfulness is irrepressible. The knocking about may have been severe, the situation may be desperate, and the outlook depressing, but you will nearly always find the British soldier cheerful in spite of all.
I remember an old monastic exhortation written in the eighth century entitled, "De octo principalibus vitiis," where sadness is bracketed along with pride, covetousness, lust, and the other familiar vices, while cheerfulness is placed high on the list of virtues. I can now appreciate the old monks' valuation of cheerfulness, and for the lesson I have to thank those wounded soldiers in the railway carriage at Aachen.
They were as cheery as soldiers on furlough. For nearly four hours the train waited just outside the dripping station, and we spent most of the time laughing! In fact, we were so hilarious that I think our sentries got suspicious; at any rate they were considerably bewildered at our strange conduct. We none of us had much to laugh at. The most helpless man in our carriage was a young fellow of nineteen in the K.O.S.B.'s, whose leg had been broken just above the shin, and a piece of the bone knocked away. This man was subsequently exchanged, and we journeyed home to England together. Two other men had bullet wounds in the thigh which were still septic; and the fourth, an Irishman from Carlow, had been very badly wounded in the face, having lost the sight of one eye, was also deaf in one ear and shockingly disfigured.
The rain still poured heavily down, and we were still, at 12.30 P.M., outside Aachen station.
At last a man who looked like a soldier of high rank, but was merely the station-master, came in, escorted by a German private, to count us. He informed our sentries that we were about to start for Mainz, and before going out the German soldier snatched the French képi from the disfigured Irishman and gave him his German round soft cap in exchange. It is a cheap and very common method of obtaining a war trophy.
It was now time to make inquiries about lunch, and we were told we would get nothing till we got to Mainz at seven o'clock.
Every one of us had been supplied by the kind French people at Cambrai with bread and cold meat, chocolate and biscuits, so that we were able to make quite a decent meal. Still I made a point of always asking the Germans for food before using our own. It was with the greatest difficulty that we at last got something to drink. Our sentries did not show any ill-feeling, and it was not their fault that nothing was given us; it was simply that no arrangements had been made. At about four in the afternoon we each got a cup of what was meant for tea, and this was the first liquid we had had since the previous morning.
The sentries were provided with coffee and sandwiches at every station, which was always brought to the carriage by women dressed in uniform. They belonged to an association which has been formed for the purpose of supplying soldiers on transport duty with hot drinks.
I inquired of one of these ladies if there was not an association for supplying prisoners of war with food and drink, and was rewarded with a solemn serious negative.
The train did not get on very fast, and we stopped a good many times just outside the stations—waits lasting sometimes over an hour. Although the amount of data regarding the internal conditions of a country which can be obtained from a carriage window on a journey such as we were making is certainly not extensive, still I noted a good many interesting points.
Civilians, of course, were few and far between. At the stations and in the public places, and as far as I could see in the streets, nearly all were in uniform, young and old. Some of the older men wore very quaint-looking garments. I have seen more civilians on the platform of one English country station than I saw at all the German stations together between Cambrai and Würzburg.
Railway work, such as unloading coal, &c., from the trucks, was being done by boys of twelve to fifteen, working in gangs of about six, doing the work of two or three men. All the railway engine-drivers and employees I saw were men obviously above military age.
The stations are all under military control, and transport work is carried on by soldiers.
Troop trains passed incessantly. The men, who I should say were about twenty years old, were cheerful and always singing, just like our own troops are fond of doing, only the Germans sing much better! They shouted out greetings to the wounded Germans on our train, and looked with curiosity at the French and British soldiers. When the troop train happened to draw up opposite us, sometimes a fist would be shaken in the air, accompanied by what sounded like very bad language. But the general spirit shown by these young German troops towards our train-load of wounded prisoners was that of contempt and pity of victors for the vanquished. The men were splendidly equipped, and many regiments carried a long spade strapped on to the back of their kit, the iron head stretching high above the helmet. I remember starting to count the troop trains, but I cannot find any note of the number in my diary. I should put the number we saw in one day at from fifteen to twenty.
In the public squares of the smaller towns, and even outside some of the country villages, groups of youths, almost children, were being put through elementary military exercises.
The train stopped at one small countryside station, and I got a very good view of some German troops having a field-day. They were preparing to advance on the village through some woods, and the sight reminded me of the German attacks on our trenches at Mons.
Nothing that I could observe from my carriage window spoke more eloquently of the efforts Germany was making than the goods traffic which passed along the line or lay shunted at the stations.
The very trucks themselves were eloquent of war and of Germany's success in war. Belgian rolling stock was very much in evidence, and it was depressing to see the well-known French vans with the inscription, "hommes 40, chevaux 12," familiar to all who have travelled in France. There were also a few strange-looking waggons, either Russian or Polish.
Nearly all the goods trains were carrying war material. Long trains were standing on the sidings with Red Cross ambulances on every truck.
We passed countless numbers of trains loaded with broad wooden planks and stout larch poles, doubtless intended for the erection of earthworks. Most instructive was the sight of one long train of about thirty trucks loaded with private motor-cars of all sorts and sizes, which had been hurriedly painted with grey stripes and some sort of notice indicating Government service. Once we passed a train with heavy artillery on specially constructed waggons, and we saw several trains of ordinary field artillery. These trains of troops, munitions, motor-cars, coal, and a hundred other weapons of war that were hidden from view, the whole methodical procession of supplies to the Front, were most suggestive of power, of concentration, and organisation of effort. Most impressive was this glimpse of Germany at war. It is difficult to convey the impression to those who have not seen Germany in a state of war. Men who have been at the Front see little of the power which is behind the machine against which they are fighting.
I do not think many people in this country, even in high places, have yet understood how great, as to be almost invincible, are the military and industrial resources of Germany.
The strength given by unity of purpose, by self-sacrifice of individual to national requirements, by organisation of disciplined masses, is the strength of Germany, behind which is the all-prevailing spirit of the motto, "Deutschland über Alles," the Fatherland above all things, and before all things. The end justifying the means in the name of a perverted patriotism, whose end is self-glorification, whose means include among other horrors the murder of an innocent and defenceless civilian population.
This German patriotism, a monstrous caricature of the noblest of virtues, is the only ideal which the brutal materialism of Prussia can still pretend to claim for its own.
Chivalry, honour, and a fair name, the ideals for which men will cheerfully die, Germany has destroyed and buried in the wreckage of Belgian homesteads.
In my carriage-window conversations with German soldiers, to whom it might have been dangerous to express myself as frankly as I have just done here, I always felt that I was dealing with people possessed by an "idée fixe." Evil, as long as it was German evil, was right.
Pride has brought these people to believe that all law, religious and ethical, should be subservient to the interests of the Fatherland. The German pride is something quite apart from the common conceit with which all men and all nations are afflicted, for the foolish British bumptiousness, which of late years has not been so much in evidence, due to ignorance and want of intercourse with Continental nations, does not strike deep enough into the national character to affect the moral sanity of the race. But German pride working through several generations has apparently destroyed all sense of right and wrong. It has become, therefore, impossible to convince the German people of wrong-doing.
I once ventured to say, in answer to one man who was very indignant with "England's treachery" (he was a kultured man and addressed me as a "hireling of La Perfide Albion"), that at any rate we had not invaded Belgium in breach of a solemn treaty. I fully expected to be chastised for my boldness, but my remark did not arouse any indignation. I was told quite simply that "even if there was any truth in my statement the necessity of Germany was supreme and above all."
Deutschland über Alles.
At most of the stations we stopped at, men used to come into our carriage out of curiosity; some of them were rude and insulting, but very often they were eager to enter into conversation.
At one place an Unterofficier, who understood a little English but did not speak it, kept on repeating in German that England had made the War and tried to catch Germany unprepared, and that we were mobilised for war in July. I did not answer him, but turned round to the wounded soldier next me and said to him, "When did you mobilise?" All the men answered in chorus, "On the 5th August." "I don't know when you Germans mobilised," I said, "but you were fighting in Belgium on the day we mobilised."
In most of their conversations the question of who was going to win was not raised, for the Germans consider that they have won already, and they have no fears of being unable to maintain the territory they have conquered.
The prevailing sentiment towards England was contemptuous. I remember some soldiers at one place reading the news to my sentry out of a German paper, and one of the items was "Kitchener has organised an army of one million men." This statement caused considerable laughter, and when the sentry returned to our carriage I asked him where the joke lay. England, he then explained, for years had employed a small number of paid men to do whatever fighting was needed, and the nation could not now be drilled and made soldiers of, as they were not animated by the martial, manly spirit of Germany, and those few that did volunteer—he used the word with contempt—would require at least a year's training.
From such conversations as these, and from reading the German papers, I am convinced that the strongest ground of confidence the Germans possess is their contempt of England's military power. The Germans know far better than we do the weakness of our voluntary system. They know that if the full power of the British Empire was brought against them, defeat would in the long-run be inevitable. But they believe, and I think rightly believe, that this can never come to pass without organisation and discipline of the whole country. No disaster to the German arms on the field of battle would have an effect on the morale of the German people such as would result from the knowledge that the English had recognised the principle of National Service.
But as long as England remains "le pays des embusqués," German opinion will not be influenced by speeches on England's grim determination made in Parliament or leaders written in our morning papers: Germany knows that grim determination is shown not in words, but in deeds.
The day when England consents to the great sacrifice and faces the stern discipline of conscription, the present unshakable confidence of the German people will be changed into apprehensive despair.
I have interrupted the thread of my story to reply to those people who keep on telling us that we have done splendidly, that no one else could have done what we have done; that our voluntary army of one or two or three million men, whatever it may be, is the most wonderful creation of all history; and so on to the Navy and its great deeds. The litany of praise is familiar to all, and a good deal of it is true.
But the point to be considered is not what we have done, but what we have left undone, since nothing less will suffice than the maximum possible effort.