CHAPTER XXIX.
A warm drizzling mist, shot with silver light where the April sun vainly tried to break through, covered the hedgeless fields, dark plough and green pasture, and the great fen lands, as I drove out the twenty miles from Cambridge to Westrea. I had hired a gig from the livery stable, driven by a superannuated post-boy, a withered scrap of a creature, toothless and—rather to my relief—silent, save for professional clickings and chirrupings addressed to his horse. The gig bobbed and curtsied over the rutted cross-country roads at a bare six miles an hour. We passed but few villages, a few scattered cottages, a few farm-carts—these mostly drawn by oxen, to me an unusual sight. The country was bare, featureless, sparsely inhabited, and sad. Once or twice the mist, lifting, disclosed vast reed-beds and expanses of still blue-brown water, off which, with strange plaintive cries and a mighty whirring and beating of wings, great flocks of wild fowl rose.
As we neared our destination the landscape assumed a more cheerful character, being diversified by low hills, fine timber trees, and patches of wood; more prosperous, too, with neater cottages, a better type both of farm and farming, and clean running brooks in place of stagnant fen.
Directed by the rubicund and jovial host of a wayside inn, we turned off the main road, through a field gate, and drove some quarter of a mile down an avenue of fine oaks to a comely red-brick house set in the hollow—tile-roofed and gabled, with stacks of high twisted chimneys, the whole dating, as I judged, from the latter part of the seventeenth century. In front of it a garden the box-edged borders bright with spring flowers, brick walls—against which fruit trees were trained—on either hand, stretched down to the stream, here artificially widened into a sort of moat, its banks supported by masonry. Even now, through the drizzling rain, the place seemed to tell of ample, if homely, comfort and prosperity.
Crossing the stream by a hump-backed brick bridge, the gig drew up, amid flutter of pigeons and barking of dogs, before a square porch, where Braithwaite met me with extended hand.
‘Well—so here you are,’ he said. ‘And welcome to Westrea—no man more so; though the skies might have treated you in kindlier fashion, we must own.’
Then, as I clambered down and tipped my ancient driver, he lifted out my carpet bag and called to Nellie. And I, looking once again into her beautiful face, knew, beyond all question of doubt, that the words asking the Master’s niece, Alice Dynevor, to be my bride would never be spoken. No—whether hopeless or not as to the final issue, here my heart was anchored; so that, failing the beloved woman who stood before me, I must go mateless to the end of my days.
Nellie’s greeting was very quiet. Yet I fancied my coming gave her pleasure, for her cheek flushed and the old witch-smile played about her lips. Still, I use the word ‘woman’ advisedly. For, even in the dim light of the porch, I was conscious of a change in her—of something lost, yet something gained and added; of a greater poise, a greater dignity, for hers was—may I not say is, and that how thankfully?—one of those natures which experience and trial serve to mature and enrich rather than to break.—Would there were more of such; for are they not the salt of the earth, the divinely given leaven which, unto strength, courage, righteousness, leavens the whole lump? Ah! what a wife for my dear, weak, wayward, noble boy, Hartover!—Or, he being free no longer, what a wife for⸺
Sternly I put that thought from me. To indulge it would be to sink myself in intoxicating dreams and visions, drench my senses with sweet poison, emasculate my reason and my will—in a word, unman myself. Since her presence affected me even more profoundly than I anticipated, I must, in honour, arm myself against the delight of it with all the fortitude and prudence I possessed.
We had passed straight from the porch into the main living-room of the house, a large hall with a heavily timbered ceiling and a big open fireplace at the further end. Some logs burned cheerfully upon the hearth—a not unwelcome sight after my long drive in the drizzling mist. Here sweet-faced Miss Ann Braithwaite, in quakerish grey gown and close net cap, received me with kindly speech. Everything spoke of the same easy circumstances and solid comfort, along with an exquisite cleanliness very pleasant to the eye and touch.
At supper Nellie performed her duties as hostess with a pretty solicitude and dignity; and the evening passed in talk, Braithwaite glad enough, I think, to hold forth once more on social reform, national and political subjects. He certainly talked well and to the point—his views humorously and, I must add, enlighteningly different to those I was accustomed to hear set forth in College Common-rooms or at the High Table in Hall. But I fancied his radicalism sounded a less temperate and genial note, and that he looked anxiously at Nellie from time to time. His manner to her was peculiarly gentle, and he referred to her opinion with an almost wistful desire to interest her in our conversation.
I had no opportunity of speaking with her alone that night, for which I was not altogether sorry. Better to wait until the first sweet torment of her nearness had worn off, and I had schooled myself to accept it without nervousness.
I rose to a day as brilliantly fair as yesterday had been wet. Sunshine and fresh air pervaded the house. A side door, in the hall—where breakfast awaited me—stood open on to the garden, the moat, and avenue of oaks climbing the gentle grass slope beyond to the sky-line.
After breakfast Braithwaite went out on to his farm, and Miss Ann retired to attend to some household business. Nellie, an all-round blue apron tied over her light gown and a white sunbonnet upon her head, stood at the table gathering scraps of broken food into a bowl. She was going, so she told me, to feed some broods of young chickens in the Orchard Close; and, on my asking permission to go with her, seemed pleased to have my company. As we passed out of the porch into the morning sunshine, I could not but exclaim at the peaceful charm of the place.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is peaceful—almost too peaceful, perhaps. But my father does not feel that. He has plenty to occupy him. The land had been neglected and the farm buildings suffered to fall into decay before we came; and you know his energy in making improvements and setting things to rights—working himself and making, not only his labourers, but nature itself work for and with him.’
She glanced at me with a smile of tender amusement.
‘He is happy here,’ she added.
‘And you?’ I asked, perhaps unwisely.
‘If he is happy, I am content,’ she answered. ‘He is the best father living, and—his will is mine, dear Mr. Brownlow. It ought to be so, for he is most indulgent to me. There is nothing I could ask for which he would not give me if he could.’
And she paused.
‘If he could?’ I repeated, for it struck me she alluded to a subject which must be in both our minds, and about which she might be glad to speak.
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘there are things—or at least there is one thing he cannot give me, because it is—or rather was—against his principles and judgment, against his conviction of what is wise and right. And now⸺’
Again she paused.
‘Now it is too late.’
She moved forward quickly and opened the door leading into the Orchard Close—some half acre of ancient turf, in which grew fine old fruit trees, apple, pear, plum, cherry, and shining-leafed walnut. The pears were already in blossom, their pyramids and wreaths of powdery white seen, overhead, against the radiant blue. High brick walls, mellow with age and encrusted in places with lichens of every tint from vivid orange to delicate grey, enclosed the place. Hen-coops were set out upon the warm short grass, over which a busy population of yellow chicks and ducklings scampered towards us—their mothers and foster-mothers, meanwhile, craning ruffled necks between the wooden bars of the coops, with distracted callings and cluckings.
With a wooden spoon Nellie scattered the food among them from her bowl, looking down at the pretty, clean, scrambling little creatures—both she, they, the blossoming trees, and ruddy walls making a charming picture. But a change had come over her. The smile, the play of feature, vanished. The cheek seemed to sharpen, the dark line under the eyes to darken yet more. A settled sadness seemed to touch her. Was it thus she looked when she had not to amuse her father, when she had not to put a force upon herself, and feign cheerfulness for the sake of those about her—when she found herself alone, in short?
Vain heart of mine!—for was this not a confession that she dare be herself before me, that I was privileged to witness what she hid from others? There was a compression about the lips now, a kindling of the eyes, which told me she was coming straight to the point, like the fine and fearless woman she was—but I little expected to what point.
She set down the bowl upon the grass, where the greedy chicks swarmed over and into it, and thrusting her hand within the bosom of her dress drew out a letter.
‘This reached me a week ago,’ she said. ‘I could not show it to my father, nor to dear Aunt Ann. Had you not been coming, I must have written to you, Mr. Brownlow. Suspense was intolerable; and, if you yourself knew, I was sure you would tell me the truth.’
She put the letter into my hand. I recognised the writing at once, and with a feeling of shame and sorrow, amounting almost to horror, looked her in the face. God! how glorious it was in its agony—courage which could meet anything which must be; act on anything which was right; and, with all, such invincible sweetness!
I read the letter.
‘Silly Country Girl—Listen to me, and cease to follow what you will never win and try to reach honours which belong to bolder hearts than yours. You are thrown aside and done with, like his old glove, his old shoe. Know, then—but do not tell it, for the day you do tell shall be the last safe one of your life—that he is married already; and to me, who am far cleverer than you, and can please him better, love him better than you, ignorant little peasant, could ever please or love.’
‘Devil!’ was all I said, as I finished this melodramatic effusion, for anger and disgust choked me.
‘It is so, then?’—from Nellie, watching me.
‘You asked me to be truthful?—It is. I know the handwriting too well.’
‘Whose is it?’ she asked, in a low but steady voice.
‘That of the person—the Frenchwoman—whom he has married.’
‘Mademoiselle Fédore, who used to be at Hover?’
‘Mademoiselle Fédore.’
She raised her head, standing stiffly erect, her whole form tense and rigid for a moment. I could not speak. What comfort could I offer? Her grief was too sacred for me to profane it with any chance words of sympathy. I could only admire, reverence,—aye, and worship—before this martyrdom of true love.
At last: ‘I believed it. Yes—I was sure from the first. But it is very cruel. I have not deserved that insult. Whom have I followed? What honours have I tried to reach? I have striven, dear Mr. Brownlow, not even to think of him. Ever since my father forbade me to see him, or hold any sort of intercourse with him, there was but one thing to do—to obey. And I have obeyed. God knows that I have. You believe me?’
She glanced up in my face with something of the old witch-smile. My eyes answered yes. I dared not trust myself to speak. She looked down again on to the smooth turf and soft, scrambling, peeping chickens.
‘Tell me—I only saw her once, and saw she was very handsome. But is she—is she worthy of him?’
‘Do not ask me,’ I said, weakly perhaps; but I was hard pressed, wellnigh desperate. ‘Judge for yourself of the nature of the woman who could write such a letter.’
‘No, if I begin to judge, if I begin to fancy, I should go—it is wrong, it is wicked of me—but I feel, at times, I should go mad.’
She was silent again, looking down. Then:
‘God forgive her—for this letter has undone the work of months. Ever since we left Yorkshire, and came here to Westrea, I have struggled for my father’s sake, for Aunt Ann’s—and for my own pride’s sake too—to put the thought of him out of my mind, and interest myself in books, in my father’s schemes, and in my own home duties. I believed I had conquered myself, conquered my—my love. But this letter brought back all the pain, and stirred up something violent and evil in me—something I have never felt before. It is degrading. I am jealous, dear Mr. Brownlow—jealous. Do you know what that means?’
Alas! did I not know?—and most bitterly!
‘But of course you do not. How should you!’ she went on.
How should I indeed?—And she smiled at me in lovely apology, thereby cutting me to the quick. For did not her words, her look, show how wholly innocent and ignorant she was of all personal feeling on my part?
Well, and if so, what had I to complain of? Earlier, had it not been an integral element in that mystic, fantastic inner life of mine, to conceive of her loving the dear boy as deeply, eternally; even though as hopelessly, as I loved her? Now that my conception proved true in fact, what cause had I to be hurt, and to shrink? Was it not inconsistent, illogical, a very height of unreason? I took myself to task for my folly; but I suffered. Meanwhile an idea occurred to me, but I dared not put it into execution yet. In Fédore’s letter was one lie which could and, in justice to the dear boy, ought to be refuted. But I must wait until I could judge better of Nellie’s powers of endurance, and better trust my own calmness and nerve in handling a very delicate subject.
Now I only said to her:
‘Will you trust me with this letter, and let me keep it for the present?’
‘Why?’
‘Because—forgive me if I seem to preach to you—as long as it remains in your possession, you cannot, I think, but read and re-read it.’
‘That is true,’ she said.
‘And each time you do so, you renew your own pain, renew—quite naturally—your sense of injury, of anger at the insult offered you. Yet this renewal works to no good end. It is useless, merely causing you to move in a vicious circle, since it cannot alter the facts or affect the result.’
‘Yes—yes,’ she said. ‘Ah! how well you understand, dear Mr. Brownlow! Keep the letter. It is better out of my possession. And I feel less unhappy now that I have spoken to you. I longed for, yet dreaded, your coming. I knew that I should want to tell you of this—to speak freely to you; and yet I doubted if it were possible to talk on such a subject without seeming wanting in modesty. But you have made it easy by your sympathy—which I feel. It is wonderful. And I am very grateful—more grateful than I can express.’
For the first time her eyes had tears in them, and her brave lips quivered. I could bear no more. I turned and walked away a few steps, the sunshine gay among the pear blossom above my head, warm upon the turf at my feet. Ah, dear God, what a beautiful world—and I to go through it lonely all the days of my life!
Nellie picked up her bowl and came after me, a wistfulness in her sweet face.
‘What is the matter, dear Mr. Brownlow? I have not offended you?’ she said.
‘No—ten thousand times, no,’ I answered. ‘But the times are somewhat out of joint, and—well—would to heaven I were a better, abler man to set them right!’
Just then Braithwaite hailed us from the doorway. We joined him and, with him, went back to the house.
(To be continued.)
LAMENT BEFITTING THESE ‘TIMES OF NIGHT.’
BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
This Lament for martyr, soldier, and sage,
‘Him who had walked through the times of night,’
so apposite to these present times, is from verses in the MSS. of the British Museum, signed in her handwriting, ‘Unfinished. C. Brontë. 70 lines, Novbr. 28th, 1834.’ The lines bear no title. They were preserved by her in a collection of her writings for which she made a title-page, ‘The Scrap Book. A Mingling of Many Things, compiled by Lord C. A. F. Wellesley. C. Brontë, March 17th, 1835.’ The book contains ‘chips from her workshop’ during her nineteenth year, one of her happiest years at home. She was still using the pseudonym of her childhood days, associated with her idol, the Duke of Wellington. In this period she was celebrating heroes; compare her poems ‘Richard Cœur de Lion and Blondel’ and ‘Saul.’
The obvious allusion in the first twelve lines is to the protomartyr of Christianity. The stanza upon the ‘son of wisdom’ refers to Socrates, the protomartyr of Paganism. The lament for the soldier, ‘laid on the battle-plain,’ is set like a gem between these stanzas, and flashes out her conception of the true patriot and hero. She ranks the dying common soldier,
‘His thoughts all for his fatherland,’
with St. Stephen and Socrates, a trinity of martyrs of faith, of patriotism, and of philosophy.
I trust lovers of Charlotte Brontë will welcome, in this centennial year of her birth, the first publication of this poem.
George E. MacLean.
Lament for the Martyr who dies for his faith,
Who prays for his foes with his failing breath,
Who sees, as he looks to the kindling sky,
God and his captain, the Saviour, nigh;
Who sees the mighty recompense,
When soul is conquering flesh and sense;
Sees heaven and all its angels bright,
At the very end of his mortal fight,
At the black close of that agony
Which sets the impatient spirit free;
Then, as in Christ he sinks to sleep,
Weep for the Dying Martyr, weep.
And the soldier, laid on the battle-plain
Alone at the close of night, alone,
The passing off of some warlike-strain
Blent with his latest moan;
His thoughts all for his fatherland,
His feeble heart, his unnerved hand
Still quiveringly upraised to wield
Once more his bright sword on the field,
While wakes his fainting energy
To gain her yet one victory;
As he lies bleeding, cold and low,
As life’s red tide is ebbing slow,
Lament for fallen bravery.
For the son of wisdom, the holy sage,
Full of knowledge and hoar with age,
Him who had walked through the times of night,
As if on his path a secret light
Lustrous and pure and silent fell;
To all, save himself, invisible,
A secret ray from Heaven’s own shrine
Poured on that spirit half divine,
And making a single Isle of light
In the wide blank ocean of Pagan night;
Lament for him as you see him laid
Waiting for Death on the Dungeon bed,
The sickly lamp beside him burning,
Its dim ray falling on sorrow and gloom;
Around him his sad disciples mourning,
As they watch for the hour of awful doom;
And he, by coming death unshaken,
As if that slumber would soon be o’er,
As if all freshened he should waken
And see the light of morn once more.
Ay, on the sage’s, the soldier’s bier
I could drop many a pitying tear,
And as the martyr sinks to sleep
I could in love, in sorrow weep.
...
‘THE IMPERIAL JUNKER.’
WHAT THE KAISER’S OWN MEN THOUGHT OF HIM.
BY A NEUTRAL DIPLOMAT.
My work never brought me into intimate contact with court circles in Berlin, but—as the very existence of my country has hung for years on the tenuous thread of the Kaiser’s whim—I have missed no opportunity (during the decade or more in which special missions for my Government have taken me to various foreign capitals) to study the War Lord through those who, in one way or another, had been given opportunities for forming their estimates of him at first hand. My surest and most intimate knowledge of the Kaiser was gained, perhaps, from German and Austrian diplomatic and consular officials who were either included in the inner circle of his personal friends, or whose duties had been of a character to reveal to them the hidden springs and cogs of their master’s intricate machine of welt-politik. But very illuminative, also, I found the after-dinner confidences of several prominent Americans—notably two world-famous ‘kings of industry’ and an almost equally well known ‘intellectual’—through whom the Kaiser had made cleverly calculated efforts to extend his influence in the United States.
The German and Austrian officials alluded to were, for the most part, pre-war acquaintances, but their attitudes toward the Kaiser and his world policies are of pertinent interest at this time as showing that the present apparently unbroken front of German unity is in reality a structure no less artificial and precarious than the tottering ‘paper castle’ of the German scheme of war finance. But two of the Americans—the very ones, too, I found most impressed by Wilhelm’s ‘guide-counsellor-and-friend’ tactics—I have seen since the first of the present year, and it is a significant coincidence that each of them prefaced a scathing denunciation and sweeping repudiation of the Kaiser with the words, ‘He lied to me!’
It is undoubtedly true, as has occasionally been stated in the British press by those intimately acquainted with Germany and the Germans, that the Kaiser was not an ultra-militarist; or rather, that while he might be so rated according to the standard of less ‘organised-for-war’ countries than Germany, he was not so extreme in his views in this regard as many of the leaders of the so-called ‘Military Party,’ the royal member of which was the Crown Prince. But it is true that he was the leader in fact as well as in name—the soul and the mainspring—of what I may call the ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ movement, which had for its end not only Teutonic ‘kultural’ supremacy, but also Teutonic commercial, financial, and—ultimately—political supremacy. And it is also true that he strove to attain these ends by methods so rough-shod, tactless and cynical that the arbitrament of the sword became the inevitable and only alternative to the national effacement of those countries which stood in Germany’s way.
Let me make myself plain on this point. The Kaiser strove not only to win Germany a place in the sun, but to make Germany the place in the sun, and, in a sense, it is true, as he has so often claimed, that he desired and worked to bring this about by peaceful means. But—he did not follow this course through any inherent love for, or humane predilection toward peace, but only because it was the cheaper way; because it would cost less in treasure and industrial potentiality; because it was calculated to set back Germany less than would the drain of even a victorious war.
He hoped—by building up the most perfect military machine the world had ever known, supplemented by a navy unquestionably designed to equal and ultimately surpass that of Great Britain—to bluff and bully his way through to his goal without paying the price. The principal difference between the Kaiser and the German military party leaders was that the latter proposed to fight first and take what they wanted after all opposition had been crushed, while the former proposed trying to seize what he wanted first and to fight only if some one had the audacity to resist. Both were the schemes of international outlaws, with the militarists comparable to the brigand and the Kaiser to the burglar. That is the most one can say for the Kaiser’s vaunted ‘peacefulness.’
Twice or thrice—notably in the cases of Tsingtau and Bosnia-Herzegovina—the Imperial thief or his accomplices got away, unscathed, with the ‘goods’; but at Agadir his nerve failed him and he was compelled to withdraw with empty pockets. The German military party leaders, knowing his aims and methods rendered ultimate war inevitable, bided their time far more patiently than would have been the case had they not known the Kaiser was no lover of peace for its own sake; that either his bungling or his opportunism must finally make his means, like his end, identical with their own.
It was, therefore, not among even the extremest militarists that one found the deepest distrust of their impetuous emperor, but rather among the members of two other classes (I am not considering the Socialists in this article at all, because the feud between them and the Kaiser was known to all the world), the diplomats and the industrialists. Among German diplomatic and consular officials one met occasional personal favourites of the Kaiser who manifested a kind of sycophantic devotion to him; but the great majority of them—through their broader knowledge of the world, and especially their keener appreciation of the latent might of the British Empire—were restive and apprehensive over the parts they were being compelled to play in a policy which they knew could only lead to a conflict from which the chances of Germany’s emerging victorious were very slender indeed. The most widely informed and most rational of these—and, therefore, the bitterest critics of the Kaiser—were men doing the same character of ‘emergency work’ on which I have so long been engaged myself. Sent on special missions of one kind or another to various parts of the world, they had an appreciation of world ‘values,’ a ‘sense’ for the set of political and racial undercurrents, such as no Prussian Junker ever attained to. Heart and soul in the ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ crusade though they were, there is scarcely one of these I can recall who was not distrustful of the Kaiser’s way of trying to bring the thing about, and, when opportunity offered for them to speak out, several were frankly condemnatory.
Of such was an unusually level-headed German who was a fellow passenger of mine on the British-India mailboat from Rangoon to Calcutta about five years ago. He claimed to have been on a special tour of investigation of Germany’s Pacific colonies and to be taking advantage of his return trip to see what the Netherlands and England were doing in a colonial way. It was just at the crisis of the Agadir imbroglio, and a wireless message announcing the recall of the gunboat Panther (after Mr. Lloyd George’s ‘Mansion House’ speech had brought home to the Kaiser the disagreeable truth that Great Britain was ready to stand by France) was the direct occasion of the conversation I am about to allude to.
Up to this moment I had found my friend unusually reticent on international politics, even for a German diplomat, but his palpable relief at the turn things had taken over Morocco seemed to have the effect of loosening his hitherto well-bitted tongue.
‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘I am whole-heartedly glad to hear this news, even though, as a German, the dénouement is a very humiliating one. But for a long time I have been afraid that this periodic waving of a lighted torch over such a powder-magazine as Europe has become would cause an explosion. It will have to come if—if “someone” continues to scatter sparks in the future as he has done in the past. Please don’t understand me as intimating that Germany would not render a good account of herself in such an event (you may be sure that her enemies would have some terrible surprises in store for them); but the folly of the thing lies in the fact that we are already on our way to win by “peaceful penetration” all that the most successful war could give us. But if we should fight a war and chance to lose it—nay, even if it should result in more or less of a draw—Germany will never again have such an opportunity for a commercial—and through that, for a political—conquest of the world as she has enjoyed for the last two or three decades, and as she will continue to enjoy so long, but only so long, as we can keep at peace. That is why I deplore so deeply the fact that we have such⸺’ He checked the half-spoken German expletive that had leapt to the tip of his tongue and concluded with ‘that we are not under a safer and saner leadership.’
Very similar views of the Kaiser’s foreign policy I found were held by many outstanding figures among what I have called the German ‘industrialists.’ In this class I would include the heads of the great shipping companies and all of the important manufactories save only those, like Krupps, which were engaged in turning out war supplies. Herr Ballin was, I am assured, one of those who watched the development of the Kaiser’s insidiously ruthless policy with the gravest misgivings, and it is a German shipper only a shade less powerful than the head of the Hamburg-Amerika line that I am about to quote in this connection. I had met this gentleman more or less casually at several points during his tour of the Far East, but it was not until we chanced to be spending the same week-end at the Peak Hotel, Hongkong, that we had any chance to exchange views.
‘How are German trade prospects in the East?’ I asked him one evening as we sat over after-dinner coffee and cigars on the veranda of the hotel.
‘Colossal, simply colossal,’ was the reply. ‘Quite beyond anything I had hoped to find. Will you please take a look at this,’ and he took from his pocket and unfolded a little publication called ‘The Daily Consular Reports,’ published by the American State Department at Washington. Turning to a report written by the American Consul-General at Hongkong, he pointed to a table of figures preceded by a paragraph of comment. I have not the exact figures in mind at this moment, but their purport was to show the remarkable manner in which Germany’s share of Hongkong’s trade had increased until it was finally greater than that of Great Britain itself.
‘That is the one most significant thing I have observed on my whole tour,’ he said. ‘To fully appreciate the weight of it, you must consider that not only is Hongkong a British port, but that it is also a port whose principal, almost its only, raison d’être was commercial. And now what do we see? To-day—on the strength of the official figures of the representative of a nation that specialises in figures—Germany has 60 per cent. of all its trade. And next year it will have more, and still more the year after. What do you think of that?’
‘I think, in the first place,’ I replied, ‘that it seems rather effectually to dispose of Germany’s contention that she is not enjoying the “freedom of the seas”; and, in the second place, that it would appear to be a remarkable tribute to the efficacy of Emperor William’s welt-politik.’
The latter was a ‘bait’ I had often used successfully before under similar circumstances, and in this instance the ‘rise’ was sharp and clean. Indeed, I think he was rather glad to avail himself of the excuse to avoid the ‘freedom of the seas’ issue.
‘Emperor William’s welt-politik!’ he fairly shouted, grasping the arms of his long reclining chair in his anger. ‘Emperor William’s welt-politik is the worst, almost the one, menace to the continuance of our commercial triumphs. We have done what we have in spite of, not because of, this kind of welt-politik. What is more, it is the one thing that threatens to bring all our achievements to nought. Yes, not only to check our advance, but even to put us back so far that we may never be able to regain the place we hold to-day, to say nothing of the one we might attain to in the course of another decade of peace.
‘See here!’ he exclaimed, raising himself in his chair and peering down across the verdant slopes of the Peak to the arcaded squares of the city and the bay beyond, where the ships of all the world swung at their anchors in the turning tide and a thousand wide-eyed, high-sterned junks came winging home to roost for the night. ‘Do you want to know the reason Germany has already the greater part of the trade of Hongkong? why Germany, if left alone, will ultimately control the trade of the world? There’s the answer. Can you read it?’
Kowloon, with its newly-opened railway disappearing into the ‘China-side’ hills, the grim lines of the four-funnelled British battle-cruiser at the naval dock, the red rectangles of bunting sliding gently down the flag-poles at the sterns of a hundred British merchantmen at the boom of the sunset gun—I scanned these for the answer, but they all seemed to argue the other way—against German dominance.
‘I give it up,’ I said finally. ‘What is it? Where is it?’
‘There,’ he replied, pointing to the solid blocks of tall office buildings in the heart of the town and along the Bund. ‘You see, do you not, that some of the buildings are dark and deserted, and that in others the lights are being turned on? Well then! The lighted ones are German, the dark ones English. That is the answer. The English are at the Cricket Club (see the lights on the veranda) and at Happy Valley—you saw them trooping to one or the other all the way from three o’clock onward. But in some of the German offices those lights will be burning at nine and ten o’clock, and even up to twelve or one on the nights before mail day. That is the answer. We Germans are winning the trade of the world because of our capacity for, our willingness to, work, work, work,’ he concluded, punctuating the final words with blows upon the wicker arms of his chair.
He puffed his cigar in angry impatience for a few moments, peering moodily into the gathering darkness, before resuming. ‘The continuance of our present rate of progress would win us everything if only we could contrive to remain free to concentrate our energies upon it. Instead of working to that end, however, it is as though every move of—from a certain quarter, was deliberately calculated to provoke, to embroil us with, the very powers whom it would serve every material interest we have to remain friendly with. A very little more of the brand of welt-politik that the Kaiser’ (he did not attempt an euphemism this time) ‘has been launching during the last few years, and we will not, cannot, be left free to win on to the goal that is already in sight. There is, perhaps, an even chance—certainly not better than that—that a great European war might be a short-cut to our commercial supremacy; but, the way things are going now, we take no chances. And if we failed to win the war, we could never have the same clear field again. You will understand now why I feel so strongly opposed to an Imperial policy which, if not radically changed, cannot but end in war.’
Between diplomats, colonial officials, manufacturers, shippers, etc., I could mention at least a score of Germans of outstanding prominence whom I heard express views so nearly identical with those already quoted that it will hardly be worth while setting them down here. (These would include, I may say, two men who have rendered important service—one politically and the other as an engineer—to the Kaiser in Asiatic Turkey, and another—whom I had met in East Africa and Samoa—who is a member of the present Cabinet, and, moreover, prominently mentioned for the ‘reconstruction period’ Premiership.) Among all of these there was not a single individual who did not have a far clearer comprehension of ‘world problems’—a less ‘warped’ international perspective—than the Kaiser (from the very one-sidedness of his life) could possibly have had. They may be taken as thoroughly representative of the very small class of Germans whose minds and observations had been sufficiently broad to have made their opinions and admonitions worth heeding. No less ‘Deutschland-über-Alles’ than the Kaiser himself, theirs was a practical policy which might have succeeded, while his was a mad piece of international adventuring that not only marked the Kaiser himself for a fall, but—since his country elected to follow him—also made inevitable the downfall of Germany. Had counsellors of this type been heeded, there is little doubt that welt-politik would have been exercised in a manner that would have prevented its becoming, for many years at least, the veritable boomerang into which the Kaiser’s inordinate vanity, cynicism and hot-headedness have converted it. From Great Britain’s standpoint, however, there can be no doubt that it was best that the ‘Imperial Bungler’ should have been allowed to have his own way, that the ‘showdown’ should have been forced at the time it was. The Germany of a decade from now would have been far richer, far more wonderful, far more difficult to defeat than the Germany of to-day. Just as I have heard so many far-sighted Germans say in the course of the last decade, the Kaiser, with his ‘shining armour’ and his trumpetings, has, in the end, only played into the hands of his enemies by awakening the lion which he might have netted—had, indeed, already half netted—in its sleep.
The interesting question which now arises is what attitude these powerful leaders, who feared, distrusted and warned against the Kaiser’s policy for more than a decade, are going to take toward that ill-advised monarch when the once rapidly rising edifice of German commercial and political domination which they had done so much to rear, finally comes down, as come it must, in ruins. Most, if not all, of the men I have alluded to or quoted were already rowing in the Kaiser’s war-galley when the explosion they had so long foreseen and dreaded rent Europe in twain and left them only the dust of their past achievements and less than the ashes of their hopes and dreams. Doubtless they have strained obediently if sullenly at their oars (I have read glowing accounts in the German papers of what several of them have done); but surely not without arrière pensée, not without thoughts of how differently things might have gone if even an amiable nonentity had been their ruler instead of an imperial adventurer.
The fact that, even in the present development of events, Germany’s future, both immediate and remote, looms far darker than even the most prescient or pessimistic of those who followed so mistrustfully the bellicose gesturings of ‘The Mailed Fist’ could have well anticipated, must bode a state of feeling against the man who is responsible for it all that augurs ominously for the lone figure at the helm of the German ship of state when it becomes a case of sauve qui peut in the final wreck. When this day comes—how different a one will it be from ‘Der Tag’ to which the hoodwinked German so long has lifted his glass!—‘I told you so’ will be the mildest of the reproaches that will be launched at the wrecker from the lips of the men whose task it will be to salvage the foundered ship as best they may.
Cut off by the pall of the more imminent war clouds, we on the outside have as yet had little chance to gauge the force of the storm that is gathering to break upon Germany from within. Whether the breaking of that storm will precede and accelerate the coming of peace, or whether the coming of peace will precede and accelerate the breaking of the storm, it is still too early to say. But break it must, sooner or later, and when this hour arrives I feel that I know enough of the temper of the men who distrusted and hated the Kaiser before the war to be safe in saying, that whatever of his just deserts he may have escaped receiving at the hands of the Allies he will stand every chance of having meted out to him at the hands of his own outraged people.
THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: AT ALL COSTS.
BY BOYD CABLE.
One might have supposed it impossible for the Colonel to have found a single favourable condition about the coming fight. His battalion had withered away to little more than half its strength; that remaining half was almost completely worn out with want of sleep, with constant cruel fighting, with forced marching; had scarcely been brought out of the water-logged trenches to rest before being marched up into them again, had the prospect before them now of a desperate fight against enormous odds with no cover but the inadequate scratches that in those days passed for trenches, and with even these battered and smashed by shell fire, swimming in water and liquid mud.
It might even be difficult to understand any reason for his ‘Well, thank Heaven the orders are plain and simple enough this time,’ since those orders were ‘to hold the position at all costs until relieved,’ the words ‘at all costs’ being heavily underlined, if one had not known the nightmare uncertainty that in the Retreat-Advance days worried the harassed commanding officers to a point of distraction. Usually the orders were full of instructions to do this if the Germans retired, to do that if they advanced in strength, to do something else if they attacked any one of a dozen points; to conform to the movements of a certain regiment, to support the advance or cover the retirement of another or another—to have, in fact, enough possibilities to consider and act promptly upon to have kept a dozen heads and a hundred eyes very fully occupied; and all, of course, in addition to the C.O.’s own paramount job of fighting his battalion.
So that after all there was some cause for his relief at the simplicity of the orders which this time bade him hold on ‘at all costs,’ even although it might well be that those orders were the death-warrant of himself and most of his remaining men. He had no doubts as to the nature of the struggle close ahead; indeed there was so little of a secret about it that every officer and man of the battalion was fully aware that the Germans had determined on an attack which was to break through the thin British line. There was to be no manœuvring, no feinting here and striking there, no cunning tactics about this attack. The Germans were going to strike straight and hard and heavy, and burst through by sheer hard fighting and weight of numbers—‘Leastways,’ as the brigade signaller put it in passing on this cheerful intelligence to the battalion signallers, ‘that’s what they think they’re goin’ to do.’
‘I like their bloomin’ cheek,’ said the signaller who took the message. ‘I wonder what they fancy we’ll be doin’ while they break through.’ The fact that a weak battalion of British infantry should consider itself fit to stem the advance of ten times their number of picked German troops did not appear to strike him in any way as being a piece of equally ‘bloomin’ cheek.’
The promised attack, however, did not develop for the next forty-eight hours, and during the whole of that time the battalion had to lie still and suffer such an inferno of bombardment, such a purgatory of bitter cold and driving rain, such a misery of knee-deep mud and crouching in painfully cramped positions, that at the end of the time they were openly praying for an attack, British or German, they did not care which, so long as it ended or even relieved the intolerable waiting.
‘I made up my mind a month ago that I was bound to be killed,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff of ‘C’ Company disgustedly. ‘I’d sorter reconciled myself to bein’ blotted out by a bullet, or blasted off the earth by a Black Maria, or skewered on a bayonet; but blow me if I ever counted on bein’ drownded in a two-foot mud puddle as I looks like bein’ now.’
‘Why don’t the soors[1] come on an’ fight it out,’ said Corporal Smedley. ‘They bukked[2] enough about wot they was goin’ to do. Why don’t they hitherao[3] an’ do it. I’m about sick o’ this shellin’ game.’
‘The shellin’ is bad enough,’ agreed Sergeant Ruff, ‘but I’m sicker o’ this swimmin’ gymkhana. They ought to serve us out a cork jacket an’ a swimmin’ suit an’ a harpoon a-piece instead o’ a rifle, to play this game proper.’
He was certainly fairly entitled to call the shelling ‘bad enough.’ It was the worst they had known yet, and that, for men who had been in it from the first days of Mons, was saying a good deal. The Germans appeared to have selected their portion of the front for the heaviest concentration of their artillery, and a rain of shells fell without ceasing night or day on the battered trenches. The men kept what cover they could, but that was little use against monster shells which blew to fragments them and their cover together. The British artillery was completely overwhelmed, and although it had struggled gallantly to maintain the unequal contest, was unable to afford the slightest relief to the suffering infantry. The casualties in the battalion mounted steadily, and apparently it was merely a matter of time until it should be utterly destroyed; but the men, although they grumbled deep and loud about the weather and the wet and the mud, the slowness of the Germans to attack, the bully beef and the biscuits and the missing of a rum ration, uttered no single grumble about the fate that kept them there or the wounds and death that carried them off singly and in groups.
At dawn of the third day the shelling rose to its highest pitch of fury. The wet ground shook to the roaring blast of heavy high-explosive, the air pulsed and sang to the shriek of passing shells, the crack of bursting high-explosive ‘woolly bears,’ the rip and thud of their shrapnel showers. The noise was deafening, the smoke and reek of high-explosive fumes blinding and choking. The flank of the battalion rested on a road which ran through the British and German lines, and the trenches to both sides of this road appeared to have been selected for the heaviest share by far of the bombardment.
‘They’ll charge across the open and down the road,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff. ‘You see now if I’m not right.’
‘I don’t care a two-anna-bit how or where they charges,’ answered the private he spoke to, ‘if so be they’d only be jildi[4] an’ get on wi’ the drill.’
‘Here they come,’ said the sergeant hurriedly. ‘Dekko[5] the road. Wot did I tell you? ’Strewth, an’ there ain’t ’arf a mob of ’em, I don’t think.’
‘Hold your fire, men,’ called one of the officers. ‘Wait till they get well in the open. Pass the word—hold your fire;’ and down the line of the wrecked trench ran the order from man to man, ‘Hold your fire—pass the word—hold your fire.’
So they held their fire, although on the other side of the road the trenches had already opened at the longer range. Deceived apparently by the silence into believing that the battalion had retired or been annihilated by the storm of shell-fire, the Germans poured out into the open and swarmed down in solid mass. They sang in a deep chorus as they came running heavily and waving their rifles over their heads.
‘Blimey, ’ark at ’em singing,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff. ‘Come on, my bloomin’ canaries, you’ll get somethin’ to sing about presently.’
And they did ‘get something.’ When they were within two hundred yards of the trench an officer’s whistle shrilled, a line of heads and rifle barrels appeared above the parapet, and in one long rolling crash the rifles broke out in the ‘mad minute’ of fire. Now, in the training of the old Regular Army the ‘mad minute’ was a firing practice to which a good deal of time and attention was devoted, and a remarkable proficiency attained in the two essential respects of speed in firing and accuracy of aim. Since it was a practice in which this particular battalion had acquired a notable reputation at a target and range immeasurably more difficult than was now presented to it, the effect on the dense mass of the attack may be imagined. The front rank was simply swept away in the first five seconds of the minute, and for another full fifty-five seconds the bullets beat down on the block of men, chopped up and cut away the advancing face of it, exactly as a chaff-cutter slices to fragments the straw bundle pushed under its destroying knives. At the end of the minute the mass had come to a standstill; at the end of another it had broken and shredded away and was swirling back to cover with the relentless bullets still hailing after it and tearing through and through it.
‘Funny thing,’ said Sergeant Ruff grimly, ‘I don’t seem to ’ave ’eard no singin’ lately. P’raps them Prussians ’as found out they come to the wrong room for the smokin’ concert.’
The respite was very short. Another mass of Germans swarmed out from their trenches and came on at a hard run, and again the British rifles broke out in a devastating whirlwind of fire. The attack was pushed harder and closer this time, till the defenders of the trench could simply point their rifles and fire without putting eye to sights and yet not miss because of the nearness and size of the target. Again the attack broke, or rather it was withered and burnt away as it came and came into the face of the furnace-blast of fire; but this time the battalion did not cease to work bolt and trigger at top speed, because on their flank across the road the rush had come further and was already in places pouring in and down over the trenches. The regiment there had to give up the bullet for the bayonet and fight now for their bare lives; but the weight of numbers was too much for them, and gradually, still fighting fiercely, they were overborne, pressed back, thrust from the trenches yard by yard, killed where they stood in the parts where they still clung stubbornly and refused to budge. The regiment was practically annihilated, and their trenches were in the hands of the enemy.
‘Now,’ said Sergeant Ruff, ‘this is where we gets ready to hang out the “House Full” sign.’
‘Going to be a regular Guest Night in Mess, eh, sergeant? and every prospect of a full table,’ said a youthful lieutenant, grinning—and fell forward in the sergeant’s arms with the laugh still on his lips and a bullet through his heart.
The Colonel had been killed by a shell the first day, and before he went he passed the word to the next senior, ‘Don’t forget, Major ... simple orders ... hold on at all costs.’
The Major was not long in command before he was out of action with a shattered thigh, and following him acting C.O. after C.O. was killed or wounded, until now the command was in the hands of the only captain left in the battalion. And each C.O. in turn received or knew his simple orders—‘Hold on at all costs,’ and no C.O. of them all had any doubt as to how they were to be carried out.
So it was that when the trenches on their flank went, and the immediate prospect before the battalion was of out-and-out annihilation, the Captain made his way round the trenches, splashing through muddy pools streaked and tinted with crimson, stumbling over the dead, stepping as carefully as might be over the men too sorely wounded to move aside, and repeated to his few remaining officers and senior N.C.O.’s the clear instructions, ‘Hold on at all costs.’
‘Not much doubt, sir, of how much the cost will be,’ one very junior lieutenant answered him.
‘No,’ said the Captain gravely; ‘but we’ve done our job so far, and that’s always something. Now we’ve only to make a good finish to it.’
‘We’ll do that all right,’ said the lieutenant confidently. ‘We’ll be cornered soon, but there’s enough of us left to make them feel our teeth. And anyhow, we’ve made them pay a pretty full price already for this patch of ground,’ and he motioned with his hand out towards where the open out in front of their trench was carpeted thick with the German dead.
An orderly, stooping low, splashed along the trench to them. ‘The wire’s through again, sir,’ he said, ‘and Brigade wishes to speak to you if you can spare a minute.’ He said nothing of how the wire had been got through, or of how its repairing had cost another good half-dozen casualties—which in itself is another tale well worth the telling. The Captain went to the telephone dug-out and crawled into the shallow, wet-dripping cave and called the Brigade and spoke with them there for five minutes. The Adjutant who was at the other end was an old personal friend of the Captain’s, but chiefly because neither knew the instant the wire might be cut again they first talked strict business and left personal affairs out of it.
‘Brigadier says to ask what chance have you,’ asked the Adjutant abruptly. ‘How much longer can you hold on?’
‘Ten minutes after they attack in force,’ said the Captain with equal brevity; ‘fifteen with luck; twenty at the outside. Trenches across the road are gone, you know, and we’re getting cut up badly with enfilade fire now. There’s nothing to stop them getting round behind us, so I expect to be attacked front, rear, and flank. We can’t stand that off long.’
‘They’ve managed to spare us a few companies of supports,’ said the Adjutant quickly. ‘They’re occupying the line behind you now, and the moment they’re ready they’ll be pushed up to help hold your trenches and retake the ones on your flank.’
‘If they don’t hurry,’ said the Captain, ‘they’ll have the job of retaking both lots. By the sound of the firing I fancy the attack is coming now. I must get along and see.’
‘All right. Good luck, Jacky.’
‘Good-bye,’ said the Captain. ‘You know the messages I’d like sent if.... And tell the General we held on to the end. Good-bye.’
He was gone, and at the other end the Adjutant sat for some minutes listening to the empty singing of the wire. That cut off suddenly to the flat deadness that means a broken connection, and the Adjutant dropped the useless instrument and hurried out to try to catch a glimpse of the last act. It was little enough he could see, for a driving misty rain obscured the view again; but from that little and from the fragments that he gathered after from the handful of wounded brought in, it was easy enough to piece out the finish.
The attack developed, as the Captain had predicted, on front, rear, and flank. Under cover of a storm of frontal and enfilade fire the Germans swarmed up along the rear of the battalion’s trenches. A score or two of men were faced about to try to beat back this rear attack, but their bullets were as powerless to stop it as pebbles flung in the face of a breaking wave. The rear attack secured a footing in the trenches and began to spread slowly along them. Their progress was disputed furiously, but in the end the remnants of the battalion were beaten back to a point where a couple of shallow communication trenches ran back to the supporting trench on the one side, and another branched off forward to the ruins of the front-line trench. Even then a few score men might have saved themselves by taking the road to the rear. None did, but to the last man turned frontward and joined the handful of their fellows. In the end the remains of the battalion clung together to a few yards of battered trench that twisted about the telephone dug-out, and finished out the fight there.
Few as they were, it took some minutes to come at them, and before the last hand-to-hand scrimmage had finished there came from the mist to rearward a clatter of rifle fire, the rush of a charging line. The Germans had been so occupied with their task of clearing out the last of the defence that the fresh attack took them by surprise. The rescuing companies were in on them before they could face about to meet the charge, so that the charge went crashing home, swept the trenches clear in a wild five minutes’ work, pushed the Germans across the road, and drove into the trenches there after them. At this critical moment another two companies charged in from the rear—companies in those days, remember, were given, and cheerfully accepted, the work of battalions, just as platoons took and did the work of companies; and the Germans, taken in flank and rear, were accounted for to the last man in killed, wounded, and prisoners.
The Captain was picked up in that last patch of trenches the battalion had held. He carried wounds enough to have killed a dozen, and his last word again was, ‘I’m glad we were able to hold on—till we were relieved.’
They found Sergeant Billy Ruff, too, with no more than a few flesh wounds and a smashed leg. The Adjutant, in the piecing out of the end of the story, sat by him and asked questions while the sergeant’s wounds were being dressed and he sucked hard on a damp cigarette. ‘At all costs, the orders was,’ said the sergeant at the finish. ‘An’ that patch o’ duck-pond trenches has just cost me seven-an’-six that was owed me by my corporal that’s killed, a cock-eyed leg, an’ a carcase full o’ rheumatics for the rest o’ my days; an’ it’s cost the army the finest set of officers that ever stepped, an’ the best battalion o’ fightin’ men it owned.’
‘Amen to all of that,’ said the Adjutant. ‘But—you held on.’
‘Course we held on,’ said Sergeant Billy Ruff, his voice showing just a shade of surprise at the comment. ‘Y’see we was ordered to hold on.’
Press Bureau: Passed for Publication.