Brothers in arms

by E. Alexander Powell

There is another form of sacrifice which the American people will inevitably be called upon to make, and that is to accept without complaint the heavy restrictions which the Government will find it necessary to put on their private activities. The Government must have the first call on coal, iron, steel, timber, chemicals, on supplies of every kind, and particularly on transportation and labor. The sooner the public gets over the idea that we must have “business as usual,” the better. The country must immediately awake to the fact that we cannot carry on a war like this with one hand and continue to do all the business we did before with the other. We can no more expect to change from peace conditions to war conditions without business inconvenience and loss than we can expect to send an army into battle without having killed and wounded. We must, therefore, adjust our business and personal affairs so as to support the army with the greatest possible efficiency, and we must do it with the least possible delay. The woman who orders a gown which she does not need is not helping labor to find employment, as she likes to think; she is preventing a soldier from having a uniform—for how is labor to be had for making uniforms unless it is released from making other clothes? Our soldiers must have blankets—but how are those blankets to be had unless the looms are released from something else? How is steel to be had for food-ships and field-guns and destroyers unless there is a prompt curtailment of its use for other purposes? If one of your pet trains is suddenly discontinued, don’t grumble, but just stop to remember that the Government needs that train and its crew for the purpose of moving troops and munitions. If your favorite restaurant curtails its menu, bear in mind that it has been done by order of the Government, which recognizes the imperative necessity for food control. It is a stupendous task that we have undertaken, and it will require every particle of grit and staying power that we possess to see it through.

I would that every man and woman in these United States might show the spirit which led the third-year cadets at West Point, who were this summer entitled by law and custom to the one furlough a cadet has in four years, to unite in waiving their right to these two months to which they had looked forward so long and so eagerly and for the spending of which they had made so many plans, and to offer their services to the Secretary of War in any work for which he thinks them fitted. In writing to his parents to explain why he would probably not be home on the long-talked-of furlough, one of these cadets said:—

“You know, as cadets, we haven’t anything but these two months to give, so we thought if we offered all we had it would maybe be worth while, even if it wasn’t much.”

How about it, my friend? Have you offered your country all you have to give?

There are doubtless those who sometimes ask themselves, though they may deem it the part of wisdom not to ask others, “Even if the Germans were to win this war, what difference would it make anyway?” Well, just for the sake of argument, suppose that our European allies had been forced to sign a separate peace and that Germany, thus left free to give us her undivided attention, had landed an army on these shores (which she could do with comparatively little trouble, the military experts agree) and held a portion of our Eastern seaboard. And suppose that one evening a column of men in gray came tramping into the little town where you live—Quincy or Tarrytown or Plainfield or New Rochelle, which it doesn’t matter. And suppose that the first thing they did after establishing themselves in your town was to arrest the mayor and a score or so of the leading citizens—some of your closest friends, members of your own family, perhaps, among them—and lock them up in the jail or the town hall. And suppose that the next morning, when you start down town, your eye is caught by a notice tacked to a tree. The notice, which is headed by the Prussian eagle, reads something like this:—

PROCLAMATION

In future the inhabitants of places situated near railways and telegraph lines which have been destroyed will be punished without mercy (whether they are guilty of this destruction or not). For this purpose hostages have been taken in all places in the vicinity of railways in danger of similar attacks; and at the first attempt to destroy any railway, telegraph, or telephone line, they will be shot immediately.

The Governor

And supposing, still for the sake of argument, that that same evening some one, ignorant of the German threat or wishful to hamper the invaders at any cost, succeeds in destroying a bridge or cutting a telegraph line. And that, early the next morning, you are awakened by a sudden crash, as though many rifles were fired in unison. And that, hurriedly dressing, you hasten down town to learn what has happened. And that, turning into the main street, you see a row of bodies—the bodies of men some of whom you had known all your life, men with whom you had gone to college, men who were fellow lodge-members, men with whom you had played bridge at the club, the body of your father or your son or your brother perhaps among them—sprawled on the asphalt in grotesque and horrid attitudes amid a slowly widening lake of crimson. Suppose that this dreadful thing happened, not in some European town of which you had but vaguely heard, but in your own town—in Newburyport or Yonkers or Princeton, which it doesn’t matter. Then would you ask “Even if the Germans were to win this war, what difference would it make anyway?” The proclamation just quoted is not imaginary. It was signed by Field Marshal von der Goltz when German governor of Belgium and was posted on the walls of Brussels in October, 1914. I saw it there myself. It is to destroy the monstrous system which permits and approves the execution of people “whether they are guilty or not” that we have gone to war. For if we don’t destroy it, it will most certainly destroy us. The trouble is that we stubbornly shut our eyes to the gravity of the situation which confronts us; we have not aroused ourselves to the colossal magnitude of our task. Sacrifices and sorrows without number await us. Before this business is over with, we must expect to be deprived of many of our comforts and most of our pleasures. We must be prepared to accept without grumbling the imposition of very burdensome taxes. We must be prepared to make countless personal sacrifices, to submit to innumerable annoying restrictions. We must expect months of discouragement and heart-breaking anxiety and gloom. We must gird ourselves for those dark days when the lists of the wounded and the dead begin to come in. For such will be the price of victory.

The surest way to bring about an early peace is to convince Germany, beyond the possibility of misunderstanding, that we stand behind the Government to the last cent in our purses and the last breath in our bodies; that in our vocabulary there is no such word as “quit”; that, no matter how appalling the price that may be exacted from us, we shall not relax our efforts by one iota until the world has been “made free for Democracy” forever.