My sister Decima, after having been attached to the French Army in January, 1915, ran the Leave Club in Paris, which did such fine work and made a home for thousands of British soldiers in 1917; it continued there after the Armistice, till 1920. I shall not attempt to describe it, as I hope she may one day do so herself. When the Armistice was signed, she went at once to Cologne. She was one of the first women to get to the city, and began at once to organise a club for the Army of Occupation, on the same lines as the one in Paris. Before she left, the work of the club had come to an end, owing to the large reduction of the Army of Occupation. I went over, and together we did a tour of the battlefields. With my sister were her Commandant, Miss Cornwallis, Mrs. Carter, whose husband did fine work with the submarines and went down in the one he commanded, and Miss Fisher, who was my sister’s chauffeuse in Cologne. We took the same route as the Germans had taken into Belgium in 1914, and travelled over a thousand miles of devastated land. From Ypres to Verdun, everywhere the Graves Commission were busy. We saw cemetery after cemetery full of little wooden crosses, which Rupert Brooke said made “some corner in a foreign field ... forever England”. We saw the parties of Annamites who collected the dead from the battlefields; they were most repulsive looking, and I was told that they were the only people who could be persuaded to do the work. From Fort Fleure, in the valley, we saw the little village of wooden huts where they lived, under the direction of one British soldier, who lived there with his wife. Through all the battle area were dwarfed, distorted trees, twisted into almost sinister shapes; and among them moved the blue figures of the Annamites from Tonkin, looking for the dead.
It was spring-time, and on Vimy Ridge the cowslips were growing, and at Verdun the ground was thick with violets. I gathered bunches and placed them on lonely graves. Looking in my note-book, I see under “Verdun” the words, “miles of utter desolation”. I shall never forget those miles and miles of wasted land, torn and churned up by the guns, the ground still scarred by trenches and pitted with shell-holes, here and there a grave with a wooden cross, and often a steel helmet on it—a pathetic loneliness. I thought what England had escaped: we still had our green fields, our wonderful trees; our villages were still standing, and our factories still held machinery that was useful and might be worked:
“This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war;
· · · · ·
This precious stone set in a silver sea.”
England was unchanged. The memory of what I saw there in France made me understand why the French people demand reparations from the nation that wasted France.
Outside Arras we met an R.A.C. man and asked him to tell us of an hotel where we might stay for the night. He told us of one, and we went on our way. When we got to the town we could not find the hotel, and asked a Tommy near the ruined Cathedral if he could direct us. He offered to show us the way, and got on to the step of the car beside Miss Cornwallis, who was riding outside. She asked him what part of England he came from, and found he came from the same small place in Kent that she had lived in all her life. He gave her the additional information: “I know you quite well; I’ve driven your father’s cows scores of times!” We reached the hotel, which was a kind of large bungalow, with canvas walls, run by an Australian—and very well run, too. I went to my room, which I was sharing with my sister, and realised that every word which was said in the next room could be heard. The next room was occupied by the R.A.C. soldier who had directed us to come to the hotel. He was not alone, but was saying “Good-bye” to his French sweetheart. Poor girl, he was leaving for England the next day, and she wanted very much to come with him. It was rather pathetic, and I wished so much the walls had not been so thin.
When one thinks now of the “Lights out”, the marching men, the ambulances at the stations, the men in khaki, and the air raids, it all seems like something that happened hundreds of years ago! Talking of air raids reminds me that some time ago I was rehearsing with an American producer for an American play. Everyone on the stage had to be in a great state of tension, and, to convey his meaning, he said to me: “You’re all as if you were waiting for a bomb to drop. Do you understand what I mean? Have you ever heard a bomb drop?” I assured him that I had, and knew exactly what “it was like”. I thought, too, “What do some of you know of England, and England in war time!”