I do not in the least wish to suggest that there has been little kindness on this side and much on the other. I am simply trying to restore the balance. So far (as is usual in war-time) the game of hatred has been played with loaded dice. Let us welcome kindness everywhere. Here, then, is a different kind of story from one of the Friends’ reports:
A young man, smart and erect three months ago when he was in employment, intelligent, speaks and writes four languages, with excellent references, now but a sad wreck, wants to go to South Africa, where he has friends, but, alas! the permit is refused—has written abroad to his father, who is in a good position, for money, but it takes so long to get a reply. His English landlady, though poor, “has been so kind,” he had his last dinner three days ago from her. We give temporary help, but if this money does not come before January 1 he will have to go into camp. Quite willing to do so, “but can we not give his poor landlady something?”
The kind landladies and other kind hearts exist, thank God, on both sides.[68] To enquire on which side there are most would (even if we could do so without bias) probably be profitless. The important point is that the kind hearts on the other side are there, and that a brotherhood of blessing will help the world more than a brotherhood of revenge—if, indeed, this last could be any brotherhood at all.
Miss G. H. writes: “I am particularly anxious to do something for interned Germans. For four months of the war I was in Germany with my mother, sister, nephew and niece, and we were all most kindly treated and helped in every possible way both by friends, by my lawyer, my banker and the neighbouring peasants. Also by all the guards and waiters along our journey on November 21. Friends, peasants, and my lawyer are still looking after my property in Germany, and I have left everything in the hands of a neighbouring peasant, who sends me accounts of it. I would like to be able to do some kind acts here in return, and for the furtherance of better relationships later on.” Yet it can never be pleasant to be in an “enemy” country. Miss H. writes further: “In spite of having such unspeakable sympathy, really understanding sympathy, shown me by not only friends, but the common people—though I hardly like using this term, as no one with so much fellow feeling could really be termed common—in spite of this kindness, I know so well how one can suffer. Over there we are looked upon in the same way that Germans are looked upon here, as quite outside the pale of common morality. Fully realising what this must mean for me, these kindly Germans would go off into a day dream of wonderment as to how they might feel in a similar plight, and one ended up with the reflection, ‘Ja, es ist halt jetzt die Zeit der Märtyrer’ (it is indeed the time of the martyrs once more).” Surely there is something strangely poignant about the convinced and steadfast martyrdom and self-sacrifice of both sides. Surely the peoples who can thus offer themselves in destroying each other must both have noble gifts to give together one day in a nobler cause.
The following is from the Nation (Jan. 19, 1918):
A clergyman sends me the following. I think it best to publish the story as it stands:—
“Some years before the outbreak of war there lived in a certain German town, now frequently raided by air squadrons, an old Englishwoman. She was a semi-invalid; difficult and cantankerous. Subject to illusions, she imagined that the good nuns, who received her as an unremunerative paying guest, were in league against her mangy, but beloved dog. Yet both she and her dog continued to receive the half-humorous tolerance of their benefactors.
“Then came the 4th of August, 1914, and Miss X. passed into the mists of war.
“A year later she emerged from the mists.
“A letter came, forwarded through a neutral in Switzerland; but the letter was not from the pen of Miss X. It had been dictated. Briefly, it said: ‘I am bed-ridden and almost blind. I have hardly anything to live upon; and the Germans will not let me go.’