The following is an extract from a valuable letter by Madeline G. Doty, an American, which appeared in the Nation of June 12, 1915:
My most revolutionary talk was with a gray-haired mother of grown children, in a secluded corner of a quiet restaurant. A burning flame this woman. Her face stamped with world suffering, her eyes the tragic eyes of a Jane Addams. In a whisper she uttered the great heresy: ‘German salvation lies in Germany’s defeat. If Germany wins when so many of her progressive young men have been slain, the people will be utterly crushed in the grip of the mailed fist.’
With this companion I discussed the collapse of the Social Democrats in the hour of crisis, the triumph of nationalism over internationalism. She attributes it to military training. During the period of service a man becomes a thing. Automatically, he acquires habits of obedience, is reduced to an unquestioning machine. Mechanically, when the call came, the Social Democrats, with the others, fell into line. But with time has come thought. Also knowledge—knowledge that, in the first instance, Germany’s war was not one of self-defence. But it is too late to rebel. Most of the Social Democrats are at the front. From month to month they have put off protest as unwise. Only Liebknecht has made himself heard. Now he has been caught up in the iron hand, and sent to battle. But women are not bound by the spell of militarism. While the Government rejoiced at the submission of its Socialist men, the women grew active. Organising a party of their own, they fought bravely. Last fall Rosa Luxembourg dashed into the street and addressed a regiment of soldiers. ‘Don’t go to war, don’t shoot your brothers,’ she cried. For this offence she was sent to prison for a year. To-day she lies in solitary confinement. But her suffering only inspires the others. In March 750 women walked to the Reichstag. At the entrance they halted. As the members entered they shouted, ‘We will have no more war; we will have peace.’ Quickly the police dispersed them, and the order went forth that no newspaper should print one word of the protest. Still the women work on. On April 8, an International Socialist Woman’s Congress was held at Berne, Switzerland. Ten nations were represented, including all the belligerents.
The task of peace propaganda in Germany is gigantic. Neither by letter nor by Press can news be spread. Both are censored. The work must be carried on by spoken word passed from mouth to mouth. The courage of the little band of women I had met was stupendous. Through them I learned to love Germany. So my life in Berlin became a double one. I ate and slept, and was unregenerate in one part of the town, and only really lived when I escaped from respectability and, strange contradiction of terms, became a criminal fighting for peace.
But wherever I was, one fact grew omnipresent. Germany was magnificently organised. Here lay the country’s power and her weakness. Her power because it made Germany a unit. There were no weak links in the chain. Her weakness, because it robbed her people of individuality, made them cogs in a machine.
“Germany no longer cares whom she hurts,” runs another passage in this letter; “like an unloved child at bay she means, to smash and kill. The pity of it! Never was there a more generous, soft-hearted, kindly people. Germany, the land of the Christmas tree and folk songs, and hearthsides and gay childish laughter, turned into a relentless fighting machine! But each individual is a cog firmly fixed in the machine, which will go ever on as long as the ruling power turns the crank.”[73]
Two Soldiers’ Letters.
“If I were not firmly convinced that even this war will help to establish the Kingdom of God I could hardly endure it. But I believe that after passing through this hell humanity will come to itself and learn to believe in the reign of human brotherhood.... I cannot tell you the moral suffering I go through. These butcheries are utter madness. I cannot forget for a moment that our enemies are men, and consequently our brothers.” So wrote a young German soldier student quoted by Mr. Jerome K. Jerome.
The following letter is from the Vossische Zeitung. A soldier’s young sister had written asking him to “kill a lot of Russians” and “to gain a new victory in order to cheer us up.” “‘Kill a lot of Russians.’ You have not seen them lying about—those poor dead, with their singularly solemn faces.... You have not seen the battle which preceded, and the bad wounds which so many of my friends got in trying to kill a lot of them. You do not think of the fact that those dead men had parents, brothers, and sisters whom they loved. And you have not seen the harrowing destruction of the villages and towns—how the poor, hunted-down population is running away, leaving everything they had behind them to be consumed by the flames.... And then, remember, we are not fighting in order to cheer you up—we are not lying about in the open-air day and night, starved and suffering from wounds and homesickness, in order that you at home may be cheerful at the tea or beer table. We are fighting and bearing this terrible wretchedness in order that you may he spared the horrors of war, and that Germany’s future may be bright.” That is, I believe, what the enormous majority of Germany’s soldiers are fighting for. Soldiers on both sides have similar and quite reconcilable aims; but government is too complex to express the simple will of the people. In every country, it seems to me, anti-militarist opinion only needs its chance. I was struck by the frequency with which such an opinion cropped up when I was travelling a few weeks in Germany not long before the war. On the top of the Belchen I encountered it in talking to a native of Würtemberg. Again in a walk with a young German to the Feldberg; again in a book-shop at Freiburg; again in chance railway talk with a very well-educated German on my way to Berlin. In Berlin itself a giant Westphalian accosted me, as he wanted to make the acquaintance of “one of these terrible fellows who mean to smash up Germany.” His political ideal consisted in the belief that England and Germany, understanding each other, could keep the peace of the world.