With the French in France and Salonika

by Richard Harding Davis

During my few days in England, I found that what is going forward in Paris for blind French officers is being carried on in London at St. Dunstan’s, Regent’s Park, for blind Tommies. At this school the classes are much larger than are those in Paris, the pupils more numerous, and they live and sleep on the premises. The premises are very beautiful. They consist of seventeen acres of gardens, lawns, trees, a lake, and a stream on which you can row and swim, situated in Regent’s Park and almost in the heart of London. In the days when London was farther away the villa of St. Dunstan’s belonged to the eccentric Marquis of Hertford, the wicked Lord Steyne of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.” It was a country estate. Now the city has closed in around it, but it is still a country estate, with ceilings by the Brothers Adam, portraits by Romney, sideboards by Sheraton, and on the lawn sheep. To keep sheep in London is as expensive as to keep race-horses, and to own a country estate in London can be afforded only by Americans. The estate next to St. Dunstan’s is owned by an American lady. I used to play lawn-tennis there with her husband. Had it not been for the horns of the taxicabs we might have been a hundred miles from the nearest railroad. Instead, we were so close to Baker Street that one false step would have landed us in Mme. Tussaud’s. When the war broke out the husband ceased hammering tennis-balls, and hammered German ships of war. He sank several—and is now waiting impatiently outside of Wilhelmshaven for more.

St. Dunstan’s also is owned by an American, Otto Kahn, the banker. In peace times, in the winter months, Mr. Kahn makes it possible for the people of New York to listen to good music at the Metropolitan Opera House. When war came, at his country place in London he made it next to possible for the blind to see. He gave the key of the estate to C. Arthur Pearson. He also gave him permission in altering St. Dunstan’s to meet the needs of the blind to go as far as he liked.

When I first knew Arthur Pearson he and Lord Northcliffe were making rival collections of newspapers and magazines. They collected them as other people collect postal cards and cigar-bands. Pearson was then, as he is now, a man of the most remarkable executive ability, of keen intelligence, of untiring nervous energy. That was ten years ago. He knew then that he was going blind. And when the darkness came he accepted the burden; not only his own, but he took upon his shoulders the burden of all the blind in England. He organized the National Institute for those who could not see. He gave them of his energy, which has not diminished; he gave them of his fortune, which, happily for them, has not diminished; he gave them his time, his intelligence. If you ask what the time of a blind man is worth, go to St. Dunstan’s and you will find out. You will see a home and school for blind men, run by a blind man. The same efficiency, knowledge of detail, intolerance of idleness, the same generous appreciation of the work of others, that he put into running The Express and Standard, he now exerts at St. Dunstan’s. It has Pearson written all over it just as a mile away there is a building covered with the name of Selfridge, and a cathedral with the name of Christopher Wren. When I visited him in his room at St. Dunstan’s he was standing with his back to the open fire dictating to a stenographer. He called to me cheerily, caught my hand, and showed me where I was to sit. All the time he was looking straight at me and firing questions:

“When did you leave Salonika? How many troops have we landed? Our positions are very strong, aren’t they?”

He told the stenographer she need not wait, and of an appointment he had which she was not to forget. Before she reached the door he remembered two more things she was not to forget. The telephone rang, and, still talking, he walked briskly around a sofa, avoided a table and an armchair, and without fumbling picked up the instrument. What he heard was apparently very good news. He laughed delightedly, saying: “That’s fine! That’s splendid!”

A secretary opened the door and tried to tell him what he had just learned, but was cut short.

“I know,” said Pearson. “So-and-so has just phoned me. It’s fine, isn’t it?”

He took a small pad from his pocket, made a note on it, and laid the memorandum beside the stenographer’s machine. Then he wound his way back to the fireplace and offered a case of cigarettes. He held them within a few inches of my hand. Since I last had seen him he had shaved his mustache and looked ten years younger and, as he exercises every morning, very fit. He might have been an officer of the navy out of uniform. I had been in the room five minutes, and only once, when he wrote on the pad and I saw that as he wrote he did not look at the pad, would I have guessed that he was blind.

“What we teach them here,” he said, firing the words as though from a machine-gun, “is that blindness is not an ‘affliction.’ We won’t allow that word. We teach them to be independent. Sisters and the mothers spoil them! Afraid they’ll bump their shins. Won’t let them move about. Always leading them. That’s bad, very bad. Makes them think they’re helpless, no good, invalids for life. We teach ’em to strike out for themselves. That’s the way to put heart into them. Make them understand they’re of use, that they can help themselves, help others, learn a trade, be self-supporting. We trained them to row. Some of them never had had oars in their hands except on the pond at Hempstead Heath on a bank holiday. We trained a crew that swept the river.”

It was fine to see the light in his face. His enthusiasm gave you a thrill. He might have been Guy Nickalls telling how the crew he coached won at New London.