The New France has been born in the travail of the monstrous desolation of trench-land that stretches, scabby with shell-holes, leprous with gray wire, pitted with countless graves, scarred with crumbled villages for four hundred miles across the fair fields of la douce France. In this savage desert, inhumanly silent except for the shrieking of shells, for now more than a year's time France has struggled with the incarnated spirit of evil, rearing its head again, armed with all the enginery of modern science. The little, dirty-bearded soldiers squat there in their burrows, white-faced, tense, silent, waiting, watching, month after month, or plunge over their walls to give their lives on that death-field outside. They are the simple martyrs of the New France.
* * * * *
France has learned her German lesson; has reorganized her life to make it tell effectively for her task, has reorganized her inner life, discarding frivolity and waste. She has found herself in the fire. France is not "done for," as my German-American friends so pityingly deem. Bleeding from her terrible wounds, she is stronger today than ever before,—stronger in will, in spirit, in courage, the things that count in the long, long run even in the winning of wars. Technically minded soldiers may judge that "Germany can't be beaten." But the French know in their souls that she can be, that she is beaten today! In this greatest of world's decisions it is the spirit of the Latin that triumphs again—the sanest, suavest, noblest tradition that the earth has ever known, under which men may work out their mysterious destiny.
Part Three—America
I
What Does It Mean to Us?
I went from the French front back to America. The steamer slipped down the Gironde between green vineyards, past peaceful villages, a whole universe distant from that grim, gray trench-land where the French army was holding the invader in Titan grip, stole cautiously into the Bay of Biscay at nightfall to escape prowling submarines, and began to roll in the Atlantic surges, part of those "three thousand miles of cool sea-water" on which our President so complacently relies as a nonconductor of warfare. I was homeward bound to America, the land of Peace, after four months spent in "war-ridden Europe"—to that homeland stranger somehow than the war lands, where my countrymen were protesting to both belligerents and making money, manufacturing war supplies and blowing up factories, talking "peace" and "preparedness" in the same breath; also—and God be thanked for that!—helping to feed the starving Belgians, sending men, money, and sympathy to the French. As the old steamer settled into her fourteen-knot gait, the submarines ceased to be of more than conversational concern, and I began to ask myself,—"What does it all mean to us, this bloody sacrifice of world war,—to us, strong, rich, peaceful, confident Americans?"
For in spite of a curious indifference among many Americans to the outcome, so long as it did not get us into trouble with either party, betrayed by personal letters and press articles which I had received, I was profoundly convinced that the issues of the world tragedy were momentous to us too. "This European butchery means nothing," said one friend, who supplies editorial comment for a most widely read American weekly, "except a lot of poverty, a lot of cripples, and a lot of sodden hate in the hearts of the people engaged. Europe will not be changed appreciably as a result of the war!" Our pacifist ex-Secretary of State, I remember, wrote Baron d'Estournelles de Constant inquiring what the French were fighting for, implying that to the reasonable onlooker there was no clear issue involved in the whole business, merely the passions of misguided patriotism. The well-meaning agitation for peace, which as I write has been lifted into the grotesque by the Ford peace ship, is based largely on this inability to realize the reality of the issue between the belligerents. And there is our national attitude of strict neutrality, which fairly represents the evasive mind of many Americans. Happily, they seem to say to themselves, "This war is not our affair." We were warned by Washington to keep clear of European "quarrels," and wisely we covered our retreat at The Hague by inserting that little clause which relieved us from all real responsibility for the observance of the conventions. Excuse for cowardice and blindness of vision! Such Americans like to think that as a nation we have no more concern in the present war than a peaceable family in one house has with the domestic upheavals of an unfortunate family in the next house. The part of prudence is to ignore all evidences of unpleasantness, to profess good offices, and to keep on friendly terms with all the belligerents.
The impression that such an attitude makes on the American in Europe is painful, whether it be expressed in personal letters, in newspapers and magazines, or in diplomatic "notes." He becomes impatient with the provincialism of his own people, ashamed of their transparent selfishness, astonished that human values should have got so fatally distorted in our fat, comfortable world. To the European, American neutrality has become a matter of public indifference, of private contempt. Inspired with the lofty ambition of playing the rôle of mediator in the world war, President Wilson has lost his chance of influencing the decision toward which Europe is bloodily fighting its way. At that great peace conference which every European has perpetually in mind, America will be ignored. Only those who have shared the bloody sacrifice—at least have had the courage to declare their beliefs—will penetrate its inner councils. We have had our reward—money and safety. It is not fantastic even to expect that the conquerors might under certain circumstances say to the conquered, "Take your losses from the Americans: they alone have made money out of our common woe!"
No, ours has not been the beau geste as a nation. Nor can the American take comfort in the thought that Washington diplomacy does not fairly represent the sentiment of our people. As the weeks slip past, it is only too evident that our President has interpreted exactly the national will. The farther west one travels the colder is the American heart, and duller the American vision. The numerical center of the United States is somewhere in the Mississippi Valley. Europe gave Chicago, in her distress after the great fire, eighty cents per person; Chicago has given Belgium and France seven cents per Chicagoan. Not a single Chicago bank appears on the list of subscribers to the Anglo-French loan,—very few banks anywhere west of the Alleghanies. "It is not our quarrel; we are not concerned except to get our money for the goods we sell them!"