One morning at dawn—it was at Amberieu—I saw the long trains go by carrying the German wounded and the German prisoners, who had been taken in the battles of the Vosges. There were 2,400 taken on toward the south. There were French nurses with the wounded. I saw water and fruit and chocolate given to the prisoners.
This was early in the war. The sheer lapse into barbarism had not yet come. Soon the German newspapers announced:
"Great concern is expressed in press and public utterances lest prisoners of war receive anything in the line of favored treatment. Newspapers have conducted an angry campaign against women who have ventured at the railway station to give coffee or food to prisoners of war passing through; commanding officers have ordered that persons 'demeaning themselves by such unworthy conduct' are to be immediately ejected from the stations, and in response to public clamor official announcements have been issued that such prisoners in transport receive only bread and water."
And the French followed suit; no "coddling" of prisoners; back to barbarism, the lessons of humanity forgot and savagery come again.
Civilization in the old world is smashed. I have traversed the ruins; and my feet are still dirty with mud and blood. But I can tell you what is going to come out of that welter of ruin. There will come a sane and righteous hatred of militarism. What will be surely destroyed is Caesarism. Prophecy? This is not prophecy; I am stating an assured fact. Even at this hour of hysterical and relentless warfare there lies deep in the heart of the democracy of Europe a consuming hatred of militarism.
Drops of water (or blood) do not more naturally flow into each than did the English hatred of Caesarism blend with the high French hatred of the evil thing; and when the palaces have done fighting, the cottages of Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and from the Black Sea to the Hebrides, will proclaim its destruction.
And you will see it; you will see Caesarism drowned in the very blood it has shed. And the German, mark you, will not be the least bitter of the foes of militarism. He will be indeed a relentless foe.
Reversal to barbarism, say you? A shuddering lapse into savagery?
Quite true; that is the state of Europe over the fairest and most highly civilized provinces. The picture of Sir John French strolling up and down the battle line smoking a cigarette does not give a fair idea of it; nor do you get it from the Kaiser on a hilltop surveying his massed war bullocks surging forth patiently to battle; all that belongs to the picture books of war.
The real thing is dirtier.