Violet R. Markham

“ But, in fact, the country is beaten flat and cannot at the moment stand alone. However bitter the cup of humiliation, better the presence of a conqueror who has kept order, provided food, administered even-handed justice, and dealt fairly between man and man, than the horrors of hunger and revolution. As for the French, it cannot be expected that France with the memories of 1870 and 1914 burnt deep into her very marrow, France dragged twice through the fire, can approach the tasks of occupation in the same spirit as the more detached Britons who have less to forget. ”

“ France who means so much to the mind of Europe, who has given to it eternal principles of truth and liberty—will not France in this matter rise to the level of her own heroic stature?
The established democracies of the world have in these troubled times to hold up each others arms. So long as the great Republic of the West stands aloof, the chain of brotherhood and common effort is broken at a vital point. The darkness is greater, the task infinitely more hard, because she has withdrawn her companionship from what should have been a united purpose. ”

“ The practical fact which confronts us all is that the world is in ruin, and that where the politicians have failed hopelessly the decent people of all nations have to get together and make it habitable again. To dismiss the German nation as a gang of criminals unfit for human intercourse may be a magnificent gesture on the part of the thoughtless. But it is not business. There are good Germans and bad Germans, Germans animated by a quite detestable spirit, others who are conscientious and high-minded. The wholesale indictment of a nation is as absurd as the wholesale indictment of a class. ”

“ If a bankrupt is to discharge his debts, he must be put into a position to earn. If he is to be loaded with chains, that spectacle may have its own satisfaction, but it will not produce money on the credit side. A hungry bankrupt Germany cannot work to pay off the indemnity on which France has just claim. If Europe crumbles further; if Bolshevism finds a new recruiting ground in the anger and despair of a whole people—where is France likely to stand in this matter of payment? ”

“ With the memory of shattered and devastated France before our eyes, we think with sternness no punishment can be too severe in expiation of the crime under whose consequences the world is staggering to-day. A train-load of German prisoners, homeward bound, runs into the station. They cheer, not very loudly or energetically, it is true, but nevertheless they cheer as once again they touch the soil of the Fatherland. From the windows we catch sight of eager, excited faces among the shabby men in their faded uniforms. ”

“ A mile or more below the Hohenzollern bridge, where four kings of Prussia on their bronze horses survey a world fashioned now on other lines than those contemplated by Prussian arrogance, the Rhine flows along a ribbon of green strand which serves as a recreation ground for the children of the district. Here on a summer evening we sometimes walk and watch young Germany at play: children of all ages bathing, paddling, shouting, laughing, amusing themselves in a hundred different ways, while their parents sit in little groups, the women sewing or knitting, the men with their pipes. ”

“ At no point can the German character produce contradictions so supreme as over the question of religion. The extent to which the practice of religion, however exact and devout, can remain external to a man’s life is an unhappy fact with which all religious systems and creeds are too familiar. Germany perhaps supplies the supreme example. But to any one like myself who has seen a good deal of Catholic worship in Germany, the puzzle is necessarily acute. In no country of the world, certainly in no Catholic country, have I ever found myself among congregations so earnest and so devout. ”

“ It is not a question of dragging Germany about in a white sheet and a candle from shrine to shrine, but of some guarantee that there shall be no repetition of events so lamentable. The best guarantee for the future is a clear recognition of what was wrong in the past. Truth permeates very slowly through German mentality, and few Germans seem to realise that they or their rulers have brought the world to the very brink of ruin; that millions of lives have perished as the result of their insensate ambitions. ”

“ And even as we talked and exchanged [82] the old Christmas messages of peace and drank each other’s health, the room and the tree and the candles all seemed to vanish, and in their place I saw the grey desolation and havoc of Flanders, lines of dim figures advancing to attack, rows of graves, silent, mournful.
But if these things are not to have their repetition in a future still more awful than the present we have known, somehow, some way, men must learn the message of Christmas, hard though it be in our distracted world, “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men.” ”

“ Every line breathes a narrow and aggressive patriotism of the type which has made the name of Germany detested. The great poets of the Liberation period have sung both of freedom and oppression on a note which rings clear and true to any lover of liberty. The Elberfeld Rektor, commenting on this verse long before 1914, can only do so in terms of abuse of France. To him a poet is really important, not for some immortal gift to the sum-total of the world’s truth and beauty, but for the degree to which he may have added new stops to the full-sounding organ swelling the note of German excellence. ”

“ Are German little boys endowed with virtue of such abnormal quality that they survive the chronic temptations to which they must be subjected in the matter of pears, and apples, and plums? Even the ingenious theory that the apples are cooking ones, designed if stolen to inflict adequate punishment on youthful stomachs, cannot explain away these innumerable orchards and long avenues of fruit trees. The Rhineland is a garden of enchantment when the blossom is in flower. It is a hard saying that any sight on earth can be more beautiful than an English spring at its best. ”

“ She lies a beaten and prostrate nation to-day. We may push her over the brink and so precipitate new catastrophes. Or without sentiment and without illusion we may take a longer view; we may direct our policy towards ultimate ends of appeasement, towards the establishment of a saner and a better Europe unhaunted by the menace of vast aggressive forces, towards the recovery by Germany herself of her old birthright of music, poetry, and philosophy bartered by her for evil dreams of world power and domination. That new order cannot be founded on any basis of enduring hatred. ”

“ They feel it below their dignity to study the Boche dispassionately, to watch him at work, at play, at prayer. But if we are concerned in this distracted world not to rest perpetually in the barren measures of strife, then it may be worth while to consider dispassionately what qualities the Germans possess which hold out some hope for the future. From this aspect it seems to me that Cologne Cathedral and its congregations are worthy of attention. The heart of every man is an altar, neglected, desecrated perhaps, but never forfeiting its right to serve the divine purpose. ”

“ The post-war chaos appears so complete that men turn from it in despair. Moral disillusion and weariness have their counterparts in recklessness and wild extravagance. There is a sense of an approaching Twilight of the Gods; of a collapse of the foundations of society. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, on the brink of the chasm though it be, before the darkness swallows us up.
How is it that a war fought for principles and ideals so clear and so noble as those which animated us at the outset of the struggle can have resulted in a condition of practical moral bankruptcy? ”

“ It is impossible to forget the sufferings and trials which have led up to our presence on the Rhine, even though the sufferings are not confined to one side. A very small grain of imagination is necessary in order to realise what a military occupation would have meant to us. Admittedly, if the war had come to a different end, we should have felt to the full the weight of the Prussian jackboot. The Boche as a conqueror can be intolerable—swollen-headed, swaggering, brutal. Victory would have intensified tenfold every bad quality the race possesses. ”

“ It is the weapon-in-chief for keeping open sores and exasperating passions which good sense would try to allay. Nations catch sight of each other dimly through mists of misrepresentation and bitterness. Truth and justice disappear in the welter, and without truth and justice the practical affairs of the world drift daily towards an ultimate whirlpool of chaos.
Great, therefore, as I see it is the responsibility of all who to-day throw their careless offerings on the altars of hatred, so that the flames of discord flare up anew. ”

“ The ruthless and cruel spirit which dominated the German war-machine and the many crimes committed are mainly responsible for the bitterness which was developed among the British peoples during the struggle. However natural the growth of this temper, its survival to-day is a menace to the future of the world. Hatred when it takes possession of the soul of a man or woman is a wholly corroding and destructive force. Where hatred abides the powers of darkness have their being, ready to sally forth and work havoc anew. ”

“ France and England are united by ties of a sacred and abiding character. Side by side have they upheld the torch of liberty while the foundations of the world rocked. The blood of their sons has been poured out on hundreds of battlefields in a common defence of liberty. The courage and the fortitude of France during the struggle was an example and an inspiration to the whole Alliance. Why are we conscious, therefore, to-day of so heavy a fall in all those values which made France heroic during the war? ”

“ How can it be reconciled with their arrogance and brutality when they had the upper hand in France and Belgium? These middle-class families, these quiet, respectable working-class people enjoying their simple pleasures, what part did they take in the insults heaped on prisoners and captives? Did these parents and children rejoice and cheer when submarines sent other women and children to their deaths? What kind of conscience do they carry for the war? How can they outwardly at least bear so little grudge against the people who have beaten them? ”

“ I do not think this wish will be gratified, but what the speaker and his kind forget is that Bolshevism is a disease which can be treated by no cordon sanitaire, and that the spread of ruin and confusion in Central Europe means that the same evil spectres will knock assuredly at our own doors. The fatal habit of “thinking war” still dominates whole classes of people throughout the Allied countries. But the business of the hour is peace, and to be a laggard about peace to-day is as criminal as to have been a laggard about war when Europe and civilisation stood menaced. ”

“ The great charge against the Peace is its failure to envisage a normal and healthy life for Europe. Our quarrel against its provisions is that they are in many cases fully as short-sighted and as lacking in imagination as what Prussians themselves might have evolved. The precedents of Brest-Litovsk, at which we raised our hands in justifiable horror, are not agreeable ones to follow. The fatal flaw of the Peace is that it does not look beyond the period of punishment and reparation to an ultimate pacification of Europe. ”

“ A peaceful, happy gathering, with laughter, and music, and beer—the music and the beer both of excellent quality. Forget for a moment that the uniforms are khaki, not grey, put back the clock five years, and who would suspect the tragic bonds of blood and strife in which the company are united? Is the war a dream or a nightmare? Is Europe white with the bones of the millions who have died; is Germany itself staggering on the edge of ruin and starvation? ”

“ It is the natural instinct of every decent person to shield a child from suffering, and as I watch the boys and girls playing on the banks of the Rhine, the whole question of the war takes on an aspect from which [108] every vestige of glamour and chivalry and romance has vanished. These merry children at their games: it is on them that the hand of Britain’s sea-power, however unwittingly, has rested in its heaviest form. The British people would repudiate with anger any idea of making war on children. ”

“ Coblenz, which we reached in due course, is a shabby city magnificently situated at the junction of the Rhine and the Mosel. No town in the Rhineland lies so nobly, overlooked as it is by the great rock of Ehrenbreitstein. The river front of Coblenz is second to none in the whole course of the stream. Yet the town itself is cramped and curiously dirty for a German city. It gives the impression of a poor place which has dropped behindhand in the race. ”

“ Only on rare and solemn occasions was the Kaiser-Glocke heard. Then as its deep note boomed across the waters of the Rhine, the citizens of Cologne thrilled with proud memories of conquest and restored national life. The cannon of a conquered foe are symbols of death, destruction, and defeat. To convert them as trophies of victory into bells which call men and women to the service of God and the worship of the Prince of Peace, is an act of paganism removed as by the poles from rudimentary Christian ethic. ”