Wartime

“ Those Englishmen in England (and in France) who have slept warm in their beds throughout the war should remind themselves of those thousands of our soldiers who wet through, sleepless, fed on food which, served as it finally was up in the trenches, would hardly have tempted a dog, have stood watching rain-sodden darkness of night yield to dismal shell-bringing dawn, and have witnessed the monotonous routine of war till sun, earth, sky and all the elements of nature seemed pledged in one conspiracy of hardship. ”

“ On your way up to the front you are struck by the number of soldiers sitting on the doorsteps of ruined houses studying the tails of their shirts as though they were precious manuscripts. When you are at the front you notice that the men have an uneasy way with their shoulders as though they wished to be scraping along brick walls, and when you have slept one night at the front you realize what the soldier meant when he wrote home to say: "This war isn't a very bloody war, so far as I've seen it, but it does tickle at night." ”

“ While the guns roar from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and the greatest armed host that history has ever known is still locked in a life-and-death struggle on a dozen fronts, another war, more potent and permanent perhaps than the one which now engulfs Europe, lurks beyond the distant horizon of peace. ”

“ To smooth the scarred and broken earth, and plant
The fields again. But—if we must—
We'll deal first with those war-lords, break
Their knees and bring them to the dust.
For France's sake
We'll fight until we drop. ”

“ Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster--and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. ”

“ On the morning of the 26th they rose to learn that a great war had begun, a conflict the possible width and depth of which no man was yet able to foresee; and as day after day passed on, each day some new nation springing into the terrible arena until practically the whole of Europe was in arms and the Armageddon seemed at hand, the world stood amazed and astounded, wondering what hand had loosed so vast a catastrophe, what deep and secret causes lay below the ostensible causes of the war. ”

“ Years had passed, but I remembered well that week of fierce excitement when the clash of arms rang through Europe, when three great fleets were mobilized, and the very earth seemed to reverberate with the footsteps of the gathering millions, moving always towards one spot. Disaster was averted by what seemed then to be a miracle; but no one ever doubted but that one man, and one man alone, was responsible for what might have been the most awful catastrophe of civilized times. ”

“ What were the unseen and unnoted conditions that, within little more than a week’s time, induced all the leading nations of Europe to cast down the gage of battle and spring full-armed into the arena, bent upon a struggle which threatened to surpass any that the world had ever seen? ”

“ We, his comrades, have but to turn the pages of his story to live again those marvellous days and to feel the hopes and fears, the pathos and the fun, the excitement and the weariness, and the hundred other emotions which gave to life in the Great War a sense of adventure which we can hardly hope to savour again. ”

“ Yet, while following the fortunes of our army in the field, I have often found myself pondering the fact whether, after all, war is such an abnormal thing to this great host of ours, Britishers of all stamps and from every clime drawn to the fighting-line by the same high ideal. ”

“ War had blown over it, that was all, and life, which is so much stronger than the strongest field-marshal, which can be bent, beaten down, and crushed some-times, like the grass, was growing back again. ”

“ Already in the East there were skirmishes as the prelude to the great war of the nations. All Europe, Europe that only yesterday was sceptical and apathetic, like a dead wood, was swept by the flames. All men were possessed by the desire for battle. War was ever on the point of breaking out. ”

“ When two civilized nations go to war, each strains every nerve to mow the other down, to cut his throat, to mutilate and kill him,—by fair means or foul,—and when the battle is lost and won, they commiserate and sympathize with them, and grieve to see so many hundreds of their fellowmen writhing in agony on the battlefield. ”

“ It may be truly said that never before in history was a great war, or any war, so accurately and fully reported day by day for at least three years, subject to certain reservations which were abominably vexatious and tended to depress the spirit of the troops and to arouse the suspicion of the nation. ”

“ Permit me to see in your decision the homage of all the nations that you represent toward a country which more than any other has endured the sufferings of war, of which entire provinces have been transformed into a vast battle-field and have been systematically laid waste by the invader, and which has paid the human tribute in death. ”

“ How does this pessimism stand in the light of day? It is true, war has not yet been abolished. But who will deny that the number of wars has grown less from century to century, and that many and many troubles, which at earlier periods would surely have led to war, have been peaceably composed? ”

“ Every one of you won the war— You and you and you— Each one knowing what it was for, And what was his job to do. Every one of you won the war, Obedient, unwearied, unknown, Dung in the trenches, drift on the shore, Dust to the world's end blown ”

“ So this great Forty Years’ War began, in which there was to be no single grand, decisive engagement, but a thousand petty skirmishes and little raids, infinitely more vexatious and exhausting, and was waged until the weaker of the combatants, literally worn out in the fray, had laid down her arms and her life together, and was at peace at last, under the sheet in the darkened parlor. ”

“ The Great War through which we have passed differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. ”

“ We who lived at home, have, looking at the late wars of Europe, imagined that 'the army' might beat or be beaten, but that 'the country' and the mass of its in-dwellers would remain unharmed. We have not seen cities captured, farms laid waste, and experienced the horrors of war. ”

“ Through the half-heard ripple of clear little voices, there came upon me one of those thunder-claps of realization which, since the beginning of the war, have brought wiser and stronger people than I to the brink of insanity—realization for an instant (longer than an instant would carry any one over the brink) that the war is really going on, realization of what the war really means, one glimpse of the black abyss. ”

“ Gradually, I dreamed, the firearms became more and more destructive, while all the elements, and everything in existence, were pressed into the service of war; and so absorbed were my human beings in the perfecting of war that they invented a subsidiary state of affairs called 'Peace,' which, on referring to these creatures' dictionaries, I found to be 'An interval necessary to the effective preparation of war.' The nations were never altogether in their element during these intervals; and, of course, any protracted peace meant the gradual impoverishment of the soil for want of the fertiliser. ”

“ The war is waging, slaughter raging, And heavy through the reeking pall, The iron death-dice fall! Nearer they close—foes upon foes "Ready!"—From square to square it goes, Down on the knee they sank, And fire comes sharp from the foremost rank. ”

“ Aside from a few bruised shins and torn coats and missing caps, there had been no casualties worth mentioning. It was not a country-wide war. It was, indeed, a war of which no history save this veracious chronicle, gives any record. ”

“ It was just in the lull when everybody, North and South, was tired of the war and when a hard push either way would win. And from the spirit of the men who enlisted, they were of the opinion that the war had lasted long enough, and it was time to give the push from the North. ”

“ What can we, sheltered and safe in England, know of such sorrow as this? To say we have never known invasion is to say we have never known the real meaning of war. It may and does press hardly on us, but it does not grind us under foot. ”

“ The Points at Issue Long periods of peace, intervening between cycles of war, are necessarily periods during which there must arise a mass of theory concerning the way in which men will be affected by war when it breaks out. They are necessarily periods in which are perfected weapons, the actual effect of which upon the human mind has not been tested. ”

“ It was war from beginning to end: bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it."
"Do you mean actual fighting with weapons?" said I, "or the strikes and lock-outs and starvation of which we have heard?" ”

“ The twentieth century, altho comparatively a time of great plenty, thus witnessed the most ferocious and bloody of all wars. An increase of riches, national and individual, had not conduced to peace, but rather to irritability and contention. ”

“ How could they possibly sandwich in a war. I'm sixty-two years old, and as far back as I can remember European war clouds have been passing like little summer clouds, and they will continue to pass long after you're an old man, Jackie. ”

“ Presently the latter came to me and said,—
"So there's war, then, in reality, among us at home. The North and the South are fighting against each other."
"What!" I exclaimed, in utter amazement; "what—war? War in the United States, and among ourselves?" ”

“ But may I respectfully suggest that it is worth America's while to study our blunders, so as to begin just where we are now and not where we were three years ago? That is an advantage. In war, time has as tragic a significance as it has in sickness. A step which, taken today, may lead to assured victory, taken tomorrow may barely avert disaster. ”

“ The old war-vessel had lived through the still ages of peace, had survived the long period of decay, had endured the disintegrating assaults of time, only to accomplish her manifest purpose of destruction as she fell. ”

“ We were really growing used to the war, and it was less the monstrous, strange thing than it had been in our daily lives. War had become our daily life and portion in Britain. All who were not slackers were doing their part— every one. ”

“ II — EVOLUTION AND WAR
The Great War of to-day has rendered acute the question of the place of warfare in Nature and the effect of war on the human race. These have long been debated problems concerning which there is no complete agreement. But until we make up our minds on these fundamental questions we can gain no solid ground from which to face serenely, or at all events firmly, the crisis through which mankind is now passing. ”

“ But what does concern us most directly, and what makes this war the culmination of the long story which we have endeavoured to survey, is that this is a war in which, as in no earlier war, the whole fate and future of the now unified world is at stake. ”

“ It was all done in the name of humanity; for to shorten the war was the humanest course, and the shortest way was that of the greatest destruction. The means of destruction were developed at a prodigious rate, and England became a vast laboratory of death. ”

“ It is impossible to estimate what proportion of us, in khaki or out of it, grasped the war and its political antecedents as a whole in the light of any philosophy of history or knowledge of what war is. ”

“ It is certain that, during the last fifty years, the period in which peace societies have been at work, armies have been growing steadily larger, the means of destruction have been multiplying, and wars have been as frequent and as bloody as ever before; and, what is worse, the popular heart goes into war as it has never done in past ages. ”

“ It brought the older and the later war into almost startling nearness, and made us realize, as perhaps nothing else could have done, how the future visitor will trace the movements in which we have had a part; and when we have been dust for centuries, will follow the path of our battalions from hill to hill, from stream to stream, from the border of a wood to the open ground where the bloody conflict was hand to hand, and will comment upon the history we have made. ”

“ A small, mobile, regular army, formed to go over seas and march long distances, was to fight in a war where millions were engaged and a day’s march would cover an immense stretch of territory in international calculations of gain and loss. ”

“ But greater than such deeds, of which there have been inspiring hundreds, is the patient endurance shown by men whose world has narrowed down to that little corner of a great war which they are [221] fighting for their country. To fight on night and day in the trenches, under avalanches of murdering metal and storms of rending shrapnel, calls for higher qualities than those short, sharp gusts of conflict which in former days were called battles. ”