The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume I Part 29

Now and then the subject of its settlement is mentioned--Belgium and Serbia, of course, to be saved and as far as possible indemnified; Russia to have the Slav-Austrian States and Constantinople; France to have Alsace-Lorraine, of course; and Poland to go to Russia; Schleswig-Holstein and the Kiel Ca.n.a.l no longer to be German; all the South-German States to become Austrian and none of the German States to be under Prussian rule; the Hohenzollerns to be eliminated; the German fleet, or what is left of it, to become Great Britain's; and the German colonies to be used to satisfy such of the Allies as clamour for more than they get.

Meantime this invincible race is doing this revolutionary task marvellously--volunteering; trying to buy arms in the United States (a Pittsburgh manufacturer is now here trying to close a bargain with the War Office!)[78]; knitting socks and m.u.f.flers; taking in all the poor Belgians; stopping all possible expenditure; darkening London at night; doing every conceivable thing to win as if they had been waging this war always and meant to do nothing else for the rest of their lives-and not the slightest doubt about the result and apparently indifferent how long it lasts or how much it costs.

Every aspect of it gets on your nerves. I can't keep from wondering how the world will seem after it is over--Germany (that is, Prussia and its system) cut out like a cancer; England owning still more of the earth; Belgium--all the men dead; France bankrupt; Russia admitted to the society of nations; the British Empire entering on a new lease of life; no great navy but one; no great army but the Russian; nearly all governments in Europe bankrupt; Germany gone from the sea--in ten years it will be difficult to recall clearly the Europe of the last ten years. And the future of the world more than ever in our hands!

We here don't know what you think or what you know at home; we haven't yet any time to read United States newspapers, which come very, very late; n.o.body writes us real letters (or the censor gets 'em, perhaps!); and so the war, the war, the war is the one thing that holds our minds.

We have taken a house for the Chancery[79]--almost the size of my house in Grosvenor Square--for the same sum as rent that the landlord proposed hereafter to charge us for the old hole where we've been for twenty-nine years. For the first time Uncle Sam has a decent place in London. We've five times as much room and ten times as much work. Now--just this last week or two--I get off Sundays: that's doing well. And I don't now often go back at night.

So, you see, we've much to be thankful for.--Shall we insure against Zeppelins? That's what everybody's asking. I told the Spanish Amba.s.sador yesterday that I am going to ask the German Government for instructions about insuring their Emba.s.sy here!

Write and send some news. I saw an American to-day who says he's going home to-morrow. "Cable me," said I, "if you find the continent where it used to be."

Faithfully yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

P.S. It is strange how little we know what you know on your side and just what you think, what relative value you put on this and what on that. There's a new sort of loneliness sprung up because of the universal absorption in the war.

And I hear all sorts of contradictory rumours about the effect of the German crusade in the United States. Oh well, the world has got to choose whether it will have English or German domination in Europe; that's the single big question at issue. For my part I'll risk the English and then make a fresh start ourselves to outstrip them in the spread of well-being; in the elevation of mankind of all cla.s.ses; in the broadening of democracy and democratic rule (which is the sheet-anchor of all men's hopes just as bureaucracy and militarism are the destruction of all men's hopes); in the spread of humane feeling and action; in the growth of human kindness; in the tender treatment of women and children and the old; in literature, in art; in the abatement of suffering; in great changes in economic conditions which discourage poverty; and in science which gives us new leases on life and new tools and wider visions. These are _our_ world tasks, with England as our friendly rival and helper. G.o.d bless us.

W.H.P.

_To Arthur W. Page_ London, November 6, 1914.

DEAR ARTHUR:

Those excellent photographs, those excellent apples, those excellent cigars--thanks. I'm thinking of sending Kitty[80] over again. They all spell and smell and taste of home--of the U.S.A.

Even the messenger herself seems Unitedstatesy, and that's a good quality, I a.s.sure you. She's told us less news than you'd think she might for so long a journey and so long a visit; but that's the way with us all. And, I dare say, if it were all put together it would make a pretty big news-budget. And luckily for us (I often think we are among the luckiest families in the world) all she says is quite cheerful. It's a wonderful report she makes of County Line[81]--the country, the place, the house, and its inhabitants. Maybe, praise G.o.d, I'll see it myself some day--it and them.

But--but--I don't know when and can't guess out of this vast fog of war and doom. The worst of it is n.o.body knows just what is happening. I have, for an example, known for a week of the blowing up of a British dreadnaught[82]--thousands of people know it privately--and yet it isn't published! Such secrecy makes you fear there may be other and even worse secrets. But I don't really believe there are. What I am trying to say is, so far as news (and many other things) go, we are under a military rule.

It's beginning to wear on us badly. It presses down, presses down, presses down in an indescribable way. All the people you see have lost sons or brothers; mourning becomes visible over a wider area all the time; people talk of nothing else; all the books are about the war; ordinary social life is suspended--people are visibly growing older. And there are some aspects of it that are incomprehensible. For instance, a group of American and English military men and correspondents were talking with me yesterday--men who have been on both sides--in Germany and Belgium and in France--and they say that the Germans in France alone have had 750,000 men killed. The Allies have lost 400,000 to 500,000. This in France only. Take the other fighting lines and there must already be a total of 2,000,000 killed. Nothing like that has ever happened before in the history of the world. A flood or a fire or a wreck which has killed 500 has often shocked all mankind. Yet we know of this enormous slaughter and (in a way) are not greatly moved. I don't know of a better measure of the brutalizing effect of war--it's bringing us to take a new and more inhuman standard to measure events by.

As for any political or economic reckoning--that's beyond any man's ability yet. I see strings of incomprehensible figures that some economist or other now and then puts in the papers, summing up the loss in pounds sterling. But that means nothing because we have no proper measure of it. If a man lose $10 or $10,000 we can grasp that. But when nations shoot away so many million pounds sterling every day--that means nothing to me. I do know that there's going to be no money on this side the world for a long time to buy American securities. The whole world is going to be hard up in consequence of the bankruptcy of these nations, the inestimable destruction of property, and the loss of productive men. I fancy that such a change will come in the economic and financial readjustment of the world as n.o.body can yet guess at.--Are Americans studying these things? It is not only South-American trade; it is all sorts of manufacturers; it is financial influence--if we can quit spending and wasting, and husband our earnings. There's no telling the enormous advantages we shall gain if we are wise.

The extent to which the German people have permitted themselves to be fooled is beyond belief. As a little instance of it, I enclose a copy of a letter that Lord Bryce gave me, written by an English woman who did good social work in her early life--a woman of sense--and who married a German merchant and has spent her married life in Germany. She is a wholly sincere person. This letter she wrote to a friend in England and--she believes every word of it. If she believes it, the great ma.s.s of the Germans believe similar things. I have heard of a number of such letters--sincere, as this one is. It gives a better insight into the average German mind than a hundred speeches by the Emperor.

This German and Austrian diplomatic business involves an enormous amount of work. I've now sent one man to Vienna and another to Berlin to straighten out almost hopeless tangles and lies about prisoners and such things and to see if they won't agree to swap more civilians detained in each country. On top of these, yesterday came the Turkish Emba.s.sy! Alas, we shall never see old Tewfik[83]

again! This business begins briskly to-day with the detention of every Turkish consul in the British Empire. Lord! I dread the missionaries; and I know they're coming now. This makes four emba.s.sies. We put up a sign, "The American Emba.s.sy," on every one of them. Work? We're worked to death. Two nights ago I didn't get time to read a letter or even a telegram that had come that day till 11 o'clock at night. For on top of all these Emba.s.sies, I've had to become Commissary-General to feed 6,000,000 starving people in Belgium; and practically all the food must come from the United States. You can't buy food for export in any country in Europe. The devastation of Belgium defeats the Germans.--I don't mean in battle but I mean in the after-judgment of mankind. They cannot recover from that half as soon as they may recover from the economic losses of the war. The reducing of those people to starvation--that will stick to d.a.m.n them in history, whatever they win or whatever they lose.

When's it going to end? Everybody who ought to know says at the earliest next year--next summer. Many say in two years. As for me, I don't know. I don't see how it can end soon. Neither can lick the other to a frazzle and neither can afford to give up till it is completely licked. This way of living in trenches and fighting a month at a time in one place is a new thing in warfare. Many a man shoots a cannon all day for a month without seeing a single enemy.

There are many wounded men back here who say they haven't seen a single German. When the trenches become so full of dead men that the living can't stay there longer, they move back to other trenches. So it goes on. Each side has several more million men to lose. What the end will be--I mean when it will come, I don't see how to guess. The Allies are obliged to win; they have more food and more money, and in the long run, more men. But the German fighting machine is by far the best organization ever made--not the best men, but the best organization; and the whole German people believe what the woman writes whose letter I send you. It'll take a long time to beat it.

Affectionately, W.H.P.

The letter that Page inclosed, and another copy of which was sent to the President, purported to be written by the English wife of a German in Bremen. It was as follows:

It is very difficult to write, more difficult to believe that what I write will succeed in reaching you. My husband insists on my urging you--it is not necessary I am sure--to destroy the letter and all possible indications of its origin, should you think it worth translating. The letter will go by a business friend of my husband's to Holland, and be got off from there. For our business with Holland is now exceedingly brisk as you may understand. Her neutrality is most precious to us[84].

Well, I have of course a divided mind. I think of those old days in Liverpool and Devons.h.i.+re--how far off they seem! And yet I spent all last year in England. It was in March last when I was with you and we talked of the amazing treatment of your army--I cannot any longer call it _our_ army--by ministers crying for the resignation of its officers and eager to make their humiliation an election cry! How far off that seems, too! Let me tell you that it was the conduct of your ministers, Churchill especially, that made people here so confident that your Government could not fight. It seemed impossible that Lloyd George and his following could have the effrontery to pose as a "war" cabinet; still more impossible that any sane people could trust them if they did!

Perhaps you may remember a talk we had also in March about Matthew Arnold whom I was reading again during my convalescence at Sidmouth. You said that "Friends.h.i.+p's Garland" and its Arminius could not be written now. I disputed that and told you that it was still true that your Government talked and "ga.s.sed" just as much as ever, and were wilfully blind to the fact that your power of action was wholly unequal to your words. As in 1870 so now. Nay, worse, your rulers have always known it perfectly well, but refused to see it or to admit it, because they wanted office and knew that to say the truth would bring the radical vote in the cities upon their poor heads. It is the old hypocrisy, in the sense in which Germans have always accused your nation: alas! and it is half my nation too. You pride yourselves on "Keeping your word" to Belgium. But you pride yourselves also, not so overtly just now, on always refusing to prepare yourselves to keep that word in _deed_. In the first days of August you knew, absolutely and beyond all doubt, that you could do nothing to make good your word. You had not the moral courage to say so, and, having said so, to act accordingly and to warn Belgium that your promise was "a sc.r.a.p of paper," and effectively nothing more. It _is_ nothing more, and has proved to be nothing more, but you do not see that your indelible disgrace lies just in this, that you unctuously proclaim that you are keeping your word when all the time you know, you have always known, that you refused utterly and completely to take the needful steps to enable you to translate word into action.

Have you not torn up your "sc.r.a.p of paper" just as effectively as Germany has? As my husband puts it: England gave Belgium a check, a big check, and gave it with much ostentation, but took care that there should be no funds to meet it! Trusting to your check Belgium finds herself bankrupt, sequestrated, blotted out as a nation. But I know England well enough to foresee that English statesmen, with our old friend, the Manchester _Guardian_, which we used to read in years gone by, will always quote with pride how they "guaranteed" the neutrality of Belgium.

As to the future. You cannot win. A nation that has prided itself on making no sacrifice for political power or even independence must pay for its pride. Our house here in Bremen has lately been by way of a centre for naval men, and to a less extent, for officers of the neighbouring commands. They are absolutely confident that they will land ten army corps in England before Christmas. It is terrible to know what they mean to go for. They mean to destroy. Every town which remotely is concerned with war material is to be annihilated. Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, Northampton are to be wiped out, and the men killed, ruthlessly hunted down. The fact that Lancas.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re have held aloof from recruiting is not to save them. The fact that Great Britain is to be a Reichsland will involve the destruction of inhabitants, to enable German citizens to be planted in your country in their place. German soldiers hope that your poor creatures will resist, as patriots should, but they doubt it very much. For resistance will facilitate the process of clearance. Ireland will be left independent, and its harmlessness will be guaranteed by its inevitable civil war.

You may wonder, as I do sometimes, whether this hatred of England is not unworthy, or a form of mental disease. But you must know that it is at bottom not hatred but contempt; fierce, unreasoning scorn for a country that pursues money and ease, from aristocrat to trade-unionist labourer, when it has a great inheritance to defend. I feel bitter, too, for I spent half my life in your country and my dearest friends are all English still; and yet I am deeply ashamed of the hypocrisy and make-believe that has initiated your national policy and brought you down. Now, one thing more. England is, after all, only a stepping stone.

From Liverpool, Queenstown, Glasgow, Belfast, we shall reach out across the ocean. I firmly believe that within a year Germany will have seized the new Ca.n.a.l and proclaimed its defiance of the great Monroe Doctrine.

We have six million Germans in the United States, and the Irish-Americans behind them. The Americans, believe me, are _as a nation_ a cowardly nation, and will never fight organized strength except in defense of their own territories. With the Nova Scotian peninsula and the Bermudas, with the West Indies and the Guianas we shall be able to dominate the Americas. By our possession of the entire Western European seaboard America can find no outlet for its products except by our favour. Her finance is in German hands, her commercial capitals, New York and Chicago, are in reality German cities. It is some years since my father and I were in New York. But my opinion is not very different from that of the forceful men who have planned this war--that with Britain as a base the control of the American continent is under existing conditions the task of a couple of months.

I remember a conversation with Doctor Dohrn, the head of the great biological station at Naples, some four or five years ago. He was complaining of want of adequate subventions from Berlin. "Everything is wanted for the Navy," he said. "And what really does Germany want with such a navy?" I asked. "She is always saying that she certainly does not regard it as a weapon against England." At that Doctor Dohrn raised his eyebrows. "But you, _gnadige Frau_, are a German?" "Of course." "Well, then, you will understand me when I say with all the seriousness I can command that this fleet of ours is intended to deal with smugglers on the sh.o.r.es of the Island of Rugen." I laughed. He became graver still.

"The ultimate enemy of our country is America[85]; and I pray that I may see the day of an alliance between a beaten England and a victorious Fatherland against the bully of the Americas." Well, Germany and Austria were never friends until Sadowa had shown the way. Oh! if your country, which in spite of all I love so much, would but "see things clearly and see them whole."

Bremen, September 25, 1914.

_To Ralph W. Page_[86]

London, Sunday, November 15, 1914.

DEAR RALPH:

You were very good to sit down in Greensboro', or anywhere else, and to write me a fine letter. Do that often. You say there's nothing to do now in the Sandhills. Write us letters: that's a fair job!

G.o.d save us, we need 'em. We need anything from the sane part of the world to enable us to keep our balance. One of the commonest things you hear about now is the insanity of a good number of the poor fellows who come back from the trenches as well as of a good many Belgians. The sights and sounds they've experienced unhinge their reason. If this war keep up long enough--and it isn't going to end soon--people who have had no sight of it will go crazy, too--the continuous thought of it, the inability to get away from it by any device whatever--all this tells on us all. Letters, then, plenty of them--let 'em come.

You are in a peaceful land. The war is a long, long way off. You suffer nothing worse than a little idleness and a little poverty.

They are nothing. I hope (and believe) that you get enough to eat.

Be content, then. Read the poets, improve a piece of land, play with the baby, learn golf. That's the happy and philosophic and fortunate life in these times of world-madness.

As for the continent of Europe--forget it. We have paid far too much attention to it. It has ceased to be worth it. And now it's of far less value to us--and will be for the rest of your life--than it has ever been before. An ancient home of man, the home, too, of beautiful things--buildings, pictures, old places, old traditions, dead civilizations--the place where man rose from barbarism to civilization--it is now bankrupt, its best young men dead, its system of politics and of government a failure, its social structure enslaving and tyrannical--it has little help for us. The American spirit, which is the spirit that concerns itself with making life better for the whole ma.s.s of men--that's at home at its best with us. The whole future of the race is in the new countries--our country chiefly. This grows on one more and more and more. The things that are best worth while are on our side of the ocean. And we've got all the bigger job to do because of this violent demonstration of the failure of continental Europe. It's gone on living on a false basis till its elements got so mixed that it has simply blown itself to pieces. It is a great convulsion of nature, as an earthquake or a volcano is. Human life there isn't worth what a yellow dog's life is worth in Moore County. Don't bother yourself with the continent of Europe any more--except to learn the value of a real democracy and the benefits it can confer precisely in proportion to the extent to which men trust to it. Did you ever read my Address delivered before the Royal Inst.i.tution of Great Britain[87]? I enclose a copy. Now that's my idea of the very milk of the word. To come down to daily, deadly things--this upheaval is simply infernal. Parliament opened the other day and half the old lords that sat in their robes had lost their heirs and a larger part of the members of the House wore khaki. To-morrow they will vote $1,125,000,000 for war purposes. They had already voted $500,000,000. They'll vote more, and more, and more, if necessary. They are raising a new army of 2,000,000 men. Every man and every dollar they have will go if necessary. That's what I call an invincible people. The Kaiser woke up the wrong pa.s.senger. But for fifty years the continent won't be worth living on. My heavens!

what bankruptcy will follow death!

Affectionately, W.H.P.

_To Frank C. Page_[88]

Sunday, December 20th, 1914.

DEAR OLD MAN:

I envy both you and your mother[89] your chance to make plans for the farm and the house and all the rest of it and to have one another to talk to. And, most of all, you are where you can now and then change the subject. You can guess somewhat at our plight when Kitty and I confessed to one another last night that we were dead tired and needed to go to bed early and to stay long. She's sleeping yet, the dear kid, and I hope she'll sleep till lunch time. There isn't anything the matter with us but the war; but that's enough, Heaven knows. It's the worst ailment that has ever struck me. Then, if you add to that this dark, wet, foggy, sooty, cold, penetrating climate--you ought to thank your stars that you are not in it. I'm glad your mother's out of it, as much as we miss her; and miss her? Good gracious! there's no telling the hole her absence makes in all our life. But Kitty is a trump, true blue and dead game, and the very best company you can find in a day's journey. And, much as we miss your mother, you mustn't weep for us; we are having some fun and are planning more. I could have no end of fun with her if I had any time. But to work all day and till bedtime doesn't leave much time for sport.

The farm--the farm--the farm--it's yours and Mother's to plan and make and do with as you wish. I shall be happy whatever you do, even if you put the roof in the cellar and the cellar on top of the house.

If you have room enough (16 X 10 plus a fire and a bath are enough for me), I'll go down there and write a book. If you haven't it, I'll go somewhere else and write a book. I don't propose to be made unhappy by any house or by the lack of any house nor by anything whatsoever.

All the details of life go on here just the same. The war goes as slowly as death because it _is_ death, death to millions of men.