The Audacious War Part 7

j.a.pan wants to cooperate with Russia, and, indeed, with all European civilization. After the fall of Kiao-Chau she sent arms to Russia, and she stands ready to throw legions into the European field in defense of her English ally. Influential people in England are strongly urging the military authorities to permit the little j.a.ps to join in.

Russia will keep faith with the Poles and the Jews and set up an autonomous Poland. But there is a strong resentment in Russia to-day because the Polish Jews misled the Russian army in the marshy grounds of East Prussia in the early campaigns of the war.

Russian military plans had to be changed and the field of war set farther south. Here Russia hopes to drive the five million people of Silesia back toward Berlin. This will awaken the Junkers of East Prussia and bring home to the people of Germany what the Prussian military machine really invites when it attempts a world-conquest.

Russia lacks military railroads and scientific means of communication.

But just as America was surprised ten years ago to find the j.a.ps, as the ally of England, giving, as the English predicted, "a good account of themselves," so the Russians as the allies of Great Britain may be found giving a very good account of themselves in this war. Russia is certainly unconquerable from either the Austrian or the German standpoint, and the smas.h.i.+ng of Austria between Russia, Roumania, Servia, and Italy may be the real military campaign of this most Audacious War.

American engineers and diplomats familiar with Russia declare that, properly led, the Russian soldier is the greatest fighter in the world; and he is getting that leaders.h.i.+p now.

The Russians expect the war will be over before next autumn, but Kitchener does not plan to end it then. He means to do this job thoroughly, and his plans are most comprehensive.

CHAPTER X

THE ENGLISH POSITION

A Quiet London--The Call to Arms--No Mourning--The Zeppelin Scare--German Spies--The German Landing--Kultur War Indemnities.

It is worth a winter trip across the Atlantic to stand with a London audience and hear it respond to the call, "Are we downhearted?" with a thunderous "NO!"

It is then you first realize that the British Empire is at war; and what that war means; and that that Empire has piped to its defense a free people inhabiting one fifth of the territory of the globe.

The British Empire has war upon its hands a major part of the time. It may be in the Soudan; it may be in South Africa. From some quarter of the globe war is almost always before the Empire. But a war summoning the whole British Empire to arms on land and sea,--that has not been dreamed of for a hundred years.

You expect to find in London an armed camp, the flags flying, the drums beating, the troops marching; an excited people discussing causes and effects of the military and naval programmes; military encampments with white tents over the plains. But you find nothing of the sort. If you attempt to motor in the country and figure on reaching a certain place in two hours, you may find it takes you four, as you are very likely to run into troops, companies, regiments, and armies in training, but mostly without arms and only partially uniformed. They are trudging the highways and the lanes of England from 5.30 A.M. until dusk,--rain or s.h.i.+ne. Here is Kitchener's army being put into condition, with no fuss, feathers, or trumpet beats. The army is "rolling up" and "hardening up." But not on the tented campus. It is quartered in the towns and villages all over England, and board and lodging is regularly paid by the government.

There are no noticeable drum beats over England; no displays of bunting. Monuments, public buildings, and conspicuous corners, and, most conspicuous of all, the gla.s.s fronts of the taxi-cabs, bear signs calling the men of England to arms:--

"Fall in--Join the Army at once."

"Your King and Country need you. England expects that every man this day will do his duty."

"Enlist for the duration of the War."

"Enlist for three years."

"You are needed to fight for Honor and the Country's defense."

"No price can be too high when Honor and Freedom are at stake."

"Who dies if England lives?"

"He gives twice who gives quickly--join at once."

"'More men and still more until the enemy is crushed.'--Lord Kitchener."

And many more of the same tenor. Beyond these you will see little evidence in the London streets of an empire at war. Hotels are largely empty; managers very polite; restaurants must close at 10. P.M.; no after-theater supper at the hotels unless you are a guest. Men in khaki uniforms are more conspicuous; and bandaged heads, slung arms, and legs a.s.sisted by crutches are more noticeable than formerly.

The searchlights flash above the city; the street lights are shaded overhead in foolish fancy as a protection from aeroplanes or dirigibles. Curtains are closely drawn by police orders, in the houses and railway trains.

Yet one of the airmen who had been over London at night told me that the city was just as conspicuous as though it were wide open in illumination. Indeed, there is a general call among the Londoners for the police to let up and permit electric signs, lighted windows, and more light in the streets. But the only answer that came early in December was orders to turn down the lights further!

In Paris they turned on the lights, illuminated the streets, closed up the museums and galleries, buried their art and sent the Venus de Milo on a walk to some storage vault along with the banks' reserve gold.

London's museums and picture galleries are wide open, and the endeavor to protect the streets from Germans peering down from above looks childish. The great strategy of the Germans consists of talking across the Channel about their plans for raiding England. I suspect that the English military authorities do not object. It encourages enlistment.

When enlistment gets dull, the Germans stimulate it with some sh.e.l.ls thrown on the English coast.

There are only two or three new plays in London this season; the great war-plays and dramas, and indeed the literature of this war, have yet to be written. Nearly all the new presentations for which London is so famous were set back on the shelf when the business of war started.

Most of the theater programs are revivals of old favorites, and a few of the theaters are still closed. All that are open begin promptly at 8 P.M. Five hundred English actors have gone to the front.

You have to make the circuit to find the heart of England at war, but you find it--horse, foot, and dragoons; men, women, and children. "Are we downhearted?" answered by a thunderous "No!" Then again silence, and turning down of the lights, and the steady work! work! work!

"Have you a bed here?" said Kitchener when he entered the War Office.

"Never heard of such a thing here," was the response.

"Get one," said Kitchener; "I have no time for clubs and hotels."

Not only Kitchener but the whole staff camped down in the office, working days, nights, and Sundays, until Lady ---- turned over her house nearby to Kitchener and his staff.

"Where is ----?" I asked of his next-door neighbor. The response was, "Oh, he is at the War Office, and gets a Sunday home with his family about once in six weeks." That family was not fifteen miles from London.

When a citizen has been suddenly notified that where he could formerly get a train for home every fifteen minutes, the railroad has been taken for military service, and he must get his supper in town, there is not the slightest word of complaint. He only wishes he could contribute more to the Empire.

I spoke with Lord K., of B---- & Co., concerning the loss of his eldest son, as I had known Lord K. for many years. The manner, the gesture, the speech, in response, were all one, and brief; just an indication of sacrifice that had to be made for the Empire; and that sacrifice had only just begun; deaths in the family just honorable incidents in the life of the Empire.

You see crutches and broken heads in London, but you will see no mourning.

"Yes," said Lord C. to me, "the average income tax in England is now doubled until it is one eighth, or about 12 1/2 per cent, but my friends in the banking world have to pay an increasing supertax. I know many who must now give one quarter of their income to the government. They not only do it gladly, but expect it will be a half next year, and they will contribute that just as gladly."

From the top to the bottom in the Empire, all that is asked at the present time is a protected food and clothing supply, and everything else can go into "the cauldron of war."

"Did you ever see anything like it?" said an American banker in London to me. "Are n't these people wonderful? Did you ever see such resolution, such steady work, such sacrifices, such unity of empire?"

It was indeed worth a winter's trip across the ocean to see it.

Although the newspapers complained of the censors.h.i.+p, there was only one general complaint from the people in the British press. They wanted to know what the regulations were, or were to be, concerning self-defense when the Germans arrive in the country. Should a citizen without uniform take up arms against the invaders? Had he a right individually to shoot a German invader? Was the old rule that an Englishman's home is his castle, and that he has the right to defend it, now superseded by any rules of international warfare?

Some independent people of note were declaiming in the public prints that any German invader of England was a thief and a robber and that any weapons might be used to attack the invaders; and that there was no rule of warfare that could prevent an Englishman defending his home by any weapons against any foreign invaders.

Nevertheless the spirit of the people was, even under invasion, to respect law and order and rules of warfare, and be guided by the government as to all forms of individual or collective defenses. They simply wanted the rules promulgated.

The English are reconciled to Zeppelin raids from Germany, and rather expect them. But there is yet no unanimity in preparation or action.

The Rothschilds have put four feet of sand on the roof of their building, but the amount of their gold in store must be incomparably less than that in the Bank of England, where no precautions are visible.

Trenches by the beaches and barricades by the highways are noticeable along the entire south and east coasts of England, but they are without stores or equipment. You run across these trenches in the moonlight as you journey about the country and for the moment you wonder for what purpose somebody dug those long ditches by the sh.o.r.e, and what the trench or irrigation scheme is. Your answer comes when you run straight into a timber barricade across the highway nearby. Then you look down the coast and see flas.h.i.+ng searchlights, note the lights of steamers pa.s.sing up and down the coast, and reflect that there is no universal law in war. The Channel steamers are carrying lights in the war area, but the North Atlantic steamers still cross the ocean without showing even port or starboard lights. The street cars moving in the English coast cities must, of course, be lighted and the streets must have some illuminant; but the railroad carriages, hotels, and private houses must draw their curtains. Yet railroad terminals and piers must have their lights, and harbors must have their searchlights. General service lights must be ablaze, but individual glimmers must be curtained. It reminds one of Cowper, the English poet, who, in the same kennel, cut a big hole for his big dog and a little hole for the pup.