Defenders of Democracy Part 10

The Prayer of "Le Poilu"

Then "Le Poilu" standing, in the cold December night, behind the breastworks, fixed his gaze upon a star that was s.h.i.+ning with a strange brilliance in the sky above. His mind was stirred with thoughts of far away things. His heart grew lighter, as though it yearned to reach the star; his lips trembled, and softly he breathed a prayer.

"O Star," he murmured, "I need not thy glimmering light, for I know my way. The road may have appeared dark at first when my eyes were unaccustomed to its sharp turns, but for a year it has been divinely illumined for me. Even if it grew longer each day, it will never seem dark again. Although torn by thorns and cut by stones, nothing can make me turn back. I know that I shall go on, steadfast to the end. I behold before me Victory.... But there,--behind me, is a mult.i.tude sorely troubled in the darkness.

"Now, as the old year revolves on its rusty hinges, those who wait at home live over in their troubled hearts the events which marked its pa.s.sing. They think of the barbarous hordes of the Orient which the German has caught in his train; Turks and Bulgarians, Kurds and Malissores, and they overlook the great nations enrolled under the banner of civilization. They brood over lands ground under the iron heel of the Teuton and overlook the Empires that we hold; here, West and East Africa, four times as large as all Germany, with their thousands of miles of railroads and their diamond mines; there, the Islands of Oceania and the fortress of Asia: Kiao-Tcheou, which the Kaiser has proclaimed the pearl of his colonies. They are alarmed at the chaff that Germany gathers in her lawless course and they do not see the mighty girders that stay France. But we who are the girders, we know better, we see farther.

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches.... Confidence!

"By the light of the past we behold the future. Whenever an army, seized with the frenzy of conquest, has forced its way into a far land, abandoning the cradle whence it drew its life and strength, it has wasted away, it has perished from utter exhaustion. Like stones loosened from a solid wall, it has disintegrated. Like the grain of dust which the wind has blow away, it has vanished never to return.

"More than a century ago legions attempted the conquest of Egypt.

They were the most magnificent in the world. Their chiefs bore the names of Desaix, Kleber and Bonaparte. But they had not the mastery of the seas, and returned not from the burning sands of the desert.... Think also of the time when the most formidable army of Europe, led by the greatest conqueror the world has ever known, tried to overwhelm the vast Russian Empire. But the empire was mightier than the Great Army, and it returned not from the glacial solitude of the steppes.... So let it go far, ever farther on, that German army already decimated, panting, exhausted; let it reach the Tigris, the Euphrates, even far off India! It will not return.

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches.... History!

"Truly the winter nights are long, and all the rays, O Star, are not worth the smile of the loved woman at the hearth. And yet, thou hast something of woman, since so many men follow thee blindly: thou hast her grace and splendor. [No German couturier will ever clothe you!] Thou hast even virtues that women do not possess, for thou art patient and calm. Clouds come between thy wors.h.i.+pers and thee, dawn each morning extinguishes thy light, yet dost thou bow before the supreme law of nature without a murmur. I pray thee inspire with submission thy sisters of the earth; teach them calmly and patiently to await the return of their warriors.

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches.... Discipline!

"Would that all men, that all women might know that there is something above Numbers, above Force, above even Courage, and that is PERSEVERANCE! A few years ago there was a boxing match between Sam Mac Vea and Joe Jeannette that will remain famous in the history of the sport. Mac Vea was a heavy weight, strong, all muscle: a veritable black giant. Joe Jeannette, light, well proportioned, all nerve: a mongrel of the best sort. The match was epic. It went on for forty-two rounds and lasted three hours. At the third round, and again in the seventh, Sam Mac Vea threw Joe Jeannette, and his victory seemed a.s.sured. But little by little Joe Jeannette revived, pulled himself together, defended himself, and through sheer nerve, began to attack. At the forty-second round, shoulder to shoulder, panting, dripping wet and covered with blood they struck the last blow. The resources of Sam Mac Vea were exhausted, and through the very a.s.surance of his adversary he felt himself beaten.... Suddenly the great giant lifted his arms and gave way, saying: 'I guess I cannot.'...

"Thus shall we soon see Germany fall to the earth, saying brokenly, 'I cannot.'...

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches...to be game!"

Stephane Lauzanne

Translation by Madame Carlo Polifeme.

A Tribute to England

It may be said of this war, as the master mind of all the ages said of adversity, that "its uses are sweet," even though they be as a precious jewel s.h.i.+ning in the head of an ugly and venomous toad.

While the world-war has brutalized men, it has as a moral paradox added immeasurably to the sum of human n.o.bility. Its epic grandeur is only beginning to reveal itself, and in it the human soul has reached the high water marker of courage and honor.

The war has enriched our language with many new expressions, but none more beautiful than that of "Somewhere in France." To all n.o.ble minds, while it sounds the abysmal depths of tragic suffering, it rises to the sublimest heights of heroic self-sacrifice.

The world has paid its tribute to the immortal valor of France, and no words could pay the debt of appreciation which civilization owes to this heroic nation; but has there been due recognition of the equal valor and the like spirit of self-sacrifice which has characterized Great Britain in this t.i.tanic struggle?

When the frontier of Belgium was crossed, England staked the existence of its great empire upon the issue of the uncertain struggle. It had, as figures go in this war, only a small army. If it had been n.i.g.g.ardly in its effort to defend Belgium, and save France in her hour of supreme peril, England might have said, without violating any express obligation arising under the ENTENTE CORDIALE, that in giving its incomparable fleet it had rendered all the service that its political interests, according to former standards of expediency, justified; and it could have been plausibly suggested that the ordinary considerations of prudence and the instinct of self-preservation required it, in the face of the deadly a.s.sault by the greatest military power in the world, to reserve its little army for the defense of its own soil. England never hesitated, when the Belgian frontier was crossed, but moved with such extraordinary speed that within four days after its declaration of war its standing army was crossing the channel, and within a fortnight it had landed upon French soil the two army corps which const.i.tuted the backbone of her military power.

What follows will be remembered with admiration and grat.i.tude by the English speaking races as long as they endure, for nothing in the history of that race is finer than the way in which the so called "contemptible little British Army," as the Kaiser somewhat prematurely called it--outnumbered four to one, and with an even greater disproportion in artillery--withstood the powerful legions of Von Kluck at Mons. Enveloped on both flanks they stood as a stone wall for three days against an a.s.sault of one of the mightiest armies in recorded history, and only retreated when ordered to do so by the high command of the Allied forces in order to conform to its strategic plans. The English were not defeated at Mons. It was a victory, both in a technical and moral sense.

The retreat from Mons to the Marne was one of terrible hards.h.i.+p and imminent danger. For nearly fourteen days, in obedience to orders, the British soldiers,--fighting terrific rear guard actions, which, in r.e.t.a.r.ding the invaders, made possible the ultimate victory,--slowly retreated, never losing their morale, although suffering untold physical hards.h.i.+ps and the greater agony of temporary defeats, which they could not at that time understand, and yet it is to their undying credit, in common with their brave comrades of the French Army, that when the moment came to cease the retreat and to turn upon a foe, which flushed with unprecedented victory still greatly outnumbered the retreating armies, the British soldier struck back with almost undiminished power. The "miracle of the Marne" is due to Tommy Atkins as well as to the French Poilu.

Even more wonderful was the defense of Ypres. There was a time in the first battle of Ypres when the British high command, denuded of sh.e.l.ls, were allotting among their commands, then engaged in a life-and-death struggle, ammunition which had not yet left England.

So terribly was the "first seven divisions" of glorious memory decimated in this first battle of Ypres, that at a critical time, the bakers, cobblers and grooms were put into the trenches to fill the gaps made by the slain soldiers in that great charnel house.

The "thin red line" held back--not for days, but for weeks,--an immensely superior force, and the soldiers of England unflinchingly bared their b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the most destructive artillery-fire that the world at that time had ever known. They held their ground and saved the day, and the glory of the first and second battles of Ypres, which saved Calais, and possibly the war itself, will ever be that of the British Army.

Over four million Britons have volunteered in the war, and although very few of them had ever had an previous military experience, yet their stamina and unconquerable courage were such that the youth of the great Empire, on more than one occasion, when called upon, as on the Somme, to attack as well as defend, swept the famed Prussian guard out of seemingly impregnable positions, as for example at Contalmaison.

Will the world ever forget the children of the Mother Empire who came so freely and n.o.bly from far distant Canada, who wrenched Vimy and Messines ridges from a powerful foe?

I hear still the tramp of marching thousands in the first days of the war, as they pa.s.sed through the streets of Winchester en route to France via Southampton, singing with cheer and joy, "It is a long way to Tipperary." Alas! It is indeed a "long, long way,"

and many a gallant English boy has fallen in that way of glory.

To-day, from the Channel to the Vosges, there are hundreds of thousands of graves where British soldiers keep the ghostly bivouac of the dead. They gave their young lives on the soil of France to save France, and when the great result is finally accomplished, a grateful world will never forget that "fidelity even unto death" of the British soldier. Their place on Fame's eternal camping ground is sure.

What just man can fail to appreciate the work of the English sailor? It has been said by Lord Curzon, that never has an English mariner in this war refused to accept the arduous and most dangerous service of patrolling the great highways of the deep. No soldier can surpa.s.s in courage or fort.i.tude the mine sweepers, who have braved the elemental forces of nature, and the most cruel forces of the Terror, which lurks under the seas.

The spirit of Nelson still inspires them, for every mariner of England has done his duty in this greatest crisis of the modern world.

And how can words pay due tribute to the work and sacrifices of the women and children of England? They have endured hards.h.i.+ps with masculine strength, and have accepted irreparable sacrifices with infinite self-sacrifice.

When the three British cruisers were sunk early in the war by a single submarine, and many thousand British sailors perished, the news was conveyed to a seaport town in England, from which many of them had been recruited, by posting upon a screen the names of the pitifully few men who had survived that terrible disaster. Thousands of women, the wives and daughters of those who had perished, waited in the open square in the hope, in most cases in vain, to see the name of some one who was dear to them posted among the survivors; and yet when the last names of the rescued were finally posted, and thousands of English women, there a.s.sembled, realized that those who were nearest and dearest to them had perished beneath the waves, these women of England, instead of lamentations or tears, in the spirit of loftiest and most sacred patriotism united their voices and sang "Britannia Rules the Waves," and re-affirmed their belief that, notwithstanding all the powers of h.e.l.l, that "Britons never would be slaves."

Who shall then question England's right to a conspicuous place in this worldwide tournament of Fame? In all her past history, there has never been any page more glorious. Without her, as without France, civilization would have perished. To each nation be lasting honor!

The spirit of Shakespeare has animated his people, and that mighty spirit still says to them in his own flaming words---

"In G.o.d's name, cheerily on, courageous friends, To reap the harvest of perpetual peace By this one b.l.o.o.d.y trial of sharp war."

[signed]James M. Beck

Unity and Peace

Great Britain and the United States were politically separated nearly a century and a half ago, because Britain was not in those days governed by the will of the people as she has been for the last eighty years and more. But the ideals of the two nations have been for many generations substantially the same. Both have loved Liberty ever since the time when their common ancestors wrested it from feudal monarchs. A time has now come when both nations are called to defend, and to extend in the world at large, the freedom they won within their own countries. America has harkened to the call. Renouncing her former isolation, she has felt that duty to mankind requires her to contend in arms for the freedom she has ill.u.s.trated by her example. The soldiers of Britain and France welcome the stalwart sons of America as their comrades in this great struggle for Democracy and Humanity. With their help, they look forward confidently to a decisive victory, a victory to be followed by a lasting peace.

[signed] Bryce.