A Traveller in War-Time | Page 4

to the place where these things are, hence indeed you need
experience. You can only win your way on the frontier unless you are
willing to live there."
Through the pall of horror and tragedy the American sees a vision; for
him it is not merely a material and bloody contest of arms and men, a

military victory to be gained over an aggressive and wrong-minded
people. It is a world calamity, indeed, but a calamity, since it has come,
to be spiritualized and utilized for the benefit of the future society of
mankind. It must be made to serve a purpose in helping to liberate the
world from sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and cant.

II
One night we entered the danger zone. There had been an entertainment
in the little salon which, packed with passengers, had gradually
achieved the temperature and humidity of a Turkish bath. For the ports
had been closed as tight as gaskets could make them, the electric fans,
as usual, obstinately "refused to march." After the amateur
speechmaking and concert pieces an Italian violinist, who had thrown
over a lucrative contract to become a soldier, played exquisitely; and
one of the French sisters we had seen walking the deck with the
mincing steps of the cloister sang; somewhat precariously and
pathetically, the Ave Maria. Its pathos was of the past, and after she
had finished, as we fled into the open air, we were conscious of having
turned our backs irrevocably yet determinedly upon an era whose life
and convictions the music of the composer so beautifully expressed.
And the sister's sweet withered face was reminiscent of a missal, one
bright with colour, and still shining faintly. A missal in a library of
modern books!
On deck a fine rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a
phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving
the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating
the sinister blackness of the night. We were, apparently, a beacon in
that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters were lurking.
There were on board other elements which in the normal times gone by
would have seemed disquieting enough. The evening after we had left
New York, while we were still off the coast of Long Island, I saw on
the poop a crowd of steerage passengers listening intently to harangues
by speakers addressing them from the top of a pile of life rafts.
Armenians, I was told, on their way to fight the Turks, all recruited in
America by one frenzied woman who had seen her child cut in two by a
German officer. Twilight was gathering as I joined the group, the sea

was silvered by the light of an August moon floating serenely between
swaying stays. The orator's passionate words and gestures evoked wild
responses from his hearers, whom the drag of an ancient hatred had
snatched from the peaceful asylum of the west. This smiling, happy
folk, which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now
transformed, atavistic--all save one, a student, who stared wistfully
through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened,
when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place
to a singer. He had been a bootblack in America. Now he had become a
bard. His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour
of that age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now
determined to avenge. Their conventional costumes were proof that we
had harboured them--almost, indeed, assimilated them. And suddenly
they had reverted. They were going to slaughter the Turks.
On a bright Saturday afternoon we steamed into the wide mouth of the
Gironde, a name stirring vague memories of romance and terror. The
French passengers gazed wistfully at the low-lying strip of sand and
forest, but our uniformed pilgrims crowded the rail and hailed it as the
promised land of self-realization. A richly coloured watering-place slid
into view, as in a moving-picture show. There was, indeed, all the
reality and unreality of the cinematograph about our arrival; presently
the reel would end abruptly, and we should find ourselves pushing our
way out of the emptying theatre into a rainy street. The impression of
unreality in the face of visual evidence persisted into the night when,
after an afternoon at anchor, we glided up the river, our decks and ports
ablaze across the land. Silhouettes of tall poplars loomed against the
blackness; occasionally a lamp revealed the milky blue facade of a
house. This was France! War-torn France--at last vividly brought home
to us when a glare appeared on the sky, growing brighter and brighter
until, at a turn of the river, abruptly we came abreast of vomiting
furnaces, thousands of electric lights strung