Never Again! | Page 6

he finds that his real
privilege is to die at the foot of a Trespass-board on some rich man's
estate, singing bravely to the last that "Britons never, never shall be
slaves!" He is told that he is defending his hearth and his home, and to

prove that that is so, he is sent out on a far campaign to further some
dubious scheme -- in Mesopotamia! I think we cannot refuse to say that
the good temper and they single-heartedness and the single mindedness
of the British soldier are beyond all praise.
But, in another way, how admirable and how great has the French
soldier proved himself to be!
The passion of Patriotism, the sheer love of their own country (in the
case of the French, more truly "their own" than in the case of the
British) has swept through France in a wave of devotion which
consumed in its flame, one may almost say, the energies and the
treasures of every household. To protect their beautiful land, their
divine mistress, from violation by the German hordes was a thing for
which all men -- artists, literary men and all -- were glad to die.
When at Meaux the French army (reorganized and reinforced) broke
through the German centre and fell upon Von Kluck's left flank (his
right being already threatened by the French Sixth Army), they were
surely not men who fought, but spirits rather -- many of them almost
ghosts, white with the fatigues and privations of a long retreat; but to
save their beloved Paris they faced the enemy with a fury that nothing
could resist.
A miracle was wrought (talk of Angels at Mons, it was Devils at
Meaux), and Germany in that moment was defeated -- even though it
took two years more to make her acknowledge her defeat.
Think of Lieutenant Pericard who in a trench full of corpses at
Bois-brule cried, suddenly entranced, in a loud voice, "Debout les
morts!" and in a moment, as it were, the souls of their dead comrades
were around his men, inspiring them to victory.
When again at Verdun week after week and month after month the
French army endured tine almost hourly mass-attacks of the enemy
battalions and the deluge of their shells (eight million shells, it is
estimated the Germans threw in ten weeks), it still, though heavily
punished, stood solid, and the whole of France stood solid behind it.
France never doubted the conclusion; and the conclusion was never
doubtful.
We have spoken of `glory,' but the day of ` la gloire ' has departed.
France herself has ceased to speak of it -- and there can be no better
proof than that, of the change that has come over the minds of men .

France has emerged from the War a changed nation. The people who in
1870 made ribald verses and sang cynical songs over the plight of their
country are now no more, and France emerges serious, resolute, to the
great work which she has before her -- of building the great first
Democratic State of Europe and becoming the corner-stone of the
future European Confederation.
And what shall we say of the German army? (In the moment and
merely for the sake of brevity I leave the Belgians, Russians, Italians
and Serbians aside.)
When I think of the great German army now scattered over Europe,
fighting along that immense line (including the Austrian portion) of
some 1,400 miles in extent; when I think of this on the whole so
wonderfully goodhearted, genial, sociable people, these regiments of
Westphalians, Wurtemburgers, Saxons, Bavarians, Hungarians, these
men and boys from the fields and farms of Posen and Pomerania, the
forests of Thuringia, the vineyards of the Rhine or the vegetable
gardens of the Palatinate, these students from the Universities and
scholars from the Technical Schools; plunged in this insane War,
fighting in very truth for they know not what, and pouring out their
life-blood, like water in obedience to the long-prepared schemes of
their rulers -- I am seized with an immense pity.
They have been told they are fighting to save their Fatherland. And as
far as our argument is concerned it does not matter how falsely they
have been instructed or what grain of actual truth there may be in the
contention.
The point is that the vast majority of them believe this to be true; and
they too, dear children, are giving their lives for their hearths and
homes -- they too are leading this hateful existence in trenches and
mines, called to it by what seems to them a good conscience, and
carried onward (in company with those they have left at home) in the
mad millrace of public opinion.
However we may, blame the German High Command -- and