Told in a French Garden | Page 5

that as the days went on we all realized that the Doctor had been right--that France was to be invaded, not across her own proper frontier, but across unprotected Belgium. This seemed so atrocious to most of us that indignation could only express itself in abuse. There was not a night that the dinner-table talk was not bitter. You see the Doctor did not expect the world ever to be perfect--did not know that he wanted it to be--believed in the struggle. On the other hand the Critic, and in a certain sense the Journalist, in spite of their experiences, were more or less Utopian, and the Sculptor and the Violinist purely spectators.
No need to go into the details of the heated arguments. They were only the echo of what all the world,--that had cradled itself into the belief that a great war among the great nations had become, for economic as well as humanitarian reasons, impossible,--were, I imagine, at this time saying.
As nearly as I can remember it was on August 20th that the climax came. Li��ge had fallen. The English Expedition had landed, and was marching on Belgium. A victorious German army had goose-stepped into defenseless Brussels, and was sweeping out toward the French frontier. The French advance into Alsace had been a blunder.
The Doctor remarked that "the English had landed twelve days too late," and the Journalist drew a graphic, and purely imaginary, picture of the pathos of the Belgians straining their eyes in vain to the West for the coming of the men in khaki, and unfortunately he let himself expatiate a bit on German methods.
The spark touched the Doctor off.
"By Jove," he said, "all you sentimentalists read the History of the World with your intellects in your breeches pockets. War is not a game for babies. It is war--it is not sport. You chaps think war can be prevented. All I ask you is--why hasn't it been prevented? In every generation that we know anything about there have been some pretty fine men who have been of your opinion--Erasmus for one, and how many others? But since the generations have contented themselves with talking, and not talked war out of the problem, why, I can't see, for my part, that Germany's way is not as good as any. She is in to win, and so are all the rest of them. Schools of War are like the Schools of Art you chaps talk so much about--it does not make much difference what school one belongs to--the only important thing is making good."
"One would think," said the Journalist, "that you liked such a war."
"Well, I don't even know that I can deny that. I would not deliberately choose it. But I am willing to accept it, and I am not a bit sentimental about it. I am not even sure that it was not needed. The world has let the Kaiser sit twenty-five years on a throne announcing himself as 'God's anointed.' His pretensions have been treated seriously by all the democracies of the world. What for? Purely for personal gain. We have come to a pass where there is little a man won't do--for personal gain. The business of the world, and its diplomacy, have all become so complicated and corrupt that a large percentage of the brains of honest mankind are little willing to touch either. We need shaking up--all of us. If nothing can make man realize that he was not born to be merely happy and get rich, or to have a fine old time, why, such a complete upheaval as this seems to me to be necessary, and for me--if this war can rip off, with its shrapnel, the selfishness with which prosperity has encrusted the lucky: if it can explode our false values with its bombs: if it can break down our absurd pretensions with its cannon,--all I can say is that Germany will have done missionary work for the whole world--herself included."
Before he had done, we were all on our feet shouting at him, all but the Lawyer, who smiled into his coffee cup.
"Why," cried the Critic, in anger, "one would think you held a brief for them!"
"I do NOT," snapped the Doctor, "but I don't dislike them any more than I do--well," catching himself up with a laugh, "lots of other people."
"And you mean to tell me," said the gentle voice of the Divorc��e at his elbow, "that you calmly face the idea of the hundreds of thousands of men,--well and strong to-day--dead to-morrow,--the thought of the mothers who have borne their sons in pain, and bred them in love, only to fling them before the cannon?"
"For what, after all, are we born?" said the Doctor. "Where we die, or when is a trifle, since die we must.