±W, FRANCE AND RITAIN AT WARO 7 <' v i W '<-■ ,0* ^ 5 -0' ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN AT WAR MR. WELLS HAS ALSO WRITTEN The Following Novels: Love and Mr. Lewisham Kipps Mr. Polly The Wheels of Chance The New Machiavelli Ann Veronica Marriage Tono Bungay Bealby The Passionate Friends The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman The Research Magnificent Mr. Britling Sees It Through Short Stories Collected Under the Titles Thirty Strange Stories Twelve Stories and a Dream Tales of Space and Time The Following Fantastic and Imaginative Romances The Time Machine The War of the Worlds The Sea Lady The Wonderful Visit In the Days of the Comet The Sleeper Awakes The Food of the Gods The War in the Air The First Men in the Moon The World Set Free The Island of Dr. Moreau A Series of Books upon Social and Political Questions: Anticipations (1900) Mankind in the Making A Modern Utopia First and Last Things (Religion and Philosophy) The Future in America New Worlds for Old Social Forces in England and America What Is Coming? Italy, France and Britain at War And Two Little Books About (Children's Play Called Floor Games Little Wars ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN AT WAR BY H. G. WELLS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1917 J Copyright, 1917, By H. G. WELLS Set up and electrotyped. Published, February, 1917. Reprinted February. March, three times, 1917. CONTENTS PAGE The Passing of the Effigy 1 The "War in Italy (August, 1916) I. The Isonzo Front 35 II. The Mountain War 45 III. Behind the Front 58 The Western War (September, 1916) I. Ruins 75 II. The Grades of War 88 III. The War Landscape 107 IV. New Arms for Old Ones 127 V. Tanks 153 How People Think About the War I. Do They Really Think at All? . . 172 II. The Yielding Pacifist and the Con- scientious Objector 184 III. The Religious Revival 200 IV. The Riddle of the British . . . .216 V. The Social Changes in Progress . . 231 VI. The Ending of the War 255 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN AT WAR THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY One of the minor peculiarities of this unprece- dented war is the Tour of the Front. After some months of suppressed information — in which even the war correspondent was discouraged to the point of elimination — it was discovered on both sides that this was a struggle in which Opinion was playing a larger and more important part than it had ever done before. This wild spreading weed was perhaps of decisive importance; the Germans at any rate were attempting to make it a cultivated flower. There was Opinion flowering away at home, feeding rankly on rumour; Opinion in neu- tral countries; Opinion in the enemy country; Opinion getting into great tangles of misunder- standing and incorrect valuation between the Allies. The confidence and courage of the enemy, the amia- bility and assistance of the neutral ; the zeal, sacri- 1 2 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN fice, and serenity of the home population ; all were affected. The German cultivation of opinion be- gan long before the war; it is still the most syste- matic and, because of the psychological ineptitude of. Germans, it is probably the clumsiest. The French Maison de la Presse is certainly the best or- ganisation for making things clear, counteracting hostile suggestion, and propagating good under- standing in existence. The British official organ- isations are comparatively ineffective ; but what is lacking officially is very largely made up for by the good will and generous efforts of the English and American press. An interesting monograph might be written upon these various attempts of the belligerents to get themselves and their pro- ceedings explained. Because there is perceptible in these develop- ments, quite over and above the desire to influence opinion, a very real effort to get things explained. It is the most interesting and curious — one might almost write touching — feature of these organisa- tions that they do not constitute a positive and de- fined propaganda such as the Germans maintain. The German propaganda is simple, because its ends are simple; assertions of the moral elevation and loveliness of Germany, of the insuperable excellen- cies of German Kultur, the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and so forth, abuse of the " treacherous " THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 3 English who allied themselves to the " degenerate " French and the " barbaric " Russians, nonsense about " the freedom of the seas " — the emptiest phrase in history — childish attempts to sow sus- picion between the Allies, and still more childish attempts to induce neutrals and simple-minded paci- fists of allied nationality to save the face of Ger- many by initiating peace negotiations. But apart from their steady record and reminder of German brutalities and German aggression, the press or- ganisations of the Allies have none of this definite- ness in their task. The aim of the national intelli- gence in each of the allied countries is not to exalt one's own nation and confuse and divide the enemy, but to get to a real understanding with the peoples and spirits of a number of different nations, an un- derstanding that w T ill increase and become a fruitful and permanent understanding between the allied peoples. Neither the English, the Russians, the Italians nor the French, to name only the bigger European allies, are concerned in setting up a legend, as the Germans are concerned in setting up a legend of themselves to impose upon mankind. They are reality dealers in this war, and the Ger- mans are effigy mongers. Practically the Allies are saying each to one another, " Pray come to me and see for yourself that I am very much the human stuff that you are. Come and see that I am doing 4 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN my best — and I think it is not so very bad a best. . . ." And with that is something else still more subtle, something rather in the form of, " And please tell me what yon think of me — and all this." So we have this curious byplay of the war, and one day I find Mr. Nabokoff, the editor of the Retch, and Count Alexy Tolstoy, that writer of deli- cate short stories, and Mr. Chukovsky, the subtle critic, calling in upon me after braving the wintry seas to see the British fleet; Mr. Joseph Reinach follows them presently upon the same errand, and then appear photographs of Mr. Arnold Bennett wading in the trenches of Flanders, Mr. Noyes be- comes discreetly indiscreet about what he has seen among the submarines, and Mr. Hugh Walpole catches things from Mr. Stephen Graham in the Dark Forest of Russia. All this is quite over and above such writing of facts at first hand as Mr. Pat- rick McGill and a dozen other real experiencing soldiers, — not to mention the soldiers' letters Mr. James Milne has collected, or the unforgettable and immortal Prisoner of War of Mr. Arthur Green — or such admirable war correspondents' work as Mr. Philip Gibbs or Mr. Washburne has done. Some of us writers — I can answer for one — have made our Tour of the Fronts with a very understandable diffi- dence. For my own part I did not want to go. I THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 5 evaded a suggestion that I should go in 1915. I travel badly, I speak French and Italian with in- credible atrocity, and am an extreme Pacifist. I hate soldiering. And also I did not want to write anything " under instruction." It is largely owing to a certain stiffness in the composition of General Delme-Badcliffe, the British Military Attache at the Italian Comando Supremo, that I was at last dislodged upon this journey. General Delme-Bad- cliffe is resolved that Italy shall not feel neglected by the refusal of the invitation of the Comanclo Su- premo by any one who from the perspective of Italy may seem to be a representative of British opinion. If Herbert Spencer had been alive General Bad- cliffe would have certainly made him come, travel- ling-hammock, ear clips and all — and I am not above confessing that I wish that Herbert Spencer was alive — for this purpose. I found Udine warm and gay with memories of Mr. Belloc, Lord North - cliffe, Mr. Sidney Low, Colonel Bepington and Dr. Conan Doyle, and anticipating the arrival of Mr. Harold Cox. So we pass, mostly in automobiles that bump tremendously over war roads, a cloud of witnesses each testifying after his manner. What- ever else has happened we have all been photo- graphed with invincible patience and resolution under the direction of Colonel Barberich in a sunny little court in Udine. 6 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN My own manner of testifying must be to tell what I have seen and what I have thought during this extraordinary experience. It has been my natural disposition to see this war as something purposeful and epic, as something fundamentally as splendid as it is great, as an epoch, as " the War that will end War " — but of that last, more anon. I do not think I am alone in this inclination to a dramatic and logical interpretation. The caricatures in the French shops show civilisation (and particularly Marianne) in conflict with a huge and hugely wicked Hindenburg Ogre. Well, I come back from this tour with something not quite so simple as that. If I were to be tied down to one word for my impres- sion of this war, I should say that this war is Queer. It is not like anything in a really waking world, but like something in a dream. It hasn't exactly that clearness of light against darkness or of good against ill. But it has the quality of whole- some instinct struggling under a nightmare. The world is not really awake. This vague appeal for explanations to all sorts of people, this desire to exhibit the business, to get something in the way of elucidation at present missing, is extraordinarily suggestive of the efforts of the mind to wake up that will sometimes occur at a dream crisis. My mem- ory of this tour I have just made is full of puzzled- looking men. I have seen thousands of poilus sit- THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 7 ting about in cafes, by the roadside, in tents, in trenches, thoughtful. I have seen Alpini sitting restfully and staring with speculative eyes across the mountain gulfs towards unseen and unaccount- able enemies. I have seen trainloads of wounded staring out of the ambulance train windows as we passed. I have seen these dim intimations of ques- tioning reflection in the strangest juxtapositions ; in Malasgay soldiers resting for a spell among the big shells they were hoisting into trucks for the front, in a couple of khaki-clad Maoris sitting upon the step of a horse-van in Amiens station. It is al- ways the same expression one catches, rather weary, rather sullen, inturned. The shoulders droop. The very outline is a note of interrogation. They look up as the privileged tourist of the front, in the big automobile or the reserved compartment, with his officer or so in charge, passes — importantly. One meets a pair of eyes that seems to say : " per- haps you understand. . . . "In which case . . .?" It is a part, I think, of this disposition to investi- gate that makes every one collect " specimens " of the war. Everywhere the souvenir forces itself upon the attention. The homecoming permission- aire brings with him invariably a considerable weight of broken objects, bits of shell, cartridge clips, helmets ; it is a peripatetic museum. It is as 8 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN if he hoped for a clue. It is almost impossible, I have found, to escape these pieces in evidence. I am the least collecting of men, but I have brought home Italian cartridges, Austrian cartridges, the fuse of an Austrian shell, a broken Italian bayonet, and a note that is worth half a franc within the con- fines of Amiens. But a large heavy piece of ex- ploded shell that had been thrust very urgently upon my attention upon the Carso I contrived to lose during the temporary confusion of our party by the arrival and explosion of another prospective souvenir in our close proximity. And two really very large and almost complete specimens of some species of Ammonites unknown to me, from the hills to the east of the Adige, partially wrapped in a back number of the Corriere della Sera, that were pressed upon me by a friendly officer, were unfortunately lost on the line between Verona and Milan through the gross negligence of a railway porter. But I doubt if they would have thrown any very conclusive light upon the war. § 2 I avow myself an extreme Pacifist. I am against the man who first takes up the weapon. I carry my pacifism far beyond the position of that ambigu- ous little group of British and foreign sentimen- THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 9 talists who pretend so amusingly to be socialists in the Labour Leader, whose conception of foreign policy is to give Germany now a peace that would be no more than a breathing time for a fresh out- rage upon civilisation, and who would even make heroes of the crazy young assassins of the Dublin crime. I do not understand those people. I do not merely want to stop this war. I want to nail down war in its coffin. Modern war is an intoler- able thing. It is not a thing to trifle with in this U.D.C. way, it is a thing to end for ever. I have always hated it, so far that is, as my imagination had enabled me to realise it; and now that I have been seeing it, sometimes quite closely for a full month, I hate it more than ever. I never imagined a quarter of its waste, its boredom, its futility, its desolation. It is merely a destructive and disper- sive instead of a constructive and accumulative in- dustrialism. It is a gigantic, dusty, muddy, weedy, bloodstained silliness. It is the plain duty of every man to give his life and all that he has if by so do- ing he may help to end it. I hate Germany, which has thrust this experience upon mankind, as I hate some horrible infectious disease. The new war, the war on the modern level, is her invention and her crime. I perceive that on our side and in its broad outlines, this war is nothing more than a gigantic and heroic effort in sanitary engineering ; an effort 10 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN to remove German militarism from the life and regions it has invaded, and to bank it in and dis- credit and enfeeble it so that never more will it re- peat its present preposterous and horrible efforts. All human affairs and all great affairs have their reservations and their complications, but that is the broad outline of the business as it has impressed itself on my mind and as I find it conceived in the mind of the average man of the reading class among the allied peoples, and as I find it understood in the judgment of honest and intelligent neutral ob- servers. It is my unshakeable belief that essentially the Allies fight for a permanent world peace, that primarily they do not make war but resist war, that has reconciled me to this not very congenial expe- rience of touring as a spectator al] agog to see, through the war zones. At any rate there was never any risk of my playing Balaam and blessing the enemy. This war was tragedy and sacrifice for most of the world, for the Germans it is simply the catastrophic outcome of fifty years of elaborate in- tellectual foolery. Militarism, Welt Foiitik, and here we are ! What else could have happened, with Michael and his infernal W r ar Machine in the very centre of Europe, but this tremendous disaster? It is a disaster. It may be a necessary disaster ; it may teach a lesson that could be learnt in no THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 11 other way; but for all that, I insist, it remains waste, disorder, disaster. There is a disposition, I know, in myself as well as in others, to wriggle away from this verity, to find so much good in the collapse that has come to the mad direction of Europe for the past half cen- tury as to make it on the whole almost a beneficial thing. But at most I can find in it no greater good than the good of a nightmare that awakens a sleeper in a dangerous place to a realisation of the extreme danger of his sleep. Better had he been awake — or never there. In Venetia Captain Pirelli, whose task it was to keep me out of mischief in the war zone, was insistent upon the way in which all Venetia was being opened up by the new military roads ; there has been scarcely a new road made in Venetia since Napoleon drove his straight, poplar- bordered highways through the land. M. Joseph Reinach, who was my companion upon the French front, was equally impressed by the stirring up and exchange of ideas in the villages due to the move- ment of the war. Charles Lamb's story of the dis- covery of roast pork comes into one's head with an effect of repartee. More than ideas are exchanged in the war zone, and it is doubtful how far the sani- tary precautions of the military authorities avails against a considerable propaganda e disease. A more serious argument for the good of war is that 12 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN it evokes heroic qualities in common people. There is no denying that it has brought out almost in- credible quantities of courage, devotion, and indi- vidual romance that did not show in the suffocating peace time that preceded the war. The reckless and beautiful zeal of the women in the British and French munition factories, for example, the gaiety and fearlessness of the common soldiers everywhere ; these things have always been there — like cham- pagne sleeping in bottles in a cellar. But was there any need to throw a bomb into the cellar? I am reminded of a story, or rather of the idea for a story that I think I must have read in that curi- ous collection of fantasies and observations, Haw- thorne's Note Book. It was to be the story of a man who found life dull and his circumstances al- together mediocre. He had loved his wife, but now after all she seemed to be a very ordinary human being. He had begun life with high hopes — and life was commonplace. He was to grow fretful and restless. His discontent was to lead to some action, some irrevocable action ; but upon the nature of that action I do not think the Note Book was very clear. It was to carry him to the burning of his house. It was to carry him in such a manner that he was to forget his wife. Then, when it was too late, he was to see her at an upper window, stripped and firelit, THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 13 a glorious thing of light and loveliness and tragic intensity. . . . The elementary tales of the world are very few, and Hawthorne's story and Lamb's story are, after all, only variations upon the same theme. But can we poor human beings never realise our quality without destruction? § 3 One of the larger singularities of the great war is its failure to produce great and imposing personali- ties, mighty leaders, Napoleons, Csesars. I would indeed make that the essential thing in my reckon- ing up of the war. It is a drama without a hero ; with countless incidental heroes no doubt, but no star part. Even the Germans, with a national pre- disposition for hero-cults and living still in an at- mosphere of Victorian humbug, can produce noth- ing better than that timber image, Hindenburg. It is not that the war has failed to produce heroes so much as that it has produced heroism in a tor- rent. The great man of this war is the common man. It becomes ridiculous to pick out particular names. There are too many true stories of splendid acts in the past two years ever to be properly set down. The V.C.'s and the palms do but indicate 14 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN samples. One would need an encyclopedia, a row of volumes, of the gloriousness of human impulses. The acts of the small men in this war dwarf all the pretensions of the Great Man. Imperatively these multitudinous heroes forbid the setting up of effigies. When I was a young man I imitated Swift and posed for cynicism ; I will confess that now at fifty and greatly helped by this war, I have fallen in love with mankind. But if I had to pick out a single figure to stand for the finest quality of the Allies' war, I should I think choose the figure of General Joffre. He is something new in history. He is leadership with- out vulgar ambition. He is the extreme antithesis to the Imperial boomster of Berlin. He is as it were the ordinary commonsense of men, incarnate. He is the antithesis of the ef&gj. By great good luck I was able to see him. I was delayed in Paris on my way to Italy, and my friend Captain Millet arranged for a visit to the French front at Soissons and put me in charge of Lieu- tenant de Tessin, whom I had met in England study- ing British social questions long before this war. Afterwards Lieutenant de Tessin took me to the great hotel — it still proclaims "Restaurant" in big black letters on the garden wall — which shelters the General Headquarters of France, and here I was able to see and talk to Generals Pelle THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 15 and Castelnau as well as to General Joffre. They are three very remarkable and very different men. They have at least one thing in common ; it is clear that not one of them has spent ten minutes in all his life in thinking of himself as a Personage or Great Man. They all have the effect of being active and able men doing an extremely complicated and diffi- cult but extremely interesting job to the very best of their ability. With me they had all one quality in common. They thought I was interested in what they were doing, and they were quite prepared to treat me as an intelligent man of a different sort, and to show me as much as I could understand. . . . Let me confess that de Tessin had had to persuade me to go to Headquarters. Partly that was because I didn't want to use up even ten minutes of the time of the French commanders, but much more was it because I have a dread of Personages. There is something about these encounters with personages — as if one was dealing with an efQ.gj 7 with something tremendous put up to be seen. As one approaches they become remoter; great unsus- pected crevasses are discovered. Across these gulfs one makes ineffective gestures. They do not meet you, they pose at you enormously. Sometimes there is something more terrible than dignity ; there is condescension. They are affable. I had but re- cently had an encounter with an imported Colonial 16 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN statesman, who was being advertised like a soap as the coming saviour of England. I was curious to meet him. I wanted to talk to him about all sorts of things that would have been profoundly interest- ing, as for example his impressions of the Anglican bishops. But I met a hoarding. I met a thing like a mask, something surrounded by touts, that was dully trying — as we say in London — to " come it " over me. He said he had heard of me. He had read Kipps. I intimated that though I had written Kipps I had continued to exist — but he did not see the point of that. I said certain things to him about the difference in complexity between political life in Great Britain and the colonies, that he was manifestly totally incapable of understanding. But one could as soon have talked with one of the statesmen at Madame Tussaud's. An antiquated figure. The effect of these French commanders upon me was quite different from my encounter with that last belated adventurer in the effigy line. I felt in- deed that I was a rather idle and flimsy person com- ing into the presence of a tremendously compact and busy person, but I had none of that unpleasant sen- sation of a conventional role, of being expected to play the minute worshipper in the presence of the Great Image. I was so moved by the common hu- manity of them all that in each case I broke away THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 17 from the discreet interpretations of de Tessin and talked to them directly in the strange dialect which I have inadvertently made for myself out of French, a disemvowelled speech of epicene substantives and verbs of incalculable moods and temperaments, "Entente Cordiale" They talked back as if we had met in a club. General Pelle pulled my leg very gaily with some quotations from an article I had written upon the conclusion of the war. I think he found my accent and my idioms very re- freshing. I had committed myself to a statement that Bloch has been justified in his theory that under modern conditions the defensive wins. There were excellent reasons, and General Pelle pointed them out, for doubting the applicability of this to the present war. Both he and General Castelnau were anxious that I should see a French offensive sector as well as Soissons. Then I should understand. And since then I have returned from Italy and I have seen and I do understand. The Allied offensive was win- ning; that is to say, it was inflicting far greater losses than it experienced; it was steadily beating the spirit out of the German army and shoving it back towards Germany. Only peace can, I believe, prevent the western war ending in Germany. And it is the Frenchmen mainly who have worked out how to do it. 18 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN But of that I will write later. My present con- cern is with General Joffre as the antithesis of the Effigy. The effigy, "Thou Prince of Peace, Thou God of War," as Mr. Sylvester Viereck called him, prances on a great horse, wears a Wagnerian cloak, sits on thrones and talks of shining armour and "unser Gott." All Germany gloats over his Jovian domes- ticities; when I was last in Berlin the postcard shops were full of photographs of a sort of proces- sion of himself and his sons, all with long straight noses and side-long eyes. It is all dreadfully old- fashioned. General Joffre sits in a pleasant little sitting-room in a very ordinary little villa conven- iently close to Headquarters. He sits among furni- ture that has no quality of pose at all, that is neither magnificent nor ostentatiously simple and hardy. He has dark, rather sleepy eyes under light eye- lashes, eyes that glance shyly and a little askance at his interlocutor and then, as he talks, away — as if he did not want to be preoccupied by your atten- tion. He has a broad, rather broadly modelled face, a soft voice, the sort of persuasive reasoning voice that many Scotchmen have. I had a feeling that if he were to talk English he would do so with a Scotch accent. Perhaps somewhere I have met a THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 19 Scotchman of his type. He sat sideways to hiss table as a man might sit for a gossip in a cafe. He is physically a big man, and in my memory he grows bigger and bigger. He sits now in my mem> ory in a room like the rooms that any decent; people might occupy, like that vague room that is the background of so many good portraits, a great blue-coated figure with a soft voice and rather tired eyes, explaining very simply and clearly the diffi- culties that this vulgar imperialism of Germany, seizing upon modern science and modern appli- ances, has created for France and the spirit of man- kind. He talked chiefly of the strangeness of this con- founded war. It was exactly like a sanitary en- gineer speaking of the unexpected difficulties of some particularly nasty inundation. He made lit- tle stiff horizontal gestures of his hands. First one had to build a dam and stop the rush of it, so ; then one had to organise the push that would send it back. He explained the organisation of the push. They had got an organisation now that was working- out most satisfactorily. Had I seen a sector? I had seen the sector of Soissons. Yes, but that was not now an offensive sector. I must see an of- fensive sector; see the whole method. Lieutenant de Tessin must see that that was arranged. . . . Neither he nor his two colleagues spoke of the 20 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN Germans with either hostility or humanity. Ger- many for them is manifestly merely an objection- able Thing. It is not a nation, not a people, but a nuisance. One has to build up this great counter thrust bigger and stronger until they go back. The war must end in Germany. The French generals have no such delusions about German science or foresight or capacity as dominates the smart dinner chatter of England. One knows so well that de- testable type of English folly, and its voice of de- spair: "They plan everything. They foresee everything." This paralysing Germanophobia is not common among the French. The war, the French generals said, might take — well, it cer- tainly looked like taking longer than the winter. Next summer perhaps. Probably, if nothing un- foreseen occurred, before a full year has passed the job might be done. Were any surprises in store? They didn't seem to think it was probable that the Germans had any surprises in store. . . . The Ger- mans are not an inventive people ; they are merely a thorough people. One never knew for certain. Is any greater contrast possible than between so implacable, patient, reasonable — and above all things capable — a being as General Joffre and the rhetorician of Potsdam, with his talk of German Might, of Hammer Blows and Hacking through? THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 21 Can there be any doubt of the ultimate issue be- tween them? There are stories that sound pleasantly true to me about General Joffre's ambitions after the war. He is tired; then he will be very tired. He will, he declares, spend his first free summer in making a tour of the waterways of France in a barge. So I hope it may be. One imagines him as sitting quietly on the crumpled remains of the last and tawdriest of Imperial traditions, with a fishing line in the placid water and a large buff umbrella over- head, the good ordinary man who does whatever is given to him to do — as well as he can. The power that has taken the great effigy of German imperial- ism by the throat is something very composite and complex, but if we personify it at all it is something more like General Joffre than any other single human figure I can think of or imagine. If I were to set a frontispiece to a book about this War I would make General Joffre the frontispiece. § 4 As we swung back along the dusty road to Paris at a pace of fifty miles an hour and upwards, driven by a helmeted driver with an aquiline profile fit to go upon a coin, whose merits were a little flawed by 22 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN a childish and dangerous ambition to run over every cat he saw upon the road, I talked to de Tessin about this big blue-coated figure of Joffre, which is not so much a figure as a great generalisation of cer- tain hitherto rather obscured French qualities, and of the impression he had made upon me. And from that I went on to talk about the Super Man, for this encounter had suddenly crystallised out a set of realisations that had been for some time latent in my mind. How much of what follows I said to de Tessin at the time I do not clearly remember, but this is what I had in mind. The idea of the superman is an idea that has been developed by various people ignorant of biology and unaccustomed to biological ways of thinking. It is an obvious idea that follows in the course of half an hour or so upon one's realisation of the signifi- cance of Darwinism. If man has evolved from something lower or at least something different, he must now be evolving onward into something sur-human. The species in the future will be dif- ferent from the species of the past. So far at least our Nietzsches and Shaws and so on went right. But being ignorant of the elementary biological proposition that modification of a species means really a secular change in its average, they jumped to a conclusion — to which the late Lord Salisbury THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 23 also jumped years ago at a very memorable British Association meeting — that a species is modified by the sudden appearance of eccentric individuals here and there in the general mass who interbreed — preferentially. Helped by a streak of antic egotism in themselves, they conceived of the superman as a posturing personage, misunderstood by the vulgar, fantastic, wonderful. But the antic Personage, the thing I have called the Effigy, is not new but old, the oldest thing in history, the departing thing. It depends not upon the advance of the species but upon the uncritical hero-worship of the crowd. You may see the monster drawn twenty times the size of common men upon the oldest monuments of Egypt and Assyria. The true superman comes not as the tremendous personal entry of a star, but in the less dramatic form of a general increase of good- will and skill and commonsense. A species rises not by thrusting up peaks but by brimming up as a flood does. The coming of the superman means not an epidemic of personages but the disappear- ance of the Personage in the universal ascent. That is the point overlooked by the megalomaniac school of Nietzsche and Shaw. And it is the peculiarity of this war, it is the most reassuring evidence that a great increase in general ability and critical ability has been going on throughout the last century, that no isolated great 24 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN personages have emerged. Never has there been so much ability, invention, inspiration, leadership ; but the very abundance of good qualities has prevented our focusing upon those of any one individual. We all play our part in the realisation of God's sanity in the world, but, as the strange, dramatic end of Lord Kitchener has served to remind us, there is no single individual of all the allied nations whose death can materially affect the great destinies of this war. In the last few years I have developed a re- ligious belief that has become now to me as real as any commonplace fact. I think that mankind is still, as it were, collectively dreaming and hardly more awakened to reality than a very young child. It has these dreams that we express by the flags of nationalities and by strange loyalties and by irra- tional creeds and ceremonies, and its dreams at times become such nightmares as this war. But the time draws near when mankind will awake and the dreams will fade away, and then there will be no nationality in all the world but humanity, and no king, no emperor, nor leader but the one God of mankind. This is my faith. I am as certain of this as I was in 1900 that men would presently fly. To me it is as if it must be so. So that to me this extraordinary refusal of the allied nations under conditions that have always THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 25 hitherto produced a Great Man to produce any- thing of the sort, anything that can be used as an effigy and carried about for the crowd to follow, is a fact of extreme significance and encouragement. It seems to me that the twilight of the half gods must have come, that we have reached the end of the age when men needed a Personal Figure about which they could rally. The Kaiser is perhaps the last of that long series of crowned and cloaked and semi-divine personages which has included Csesar and Alexander and Napoleon the First — and Third. In the light of the new time we see the em- peror God for the guy he is. In the August of 1914 he set himself up to be the paramount Lord of the World, and it will seem to the historian to come, who will know our dates so well and our feelings, our fatigues and efforts so little, it will seem a short period from that day to this, when the great figure already sways and staggers towards the bonfire. § 5 I had the experience of meeting a contemporary king upon this journey. He was the first king I had ever met. The Potsdam figure — with perhaps some local exceptions behind the gold coast — is, with its collection of uniforms and its pomps and splendours, the purest survival of the old tradition 26 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN of divine monarchy now that the Emperor at Pekin has followed the Shogun into the shadows. The modern type of king shows a disposition to intimate at the outset that he cannot help it, and to justify or at any rate utilise his exceptional position by sound hard work. It is an age of working kings, with the manners of private gentlemen. The King of Italy for example is far more accessible than was the late Pierpont Morgan or the late Cecil Rhodes, and he seems to keep a smaller court. I went to see him from Udine. He occupied a moderate-sized country villa about half an hour by automobile from headquarters. I went over witli General Radcliffe; we drove through the gates of the villa past a single sentinel in an ordinary in- fantry uniform, up to the door of the house, and the number of guards, servants, court attendants, of- ficials, secretaries, ministers and the like that I saw in that house were — I counted very carefully — four. Downstairs were three people, a tall soldier of the bodyguard in grey, an A.D.C., Captain Mor- eno, and Colonel Matteoli, the minister of the household. I went upstairs to a drawing-room of much the same easy and generalised character as the one in which I had met General Joffre a few days before. I gave my hat to a second bodyguard, and as I did so a pleasantly smiling man appeared at the door of the study whom I thought at first must THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 27 be some minister in attendance. I did not recog- nise him instantly because on the stamps and coins he is always in profile. He began to talk in excel- lent English about my journey, and I replied, and so talking we went into the study from which he had emerged. Then I realised I was talking to the king. Addicted as I am to the cinematograph, in which the standard of study furniture is particularly rich and high, I found something very cooling and simple and refreshing in the sight of the king's study furni- ture. He sat down with me at a little useful writ- ing-table, and after asking me what I had seen in Italy and hearing what I had seen and what I was to see, he went on talking, very good talk indeed. I suppose I did a little exceed the established tra- dition of courts by asking several questions and try- ing to get him to talk upon certain points upon which I was curious, but I perceived that he had had to carry on at least so much of the regal tradition as to control the conversation. He was, however, entirely un-posed. His talk reminded me some- how of Maurice Baring's books ; it had just the same quick, positive understanding. And he had just the same detachment from the war as the French gen- erals. He spoke of it — as one might speak of an inundation. And of its difficulties and perplexities. Here on the Adriatic side there were political en- 28 ITALY, FEANCE AND BEITAIN tanglements that by comparison made our western af ter-the-war problems plain sailing. He talked of the game of spellicans among the Balkan nation- alities. How was that difficulty to be met? In Macedonia there w T ere Turkish villages that were Christian and Bulgarians that were Moslem. There were families that changed the termination of their names from ski to off as Serbian or Bul- garian prevailed. I remarked that that showed a certain passion for peace, and that much of the mis- chief might be due to the propaganda of the great powers. I have a prejudice against that blessed Whig "principle of nationality," but the King of Italy was not to be drawn into any statement about that. He left the question with his admission of its extreme complexity. He went on to talk of the strange contrasts of war, of such things as the indifference of the birds to gunfire and desolation. One day on the Carso he had been near the newly captured Austrian trenches, and suddenly from amidst a scattered mass of Austrian bodies a quail had risen. That had struck him as odd, and so too had the sight of a pack of cards and a wine flask on some newly made graves. The ordinary life was a very obstinate thing. . . . He talked of the courage of common men. He was astonished at the quickness with which they THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 29 came to disregard shrapnel. And they were so quietly enduring when they were wounded. He had seen a lot of the wounded, and he had expected much groaning and crying out. But unless a man is hit in the head and goes mad he does not groan or scream! They are just brave. If you ask them how they feel it is always one of two things : either they say quietly that they are very bad or else they say there is nothing the matter. . . . He spoke as if these were mere chance observa- tions, but every one tells me that nearly every day the king is at the front and often under fire. He has taken more risks in a week than the Potsdam War Lord has taken since the war began. He keeps himself acutely informed upon every aspect of the war. He was a little inclined to fatalism, he con- fessed. There were two stories current of two fami- lies of four sons, in each three had been killed and in each there was an attempt to put the fourth son in a place of comparative safety. In one case a general took the fourth son in as an attendant and embarked upon a ship that was immediately torpedoed ; in the other the fourth son was killed by accident while he was helping to carry dinner in a rest camp. From those stories we came to the question whether the uneducated Italians were more superstitious than the uneducated English ; the king thought they were much less so. That struck me as a novel idea. But 30 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN then lie thought that English rural people believe in witches and fairies. I have given enough of this talk to show the quality of this king of the new dispensation. It was, you see, the sort of easy talk one might hear from fine-minded people anywhere. When we had done talking he came to the door of the study with me and shook hands and went back to his desk — with that gesture of return to work which is very familiar and sympathetic to a writer, and with no gesture of regality at all. Just to complete this impression let me repeat a pleasant story about this king and our Prince of Wales, who recently visited the Italian front. The Prince is a source of anxiety on these visits ; he has a very strong and very creditable desire to share the ordinary risks of war. He is keenly interested, and unobtrusively bent upon getting as near the fighting line as possible. But the King of Italy was firm upon keeping him out of anything more than the most incidental danger. " We don't want any his- torical incidents here," he said. I think that might well become an historical phrase. For the life of the Effigy is a series of historical incidents. § 6 Manifestly one might continue to multiply por- traits of fine people working upon this great task of THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 31 breaking and ending the German aggression, the German legend, the German ef&gy, and the effigy business generally ; the thesis being that the Allies have no ef&gj. One might fill a thick volume with pictures of men up the scale and down working loyally and devotedly upon the war, to make this point clear that the essential king and the essential loyalty of our side is the commonsense of mankind. There comes into my head as a picture at the other extreme of this series, a memory of certain trenches I visited on my last day in France. They were trenches on an offensive front ; they were not those architectural triumphs, those homes from home, that grow to perfection upon the less active sections of the great line. They had been first made by men who had run rapidly forward with spade and rifle, stooping as they ran, who had dropped into the craters of big shells, who had organised these chiefly at night and dug the steep ditches side- ways to join up into continuous trenches. They were now pushing forward saps into No Man's Land, linking them across, and so continually creep- ing nearer to the enemy and a practicable jumping- off place for an attack. (It has been made since; the village at which I peeped was in our hands a week later. ) These trenches were dug into a sort of yellowish sandy clay ; the dug-outs were mere holes in the earth that fell in upon the clumsy ; hardly any 32 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN timber had been got up to the line ; a storm might flood them at any time a couple of feet deep and begin to wash in the sides. Overnight they had been " strafed " and there had been a number of casualties; there were smashed rifles about and a smashed-up machine gun emplacement, and the men were dog-tired and many of them sleeping like logs, half buried in clay. Some slept on the firing steps. As one went along one became aware ever and again of two or three pairs of clay -yellow feet sticking out of a clay hole, and peering down one saw the shapes of men like rudely modelled earthen images of sol- diers, motionless in the cave. I came round the corner upon a youngster with an intelligent face and steady eyes sitting up on the firing step, awake and thinking. We looked at one another. There are moments when mind leaps to mind. It is natural for the man in the trenches suddenly confronted by so rare a beast as a middle- aged civilian with an enquiring expression, to feel himself something of a spectacle and something gen- eralised. It is natural for the civilian to look rather in the vein of saying, " Well, how do you take it? " As I pushed past him we nodded slightly with an effect of mutual understanding. And we said with our nods just exactly what General Joffre said with his horizontal gestures of the hand and what the King of Italy conveyed by his friendly THE PASSING OF THE EFFIGY 33 manner; we said to each other that here was the trouble those Germans had brought upon us and here was the task that had to be done. Our guide to these trenches was a short, stocky young man, a cob ; with a rifle and a tight belt and projecting skirts and helmet, a queer little figure that, had you seen it in a picture a year or so before the war, you would most certainly have pronounced Chinese. He belonged to a Northumbrian bat- talion; it does not matter exactly which. As we returned from this front line, trudging along the winding path through the barbed wire tangles be- fore the smashed and captured German trench that had been taken a fortnight before, I fell behind my guardian captain and had a brief conversation with this individual. He was a lad in the early twenties, weather-bit and with bloodshot eyes. He was, he told me, a miner. I asked my stock question in such cases, whether he would go back to the old work after the war. He said he would, and then added — with the events of overnight in his mind : " If A'hm looky." Followed a little silence. Then I tried my second stock remark for such cases. One does not talk to soldiers at the front in this war of Glory or the " Empire on which the sun never sets " or " the meteor flag of England " or of King and Country or any of those fine old headline things. On the deso- 34 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN late path that winds about amidst the shell craters and the fragments and the red-rusted wire, with the silken shiver of passing shells in the air and the blue of the lower sky continually breaking out into eddy- ing white puffs, it is wonderful how tawdry such panoplies of the efQ.gy appear. We know that we and our allies are upon a greater, graver, more fundamental business than that sort of thing now. We are very near the waking point. " Well," I said, " it ? s got to be done." " Aye," he said, easing the strap of his rifle a lit- tle ; " it's got to be done." THE WAR IN ITALY August, 1916 I THE ISONZO FRONT § 1 My first impressions of the Italian war centre upon Udine. So far I had had only a visit to Soissons on an exceptionally quiet day and the sound of a Zep- pelin one night in Essex for all my experience of actual warfare. But my bedroom at the British mission in Udine roused perhaps extravagant ex- pectations. There were holes in the plaster ceiling and wall, betraying splintered laths, holes that had been caused by a bomb that had burst and killed several people in the little square outside. Such excitements seem to be things of the past now in Udine. Udine keeps itself dark nowadays, and the Austrian sea-planes, which come raiding the Italian coast country at night very much in the same aim- less, casually malignant way in which the Zeppelins raid England, apparently because there is nothing else for them to do, find it easier to locate Venice. 35 36 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN My earlier rides in Venetia began always with the level roads of the plain, roads frequently edged by water courses, with plentiful willows beside the road, vines and fields of Indian corn and suchlike lush crops. Always quite soon one came to some old Austrian boundary posts; almost everywhere the Italians are fighting upon what is technically enemy territory, but nowhere does it seem a whit less Italian than the plain of Lombardy. When at last I motored away from Udine to the northern mountain front I passed through Campo-Formio and saw the white-faced inn at which Napoleon dis- membered the ancient republic of Venice and bar- tered away this essential part of Italy into foreign control. It just gravitates back now — as though there had been no Napoleon. And upon the roads and beside them was the enor- mous equipment of a modern army advancing. Everywhere I saw new roads being made, railways .pushed up, vast store dumps, hospitals ; everywhere the villages swarmed with grey soldiers ; everywhere our automobile was threading its way and taking astonishing risks among interminable processions of motor lorries, strings of ambulances or of mule- carts, waggons with timber, waggons with wire, waggons with men's gear, waggons with casks, wag- gons discreetly veiled, columns of infantry, cavalry, batteries en route. Every waggon that goes up full THE ISONZO FRONT 37 comes back empty, and many wounded were coming down and prisoners and troops returning to rest. Goritzia had been taken a week or so before my ar- rival ; the Isonzo had been crossed and the Austrians driven back across the Carso for several miles ; all the resources of Italy seemed to be crowding up to make good these gains and gather strength for the next thrust. The roads under all this traffic re- mained wonderful; gangs of men were everywhere repairing the first onset of wear, and Italy is the most fortunate land in the world for road metal; her mountains are solid road metal, and in this Venetian plain you need but to scrape through a yard of soil to find gravel. One travelled through a choking dust under the blue sky, and above the steady incessant dusty suc- cession of lorry, lorry, lorry, lorry that passed one by, one saw, looking up, the tree tops, house roofs, or the solid Venetian campanile of this or that way- side village. Once as we were coming out of the great grey portals of that beautiful old relic of a former school of fortification, Palmanova, the traffic became suddenly bright yellow, and for a kilometre or so we were passing nothing but Sicilian mule- carts loaded with hay. These carts seem as strange among the grey shapes of modern war transport as a Chinese mandarin in painted silk would be. They are the most individual of things, all two-wheeled, 38 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN all bright yellow and the same size it is true, but upon each there are the gayest of little paintings, such paintings as one sees in England at times upon an ice-cream barrow. Sometimes the picture will present a scriptural subject, sometimes a scene of opera, sometimes a dream landscape or a trophy of fruits or flowers, and the harness — now much out of repair — is studded with brass. Again and again I have passed strings of these gay carts; all Sicily must be swept of them. Through the dust I came to Aquileia, which is now an old cathedral, built upon the remains of a very early basilica, standing in a space in a scat- tered village. But across this dusty space there was carried the head of the upstart Maximin who murdered Alexander Severus, and later Aquileia brought Attila near to despair. Our party alighted ; we inspected a very old mosaic floor which has been uncovered since the Austrian retreat. The Austrian priests have gone too, and their Italian successors are already tracing out a score of Roman traces that it was the Austrian custom to minimise. Captain Pirelli refreshed my historical memories; it was rather like leaving a card on Gibbon en route for contemporary history. By devious routes I went on to certain batteries of big guns which had played their part in hammer- ing the Austrian left above Monfalcone across an THE ISONZO FKONT 39 arm of the Adriatic, and which were now under or- ders to shift and move up closer. The battery was the most unobtrusive of batteries; its one desire seemed to be to appear a simple piece of woodland in the eye of God and the aeroplane. I went about the network of railways and paths under the trees that a modern battery requires, and came presently upon a great gun that even at the first glance seemed a little less carefully hidden than its fellows. Then I saw that it was a most ingenious dummy made of a tree and logs and so forth. It was in the emplace- ment of a real gun that had been located ; it had its painted sandbags about it just the same, and it felt itself so entirely a part of the battery that whenever its companions fired it burnt a flash and kicked up a dust. It was an excellent example of the great art of Camouflage which this war has developed. I went on through the wood to a shady observa- tion post high in a tree, into which I clambered with my guide. I was able from this position to get a very good idea of the general lie of the Italian east- ern front. I was in the delta of the Isonzo. Di- rectly in front of me were some marshes and the ex- treme tip of the Adriatic Sea, at the head of which was Monfalcone, now in Italian hands. Behind Monfalcone ran the red ridge of the Carso, of which the Italians had just captured the eastern half. Be- hind this again rose the mountains to the east of the iO ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN Isonzo which the Austrians still held. The Isonzo came towards me from out of the mountains, in a great westward curve. Fifteen or sixteen miles away where it emerged from the mountains lay the pleasant and prosperous town of Goritzia, and at the westward point of the great curve was Sagrado with its broken bridge. The battle of Goritzia was really not fought at Goritzia at all. What hap- pened was the brilliant and bloody storming of Mounts Podgora and Sabotino on the western side of the river above Goritzia, and simultaneously a crossing at Sagrado below Goritzia and a magnifi- cent rush up to the plateau and across the plateau of the Carso. Goritzia itself was not organised for defence, and the Austrians were so surprised by the rapid storm of the mountains to the northwest of it and of the Carso to the southeast, that they made no fight in the town itself. As a consequence when I visited it I found it very little injured — compared, that is, with such other towns as have been fought through. Here and there the front of a house has been knocked in by an Austrian shell, or a lamp post prostrated. But the road bridge had suffered a good deal; its iron parapet was twisted about by shell bursts and inter- woven with young trees and big boughs designed to screen the passerby from the observation of the Aus- trian gunners upon Monte Santo. Here and there THE ISONZO FKONT 41 were huge holes through which one could look down upon the blue trickles of water in the stony river bed far below. The driver of our automobile dis- played what seemed to me an extreme confidence in the margins of these gaps, but his confidence was justified. At Sagrado the bridge had been much more completely demolished; no effort had been made to restore the horizontal roadway, but one crossed by a sort of timber switchback that followed the ups and downs of the ruins. It is not in these places that one must look for the real destruction of modern war. The real fight on the left of Goritzia went through the village of Lucinico up the hill of Podgora. Lucinico is noth- ing more than a heap of grey stones ; except for a bit of the church wall and the gable end of a house one cannot even speak of it as ruins. But in one place among the rubble I saw the splintered top and a leg of a grand piano. Podgora hill, which was no doubt once neatly terraced and cultivated, is like a scrap of landscape from some airless, treeless planet. Still more desolate was the scene upon the Carso to the right (south) of Goritzia, Both San Martino and Doberdo are destroyed beyond the limits of ruination. The Carso itself is a waterless upland with but a few bushy trees ; it must always have been a desolate region, but now it is an inde- scribable wilderness of shell craters, smashed-up 42 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN Austrian trenches, splintered timber, old iron, rags and that rusty thorny vileness of man's invention, worse than all the thorns and thickets of nature, barbed wire. There are no dead visible; the wounded have been cleared away; but about the trenches and particularly near some of the dug-outs there was a faint repulsive smell. . . . Yet into this wilderness the Italians are now thrusting a sort of order. The German is a won- derful worker ; they say on the Anglo-French front that he makes trenches by way of resting, but I doubt if he can touch the Italian at certain forms of toil. All the way up to San Martino and beyond, swarms of workmen were making one of those care- fully graded roads that the Italians make better than any other people. Other swarms were laying waterpipes. For upon the Carso there are neither roads nor water, and before the Italians can thrust further both must be brought up to the front. As we approached San Martino an Austrian aero- plane made its presence felt overhead by dropping a bomb among the tents of some workmen, in a little scrubby wood on the hillside near at hand. One heard the report and turned to see the fragments flying and the dust. Probably they got some one. And then, after a little pause, the encampment be- gan to spew out men ; here, there and everywhere they appeared among the tents, running like rabbits THE ISONZO FRONT 43 at evening-time, down the hill. Very soon after and probably in connection with this signal Austrian shells began to come over. They do not use shrap- nel because the rocky soil of Italy makes that un- necessary. They fire a sort of shell that goes bang and releases a cloud of smoke overhead, and then drops a parcel of high explosive that bursts on the ground. The ground leaps into red dust and smoke. But these things are now to be seen on the cinema. Forthwith the men working on the road about us begin to down tools and make for the shelter trenches, a long procession going at a steady but resolute walk. Then like a blow in the chest came the bang of a big Italian gun somewhere close at hand. . . . Along about four thousand miles of the various fronts this sort of thing was going on that morn- ing. . . . § 2 This Carso front is the practicable offensive front of Italy. From the left wing on the Isonzo along the Alpine boundary round to the Swiss boundary there is mountain warfare like nothing else in the world, it is warfare that pushes the boundary back- ward, but it is mountain warfare that will not, for so long a period that the war will be over first, hold out any hopeful prospects of offensive movements on 44 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN a large scale against Austria or Germany. It is a short distance, as the crow flies, from Rovereto to Munich, but not as the big gun travels. The Ital- ians, therefore, as their contribution to the common effort, are thrusting rather eastwardly towards the line of the Julian Alps through Carinthia and Car- niola. From my observation post in the tree near Monfalcone I saw Trieste away along the coast to my right. It looked scarcely as distant as Folke- stone from Dungeness. The Italian advanced line is indeed scarcely ten miles from Trieste. But the Italians are not, I think, going to Trieste just yet. That is not the real game now. They are playing loyally with the Allies for the complete defeat of the Central Powers, and that is to be achieved striking home into Austria. Meanwhile there is no sense in knocking Trieste to pieces, or using Italians instead of Austrian soldiers to garrison it. II THE MOUNTAIN WAR The mountain warfare of Italy is extraordinarily unlike that upon any other front. From the Isonzo to the Swiss frontier we are dealing with high moun- tains, cut by deep valleys between which there is usually no practicable lateral communications. Each advance must have the nature of an unsup- ported shove along a narrow channel, until the whole mountain system, that is, is won, and the at- tack can begin to deploy in front of the passes. Geographically Austria has the advantage. She had the gentler slope of the mountain chains while Italy has the steep side, and the foresight of old treaties has given her deep bites into what is nat- urally Italian territory ; she is far nearer the Italian plain than Italy is near any practicable fighting ground for large forces ; particularly is this the case in the region of the Adige valley and Lake Garda. The legitimate war, so to speak, in this region is a mountaineering war. The typical position is roughly as follows. The Austrians occupy valley 45 46 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN A which opens northward ; the Italians occupy val- ley B which opens southward. The fight is for the crest between A and B. The side that wins that crest gains the power of looking down into, firing into and outflanking the positions in the enemy valley. In most cases it is the Italians now who are pressing, and if the reader will examine a map of the front and compare it with the official reports he will soon realise that almost everywhere the Italians are up to the head of the southward val- leys and working over the crests so as to press down upon the Austrian valleys. But in the Trentino the Austrians are still well over the crest on the southward slopes. When I was in Italy they still held Rovereto. Now it cannot be said that under modern condi- tions mountains favour either the offensive or the defensive. But they certainly make operations far more deliberate than upon a level. An engineered road or railway in an Alpine valley is the most vulnerable of things; its curves and viaducts may be practically demolished by shell fire or swept by shrapnel, although you hold the entire valley ex- cept for one vantage point. All the mountains round about a valley must be won before that val- ley is safe for the transport of an advance. But on the other hand a surprise capture of some single mountain crest and the hoisting of one gun into THE MOUNTAIN WAR 47 position there may block the retreat of guns and material from a great series of positions. Moun- tain surfaces are extraordinarily various and subtle. You may understand Picardy upon a map, but mountain warfare is three-dimensional. A strug- gle may go on for weeks or months consisting of ap- parently separate and incidental skirmishes, and then suddenly a whole valley organisation may crumble away in retreat or disaster. Italy is gnaw- ing into the Trentino day by day, and particularly round by her right wing. At no time shall I be surprised to see a sudden lunge forward on that front, and hear of a tale of guns and prisoners. This will not mean that she has made a sudden at- tack, but that some system of Austrian positions has collapsed under her continual pressure. Such briefly is the idea of the mountain struggle. Its realities, I should imagine, are among the strangest and most picturesque in all this tremen- dous world conflict. I know nothing of the war in the east, of course, but there are things here that must be hard to beat. Happily they will soon get justice done to them by an abler pen than mine. I hear that Kipling is to follow me upon this round ; nothing can be imagined more congenial to his ex- traordinary power of vivid rendering than this struggle against cliffs, avalanches, frost and the Austrian. 48 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN To go the Italian round needs, among other things, a good head. Everywhere it has been neces- sary to make roads where hitherto there have been only mule tracks or no tracks at all ; the roads are often still in the making, and the automobile of the war tourist skirts precipices and takes hairpin bends upon tracks of loose metal not an inch too broad for the operation, or it floats for a moment over the dizzy edge while a train of mule transport blunders by. The unruly imagination of man's heart (which is " only evil continually ") speculates upon what would be the consequences of one good bump from the wheel of a mule-cart. Down below, the trees that one sees through a wisp of cloud look far too small and spiky and scattered to hold out much hope for a fallen man of letters. And at the high positions they are too used to the vertical life to understand the secret feelings of the visitor from the horizontal. General Bompiani, whose writings are well known to all English students of military matters, showed me the Gibraltar he is making of a great mountain system east of the Adige. "Let me show you," he said, and flung himself on to the edge of the precipice into exactly the po- sition of a lady riding side-saddle. " You will find it more comfortable to sit down." But anxious as I am abroad not to discredit my country by unseemly exhibitions I felt unequal to THE MOUNTAIN WAR 49 such gymnastics without a proper rehearsal at a lower level. I seated myself carefully a yard (per- haps it was a couple of yards) from the edge, ad- vanced on my trousers without dignity to the verge, and so with an effort thrust my legs over to dangle in the crystalline air. " That," proceeded General Bompiani, pointing with a giddy flourish of his riding whip, " is Monte Tomba." I swayed and half extended my hand towards him. But he was still there — sitting, so to speak, on the half of himself. ... I was astonished that he did not disappear abruptly during his exposi- tion. . . . § 2 ' The fighting in the Dolomites has been perhaps the most wonderful of all these separate mountain campaigns. I went up by automobile as far as the clambering new road goes up the flanks of Tofana No. 2; thence for a time by mule along the flank of Tofana No. 1, and thence on foot to the vestiges of the famous Castelletto. The aspect of these mountains is particularly grim and wicked; they are worn old mountains, they tower overhead in enormous vertical cliffs of sallow grey, with the square jointings and occa- sional clefts and gullies, their summits are toothed 50 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN and jagged ; the path ascends and passes round the side of the mountain upon loose screes, which de- scend steeply to a lower wall of precipices. In the distance rise other harsh and desolate looking mountain masses, with shining occasional scars of old snow. Far below is a bleak valley of stunted pine trees through which passes the road of the Dolomites. As I ascended the upper track two bandaged men were coming down on led mules. It was mid August, and they were suffering from frost bite. Across the great gap between the summits a minute traveller with some provisions was going up by wire to some post upon the crest. For everywhere upon the icy pinnacles are observation posts directing the fire of the big guns on the slopes below, or ma- chine-gun stations, or little garrisons that sit and wait through the bleak days. Often they have no link with the world below but a precipitous climb or a "teleferic" wire. Snow and frost may cut them off absolutely for weeks from the rest of man- kind. The sick and wounded must begin their jour- ney down to help and comfort in a giddy basket that swings down to the head of the mule track below. Originally all these crests were in Austrian hands ; they were stormed by the Alpini under al- most incredible conditions. For fifteen days, for example, they fought their way up these screes on THE MOUNTAIN WAR 51 the flanks of Tofana No. 2 to the ultimate crags, making perhaps a hundred metres of ascent each day, hiding under rocks and in holes in the day- light and receiving fresh provisions and ammuni- tion and advancing by night. They were subjected to rifle fire, machine-gun fire and bombs of a pecu- liar sort, big iron balls of the size of a football filled with explosive that were just flung down the steep. They dodged flares and star shells. At one place they went up a chimney that would be far beyond the climbing powers of any but a very active man. It must have been like storming the skies. The dead and wounded rolled away often into inaccessi- ble ravines. Stray skeletons, rags of uniform, frag- ments of weapons, will add to the climbing interest of these gaunt masses for many years to come. In this manner it was that Tofana No. 2 was taken. Now the Italians are organising this prize, and I saw winding up far above me on the steep grey slope a multitudinous string of little things that looked like black ants, each carrying a small bright yellow egg. They were mules bearing bulks of tim- ber. . . . But one position held out invincibly ; this was the Castelletto, a great natural fortress of rock stand- ing out at an angle of the mountain in such a posi- tion that it commanded the Italian communications (the Dolomite road) in the valley below, and ren- 52 ITALY, FEANCE AND BEITAIN dered all their positions uncomfortable and inse- cure. This obnoxious post was practically inac- cessible either from above or below, and it barred the Italians even from looking into the Val Trave- nanzes which it defended. It was, in fact, an im- pregnable position. It was an impregnable posi- tion, and against it was pitted the invincible fifth group of the Alpini. It was the old problem of the irresistible force in conflict with the immovable post. And the outcome has been the biggest mili- tary mine in all history. The business began in January, 1916, with sur- veys of the rock in question. The work of survey- ing for excavations, never a very simple one, be- comes much more difficult when the site is occupied by hostile persons with machine guns. In March, as the winter's snows abated, the boring machinery began to arrive, by mule as far as possible and then by hand. Altogether about half a kilometre of gal- lery had to be made to the mine chamber, and mean- while the gelatine was coming up load by load and resting first here, then there, in discreetly chosen positions. There were at the last thirty-five tons of it in the inner chamber. And while the boring machines bored and the work went on, Lieutenant Malvezzi was carefully working out the problem of " il massimo effetto dirompente " and deciding ex- actly how to pack and explode his little hoard. On THE MOUNTAIN WAR 53 the eleventh of July, at 3.30, as he rejoices to state in his official report, " the mine responded per- fectly both in respect of the calculations made and of the practical effects/' that is to say, the Aus- trians were largely missing and the Italians were in possession of the crater of the Castelletto and looking down the Val Travenanzes from which they had been barred for so long. Within a month things had been so tidied up, and secured by fur- ther excavations and sandbags against hostile fire, that even a middle-aged English writer, extremely fagged and hot and breathless, could enjoy the same privilege. All this, you. must understand, had gone on at a level to which the ordinary tourist rarely climbs, in a rarefied, chest-tightening atmos- phere, with wisps of cloud floating in the clear air below and club-huts close at hand. . . . Among these mountains avalanches are fre- quent; and they come down regardless of human strategy. In many cases the trenches cross ava- lanche tracks; they and the men in them are peri- odically swept away and periodically replaced. They are positions that must be held ; if the Italians will not face such sacrifices, the Austrians will. Avalanches and frost bite have slain and disabled their thousands; they have accounted perhaps for as many Italians in this austere and giddy cam- paign as the Austrians. . . . 54 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN § 3 It seems to be part of the stern resolve of Fate that this, the greatest of wars, shall be the least glorious ; it is manifestly being decided not by vic- tories but by blunders. It is indeed a history of colossal stupidities. Among the most decisive of these blunders, second only perhaps to the blunder of the Verdun attack and far outshining the wild raid of the British towards Bagdad, was the blun- der of the Trentino offensive. It does not need the equipment of a military expert, it demands only quite ordinary knowledge and average intelli- gence, to realise the folly of that Austrian adven- ture. There is some justification for a claim that the decisive battle of the war was fought upon the soil of Italy. There is still more justification for saying that it might have been. There was only one good point about the Aus- trian thrust. No one could have foretold it. And it did so completely surprise the Italians as to catch them without any prepared line of positions in their rear. On the very eve of the big Russian offensive, the Austrians thrust eighteen divisions hard at the Trentino frontier. The Italian posts were then in Austrian territory; they held on the left wing and the right, but they were driven in by sheer weight of men and guns in the centre, they THE MOUNTAIN WAR 55 lost guns and prisoners because of that difficulty of mountain retreats to which I have alluded, and the Austrians pouring through reached not indeed the plain of Venetia, but to the upland valleys immedi- ately above it, to Asiago and Arsiero. They prob- ably saw the Venetian plain through gaps in the hills, but they were still separated from it even at Arsiero by what are mountains to an English eye, mountains as high as Snowdon. But the Italians of such beautiful old places as Vicenza, Marostica and Bassano could watch the Austrian shells burst- ing on the last line of hills above the plain, and I have no doubt they felt extremely uneasy. As one motors through these ripe and beautiful towns and through the rich valleys that link them — it is a smiling land abounding in old castles and villas, Vicenza is a rich museum of Palladio's archi- tecture and Bassano is full of irreplaceable painted buildings — one feels that the thing was a narrow escape, but from the military point of view it was merely an insane escapade. The Austrians had behind them — and some way behind them — one little strangulated railway and no good pass road ; their right was held at Pasubio, their left was simi- larly bent back. In front of them was between twice and three times their number of first class troops, with an unlimited equipment. If they had surmounted that last mountain crest they would 56 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN have come down to almost certain destruction in the plain. They could never have got back. For a time it is said that General Cadorna considered that possibility. From the point of view of purely military considerations, the Trentino offensive should perhaps have ended in the capitulation of Vicenza. I will confess I am glad it did not do so. This tour of the fronts has made me very sad and weary with a succession of ruins. I can bear to see no more ruins unless they are the ruins of Dussel- dorf, Cologne, Berlin, or such-like modern German city. Anxious as I am to be a systematic Philis- tine, to express my preference for Marinetti over the Florentine British and generally to antagonise sesthetic prigs, I rejoiced over that sunlit land as one might rejoice over a child saved from beasts. On the hills beyond Schio I walked out through the embrasure of a big gun in a rock gallery, and saw the highest points upon the hillside to which the Austrian infantry clambered in their futile last attacks. Below me were the ruins of Arsiero and Velo d'Astico recovered, and across the broad val- ley rose Monte Cimone with the Italian trenches upon its crest and the Austrians a little below to the north. A very considerable bombardment w T as going on and it reverberated finely. (It is only among mountains that one hears anything that one THE MOUNTAIN WAR 57 can call the thunder of guns. The heaviest bom- bardments I heard in France sounded merely like Brock's benefit on a much louder scale, and disap- pointed me extremely.) As I sat and listened to this uproar and watched the shells burst on Cimone and far away up the valley over Castelletto above Pedescala, Captain Pirelli pointed out the position of the Austrian frontier. I doubt if English peo- ple realise that the utmost depth to which this great Trentino offensive, which exhausted Austria, wasted the flower of the Hungarian army and led directly to the Galician disasters and the interven- tion of Rumania, penetrated into Italian territory was about six miles. Ill BEHIND THE FRONT § 1 I have a peculiar affection for Verona and cer- tain things in Verona. Italians must forgive us English this little streak of impertinent proprie- torship in the beautiful things of their abundant land. It is quite open to them to revenge them- selves by professing a tenderness for Liverpool or Leeds. It was, for instance, with a peculiar and personal indignation that I saw where an Austrian air bomb had killed five-and-thirty people in the Piazza Erbe. Somehow in that jolly old place, a place that has very much of the quality of a very pretty and cheerful little old woman, it seemed ex- ceptionally an outrage. And I made a special pil- grimage to see how it was with that monument of Can Grande, the equestrian Scaliger with the side- long grin, for whom I confess a ridiculous admira- tion. Can Grande, I rejoice to say, has retired into a case of brickwork, surmounted by a steep roof of thick iron plates ; no aeroplane exists to carry bomb 58 BEHIND THE FRONT 59 enough to smash that covering ; there he will smile securely in the darkness until peace comes again. All over Venetia the Austrian seaplanes are making the same sort of idiot raid on lighted places that the Zeppelins have been making over England. These raids do no effective military work. What conceivable military advantage can there be in dropping bombs into a marketing crowd? It is a sort of anti-Teutonic propaganda by the Central Powers to which they seem to have been incited by their own evil genius. It is as if they could con- vince us that there is an essential malignity in Ger- mans, that until the German powers are stamped down into the mud they will continue to do evil things. All the Allies have borne the thrusting and boasting of Germany with exemplary patience for half a century; England gave her Heligoland and stood out of the way of her colonial expansion, Italy was a happy hunting ground for her business enterprise, France had come near resignation on the score of Alsace-Lorraine. And then over and above the great outrage of the war come these in- cessant mean-spirited atrocities. A great and sim- ple wickedness it is possible to forgive; the war itself, had it been fought greatly by Austria and Germany, would have made no such deep and en- during breach as these silly, futile assassinations have done between the Austro-Germans and the 60 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN rest of the civilised world. One great misdeed is a thing understandable and forgivable ; what grows upon the consciousness of the world is the per- suasion that here we fight not a national sin but a national insanity; that we dare not leave the Ger- man the power to attack other nations any more for ever. . . . Venice has suffered particularly from this ape- like impulse to hurt and terrorise enemy non-com- batants. Venice has indeed suffered from this war far more than any other town in Italy. Her trade has largely ceased ; she has no visitors. I woke up on my way to Udine and found my train at Venice with an hour to spare; after much examining and stamping of my passport I was allowed outside the station wicket to get coffee in the refreshment room and a glimpse of a very sad and silent Grand Canal. There was nothing doing ; a black despondent rem- nant of the old crowd of gondolas browsed dreamily against the quay. There was no competition for a potential passenger; a small boy walked down the quay to stare at me the better. The empty palaces seemed to be sleeping in the morning sunshine be- cause it was not worth while to wake up. . . . Except in the case of Venice, the war does not seem as yet to have made nearly such a mark upon BEHIND THE FKONT 61 life in Italy as it has in England or provincial France. People speak of Italy as a poor country, but that is from a banker's point of view. In some respects she is the richest country on earth, and in the matter of staying power I should think she is better off than any other belligerent. She pro- duces food in abundance everywhere; her women are agricultural workers, so that the interruption of food production by the war has been less serious in Italy than in any other part of Europe. In peace time, she has constantly exported labour ; the Italian worker has been a seasonal emigrant to America, north and south, to Switzerland, Ger- many and the south of France. The cessation of this emigration has given her great reserves of man power, so that she has carried on her admirable campaign with less interference with her normal economic life than any other power. The first per- son I spoke to upon the platform at Modane was a British officer engaged in forwarding Italian pota- toes to the British front in France. Afterwards on my return, when a little passport irregularity kept me for half a day in Modane, I went for a walk with him along the winding pass road that goes down into France. " You see hundreds and hundreds of new Fiat cars," he remarked, " along here — going up to the French front." But there is a return trade. Near Paris I saw 62 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN scores of thousands of shells piled high to go to Italy. I donbt if English people fully realise either the economic sturdiness or the political courage of their Italian ally. Italy is not merely fighting a first-class war in first-class fashion but she is doing a big, dangerous, generous and far-sighted thing in fighting at all. France and England were obliged to fight; the necessity was as plain as daylight. The participation of Italy demanded a remoter wis- dom. In the long run she would have been swal- lowed up economically and politically by the Ger- man if she had not fought ; but that was not a thing staring her plainly in the face as the danger, insult and challenge stared France and England in the face. What did stare her in the face was not merely a considerable military and political risk, but the rupture of very close financial and com- mercial ties. I found thoughtful men talking everywhere I have been in Italy of two things, of the Jugo-Slav riddle and of the question of post war finance. So far as the former matter goes I think the Italians are set upon the righteous solu- tion of all such riddles, they are possessed by an intelligent generosity. They are clearly set upon deserving Jugo-Slav friendship; they understand the plain necessity of open and friendly routes to- wards Roumania. It was an Italian who set out BEHIND THE FRONT 63 to explain to me that Fiume must be at least a free port ; it would be wrong and foolish to cut the trade of Hungary off from the Mediterranean. But the banking puzzle is a more intricate and puzzling matter altogether than the possibility of trouble between Italian and Jugo-Slav. I write of these things with the simplicity of an angel, but without an angelic detachment. Here are questions into which one does not so much rush as get reluctantly pushed. Currency and banking are dry distasteful questions, but it is clear that they are too much in the hands of mystery-mongers ; it is as much the duty of any one who talks and writes of affairs, it is as much the duty of every sane adult, to bring his possibly poor and unsuit- able wits to bear upon these things, as it is for him to vote or enlist or pay his taxes. Behind the sim- ple ostensible spectacle of Italy recovering the un- redeemed Italy of the Trentino and East Venetia, goes on another drama. Has Italy been sinking into something rather hard to define called " eco- nomic slavery"? Is she or is she not escaping from that magical servitude? Before this ques- tion has been under discussion for a minute comes a name — for a time I was really quite unable to decide whether it is the name of the villain in the piece or of the maligned heroine, or a secret so- ciety or a gold mine, or a pestilence or a delusion 64 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN — the name of the Banco, Commerciale Italiana. Banking in a country undergoing so rapid and vigorous an economic development as Italy is very different from the banking we simple English peo- ple know of at home. Banking in England, like land-owning, has hitherto been a sort of hold up. There were always borrowers, there were always tenants, and all that had to be done was to refuse, obstruct^ delay and worry the helpless borrower or would-be tenant until the maximum of security and profit was obtained. I have never borrowed but I have built, and I know something of the ex- treme hauteur of property in England towards a man who wants to do anything with land, and with money I gather the case is just the same. But in Italy, which already possessed a sunny prosperity of its own upon mediaeval lines, the banker has had to be suggestive and persuasive, sympathetic and helpful. These are unaccustomed attitudes for British capital. The field has been far more at- tractive to the German banker, who is less of a proudly impassive usurer and more of a partner, who demands less than absolute security because he investigates more industriously and intelligently. This great bank, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, is a bank of the German type : to begin with, it was certainly dominated by German directors; it was a bank of stimulation, and its activities interweave BEHIND THE FRONT 65 now into the whole fabric of Italian commercial life. But it has already liberated itself from Ger- man influence, and the bulk of its capital is Italian. Nevertheless I found discussion ranging about firstly what the Banca Commerciale essentially was, secondly what it might become, thirdly what it might do, and fourthly what, if anything, had to be done to it. It is a novelty to an English mind to find bank- ing thus mixed up with politics, but it is not a nov- elty in Italy. All over Venetia there are agricul- tural banks which are said to be " clerical." I grappled with this mystery. " How are they cleri- cal?" I asked Captain Pirelli. "Do they lend money on bad security to clerical voters, and on no terms whatever to anti-clericals? " He was quite of my way of thinking. " Pecunia non olet," he said; "I have never yet smelt a clerical fifty lira note." . . . But on the other hand Italy is very close to Germany; she wants easy money for de- velopment, cheap coal, a market for various prod- ucts. The case against the Germans, this case in which the Banca Commerciale Italiana appears, I am convinced, unjustly as a suspect, is that they have turned this natural and proper interchange with Italy into the acquisition of German power. That they have not been merely easy traders, but patriotic agents. It is alleged that they used their 66 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN early " pull " in Italian banking to favour German enterprises and German political influence against the development of native Italian business; that their merchants are not bona-fide individuals but members of a nationalist conspiracy to gain eco- nomic controls. The German is a patriotic mono- maniac. He is not a man but a limb, the worship- per of a national effigy, the digit of an insanely proud and greedy Gerinania, and here are the natu- ral consequences. The case of the individual Italian compactly is this. "We do not like Austrians and Germans. These Imperialisms look always over the Alps. Whatever increases German influence here threat- ens Italian life. The German is a German first and a human being afterwards. . . . But on the other hand England seems commercially indiffer- ent to us and France has been economically hos- tile. . . ." " After all," I said presently after reflection, " in that matter of Pecunia non olet: there used to be fusses about European loans in China. And one of the favourite themes of British fiction and drama before the war was the unfortunate position of the girl who accepted a loan from the wicked man to pay her debts at -bridge." "Italy," said Captain Pirelli, "isn't a girl. And she hasn't been playing bridge." BEHIND THE FRONT 67 I incline on the whole to his point of view. Money is facile cosmopolitan stuff. I think that any bank that settled down in Italy is going to be slowly and steadily naturalised Italian, it will be- come more and more Italian until it is wholly Italian. I would trust Italy to make and keep the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Italian. I believe the Italian brain is a better brain than the German article. But still I heard people talking of the implicated organisation as if it were engaged in the most insidious duplicities. " Wait for only a year or so after the war/' said one English authority to me, " and the mask will be off and it will be frankly a ' Deutsche Bank ' again." They assure me that then German enterprises will be favoured again, Italian and Allied enterprises blockaded and embarrassed, the good understanding of Italians and English poisoned, entirely through this organ- isation. . . . The reasonable uncommercial man would like to reject all this last sort of talk as " suspicion mania." So far as the Banca Commerciale Itali- ana goes, I at least find that easy enough ; I quote that instance simply because it is a case where sus- picion has been dispelled, but in regard to a score of other business veins it is not so easy to dispel suspicion. This war has been a shock to reason- able men the whole world over. They have been 68 ITALY, FEANCE AND BEITAIN forced to realise that after all a great number of Germans have been engaged in a crack-brained con- spiracy against the non-German world; that in a great number of cases when one does business with a German the business does not end with the indi- vidual German. We hated to believe that a busi- ness could be tainted by German partners or Ger- man associations. If now we err on the side of over-suspicion, if (outside Court circles of course) every German is suspect, it is the German's little weakness for patriotic disingenuousness that is most to blame. . . . But anyhow I do not think there is much good in a kind of witch-smelling among Italian enterprises to find the hidden German. Certain things are necessary for Italian prosperity and Italy must get them. The Italians want intelligent and helpful capital. They want a helpful France. They want bituminous coal for metallurgical purposes. They want cheap shipping. The French too want metal- lurgical coal. It is more important for civilisa- tion, for the general goodwill of the Allies and for Great Britain that these needs should be supplied than that individual British money-owners or ship- owners should remain sluggishly rich by insisting upon high security or high freights. The control of British coal-mining and shipping in the national interests — for international interests — rather BEHIND THE FKONT 69 than for the creation of that particularly passive, obstructive and wasteful type of wealth, the wealth of the mere profiteer, is as urgent a necessity for the commercial welfare of France and Italy and the endurance of the Great Alliance, as it is for the well-being of the common man in Britain. I left my military guide at Verona on Saturday afternoon and I reached Milan in time to dine out- side Salvini's in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, with an Italian fellow story-writer. The place was as full as ever; we had to wait for a table. It is notable that there were still great numbers of young- men not in uniform in Milan and Turin and Vi- cenza and Verona ; there is no effect anywhere of a depletion of men. The whole crowded place was smouldering with excitement. The diners looked about them as they talked, some talked loudly and seemed to be expressing sentiments. Newspaper vendors appeared at the intersection of the arcades, uttering ambiguous cries, and did a brisk business of flitting white sheets among the little tables. " To-night," said my companion, " I think we shall declare war upon Germany. The decision is being made." I asked intelligently why this had not been done 70 ITALY, FBANCE AND BKITAIN before. I forget the precise explanation he gave. A young soldier in uniform, who had been dining at an adjacent table and whom I had not recognised before as a writer I had met some years previously in London, suddenly joined in our conversation, with a slightly different explanation. I had been carrying on a conversation in ungainly French, but now I relapsed into English. But indeed the matter of that declaration of war is as plain as daylight; the Italian national con- sciousness has not at first that direct sense of the German danger that exists in the minds of the three northern Allies. To the Italian the tradi- tional enemy is Austria, and this war is not pri- marily a war for any other end than the emancipa- tion of Italy. Moreover we have to remember that for years there has been serious commercial fric- tion between France and Italy, and considerable mutual elbowing in North Africa. Both French- men and Italians are resolute to remedy this now, but the restoration of really friendly and trustful relations is not to be done in a day. It has been an extraordinary misfortune for Great Britain that instead of boldly taking over her shipping from its private owners and using it all, regardless of their profit, in the interests of herself and her allies, her government has permitted so much of it as military and naval needs have not requisitioned to continue BEHIND THE FRONT 71 to ply for gain, which the government itself has shared by a tax on war profits. The Anglophobe elements in Italian public life have made the ut- most use of this folly or laxity in relation more par- ticularly to the consequent dearness of coal in Italy. They have carried on an amazingly effective cam- paign in which this inconvenience, which is due en- tirely to our British slackness with the individual profiteer, is represented as if it were the delib- erate greed of the British state. This certainly contributed very much to fortify Italy's disincli- nation to slam the door on the German connec- tion. I did my best to make it clear to my two friends that so far from England exploiting Italy, I myself suffered in exactly the same way as any Italian, through the extraordinary liberties of our shipping interest. "I pay as well as you do," I said; "the shippers' blockade of Great Britain is more effec- tive than the submarines'. My food, my coal, my petrol are all restricted in the sacred name of pri- vate property. You see, capital in England has hitherto been not an exploitation but a hold up. We are learning differently now. . . . And any- how Mr. Runciman has been here, and given Italy assurances. . . ." In the train to Modane this old story recurred again. It is imperative that English readers 72 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN should understand clearly how thoroughly these lit- tle matters have been worked by the enemy. Some slight civilities led to a conversation that revealed the Italian lady in the corner as an Irish- woman married to an Italian, and also brought out the latent English of a very charming elderly lady opposite to her. She had heard a speech, a won- derful speech from a railway train, by " the Lord Runciman." He had said the most beautiful things about Italy. I did my best to echo those beautiful things. Then the Irishwoman remarked that Mr. Runci- man had not satisfied everybody. She and her hus- band had met a minister — I found afterwards he was one of the members of the late Giolotti govern- ment — who had been talking very loudly and scornfully of the bargain Italy was making with England. I assured her that the desire of Eng- land was simply to give Italy all that she needed. " But," said the husband casually, " Mr. Runci- man is a ship-owner." I explained that he was nothing of the sort. It was true that he came of a ship-owning family — and perhaps inherited a slight tendency to see things from a ship-owning point of view — but in England we did not suspect a man on such a score as that. BEHIND THE FRONT 73 u In Italy I think we should/' said the husband of the Irish lady. This incidental discussion is a necessary part of my impression of Italy at war. The two western allies and Great Britain in particular have to re- member Italy's economic needs, and to prepare to rescue them from the blind exploitation of private profit. They have to remember these needs too, because, if they are left out of the picture, then it becomes impossible to understand the full measure of the risk Italy has faced in undertaking this war for an idea. With a Latin lucidity she has counted every risk, and with a Latin idealism she has taken her place by the side of those who fight for a liberal civilisation against a Byzantine imperialism. As I came out of the brightly lit Galleria Vittorio Emanuele into the darkened Piazza del Duomo I stopped under the arcade and stood looking up at the shadowy darkness of that great pinnacled barn, that marble bride-cake, which is, I suppose, the last southward fortress of the Franco-English Gothic. " It was here," said my host, " that we burnt the German stuff." 74 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN "What German stuff? " " Pianos and all sorts of things. From the shops. It is possible, you know, to buy things too cheaply — and give too much for the cheapness." THE WESTERN WAR (September, 1916) I RUINS If I had to present some particular scene as typical of the peculiar vileness and mischief wrought by this modern warfare that Germany has elaborated and thrust upon the world, I do not think I should choose as my instance any of those great architec- tural wrecks that seem most to impress contem- porary writers. I have seen the injuries and ruins of the cathedrals at Arras and Soissons and the wreckage of the great church of Saint Eloi, I have visited the Hotel de Ville at Arras and seen photo- graphs of the present state of the Cloth Hall at Ypres — a building I knew very well indeed in its days of pride — and I have not been very deeply moved. I suppose that one is a little accustomed to Gothic ruins, and that there is always something monumental about old buildings ; it is only a ques- tion of degree whether they are more or less tum- ble-down. I was far more desolated by the obliter- 75 76 ITALY, FBANCE AND BKITAIN ation of such villages as Fricourt and Dompierre, and by the horrible state of the fields and gardens round about them, and my visit to Arras railway station gave me all the sensations of coming sud- denly on a newly murdered body. Before I visited the recaptured villages in the zone of the actual fighting, I had an idea that their evacuation was only temporary, that as soon as the war line moved towards Germany the people of the devastated villages would return to build their houses and till their fields again. But I see now that not only are homes and villages destroyed al- most beyond recognition, but the very fields are de- stroyed. They are wildernesses of shell craters; the old worked soil is buried and great slabs of crude earth have been flung up over it. No ordi- nary plough will travel over this frozen sea, let alone that everywhere chunks of timber, horrible tangles of rusting wire, jagged fragments of big shells, and a great number of unexploded shells — for the proportion of duds has been sometimes as high as one in four or five — are everywhere en- tangled in the mess. Often this chaos is stained yellow by high explosives, and across it run the twisting trenches and communication trenches eight, ten, or twelve feet deep. These will become water pits and mud pits into which beasts will falL It is incredible that there should be crops from any KUINS 77 of this region of the push for many years to come. There is no shade left ; the roadside trees are splin- tered stumps with scarcely the spirit to put forth a leaf ; a few stunted thistles and weeds are the sole proofs that life may still go on. The villages of this wide battle region are not ruined ; they are obliterated. It is just possible to trace the roads in them, because the roads have been cleared and repaired for the passing of the guns and ammunition. Fricourt is a tangle of German dug- outs. One dug-out in particular there promises to become a show place. It must be the masterpiece of some genius for dug-outs; it is made as if its makers enjoyed the job ; it is like the work of some horrible badger among the vestiges of what were pleasant human homes. You are taken down a timbered staircase into its warren of rooms and passages; you are shown the places under the craters of the great British shells, where the wood splintered but did not come in. (But the arrival of those shells must have been a stunning moment. ) There are a series of ingenious bolting shafts set with iron climbing bars. In this place German officers and soldiers have lived continually for nearly two years. This war is, indeed, a Trog- lodytic propaganda. You come up at last at the far end into what was once the cellar of a decent Frenchman's home. 78 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN But there are stranger subterranean refuges than that at Fricourt. At Dompierre the German trenches skirted the cemetery, and they turned the dead out of their vaults and made lurking places of the tombs. I walked with M. Joseph Reinach about this place, picking our way carefully amidst the mud holes and the wire, and watched the shells bursting away over the receding battle line to the west. The wreckage of the graves was Dureresque. And here would be a fragment of marble angel and here a split stone with an inscription. Splinters of coffins, rusty iron crosses and the petals of tin flowers were trampled into the mud, amidst the universal barbed wire. A little distance down the slope is a brand new cemetery, with new metal wreaths and even a few flowers ; it is a disciplined array of uniform wooden crosses, each with its list of soldiers' names. Unless I am wholly mistaken in France no Germans will ever get a chance for ever more to desecrate that second cemetery as they have done its predecessor. We walked over the mud heaps and litter that had once been houses towards the centre of Dom- pierre village, and tried to picture to ourselves what the place had been. Many things are recognisable in Dompierre that have altogether vanished at Fri- court ; for instance, there are quite large triangular pieces of the church wall upstanding at Dompierre. RUINS 79 And a mile away perhaps down the hill on the road towards Amiens, the ruins of the sugar refinery are very distinct. A sugar refinery is an affair of big iron receptacles and great flues and pipes and so forth, and iron does not go down under gun fire as stone or brick does. The whole fabric was rusty, bent and twisted, gaping with shell holes, the rag- gedest display of old iron, but it still kept its gen- eral shape, as a smashed, battered, and sunken iron- clad might do at the bottom of the sea. There wasn't a dog left of the former life of Dompierre. There was not even much war traffic that morning on the worn and muddy road. The guns muttered some miles away to the west, and a lark sang. But a little way further on was an in- termediate dressing station, rigged up with wood and tarpaulings, and orderlies were packing two wounded men into an ambulance. The men on the stretchers were grey faced, they had come out of mud and they looked as though they had been trod- den on by some gigantic dirty boot. As we came back towards where our car waited by the cemetery I heard the jingle of a horseman coming across the space behind us. I turned and beheld one of the odd contrasts that seem always to be happening in this incredible war. This man was, I suppose, a native officer of some cavalry force from French north Africa. He was a hand- 80 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN gome dark brown Arab, wearing a long yellow- wliite robe and a tall cap about which ran a band of sheepskin. He was riding one of those little fine lean horses with long tails that I think are Bar- bary horses, his archaic saddle rose fore and aft of him, and the turned-up toes of his soft leather boots were stuck into great silver stirrups. He might have ridden straight out of the Arabian Nights. He passed thoughtfully, picking his way delicately among the wire and the shellac raters, and coming into the road, broke into a canter and van- ished in the direction of the smashed-up refinery. § 2 About such towns as Rheims or Arras or Soissons there is an effect of waiting stillness like nothing else I have ever experienced. At Arras the situ- ation is almost incredible to the civilian mind. The British hold the town, the Germans hold a northern suburb; at one point near the river the trenches are just four metres apart. This state of tension has lasted for long months. Unless a very big attack is contemplated, I sup- pose there is no advantage in an assault; across that narrow interval we should only get into trenches that might be costly or impossible to hold, and so it would be for the Germans on our side. RUINS 81 But there is a kind of etiquette observed ; loud vul- gar talking on either side of the four metre gap leads at once to bomb throwing. And meanwhile on both sides guns of various calibre keep up an intermittent fire, the German guns register — I think that is the right term — on the cross of Arras cathedral, the British guns search lovingly for the German batteries. As one walks about the silent streets one hears, " Bang — Pheeee — woooo " and then far away, " dump." One of ours. Then pres- ently back comes, " Pheeee — woooo — Bang ! " One of theirs. Amidst these pleasantries, the life of the town goes on. Shops are doing business behind closed shutters. The cafes flourish. Le Lion & Arras, an excellent illustrated paper, produces its valiant sheets, and has done so since the siege began. The current number of Le Lion d' Arras had to report a local German success. Overnight they had killed a gendarme. There is to be a public funeral and much ceremony. It is rare for any one now to get killed; everything is so systema- tised. You may buy postcards with views of the de- struction at different stages, and send them off with the Arras postmark. The town is not without a certain business activity. There is, I am told, a considerable influx of visitors of a special sort; 82 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN they wear khaki and lead the Troglodytic life. They play cards and gossip and sleep in the shad- ows, and may not walk the streets. I had one glimpse of a dark crowded cellar. Now and then one sees a British soldier on some special errand; he keeps to the pavement, mindful of the spying German sausage balloon in the air. The streets are strangely quiet and grass grows between the stones. The Hotel de Ville and the cathedral are now mostly heaps of litter, but many streets of the town have suffered very little. Here and there a house has been crushed and one or two have been bisected, the front reduced to a heap of splinters and the back halves of the rooms left so that one sees the bed, the hanging end of the carpet, the clothes cupboard yawning open, the pictures still on the wall. In one place a lamp stands on a chest of drawers, on a shelf of floor cut off completely from the world below. . . . Pheeee — woooo — Bang! One would be irresistibly reminded of a Sunday afternoon in the city of London, if it were not for those un- meaning explosions. I went to the station, a dead railway station. A notice-board requested us to walk round the silent square on the outside pavement and not across it. The German sausage balloon had not been up for days; it had probably gone off to the Somme; the RUINS 83 Sorrime was a terrible vortex just then which was sucking away the sources of the whole German line; but still discipline is discipline. The sau- sage might come peeping up at any moment over the station roof, and so we skirted the square. Arras was fought for in the early stage of the war ; two lines of sand-bagged breastworks still run obliquely through the station; one is where the porters used to put luggage upon cabs and one runs down the length of the platform. The station was a fine one of the modern type, with a glass roof whose framework still remains, though the glass powders the floor and is like a fine angular gravel underfoot. The rails are rails of rust, and corn- flowers and mustard and tall grasses grow amidst the ballast. The waiting-rooms have suffered from a shell or so, but there are still the sofas of green plush, askew, a little pulled from their places. A framed shipping advertisement hung from the wall, the glass smashed. The ticket bureau is as if a giant had leant against it ; on a table and the floor are scattered a great number of tickets, mostly still done up in bundles, to Douai, to Valenciennes, to Lens and so on. These tickets are souvenirs too portable to resist. I gave way to that common weakness. I went out and looked up and down the line; two deserted goods trucks stood as if they sheltered 84 ITALY, FKANCE AND BBITAIN under a footbridge. The grass poked out through their wheels. The railway signals seemed uncer- tain in their intimations; some were up and some were down. And it was as still and empty as a summer afternoon in Pompeii. No train has come into Arras for two long years now. We lunched in a sunny garden with various men who love Arras but are weary of it, and we disputed about Irish politics. We discussed the political future of Mr. F. E. Smith. We also disputed whether there was an equivalent in English for embusque. Every now and then a shell came over — an aimless shell. A certain liveliness marked our departure from the town. Possibly the Germans also listen for the rare infrequent automobile. At any rate, as we were just starting on our way back — it is improper to mention the exact point from which we started — came " Pheeeeee — woooo." Quite close. But there was no Bang! One's mind hung expectant and disappointed. It was a dud shell. And then suddenly I became acutely aware of the personality of our chauffeur. It was not his business to talk to us, but he turned his head, showed a sharp profile, wry lips and a bright ex- cited eye, and remarked, " That was a near one — anyhow." He then cut a corner over the pavement and very nearly cut it through a house. He RUINS 85 bumped us over a shell hole and began to toot his horn. At every gateway, alley, and cross road in those silent and empty streets of Arras and fre- quently in between, he tooted punctiliously. (It is not proper to sound motor horns in Arras.) I cannot imagine what the listening Germans made of it. We passed the old gates of that city of fear, still tooting vehemently, and then with shoulders eloquent of his feelings, our chauffeur abandoned the horn altogether and put his whole soul into the accelerator. . . . § 3 Soissons was in very much the same case as Arras. There was the same pregnant silence in her streets, the same effect of waiting for the moment which draws nearer and nearer, when the brood- ing German lines away there will be full of the covert activities of retreat, when the streets of the old town will stir with the joyous excitements of the conclusive advance. The organisation of Soissons for defence is per- fect. I may not describe it, but think of whatever would stop and destroy an attacking party or foil the hostile shell. It is there. Men have had noth- ing else to do and nothing else to think of for two years. I crossed the bridge the English made in the pursuit after the Marne, and went into the first line trenches and peeped towards the invisible 86 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN enemy. To show me exactly where to look a sev- enty-five obliged with a shell. In the crypt of the Abbey of St. Medard near by — it must provoke the Germans bitterly to think that all the rest of the building vanished ages ago — the French boys sleep beside the bones of King Childebert the Second. They shelter safely in the prison of Louis the Pious. An ineffective shell from a German seventy -seven burst in the walled garden close at hand as I came out from those thousand-year-old memories again. The cathedral at Soissons had not been nearly so completely smashed up as the one at Arras; I doubt if it has been very greatly fired into. There is a peculiar beauty in the one long vertical strip of blue sky between the broken arches in the chief gap where the wall has tumbled in. And the peo- ple are holding on in many cases exactly as they are doing in Arras; I do not know whether it is habit or courage that is most apparent in this per- sistence. About the chief place of the town there are ruined houses, but some invisible hand still keeps the grass of the little garden within bounds and has put out a bed of begonias. In Paris I met a charming American writer, the wife of a French artist, the lady who wrote My House on the Field of Honour. She gave me a queer little anecdote. On account of some hospital work she had been al- lowed to visit Soissons — a rare privilege for a RUINS 87 woman — and she stayed the night in a lodging. The room into which she was shown was like any other French provincial bedroom, and after her Anglo-Saxon habit she walked straight to the win- dows to open them. They looked exactly like any other French bed- room windows, with neat, clean white lace curtains across them. The curtains had been put there, be- cause they were the proper things to go there. "Madame," said the hostess, "need not trouble to open the glass. There is no more glass in Sois- sons." But there were the curtains nevertheless. There was all the precise delicacy of the neatly curtained home life of France. And she told me too of the people at dinner, and how as the little serving maid passed about a proud erection of cake and conserve and cream, came the familiar " Pheeeee — wooooo — Bang! " " That must have been the Seminaire," said some one. As one speaks of the weather or a passing cart. "It was in the Eue de la Buerie, M'sieur," the little maid asserted with quiet conviction, poising the trophy of confectionery for Madame Huard with an unshaking hand. So stoutly do the roots of French life hold be- neath the tramplings of war. II THE GRADES OF, SVAR Soissons and Arras when I visited them were like samples of the deadlock war ; they were like Bloch come true. The liying fact about war so far is that Bloch has not come true — yet. I think in the end he will come true, but not so far as this war is con- cerned, and to make that clear it is necessary to trouble the reader with a little disquisition upon war — omitting as far as is humanly possible all mention of Napoleon's campaigns. The development of war has depended largely upon two factors. One of these is invention. New weapons and new methods have become avail- able, and have modified tactics, strategy, the rela- tive advantage of offensive and defensive. The other chief factor in the evolution of the war has been social organisation. As Machiavelli points out in his Art of ~War, there was insufficient social stability in Europe to keep a properly trained and disciplined infantry in the field from the passing of the Roman legions to the appearance of the Swiss 88 THE GRADES OF WAR 89 footmen. He makes it very clear that he considers the fighting of the Middle Ages, though frequent and bloody, to be a confused, mobbing sort of affair, and politically and technically unsatisfactory. The knight was an egotist in armour. Machiavelli does small justice to the English bowmen. It is interesting to note that Switzerland, that present island of peace, was regarded by him as the mother of modern war. Swiss aggression w T as the curse of the Milanese. That is a remark by the way; our interest here is to note that modern war emerges upon history as the sixteenth century unfolds, as an affair in which the essential factor is the drilled and trained infantryman. The artillery is devel- oping as a means of breaking the infantry ; cavalry for charging them when broken, for pursuit and for scouting. To this day this triple division of forces dominates soldiers' minds. The mechanical development of warfare has consisted largely in the development of facilities for enabling or hin- dering the infantry to get to close quarters. As that has been made easy or difficult the offensive or the defensive has predominated. A history of military method for the last few cen- turies would be a record of successive alternate steps in which offensive and defensive contrivances pull ahead, first one and then the other. Their relative fluctuations are marked by the varying 90 ITALY, FKANCE AND BBITAIN length of campaigns. From the very outset we have the ditch and the wall ; the fortified place upon a pass or main road, as a check to the advance, Artillery improves, then fortification improves. The defensive holds its own for a long period, wars are mainly siege wars, and for a century before the advent of Napoleon there are no big successful sweeping invasions, no marches upon the enemy capital and so on. There were wars of reduction, wars of annoyance. Napoleon developed the of- fensive by seizing upon the enthusiastic infantry of the republic, improving transport and mobile ar- tillery, using road-making as an aggressive method. In spite of the successful experiment of Torres JVedras and the warning of Plevna the offensive remained dominant throughout the nineteenth cen- tury. But three things were working quietly towards the rehabilitation of the defensive; firstly the in- creased range, accuracy and rapidity of rifle fire, with which we may include the development of the machine gun; secondly the increasing use of the spade, and thirdly the invention of barbed wire. By the end of the century these things had come so far into military theory as to produce the great essay of Bloch, and to surprise the British military people, who are not accustomed to read books or talk shop, in the Boer war. In the thinly popu- THE GRADES OF WAR 91 lated war region of South Africa the difficulties of forcing entrenched positions were largely met by outflanking, the Boers had only a limited amount of barbed wire and could be held down in their trenches by shrapnel, and even at the beginning of the present war there can be little doubt that we and our Allies were still largely unprepared for the full possibilities of trench warfare, we at- tempted a war of manoeuvres, war at about the grade to which war had been brought in 1898, and it was the Germans who first brought the war up to date by entrenching upon the Aisne. We had, of course, a few aeroplanes at that time, but they were used chiefly as a sort of accessory cavalry for scouting; our artillery was light and our shell al- most wholly shrapnel. Now the grades of warfare that have been devel- oped since the present war began, may be regarded as a series of elaborations and counter elaborations of the problem which begins as a line of trenches behind wire, containing infantry with rifles and machine guns. Against this an infantry attack with the bayonet, after shrapnel fails. This we will call Grade A. To this the offensive replies with improved artillery, and particularly with high explosive shell instead of shrapnel. By this the wire is blown away, the trench wrecked and the -defender held down as the attack charges up. This 92 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN is Grade B. But now appear the dug-out elaborat- ing the trench and the defensive battery behind the trench. The defenders, under the preliminary bombardment, get into the dug-outs with their rifles and machine guns, and emerge as fresh as paint as the attack comes up. Obviously there is much scope for invention and contrivance in the dug-out as the reservoir of counter attacks. Its possibilities have been very ably exploited by the Germans. Also the defensive batteries behind, which have of course the exact range of the cap- tured trench, concentrate on it and destroy the at- tack at the moment of victory. The trench falls back to its former holders under this fire and a counter attack. Check again for the offensive. Even if it can take, it cannot hold a position under these conditions. This we will call Grade A2; a revised and improved A. What is the retort from the opposite side? Obviously to enhance and ex- tend the range of the preliminary bombardment behind the actual trench line, to destroy or block, if it can, the dug-outs and destroy or silence the counter offensive artillery. If it can do that, it can go on; otherwise Bloch wins. If fighting went on only at the ground level Bloch would win at this stage, but here it is that the aeroplane comes in. From the ground it would be practically impossible to locate the enemies' dug- THE GRADES OF WAR 93 outs, secondary defences, and batteries. But the aeroplane takes us immediately to a new grade of warfare, in which the location of the defender's secondary trenches, guns, and even machine-gun positions becomes a matter of extreme precision — provided only that the offensive has secured com- mand of the air and can send his aeroplanes freely over the defender lines. Then the preliminary bombardment becomes of a much more extensive character; the defender's batteries are tackled by the overpowering fire of guns they are unable to locate and answer; the secondary dug-outs and strong places are plastered down, a barrage fire shuts off support from the doomed trenches, the men in these trenches are held down by a concen- trated artillery fire and the attack goes up at last to hunt them out of the dug-outs and collect the sur- vivors. Until the attack is comfortably established in the captured trench, the fire upon the old coun- ter attack position goes on. This is the grade, Grade B2, to which modern warfare has attained upon the Somme front. The appearance of the Tank has only increased the offensive advantage. There, at present, warfare rests. There is, I believe, only one grade higher possi- ble. The success of B2 depends upon the complete- ness of the aerial observation. The invention of an anti-aircraft gun which would be practically sure 94 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN of hitting and bringing down an aeroplane at any height whatever up to 20,000 feet, would restore the defensive and establish what I should think must be the final grade of war, A3. But at present noth- ing of the sort exists and nothing of the sort is likely to exist for a very long time ; at present hit- ting an aeroplane by any sort of gun at all is a rare and uncertain achievement. Such a gun is not impossible and therefore we must suppose such a gun will some day be constructed, but it will be of a novel type and character, unlike anything at present in existence. The grade of fighting that I was privileged to witness on the Somme, the grade at which a steady successful offensive is possible, is therefore, I conclude, the grade at which the present war will end. § 2 But now having thus spread out the broad theory of the business, let me go on to tell some of the actu- alities of the Somme offensive. I visited both the French and English fronts, and I have brought away an impression that at the time of my visit, modern war at its highest level, war at grade B2, was being fought most perfectly and systematically by the French. Comparisons in these matters are difficult I know, but my impression is at least car- THE GRADES OF WAR 95 ried out by the fact that at the time of my visit the French were advancing more rapidly, taking more prisoners and suffering a lower percentage of casualties than the British. In certain respects, however, the British were developing novelties ahead of the Fj nch. The key fact upon both Brit- ish and French fronts was the complete ascendency of the Allied aeroplanes. It is the necessary pre- liminary condition for the method upon which the great generals of the French army rely in this sani- tary task of shoving the German Thing off the soil of Belgium and France back into their own land. A man who is frequently throwing out prophe- cies is bound to score a few successes, and one that I may legitimately claim is my early insistence upon the fact that the quality of the German avi- ator was likely to be inferior to that of his French or British rival. The ordinary German has neither the flexible quality of body, the quickness of nerve, the temperament, nor the mental habits that make a successful aviator. This idea was first put into my head by considering the way in which Germans walk and carry themselves, and by noting the dif- ference in nimbleness between the cyclists in the streets of German and French towns. It was con- firmed by a conversation I had with a German avi- ator who was also a dramatist, and who came to see me upon some copyright matter in 1912. He 96 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN broached the view that aviation would destroy de- mocracy, because he said only aristocrats would make aviators. (He was a man of good family.) With a duke or so in my mind I asked him why. Because, he explained, a man without aristocratic quality in tradition, cannot possibly endure the " high loneliness " of the air. That sounded rather like nonsense at the time, and then I reflected that for a Prussian that might be true. There may be something in the German composition that does de- mand association and the support of pride and training before dangers can be faced. The Ger- mans are social and methodical, the French and English by comparison chaotic and instinctive; perhaps the very readiness for a conscious orderli- ness that makes the German so formidable upon the ground, so thorough and so fore-seeing, makes him slow and unsure in the air. At any rate the experiences of this war have seemed to carry out this hypothesis. The German aviators will not as a class stand up to those of the Allies. They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced have been men of one trick ; one of their great men, Immelmann — he was put down by an English boy a month or so ago — had a sort of hawk's swoop. He would go very high and then come down at his utmost pace at his antagonist, firing his machine gun at him as he came. If he THE GRADES OF WAR 97 missed in this hysterical lunge, he went on down. . . . This does not strike the Allied aviator as very brilliant. A gentleman of that sort can sooner or later be caught on the rise by going for him over the German lines. The first phase, then, of the highest grade of- fensive, the ultimate development of war regard- less of expense, is the clearance of the air. Such German machines as are up are put down by fight- ing aviators. These last fly high ; in the clear blue of the early morning they look exactly like gnats; some trail a little smoke in the sunshine ; they take their machine guns in pursuit over the German lines, and the German anti-aircraft guns, the Archi- balds, begin to pattern the sky about them with lit- tle balls of black smoke. From below one does not see men nor feel that men are there; it is as if it were an affair of midges. Close after the fighting machines come the photographic aeroplanes, with cameras as long as a man is high, flying low — at four or five thousand feet that is — over the enemy trenches. The Archibald leaves these latter alone ; it cannot fire a shell to explode safely so soon after firing ; but they are shot at with rifles and machine guns. They do not mind being shot at; only the petrol tank and the head and thorax of the pilot are to be considered vital. They will come back with forty or fifty bullet holes in the fabric. They 98 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN will go under tins fire along the length of the Ger- man positions exposing plate after plate; one ma- chine will get a continuous panorama of many miles and then come back straight to the aerodrome to develop its plates. There is no waste of time about the business, the photographs are developed as rapidly as possible. Within an hour and a half after the photographs were taken the first prints are going through into the bureau for the examination of the photographs. It was in all this part of the work that it seemed to me the French were rather in front of the Brit- ish ; they were more rapid ; their work rooms were better arranged and their methods of examination more businesslike. It has probably been planned by some experienced business organiser, while the British organisation, photographs at this end of the village and maps at that, and a sort of gossip- ing drift between the two, had all the casualness of the rather absent-minded amateur. But that may be a chance contrast. And things soon get put right nowadays. In the end both British and French air photographs are thoroughly scrutinised and marked. An air photograph to an inexperienced eye is not a very illuminating thing; one makes out roads, blurs of wood, and rather vague buildings. But the examiner has an eye that has been in training; THE GRADES OF WAR 99 he is a picked man; he has at hand yesterday's photographs and last week's photographs, marked maps and all sorts of aids and records. If he is a Frenchman he is only too happy to explain his ideas and methods. Here, he will point out, is a little difference between the German trench beyond the wood since yesterday. For a number of rea- sons he thinks that will be a new machine gun em- placement ; here at the corner of the farm wall they have been making another. This battery here — isn't it plain? Well, it's a dummy. The grass in front of it hasn't scorched, and there's been no seri- ous wear on the road here for a week. Presently the Germans will send one or two waggons up and down that road and instruct them to make figures of eight to imitate scorching on the grass in front of the gun. We know all about that. The real wear on the road, compare this and this and this, ends here at this spot. It turns off into the wood. There's a sort of track in the trees. Now look where the trees are just a little displaced! (This lens is rather better for that.) That's one gun. You see? Here, I will show you another. . . . That process goes on two or three miles behind the front line. Very clean young men in white overalls do it as if it were a labour of love. And the Germans in the trenches, the German gunners, know it is going on. They know that in the quick- 100 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN est possible way tliese observations of the aeroplane that was over them just now will go to the gunners. The careful gunner, firing by the map and marking by aeroplane, kite balloon or direct observation, will be getting on to the located guns and machine guns in another couple of hours. The French claim that they have located new batteries, got their tir de demolition upon them and destroyed them within five hours. The British I told of that found it incredible. Every day the French print special maps showing the guns, sham guns, trenches, every- thing of significance behind the German lines, showing everything that has happened in the last four-and-twenty hours. It is pitiless. It is in- decent. The map making and printing goes on in the room next and most convenient to the examina- tion of the photographs. And, as I say, the German army knows of this, and knows that it cannot pre- vent it because of its aerial weakness. That knowl- edge is not the least among the forces that is crumpling up the German resistance upon the Somme. I visited some French guns during the tir de de- molition phase, I counted nine aeroplanes and twenty-six kite balloons in the air at the same time. There was nothing German visible in the air at all. It is a case of eyes and no eyes. Against this precise and careful method of localisation the Ger- THE GKADES OF WAE 101 mans have only the listening method. It is a good method for the infrequent shells of such places as Arras or Soissons, but it is not good against a rapid fire. The microphone gets confused between this gun and that. The French attack resolves itself into a triple system of gun-fire. First for a day or so, or two or three days, there is demolition fire to smash up all the exactly located batteries, organi- sations, supports, behind the front line enemy trenches ; then comes barrage fire to cut off supplies and reinforcements; then, before the advance, the hammering down fire, " heads down," upon the trenches. When at last this stops and the infantry goes forward to rout out the trenches and the dug- outs, they go forward with a minimum of incon- venience. The first wave of attack fights, destroys, or disarms the surviving Germans and sends them back across the open to the French trenches. They run as fast as they can, hands up, and are shep- herded farther back. The French set to work to turn over the captured trenches and organise them- selves against any counter attack that may face the barrage fire. That is the formula of the present fighting, which the French have developed. After an advance there is a pause, while the guns move up nearer the Germans and fresh aeroplane reconnaissance goes on. Nowhere on this present offensive has a Ger- 102 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN man counter attack had more than the most inci- dental success ; and commonly they have had fright- ful losses. Then after a few days of refreshment and accumulation, the Allied attack resumes. That is the perfected method of the French of- fensive. I had the pleasure of learning its broad outlines in good company, in the company of M. Joseph Reinach and Colonel Carence, the military writer. Their talk together and with me and in the various messes at which we lunched was for the most part a keen discussion of every detail and every possibility of the offensive machine; every French officer's mess seems a little council upon the one supreme question in France, how to do it test. M. Reinach has made certain suggestions about the co-operation of French and British that I will discuss elsewhere, but one great theme was the constitution of "the ideal battery." For years French military thought has been acutely attentive to the best number of guns for effective common action, and has tended rather to the small battery theory. My two companies were playing with the idea that the ideal battery was a battery of one big gun, with its own aeroplane and kite balloon mark- ing for it. I take it the commanding officer would spend much of his time in the air, which would scarcely suit some of our own senior gunners. At the time when I visited the British and French THE GRADES OF WAR 103 fronts (early in September) I formed the impres- sion that this formula of attack was being far more thoroughly and effectively followed out by the French than by the British. I thought the French were altogether more businesslike. I make this statement with the most careful indication of the period to which it refers, because in all these mat- ters things change very rapidly and may at any time change. There is every reason to suppose that in the early stages of the Somme offensive the "science" of the British general staff w r as mark- edly below that of the French, and that very many thousands of British casualties were due to that inferiority. The British did their work, but they paid more heavily, and they were still paying more heavily early in September. The British infantry and the British subalterns were magnificent, the British aeroplane work was unsurpassable, the British guns and munitions are admirable in qual- ity and almost inexhaustibly abundant; but the offensive machine as a whole was certainly not yet knit together and working together like the French machine. The brute fact that English people have to face is that there is still something " amateur- ish " in the quality of the higher grades of British officer. Typically he is brave as a lion and all that sort of thing, he has all the schoolboy virtues and so on, his social position is excellent, his appear- 104 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN ance and his sense of appearances are exquisite, but when it comes to hard intellectual work he is, to speak plainly, a slacker, and he is often appallingly ignorant and timid or mulishiy conservative in the face of ideas and novelties. § 3 But upon the British side if there does seem to be a certain wasteful want of logical coherence, there is also a very considerable amount of scattered ini- tiative of the brightest sort thrusting through the obstructions. That unsystematic individualism that wastes our men in attacks does seem to be as- sociated with the adventurous self-reliance needed in the air. The British aeroplanes do not simply fight the Germans out of the sky; they also make themselves an abominable nuisance by bombing the enemy trenches. For every German bomb that is dropped by aeroplane upon or behind the British lines, about twenty go down on the heads of the Germans. British air bombs upon guns, stores and communications do some of the work that the French effect by their systematic demolition fire. And the British aviator has discovered and is rapidly developing an altogether fresh branch of air activity in the machine-gun attack at a very low altitude. Originally I believe this was tried in THE GKADES OF WAR 105 western Egypt, but now it is being increasingly used upon the British front in France. An aeroplane which comes down suddenly, travelling very rap- idly, to a few hundred feet, is quite hard enough to hit, even if it is not squirting bullets from a ma- chine gun as it advances. Against infantry in the open this sort of thing is extremely demoralising. It is a method of attack still in its infancy, but there are great possibilities for it in the future, when the bending and cracking German line gives as ulti- mately it must give if this offensive does not re- lax. Now a cavalry pursuit alone may easily come upon disaster, cavalry can be so easily held up by wire and a few machine guns. I think the Germans have reckoned on that and on automobiles, prob- ably only the decay of their morale prevents their opening their lines now on the chance of the British attempting some such folly as a big cavalry ad- vance, but I do not think the Germans have reck- oned on the use of machine guns in aeroplanes, sup- ported by and supporting cavalry or automobiles. At the present time I should imagine there is no more perplexing consideration amidst the many perplexities of the German military intelligence than the new complexion put upon pursuit by these low level air developments. It may mean that in all sorts of positions where they had counted conn- 106 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN dently on getting away, they may not be able to get awa y — f r om the face of a scientific advance prop- erly commanding and nsing modern material in a dexterous and intelligent manner. Ill THE WAE LANDSCAPE § 1 I saw rather more of the British than of the French aviators because of the vileness of the weather when I visited the latter. It is quite im- possible for me to institute comparisons between these two services. I should think that the British organisation I saw would be hard to beat, and that none but the French could hope to beat it. On the Western front the aviation has been screwed up to a very much higher level than on the Italian line. In Italy it has not become, as it has in France, the decisive factor. The war on the Carso front in Italy — I say nothing of the mountain warfare, which is a thing in itself — is in fact still in the stage that I have called B. It is good warfare well waged, but not such an intensity of warfare. It has not, as one says of pianos and voices, the same compass. This is true in spite of the fact that the Italians alone of all the western powers have adopted a type of aeroplane larger and much more powerful than 107 108 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN anything except the big Russian machines. They are not at all suitable for any present purpose upon the Italian front, but at a later stage, when the German is retiring and Archibald no longer searches the air, they would be invaluable on the western front because of their enormous bomb or machine gun carrying capacity. " But sufficient for the day is the swat thereof," as the British pub- lic schoolboy says, and no doubt we shall get them when we have sufficiently felt the need for them. The big Caproni machines which the Italians pos- sess are of 300 h.p. and will presently be of 500 h.p. One gets up a gangway into them as one gets into a yacht; they have a main deck, a forward machine gun deck and an aft machine gun; one may walk about in them; in addition to guns and men they carry a very considerable weight of bombs beneath. They cannot of course get up with the speed nor soar to the height of our smaller aeroplanes ; it is as carriers in raids behind a force of fighting machines that they should find their use. The British establishment I visited was a very refreshing and reassuring piece of practical organi- sation. The air force of Great Britain has had the good fortune to develop with considerable freedom from the old army tradition ; many of its officers are ex-civil engineers and so forth; Headquarters is a little shy of technical direction; and all this in a THE WAR LANDSCAPE 109 service that is still necessarily experimental and plastic is to the good. There is little doubt that, given a release from prejudice, bad associations and the equestrian tradition, British technical intelli- gence and energy can do just as well as the French. Our problem with our army is not to create in- telligence, there is an abundance of it, but to re- lease it from a dreary social and official pressure. The air service ransacks the army for men with technical training and sees that it gets them, there is a real keenness upon the work, and the men in these great mobile hangars talk shop as readily and clearly as Frenchmen do. One met with none of that interest, real or feigned, in the possibility of trout-fishing or fox-hunting behind the front or in playing with golf sticks and suchlike toys, that one still meets here and there (in spite of the July casualty lists) among highly placed officers at other points in the British front. I have already mentioned and the newspapers have told abundantly of the pluck, daring, and ad- mirable work of our aviators; what is still unten- able in any detail is the energy and ability of the constructive and repairing branch upon whose effi- ciency their feats depend. Perhaps the most in- teresting thing I saw in connection with the air work was the hospital for damaged machines and the dump to which those hopelessly injured are 110 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN taken, in order that they may be disarticulated and all that is sound in them used for reconstruction. How excellently this work is being done may be judged from the fact that our offensive in July started with a certain number of aeroplanes, a num- ber that would have seemed fantastic in a story a year before the war began. These aeroplanes were in constant action; they fought, they were shot down, they had their share of accidents. Not only did the repair department make good every loss, but after three weeks of the offensive the army was fighting with fifty more machines than at the out- set. One goes through a vast Rembrandtesque shed opening upon a great sunny field, in whose cool shadows rest a number of interesting patients ; cap- tured and slightly damaged German machines, ma- chines of our own with the scars of battle upon them, one or two cases of bad landing. The star case came from over Peronne. It had come in two days ago. I examined this machine and I will tell the state it was in, but I perceive that what I have to tell will read not like a sober statement of truth but like strained and silly lying. The machine had had a direct hit from an Archibald shell. The propeller had been clean blown away ; so had the machine gun and all its fittings. The engines had been stripped naked and a good deal bent about. The timber stay THE WAR LANDSCAPE 111 over the aviator had been broken, so that it is marvellous the wings of the machine did not shut up at once like the wings of a butterfly. The soli- tary aviator had been wounded in the face. He had then come down in a long glide into the British lines, and made a tolerable landing. . . . One consequence of the growing importance of the aeroplane in warfare is the development of a new military art, the art of camouflage. Camou- flage is humbugging disguise, it is making things — and especially in this connection, military things — seem not what they are, but something peaceful and rural, something harmless and quite uninter- esting to aeroplane observers. It is the art of mak- ing big guns look like haystacks and tents like level patches of field. Also it includes the art of making attractive models of guns, camps, trenches and the like that are not bona-fide guns, camps, or trenches at all, so that the aeroplane bomb-dropper and the aeroplane observer may waste his time and energies and the enemy gunfire be misdirected. In Italy I saw dummy guns so made as to deceive the very elect at a distance of a few thousand feet. The camouflage of concealment aims either at invisibility or imita- 112 ITALY, FKANCE AND BRITAIN tion ; I have seen a supply train look like a row of cottages, its smoke-stack a chimney, with the tops of sham-palings running along the back line of the engine and creepers painted up its sides. But that was a flight of the imagination; the commonest camouflage is merely to conceal. Trees are brought up and planted near the object to be hidden, it is painted in the same tones as its background, it is covered with an awning painted to look like grass or earth. I suppose it is only a matter of develop- ment before a dummy cow or so is put up to chew the cud on the awning. The French have a special open green fabric made of rushes which can be stretched out upon poles or the roofs of sheds with extreme rapidity and which is remarkably effective. I saw none of this on the British front. But there were great rolls of it, van after van, going up to the front on the French side. The French, being I think on the whole much better acquainted with the commonplaces of science than the senior British officers, have taken a tip from the colouration of animals in this matter. As every magazine reader knows nowadays, animal colours even when apparently conspicuous are ar- ranged almost always so as to break the outline. The okapi for instance, though it is a beast of white and black, becomes inanimate light and shadow at a few yards' distance. The French, grasping this idea THE WAR LANDSCAPE 113 firmly, paint their tents and guns in map-like shapes of strong green and fairly bright soil-yellow, colour- ings that take them down into the landscape at a surprisingly small distance. The principle of breaking the outline does not seem to have been fully grasped upon the British front. Much of the painting of guns and tents that one sees is a feeble and useless dabbing or striping ; some of the tents I saw were done in concentric bands or radiating stripes that would on the whole increase their visi- bility from above. In one place I saw a hangar painted a good grey-green, but surrounded and out- lined by spotless w T hite tents. These things irri- tate a patriotic mind anxious to be proud of its country even in little things. I wanted to get down from my automobile and talk very plainly and simply and rudely to some one upon the elements of camouflage and the morality of taking risks in war. My impression — it may be quite an unjust one — was that some of our British colonels misunder- stand and dislike camouflage. Let me, for the purposes of illustration, flash a caricature upon the screen of a certain Colonel X. of the old school, who is still, for want of proper combing out, in a position of responsibility at the front. Let me explain clearly that I have never met him, that I have no one in my mind, but that here and there I fancied I saw his influence. He is, 114 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN you know, a quintessential army man, a good sportsman, owns four thousand acres, hunts. Never reads much or any of that rot. Doesn't be- lieve much in any of this modern stuff. No. And particularly he doesn't like camouflage. He thinks a gun should look like a gun. He thinks a horse should look like a horse and that a soldier or a camp should be "smart" before anything else. This camouflage fills him with a bashful hostility. He thinks it almost as objectionable as double entendre. It is antipathetic to his simple straightforward sporting tastes. It is as if one handed over that nice white grandstand at Epsom for decorative im- provement to Mr. Roger Fry. It is like meeting a pretty woman who turns out to be clever and edu- cated and all that, and says things a man can't make head or tail of. . . . At any rate very many of the British tents look as though they had been dabbed over by a protesting man muttering " foolery " as he did it. With a good telescope the chief points of interest in the present British front in France would be visible from Mars. Happily the aerial predominance of the Allies prevents any very serious consequences of this queer little British weakness. But the effect of going from behind the French front to behind the English is like going from a brooding wood of green and blue into an open blaze of white canvas and khaki. THE WAR LANDSCAPE 115 But camouflage or no camouflage, the bulk of both the French and British forces in the new won ground of the great offensive lay necessarily in the open. Only the big guns and the advanced Red Cross stations had got into pits and subterranean hiding places. The advance had been too rapid and continuous for the armies to make much of a toilette as they halted, and the destruction and the deso- lation of the country w r on afforded few facilities for easy concealment. Tents, transport, munitions, these all indicated an army on the march — at the rate of half a mile in a week or so, to Germany. § 3 A journey up from the base to the front trenches shows an interesting series of phases. One leaves Amiens, in which the normal life threads its way through crowds of resting men in khaki and horizon blue, in which staff officers in automobiles whisk hither and thither, in which there are nurses and even a few inexplicable ladies in worldly costume, in which restaurants and cafes are congested and busy, through which there is a perpetual coming and going of processions of heavy vans to the rail- way sidings. One dodges past a monstrous blue- black gun going up to the British front behind two resolute traction engines — the three sun-blistered 116 ITALY, FKANCE AND BRITAIN young men in the cart that trails behind lounge in attitudes of haughty pride that would shame the ceiling gods of Hampton Court, One passes through arcades of waiting motor vans, through suburbs still more intensely khaki or horizon blue, and so out upon the great straight poplar-edged road — to the front. Sometimes one laces through spates of heavy traffic, sometimes the dusty road is clear ahead, now we pass a vast aviation camp, now a park of waiting field guns, now an encampment of cavalry. One turns aside, and abruptly one is in France — France as one knew it before the war, on a shady secondary road, past a delightful chateau behind its iron gates, past a beautiful church, and then suddenly we are in a village street full of stately Indian soldiers. It betrays no military secret to say that com- monly the rare tourist to the British offensive passes through Albert, Albert which is at last out of range of the German guns after nearly two years of tribulation, with its great modern red cathedral smashed to pieces and the great gilt Ma- donna and Child that once surmounted the tower now, as every one knows, hanging out horizontally over the road in an attitude that irresistibly sug- gests an imminent dive upon the passing traveller. One looks right up under it. Presently we begin to see German prisoners upon THE WAK LANDSCAPE 117 the roads or in the fields, gangs of two or three hundred in their grey uniforms, armed with spades, pickaxes and so on, keeping the road in good re- pair and working so loyally, I am told, that they work better than the Tommies we put at the same job — a good mark, I think, for Hans. The whole lot look entirely contented, and are guarded by per- haps a couple of men in khaki. These German pris- oners do not attempt to escape, they have not the slightest desire for any more fighting, they have done their bit, they say, honour is satisfied; they give remarkably little trouble. A little way fur- ther on perhaps we pass their cage, a double barbed-wire enclosure with a few tents and huts within. A string of covered waggons passes by. I turn and see a number of men sitting inside and looking almost as cheerful as a beanfeast in Epping Forest. They make facetious gestures. They have a sub- dued sing-song going on. But one of them looks a little sick, and then I notice not very obtrusive bandages. " Sitting-up cases," my guide explains. These are part of the casualties of last night's fight. The fields on either side are now more evidently in the war zone. The array of carts, the patches of tents, the coming and going of men increases. But here are three women harvesting, and presently in 118 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN a cornfield are German prisoners working under one old Frenchman. Then the fields become trampled again. Here is a village, not so very much knocked about, and passing through it we go slowly beside a long column of men going up to the front. We scan their collars for signs of some familiar regiment. These are new men going up for the first time ; there is a sort of solemn elation in many of their faces. The men coming down are usually smothered in mud or dust, and unless there has been a fight they look pretty well done up. They stoop under their equipment, and some of the youngsters drag. One pleasant thing about this coming down is the wel- come of the regimental band, which is usually at work as soon as the men turn off from the high road. I hear several bands on the British front; they do much to enhance the general cheerfulness. On one of these days of my tour I had the pleasure of seeing the — th Blankshires coming down after a fight. As we drew near I saw that they combined an extreme muddiness with an unusual elasticity. They all seemed to be looking us in the face instead of being too fagged to bother. Then I noticed a nice grey helmet dangling from one youngster's bayonet, in fact his eye directed me to it. A man behind him had a black German helmet of the type best known in English illustrations ; then two more THE WAR LANDSCAPE 119 grey appeared. The catch of helmets had indeed been quite considerable. Then I perceived on the road bank above and marching parallel with this column, a double file of still muddier Germans. Either they wore caps or went bareheaded. There were no helmets among them. We do not rob our prisoners but — a helmet is a weapon. Anyhow, it is an irresistible souvenir. Now and then one sees afar on an ammunition dump, many hundreds of stacks of shells — without their detonators as yet — being unloaded from rail- way trucks, transferred from the broad gauge to the narrow gauge line, or loaded into motor trolleys. Now and then one crosses a railway line. The railway lines run everywhere now behind the British front, the construction follows the advance day by day. They go up as fast as the guns. One's guide remarks as the car bumps over the level cross- ing, "That is one of Haig's railways." It is an aspect of the Commander-in-Chief that has much impressed and pleased the men. And at last we be- gin to enter the region of the former Allied trenches, we pass the old German front line, we pass ruined houses, ruined fields, and thick patches of clustering wooden crosses and boards where the dead of the opening assaults lie. There are no more reapers now, there is no more green upon the fields, there is no green anywhere, scarcely a tree 120 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN survives by the roadside, but only overthrown trunks and splintered stumps ; the fields are wilder- nesses of shell craters and coarse weeds, the very woods are collections of blasted stems and stripped branches. This absolutely ravaged and ruined bat- tlefield country extends now along the front of the Somme offensive for a depth of many miles ; across it the French and British camps and batteries creep forward, the stores, the dumps, the railways creep forward, in their untiring, victorious thrust* against the German lines. Overhead hum and roar the aeroplanes, away towards the enemy and humped, blue sausage-shaped kite balloons brood thought- fully, and from this point and that, guns, curiously invisible until they speak, flash suddenly and strike their one short hammer-blow of sound. Then one sees an enemy shell drop among the lit- tle patch of trees on the crest to the right, and kick up a great red-black mass of smoke and dust. We see it, and then we hear the whine of its arrival and at last the bang. The Germans are blind now, they have lost the air, they are firing by guesswork, and their knowledge of the abandoned territory. a They think they have got divisional headquar- ters there," some one remarks. ..." They haven't. But they keep on." In this zone where shells burst the wise auto- mobile stops and tucks itself away as inconspicu- THE WAR LANDSCAPE 121 ously as possible close up to a heap of ruins. There is very little traffic on the road now except for a van or so that hurries up, unloads, and gets back as soon as possible. Mules and men are taking the stuff the rest of the journey. We are in a flattened village, all undermined by dug-outs that were in the original German second line. We report ourselves to a young Troglodyte in one of these, and are given a guide, and so set out on the last part of the journey to the ultimate point, across the land of shell craters and barbed wire litter and old and new trenches. We have all put on British steel helmets, hard but heavy and inelegant head coverings. I can write little that is printable about these aesthetic crimes. The French and German helmets are noble and beautiful things. These lumpish pans . . . They ought to be called by the name of the man who designed them. Presently we are advised to get into a communi- cation trench. It is not a very attractive communi- cation trench, and we stick to our track across the open. Three or four shells shiver overhead, but we decide they are British shells, going out. We reach a supporting trench in which men are waiting in a state of nearly insupportable boredom for the midday stew, the one event of interest in a day-long vigil. Here we are told imperatively to come right in at once, and we do. 122 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN All communication trenches are tortuous and practically endless. On an offensive front they have vertical sides of unsupported earth and occa- sional soakaways for rain covered by wooden grat- ings, and they go on and on and on. At rare inter- vals they branch, and a notice board says " To Re- gent Street/' or " To Oxford Street," or some such lie. It is all just trench. For a time you talk, but talking in single file soon palls. You cease to talk, and trudge. A great number of telephone wires come into the trench and cross and recross it. You cannot keep clear of them. Your helmet pings against them and they try to remove it. Some- times you have to stop and crawl under wires. Then you wonder what the trench is like in really wet weather. You hear a shell burst at no great distance. You pass two pages of The Strand Maga- zine. Perhaps thirty yards on you pass a cigarette end. After these sensational incidents the trench quiets down again and continues to wind endlessly — just a wiry, sandy, extremely narrow trench. A giant crack. At last you reach the front line trench. On an offensive sector it has none of the architectural in- terest of first line trenches at such places as Sois- sons or Arras. It was made a week or so ago by joining up shell craters, and if all goes well we move into the German trench along by the line of THE WAE LANDSCAPE 123 scraggy trees, at which we peep discreetly, to-mor- row night. We can peep discreetly because just at present our guns are putting shrapnel over the enemy at the rate of about three shells a minute, the puffs follow each other up and down the line, and no Germans are staring about to see us. The Germans " strafed " this trench overnight, and the men are tired and sleepy. Our guns away behind us are doing their best now to give them a rest by strafing the Germans. One or two men are in each forward sap keeping a lookout ; the rest sleep, a motionless sleep, in the earthy shelter pits that have been scooped out. One officer sits by a telephone under an earth-covered tarpauling, and a weary man is doing the toilette of a machine gun. We go on to a shallow trench in which we must stoop, and which has been badly knocked about. . . . Here we have to stop. The road to Berlin is not opened up beyond this point. My companion on this excursion is a man I have admired for years and never met before until I came out to see the war, Captain C. E. Montague, author of a book called A Hind Let Loose. He is a journalist let loose. Two-thirds of the junior British officers I met on this journey were really not " army men " at all. One has none of that feel- ing of having to deal with a highly specialised mind that made the old sort of officer such uncomfortable 124 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN company for a discursive talker. They knew of nothing but about a few of the more popular theatres and about music halls and about people's relations. They had read a certain number of novels, but had either forgotten or never observed the titles. They thought philosophy, history, art or religion " a bit too deep "■ for them. This tradi- tion survives now only on the staffs. Now one finds that the apparent subaltern is really a musi- cian, or a musical critic, or an Egyptologist, or a solicitor, or a cloth manufacturer, or a writer. At the outbreak of the war my companion dyed his hair to conceal its tell-tale silver, and having been laughed to scorn by the ordinary recruiting people, enlisted in the sportsmen's battalion. He was wounded, and then the authorities discovered that he was likely to be of more use with a commission and drew him, in spite of considerable resistance, out of the firing line. To which he always returns whenever he can get a visitor to take with him as an excuse. He now stood up, fairly high and clear, explaining casually that the Germans were no longer firing, and showed me the points of interest. I had come right up to No Man's Land at last. It was under my chin. The skyline, the last sky- line before the British could look down on Bapaume, showed a mangey wood and a ruined vil- THE WAR LANDSCAPE 125 lage, crouching under repeated gobbings of British shrapnel. " They've got a battery just there, and we're making it uncomfortable." No Man's Land itself is a weedy space broken up by shell craters, with very little barbed wire in front of us and very little in front of the Germans. " They've got snipers in most of the craters, and you see them at twilight hopping about from one to the other." We have very little wire because we don't mean to stay for very long in this trench, and the Germans have very little wire because they have not been able to get it up yet. They never will get it up now. . . . I had been led to believe that No Man's Land was littered with the unburied dead, but I saw nothing of the sort at this place. There had been no Ger- man counter attack since our men came up here. But at one point as we went along the trench there was a dull stench. " Germans, I think," said my guide, though I do not see how he could tell. He looked at his watch and remarked reluctantly, " If you start at once, you may just do it." I wanted to catch the Boulogne boat. It was then just past one in the afternoon. We met the stew as we returned along the communication trench, and it smelt very good indeed. . . . We hurried across the great spaces of rusty desolation 126 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN upon which every now and again a German shell was bursting. . . . That night I was in my flat in London. I had finished reading the accumulated letters of some weeks, and I was just going comfortably to bed. IV NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES § 1 Such are the landscapes and method of modern war. It is more different in its nature from war as it was waged in the nineteenth century than that was from the nature of the phalanx or the legion. The nucleus fact — when I talked to General Joffre he was very insistent upon this point — is still as ever the ordinary fighting man, but all the acces- sories and conditions of his personal encounter with the fighting man of the other side have been revolu- tionised in a quarter of a century. The fighting together in a close disciplined order, shoulder to shoulder, which has held good for thousands of years as the best and most successful fighting, has been destroyed; the idea of breaking infantry formation as the chief offensive operation has dis- appeared, the cavalry charge and the cavalry pur- suit are as obsolete as the cross-bow. The modern fighting man is as individualised as a half back or a centre forward in a football team. Personal fight- ing has become " scrapping " again, an individual 127 128 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN adventure with knife, club, bomb, revolver or bay- onet. In this war we are working out things in- stead of thinking them out, and these enormous changes are still but imperfectly apprehended. The trained and specialised military man probably ap- prehends them as feebly as any one. This is a thing that I want to state as emphati- cally as possible. It is the quintessence of the les- son I have learnt at the front. The whole method of war has been so altered in the past five and twenty years as to make it a new and different proc- ess altogether. Much the larger part of this altera- tion has only become effective in the last two years. Every one is a beginner at this new game ; every one is experimenting and learning. The former train- ing of the soldier, the established traditions of mili- tary ways, the mental habits of what we call in Eng- land " army people " no more fit them specially for this new game than any other sort of training. In so far as that former training suppressed thought; in so far as the army tradition has given army peo- ple a disposition to assume that they are specially qualified for any sort of war, so far is their profes- sionalism a positive disadvantage. The business organiser, the civil engineer, the energetic man of general intelligence is just as likely to make a suc- cessful commander at this new warfare as a man of the old army class. This is not, I think, realised NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 129 as yet by the British as clearly as it is by the French. But it has been said admirably by Punch. That excellent picture of the old-fashioned sergeant who complains to his officer of the new recruit: " 'E's all right in the trenches, Sir ; 'e's all right at a scrap; but 'e won't never make a soldier/' is the quintessence of everything I am saying here. And was there not the very gravest doubts about General Smuts in British military circles because he had " had no military training "? The professional officer of the old dispensation was a man specialised in relation to some one of the established " arms." He was an infantry-man, a cavalry man, a gunner or an engineer. It will be interesting to trace the changes that have happened to all these arms. Before this war began speculative writers had argued that infantry drill in close formation had now no fighting value whatever, that it was no doubt extremely necessary for the handling, packing, for- warding and distribution of men, but that the ideal infantry fighter was now a highly individualised and self-reliant man put into a pit with a machine gun, and supported by a string of other men bring- ing him up supplies and ready to assist him in any forward rush that might be necessary. The opening phases of the war seemed to contra- dict this. It did not at first suit the German game 130 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN to fight on this most modern theory, and isolated in- dividual action is uncongenial to the ordinary Ger- man temperament and opposed to the organised social tendencies of German life. To this day the Germans attack chiefly in close order ; they are un- able to produce a real modern infantry for aggres- sive purposes, and it is a matter of astonishment to military minds on the English side that our hastily trained new armies should turn out to be just as good at the new fighting as the most " sea- soned troops." But there is no reason whatever why they should not be. " Leading/' in the sense of going ahead of the men and making them move about mechanically at the word of command, has ceased. On the British side our magnificent new subalterns and our equally magnificent new non- commissioned officers play the part of captains of football teams; they talk their men individually into an understanding of the job before them; they criticise style and performance. On the French side things have gone even farther. Every man in certain attacks has been given a large scale map of the ground over which he has to go, and has had his own individual job clearly marked and explained to him. All the Allied infantrymen tend to be- come specialised, as bombers, as machine gun men, and so on. The unspecialised common soldier, the infantry man who has stood and marched and NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 131 moved in ranks and ranks, the " serried lines of men," who are the main substance of every battle story for the last three thousand years, are as obso- lete as the dodo. The rifle and bayonet very prob- ably are becoming obsolete too. Knives and clubs and revolvers serve better in the trenches. The krees and the Roman sword would be as useful. The fine flourish of the bayonet is only possible in the rare infrequent open. Even then the Zulu assegai would serve as well. The two operations of the infantry attack now are the rush and the "scrap." These come after the artillery preparation. Against the rush, the machine gun is pitted. The machine gun becomes lighter and more and more controllable by one man; as it does so the days of the rifle draw to a close. Against the machine gun we are now direct- ing the " Tank," which goes ahead and puts out the machine gun as soon as it begins to sting the in- fantry rush. We are also using the swooping aero- plane with a machine gun. Both these devices are of British origin, and they promise very well. After the rush and the scrap comes the organisa- tion of the captured trench. " Digging in " com- pletes the cycle of modern infantry fighting. You may consider this the first or the last phase of an infantry operation. It is probably at present the least worked-out part of the entire cycle. Here 132 ITALY, FEANCE AND BBITAIN lies the sole German superiority; they bunch and crowd in the rush, they are inferior at the scrap, but they do dig like moles. The weakness of the British is their failure to settle down. They like the rush and the scrap; they press on too far, they get out- flanked and lost " in the blue " ; they are not nat- urally clever at the excavating part of the work, and they are not as yet well -trained in making dug- outs and shelter-pits rapidly and intelligently. They display most of the faults that were supposed to be most distinctively French before this war came to revolutionise all our conceptions of French character. § 2 Now the operations of this modern infantry, which unlike any preceding infantry in the history of war does not fight in disciplined formations but as highly individualised specialists, are determined almost completely by the artillery preparation. Artillery is now the most essential instrument of war. You may still get along with rather bad in- fantry ; you may still hold out even after the loss of the aerial ascendency, but so soon as your guns fail you approach defeat. The backbone process of the whole art of war is the manufacture in overwhelm- ing quantities, the carriage and delivery of shell upon the vulnerable points of the enemy's positions. NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 133 That is, so to speak, the essential blow. Even the infantry man is now hardly more than the residuary legatee after the guns have taken their toll. I have now followed nearly every phase in the life history of a shell from the moment when it is a segment of steel bar just cut off, to the moment when it is no more than a few dispersed and rusting rags and fragments of steel — pressed upon the stray visitor to the battlefield as souvenirs. All good factories are intensely interesting places to Visit, but a good munition factory is romantically satisfactory. It is as nearly free from the antag- onism of employer and employed as any factory can be. The busy sheds I visited near Paris struck me as being the most living and active things in the entire war machine. Everywhere else I saw fitful activity, or men waiting. I have seen more men sitting about and standing about, more bored in- activity, during my tour than I have ever seen be- fore in my life. Even the front line trenches seem to slumber ; the Angel of Death drowses over them, and moves in his sleep to crush out men's lives. The gunfire has an indolent intermittance. But the munition factories grind on night and day, grind- ing against the factories in Central Europe, grind- ing out the slow and costly and necessary victory that may end aggressive warfare in the world for ever. 134 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN It would be very interesting if one could arrange a meeting between any typical Allied munition maker on the one hand, and the Kaiser and Hinden- burg, those two dominant effigies in the German na- tionalists' dream of " world might." Or failing that, Mr. Dyson might draw the encounter. You imagine these two heroic figures got up for the in- terview, very magnificent in shining helms and flowing cloaks, decorations, splendid swords, spurs. " Here," one would say, " is the power that has held you. You were bolstered up very loyally by the Krupp firm and so forth, you piled up shell, guns, war material, you hoped to snatch your vic- tory before the industrialism and invention of the world could turn upon you. Rut you failed. You were not rapid enough. The battle of the Marne was your misfortune. And Ypres. You lost some chances at Ypres. Two can play at destructive in- dustrialism, and now we out-gun you. We are pil- ing up munitions now faster than jou. The essen- tials of this Game of the War Lord are idiotically simple, but it was not of our choosing. It is now merely a question of months before you make your inevitable admission. This gentleman in the bowler hat is the victor, Sire; not you. Assisted, Sire, by these disrespectful-looking factory girls in overalls." For example, there is M. Citroen. Before the NEW AEMS FOR OLD ONES 135 war I understand he made automobiles; after the war he wants to turn to and make automobiles again. For the duration of the war he makes shell. He has been temporarily diverted from constructive to destructive industrialism. He did me the hon- ours of his factory. He is a compact, active man in dark clothes and a bowler hat, with a pencil and notebook conveniently at hand. He talked to me in carefully easy French, and watched my face with an intelligent eye through his pince-nez for the signs of comprehension. Then he went on to the next point. He took me through every stage of his process. In his office he showed me the general story. Here were photographs of certain vacant fields and old sheds — "this place" — he indicated the altered prospect from the window — " at the outbreak of the war." He showed me a plan of the first under- taking. " Now we have rather over nine thousand work-people." He showed me a little row of specimens. " These we make for Italy. These go to Russia. These are the Rumanian pattern." Thence to the first stage, the chopping up of the iron bars, the furnace, the punching out of the first shape of the shell; all this is men's work. I had seen this sort of thing before in peace ironworks, but I saw it again with the same astonishment, the 136 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN absolute precision of movement on the part of the half -naked sweating men, the calculated efficiency of each worker, the apparent heedlessness, the real certitude, with which the blazing hot cylinder is put here, dropped there, rolls to its next appointed spot, is chopped up and handed on, the swift passage to the cooling crude, pinkish-purple shell shape. Down a long line one sees in perspective a practical Symmetry, of furnace and machine group and the shells marching on from this first series of phases to undergo the long succession of operations, machine after machine, across the great width of the shed in which eighty per cent, of the workers are women. There is a thick dust of sounds in the air, a rumble of shafting, sudden thuddings, clankings, and M. Citroen has to raise his voice. He points out where he has made little changes in procedure, cut out some wasteful movement. . . . He has an idea and makes a note in the ever-ready notebook. There is beauty about all these women, there is extraordinary grace in their finely adjusted move- ments. I have come from an after-lunch coffee upon the boulevards and from watching the ugly fashion of our time ; it is a relief to be reminded that most women can after all be beautiful — if only they would not " dress." These women wear simple overalls and caps. In the cap is a rosette. Each shed has its own colour of rosette. NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 137 u There is much esprit de corps here," says M. Citroen. " And also," he adds, showing obverse as well as reverse of the world's problem of employment and discipline, " we can see at once if a woman is not in her proper shed." Across the great sheds under the shafting — how fine it must look at night ! — the shells march, are shaped, cut, fitted with copper bands, calibrated, polished, varnished. . . . Then we go on to another system of machines in which lead is reduced to plastic ribbons and cut into shrapnel bullets as the sweetstuff makers pull out and cut up sweetstuff. And thence into a war- ren of hot underground passages in which run the power cables. There is not a cable in the place that is not immediately accessible to the electri- cians. We visit the dynamos and a vast organisa- tion of switchboards. . . . These things are more familiar to M. Citroen than they are to me. He wants me to understand, but he does not realise that I would like a little leisure to wonder. What is interesting him just now, because it is the newest thing, is his method of paying his workers. He lifts a hand very gravely : " I said, what we must do is to abolish altogether the counting of change." At a certain hour, he explained, came paytime. 138 ITALY, FKANCE AND BKITAIN The people had done; it was to his interest and theirs that they should get out of the works as quickly as possible and rest and amuse themselves. He watched them standing in queues at the wickets while inside some one counted; so many francs, so many centimes. It bored him to see this useless, tiresome waiting. It is abolished. Now at the end of each week the worker goes to a window under the initial of his name, and is handed a card on which these items have been entered : Balance from last week. So many hours at so much. Premiums. The total is so many francs, so many centimes. This is divided into the nearest round number, 100, 120, 80 francs as the case may be, and a balance of the odd francs and centimes. The latter is car- ried forward to the next week's account. At the bottom of the card is a tear-off coupon with a stamp, coloured to indicate the round sum, green, let us say, for 100, blue for 130 francs. This is taken to a wicket marked 100 or 130 as the case may be, and there stands a cashier with his money in piles of 100 or 130 francs counted ready to hand ; he swc p.-? in the coupon, sweeps out the cash. "Newt!" I became interested in the worker's side of this organisation. I insist on seeing the entrances, the NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 139 clothes-changing places, the lavatories, and so forth of the organisation. As we go about we pass a string of electric trolleys steered by important- looking girls, and loaded with shell, finished as far as these works are concerned and on their way to the railway siding. We visit the hospital, for these works demand a medical staff. It is not only that men and women faint or fall ill, but there are acci- dents, burns, crushings, and the like. The war casualties begin already here, and they fall chiefly among the women. I saw a wounded woman with a bandaged face sitting very quietly in the corner. The women here face danger, perhaps not quite such obvious danger as the women who, at the next stage in the shell's career, make and pack the ex- plosives in their silk casing, but quite considerable risk. And they work with a real enthusiasm. They know they are fighting the Boches as well as any men. Certain of them wear Russian decora- tions. The women of this particular factory have been thanked by the Tsar, and a number of decora- tions were sent by him for distribution among them. § 3 The shell factory and the explosives sfeel stand level with the drill yard as the real fimt in one of the two essential punches in modern war. 140 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN When one meets the shell again it is being unloaded from the railway truck into an ammunition dump. And here the work of control is much more the work of a good traffic manager than of the old-fashioned soldier. The dump I best remember I visited on a wet and rainy day. Over a great space of ground the sid- ings of the rail-head spread, the normal gauge rail- head spread out like a fan and interdigitated with the narrow gauge lines that go up practically to the guns. And also at the sides camions were loading, and an officer from the Midi in charge of one of these was being dramatically indignant at ftye min- utes' delay. Between these two sets of lines, shells were piled of all sizes, I should think some hundreds of thousands of shells altogether, wet and shining in the rain. French reservists, soldiers from Mada- gascar, and some Senegalese were busy at different points loading and unloading the precious freights. A little way away from me were despondent-look- ing German prisoners handling timber. All this dump was no more than an eddy as it were in the path of the shell from its birth from the steel bars near Paris to the accomplishment of its destiny in the destruction or capture of more Germans. And next the visitor meets the shell coming up upon a little trolley to the gun. He sees the gun- ners, as drilled and precise as the men he saw at the NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 141 forges, swing out the breech block and run the shell, which has met and combined with its detonators and various other industrial products since it left the main dump, into the gun. The breech closes like a safe door, and hides the shell from the visitor. It is "good-bye." He receives exaggerated warn- ings of the danger to his ears, stuffs his fingers into them and opens his mouth as instructed, hears a loud but by no means deafening report, and sees a spit of flame near the breech. Regulations of a severe character prevent his watching from an aero- plane the delivery of the goods upon the customers opposite. I have already described the method of locating enemy guns and so forth by photography. Many of the men at this work are like dentists rather than soldiers ; they are busy in carefully lit rooms, they wear white overalls, they have clean hands and laboratory manners. The only really romantic figure in the whole of this process, the only figure that has anything of the old soldierly swagger about him still, is the aviator. And, as one friend remarked to me when I visited the work of the Brit- ish flying corps, " The real essential strength of this arm is the organisation of its repairs. Here is one of the repair vans through which our machine guns go. It is a motor workshop on wheels. But at any time all this park, everything, can pack up 142 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN and move forward like Barnum and Bailey's Circus. The machine guns come through this shop in rotation; they go out again, cleaned, repaired, made new again. Since we got that working we have heard nothing of a machine gun jamming in any air fight at all." . . . The rest of the career of the shell after it has left the gun one must imagine chiefly from the incom- ing shell from the enemy. You see suddenly a fly- ing up of earth and stones and anything else that is movable in the neighbourhood of the shell-burst, the instantaneous unfolding of a dark cloud of dust and reddish smoke, which comes very quickly to a certain size and then begins slowly to fray out and blow away. Then after seeing the cloud of the burst you hear the hiss of the shell's approach, and finally you are hit by the sound of the explo- sion. This is the climax and end of the life history of any shell that is not a dud shell. Afterwards the battered fuse may serve as some journalist's paper- weight. The rest is scrap iron. Such is, so to speak, the primary process of modern warfare. I will not draw the obvious pacifist moral of the intense folly of human con- centration upon such a process. The Germans willed it. We Allies have but obeyed the German will for warfare because we could not do otherwise, we have taken up this simple game of shell de- NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 143 livery, and we are teaching them that we can play it better, in the hope that so we and the world may be freed from the German will-to-power and all its humiliating and disgusting consequences hence- forth for ever. Europe now is no more than a household engaged in holding up and if possible overpowering a monomaniac member. § 4 Now the whole of this process of the making and delivery of a shell, which is the main process of modern warfare, is one that can be far better con- ducted by a man accustomed to industrial organisa- tion or transit work than by the old type of soldier. This is a thing that cannot be too plainly stated or too often repeated. Germany nearly won this war because of her tremendously modern industrial re- sources ; but she blundered into it and she is losing it because she has too many men in military uni- form and because their tradition and interests were too powerful with her. All the state and glories of soldiering, the bright uniforms, the feathers and spurs, the flags, the march-past, the disciplined massed advance, the charge; all these are as need- less and obsolete now in war as the masks and shields of an old-time Chinese brave. Liberal- minded people talk of the coming dangers of mili- 144 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN tarism in the face of events that prove conclusively that professional militarism is already as dead as Julius Caesar. What is coming is not so much the conversion of men into soldiers as the socialisation of the economic organisation of the country with a view to both national and international necessities. We do not want to turn a chemist or a photographer into a little figure like a lead soldier, moving me- chanically at the word of command, but we do want to make his chemistry or photography swiftly avail- able if the national organisation is called upon to fight. We have discovered that the modern economic organisation is in itself a fighting machine. It is so much so that it is capable of taking on and de- feating quite easily any merely warrior people that is so rash as to pit itself against it. Within the last sixteen years methods of fighting have been elaborated that have made war an absolutely hope- less adventure for any barbaric or non-industrial- ised people. In the rush of larger events few peo- ple have realised the significance of the rapid squashing of the Senussi in western Egypt, and the collapse of De Wet's rebellion in South Africa. Both these struggles would have been long, tedious and uncertain even in A. d. 1900. This time they have been, so to speak, child's play. Occasionally into the writer's study there come NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 145 to hand drifting fragments of the American litera- ture upon the question of " preparedness/' and American papers discussing the Mexican situation. In none of these is there evident any very clear realisation of the fundamental revolution that has occurred in military methods during the last two years. It looks as if a Mexican war, for example, was thought of as an affair of rather imperfectly trained young men with rifles and horses and old- fashioned things like that. A Mexican war on that level might be as tedious as the South African war. But if the United States preferred to go into Mexi- can affairs with what I may perhaps call a 1916 autumn outfit instead of the small 1900 outfit she seems to possess at present, there is no reason why America should not clear up any and every Mexican guerilla force she wanted to in a few weeks. To do that she would need a plant of a few hun- dred aeroplanes, for the most part armed with ma- chine guns, and the motor repair vans and so forth needed to go with the aeroplanes, she w T ould need a comparatively small army of infantry armed with machine guns, with motor transport, and a few small land ironclads with three-inch guns, Of course all the ground automobiles would be pro- vided with the caterpillar wheels that have been w T orked out by the British experiments in the pres- ent war, and which enable them to negotiate nearly 146 ITALY; FRANCE AND BRITAIN every sort of ground. Such a force could locate, overtake, destroy and disperse any possible force that a country in the present industrial condition of Mexico could put into the field. No sort of en- trenchment or fortification possible in Mexico could stand against it. It could go from one end of the country to the other without serious loss, and hunt down and capture any one it wished. . . . The practical political consequence of the pres- ent development of warfare, of the complete revolu- tion in the conditions of warfare since this century began, is to make war absolutely hopeless for any peoples not able either to manufacture or procure the very complicated appliances and munitions now needed for its prosecution. Countries like Mexico, Bulgaria, Serbia, Afghanistan or Abyssinia are no more capable of going to war without the conniv- ance and help of manufacturing states than horses are capable of flying. And this makes possible such a complete control of war by the few great states which are in the necessary state of industrial de- velopment as not the most Utopian of us have hitherto dared to imagine. § 5 Infantrymen with automobile transport, plenti- ful machine guns, Tanks and such-like accessories; NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 147 that is the first Arm in modern war. The factory hand and all the material of the shell route from the factory to the gun constitute the second Arm. Thirdly comes the artillery, the guns and the photo- graphic aeroplanes working with the guns. Next I suppose we must count Sappers and Miners as a fourth Arm of greatly increased importance. The fifth and last combatant Arm is the modern sub- stitute for cavalry; and that also is essentially a force of aeroplanes supported by automobiles. Several of the French leaders with whom I talked seemed to be convinced that the horse is absolutely done with in modern warfare. There is nothing, they declared, that cavalry ever did that cannot now be done better by aeroplane. This is something to break the hearts of the Prus- sian junkers and of old-fashioned British army people. The hunt across the English countryside, the preservation of the fox as a sacred animal, the race meeting, the stimulation of betting in all classes of the public; all these things depend ulti- mately upon the proposition that the "breed of horses " is of vital importance to the military strength of Great Britain. But if the arguments of these able French soldiers are sound, the cult of the horse ceases to be of any more value to England than the elegant activities of the Toxophilite So- ciety. Moreover, there has been a colossal buying 148 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN of horses for the British army, a tremendous or- ganisation for the purchase and supply of fodder, then employment of tens of thousands of men as grooms, minders and the like, who would otherwise have been in the munition factories or the trenches. On the hypothesis of my French friends this has been a mere waste of men and money. Behind the British front I motored for miles, passing just one single swollen stream of cavalry. This is, these theorists allege, not only a useless but a dangerous force. It may very easily get into disastrous trou- ble. They ask to what possible use can cavalry be put? Can it be used in attack? Not against trenches; that is better done by infantrymen following up gunfire. Can it be used against broken infantry in the open? Not if the enemy has one or two machine guns covering their retreat. Against ex- posed infantry the swooping aeroplane with a ma- chine gun is far more deadly and more difficult to hit. Behind it your infantry can follow to receive surrenders; in most circumstances they can come up on cycles if it is a case of getting up quickly across a wide space. Similarly for pursuit the use of wire and use of the machine gun has abolished the possibility of a pouring cavalry charge. The swooping aeroplane does everything that cavalry can do in the way of disorganising the enemy, and NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 149 far more than it can do in the way of silencing ma- chine guns. It can capture guns in retreat much more easily by bombing traction engines and com- ing down low and shooting horses and men. An ideal modern pursuit would be an advance of guns, automobiles full of infantry, motor cyclists and cyclists, behind a high screen of observation aero- planes and a low screen of bombing and fighting aeroplanes. Cavalry might advance across fields and so forth, but only as a very accessory part of the general advance. . . . And what else is there for the cavalry to do? It may be argued that horses can go over country that is impossible for automobiles. That is to ig- nore altogether what has been done in this war by such devices as caterpillar wheels. So far from cavalry being able to negotiate country where ma- chines would stick and fail, mechanism can now ride over places where any horse would flounder. I submit these considerations to the horse-lover. They are not my original observations; they have been put to me and they have convinced me. Ex- cept perhaps as a parent of transport mules I see no further part henceforth for the horse to play in war. 150 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN § 6 The form and texture of the coming warfare — if there is still warfare to come — are not yet to be seen in their completeness upon the modern battle- field. One swallow does not make a summer, nor a handful of aeroplanes, a " Tank " or so, a few acres of shell craters, and a village here and there, pounded out of recognition, do more than fore- shadow the spectacle of modernised war on land. War by these developments has become the mo- nopoly of the five ^reat industrial powers; it is their alternative to end or evolve it, and if they con- tinue to disagree, then it must needs become a spec- tacle of majestic horror such as no man can yet conceive. It has been wise of Mr. Pennell there- fore, who has recently been drawing his impres- sions of the war upon stone, to make his pictures not upon the battlefield, but among the huge indus- trial apparatus that is thrusting behind and thrust- ing up through the war of the gentlemen in spurs. He gives us the splendours and immensities of forge and gun pit, furnace and mine shaft. He shows you how great they are and how terrible. Among them go the little figures of men, robbed of all dominance, robbed of all individual quality. He leaves it for you to draw the obvious conclusion that presently if we cannot contrive to put an end NEW ARMS FOR OLD ONES 151 to war, blacknesses like these, enormities and flares and towering threats, will follow in the track of the Tanks and come trampling over the bickering con- fusion of mankind. There is something very striking in these insig- nificant and incidental men that Mr. Pennell shows us. Nowhere does a man dominate in all these wonderful pictures. You may argue perhaps that that is untrue to the essential realities; all this array of machine and workshop, all this marshalled power and purpose, has been the creation of in- ventor and business organiser. But are we not a little too free with that word "creation"? Fal- staff was a "creation" perhaps or the Sistine sibyls ; there we have indubitably an end conceived and sought and achieved; but did these inventors and business organisers do more than heed certain unavoidable imperatives? Seeking coal they were obliged to mine in a certain way ; seeking steel they had to do this and this and not that and that; seeking profit they had to obey the imperative of economy. So little did they plan their ends that most of these manufacturers speak with a kind of astonishment of the deadly use to which their works are put. They find themselves making the new war as a man might wake out of some drugged condition to find himself strangling his mother. So that Mr. PennelPs sketchy and transient hu- 152 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN man figures seem altogether right to me. He sees these forges, workshops, cranes and the like, as inhuman and as wonderful as cliffs or great caves or icebergs or the stars. They are a new aspect of the logic of physical necessity that made all these older things, and he seizes upon the majesty and beauty of their dimensions with an entire impar- tiality. And they are as impartial. Through all these lithographs runs one present motif, the motif of the supreme effort of western civilisation to save itself and the world from the dominance of the re- actionary German Imperialism that has seized the weapons and resources of modern science. The pictures are arranged to shape out the life of a shell, from the mine to the great gun; nothing re- mains of their history to show except the ammuni- tion dump, the gun in action and the shell-burst. Upon this theme all these great appearances are strung to-day. But to-morrow they may be strung upon some other and nobler purpose. These gigan- tic beings of which the engineer is the master and slave, are neither benevolent nor malignant. To- day they produce destruction, they are the slaves of the spur; to-morrow we hope they will bridge and carry and house and help again. For that peace we struggle against the dull in- flexibility of the German Will-to-Power. TANKS It is the British who have produced the " land iron- clad " since I returned from France, and used it apparently with very good effect. I felt no little chagrin at not seeing them there, because I have a peculiar interest in these contrivances. It would be more than human not to claim a little in this matter. I described one in a story in The Strand Magazine in 1903, and my story could stand in parallel columns beside the first account of these monsters in action given by Mr. Beach Thomas or Mr. Philip Gibbs. My friend M. Joseph Beinach has successfully passed off long extracts from my story as descriptions of the Tanks upon British officers who had just seen them. The filiation was indeed quite traceable. They were my grandchil- dren — I felt a little like King Lear when first I read about them. Yet let me state at once that I was certainly not their prime originator. I took up an idea, manipulated it slightly, and handed it on. The idea was suggested to me by the con- 153 154 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN trivances of a certain Mr. Diplock, whose " ped- rail " notion, the notion of a wheel that was some- thing more than a wheel, a wheel that would take locomotives up hill-sides and over ploughed fields, was public property nearly twenty years ago. Pos- sibly there were others before Diplock. To the Ped-rail also Commander Murray Sueter, one of the many experimentalists upon the early tanks, admits his indebtedness, and it would seem that Mr. Diplock was actually concerned in the earlier stage of the tanks. Since my return I have been able to see the Tank at home, through the courtesy of the Ministry of Munitions. They have progressed far beyond any recognisable resemblance to the initiatives of Mr. Diplock; they have approximated rather to the American caterpillar. As I suspected when first I heard of these devices, the War Office and the old army people had practically nothing to do with their development. They took to them very re- luctantly — as they have taken to every novelty in this war. One brilliant general scrawled over an early proposal the entirely characteristic comment that it was a pity the inventor could not use his imagination to better purpose. ( That foolish Brit- ish trick of sneering at " imagination " has cost us hundreds of thousands of useless casualties, and may yet lose us the war.) The Tanks were first TANKS 155 mooted at the front about a year and a half ago; Mr. Winston Churchill was then asking questions about their practicability; he filled many simple souls with terror; they thought him a most dan- gerous lunatic. The actual making of the Tanks arose as an irregular side development of the armoured-car branch of the Eoyal Naval Air Serv- ice work. The names most closely associated with the work are (I quote a reply of Dr. Macnamara's in the House of Commons) Mr. d'Eyncourt, the Di- rector of Naval Construction, Mr. W. O. Tritton, Lieut. Wilson, R.N.A.S., Mr. Bussell, Lieut. Stern, E.N.A.S., who is now Colonel Stern, Captain Symes, and Mr. F. Skeens. There are many other claims too numerous to mention in detail. But however much the Tanks may disconcert the gallant Colonel Newcomes who throw an air of re- straint over our victorious front, there can be no doubt that they are an important as well as a novel development of the modern offensive. Of course neither the Tanks nor their very obvious next de- velopments are going to wrest the decisive pre- eminence from the aeroplane. The aeroplane re- mains now more than ever the instrument of victory upon the western front. Aerial ascendency, prop- erly utilised, is victory. But the mobile armoured big gun and the Tank as a machine-gun silencer must enormously facilitate an advance against the 156 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN blinded enemy. Neither of them can advance against properly aimed big gun fire. That has to be disposed of before they make their entrance. It remains the function of the aeroplane to locate the hostile big guns and to direct the tir-de-demolition upon them before the advance begins — possibly even to bomb them out. But hitherto, after the de- struction or driving back of the defender's big guns has been effected, the dug-out and machine gun have still inflicted heavy losses upon the advancing infantry until the fight is won. So soon as the big guns are out, the tanks will advance, destroying machine guns, completing the destruction of the wire, and holding prisoners immobile. Then the infantry will follow to gather in the sheaves. Mul- titudinously produced and — I write it with a de- fiant eye on Colonel Newcome — properly handled, these land ironclads are going to do very great things in shortening the war, in pursuit, in break- ing up the retreating enemy. Given the air as- cendency, and I am utterly unable to imagine any way of conclusively stopping or even greatly de- laying an offensive thus equipped. § 2 The young of even the most horrible beasts have something piquant and engaging about them, and TANKS 157 so I suppose it is in the way of things that the land ironclad which opens a new and more dreadful and destructive phase in the human folly of warfare, should appear first as if it were a joke. Never has any such thing so completely masked its wickedness under an appearance of genial silliness. The Tank is a creature to which one naturally flings a pet name ; the five or six I w T as shown wandering, root- ing and climbing over obstacles, round a large field near X, were as amusing and disarming as a litter of lively young pigs. At first the War Office prevented the publication of any pictures or descriptions of these contriv- ances except abroad; then abruptly the embargo was relaxed and the press was flooded with photo- graphs. The reader will be familiar now with their appearance. They are like large slugs with an un- derside a little like the flattened rockers of a rock- ing-horse, slugs between 20 and 40 feet long. They are like flat-sided slugs, slugs of spirit, who raise an enquiring snout, like the snout of a dogfish, into the air. They crawl upon their bellies in a way that would be tedious to describe to the general reader and unnecessary to describe to the enquiring specialist. They go over the ground with the slid- ing speed of active snails. Behind them trail two wheels, supporting a flimsy tail, wheels that strike one as incongruous as if a monster began kangaroo 158 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN and ended doll's perambulator. (These wheels an- noy me.) They are not steely monsters; they are painted the drab and unassuming colours that are fashionable in modern warfare, so that the armour seems rather like the integument of a rhinoceros. At the sides of the head project armoured cheeks, and from above these stick out guns that look like stalked eyes. That is the general appearance of the contemporary tank. It slides on the ground; the silly little wheels that so detract from the genial bestiality of its ap- pearance dandle and bump behind it. It swings round about its axis. It comes to an obstacle, a low wall let us say, or a heap of bricks, and sets to work to climb with its snout. It rears over the obstacle, it raises its straining belly, it overhangs more and more, and at .last topples forward; it sways upon the heap and then goes plunging down- wards, sticking out the weak counterpoise of its wheeled tail. If it comes to a house or a tree or a wall or such-like obstruction it rams against it so as to bring all its weight to bear upon it — it weighs some tons — and then climbs over the debris. I saw it, and incredulous soldiers of ex- perience watched it at the same time, cross trenches and wallow amazingly through muddy exaggera- tions of shell holes. Then I repeated the tour in- side. TANKS 159 Again the Tank is like the slug. The slug, as every biological student knows, is unexpectedly complicated inside. The Tank is as crowded with inward parts as a battleship. It is filled with en- gines, guns and ammunition, and in the interstices men. " You will smash your hat," said Colonel Stern. " No ; keep it on, or else you will smash your head." Only Mr. C. R. W. Nevinson could do justice to the interior of a Tank. You see a hand gripping something; you see the eyes and forehead of an engineer's face ; you perceive that an overall bluish- ness beyond the engine is the back of another man. " Don't hold that," says some one. " It is too hot. Hold on to that." The engines roar, so loudly that I doubt whether one could hear guns without; the floor begins to slope and slopes until one seems to be at forty-five degrees or thereabouts ; then the whole concern swings up and sways and slants the other way. You have crossed a bank. You heel side- ways. Through the door which has been left open you see the little group of engineers, staff officers and naval men receding and falling away behind you. You straighten up and go up hill. You halt and begin to rotate. Through the open door, the green field with its red walls, rows of worksheds and forests of chimneys in the background, begins a steady processional movement. The group of 160 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN engineers and officers and naval men appears at the other side of the door and further off. Then comes a sprint down hill. You descend and stretch your legs. About the field other Tanks are doing their stunts. One is struggling in an apoplectic way in the mud pit with a cheek half buried. It noses its way out and on with an air of animal relief. They are like jokes by Heath Robinson. One forgets that these things have already saved the lives of many hundreds of our soldiers and smashed and defeated thousands of Germans. Said one soldier to me : " In the old attacks you used to see the British dead lying outside the ma- chine gun emplacements like birds outside a butt with a good shot inside. Now, these things walk through." I saw other things that day at X. The Tank is only a beginning in a new phase of warfare. Of these other things I may only write in the most general terms. But though Tanks and their collaterals are being made upon a very considerable scale in X, already I realised as I walked through gigantic forges as high and marvellous as cathedrals, and from work- shed to workshed where gun carriages, ammuni- TANKS 161 tion carts and a hundred such things were flowing into existence with the swelling abundance of a river that flows out of a gorge, that as the demand for the new developments grows clear and strong, the resources of Britain are capable still of a tre- mendous response. If only we do not rob these great factories and works of their men. Upon this question certain things need to be said very plainly. The decisive factor in the sort of war we are now waging is the production and right use of mechanical material ; victory in this war de- pends now upon three things, the aeroplane, the gun, and the Tank developments. These — and not crowds of men — are the prime necessity for a successful offensive. Every man we draw from munition making to the ranks brings our western condition nearer to the military condition of Eus- sia. In these things we may be easily misled by military "experts.'' We have to remember that the military " expert " is a man who learnt his business before 1914, and that the business of war has been absolutely revolutionised since 1914; the military expert is a man trained to think of war as essentially an affair of cavalry, infantry in forma- tion, and field guns, whereas cavalry is entirely obsolete, infantry no longer fights in formation, and the methods of gunnery have been entirely changed. The military man I observe still runs 162 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN about the world in spurs, lie travels in trains in spurs, he walks in spurs, he thinks in terms of spurs. He has still to discover that it is about as ridiculous for a soldier to go about in spurs to-day as if he were to carry a crossbow. I take it these spurs are only the outward and visible sign of an inward obsolescence. The disposition of the mili- tary " expert " is still to think too little of machin- ery and to demand too much of the men. He makes irrational demands for men and for the wrong sort of men. Behind our front at the time of my visit there were, for example, many thousands of cav- alry, men tending horses, men engaged in trans- porting bulky fodder for horses and the like. These men were doing about as much in this war as if they had been at Timbuctoo. Every man who is taken from munition making at X to spur-wor- shipping in khaki, is a dead loss to the military efficiency of the country. Every man that is needed or is likely to be needed for the actual operations of modern warfare can be got by combing out the cavalry, the brewing and distilling industries, the theatres and music halls, and the like unproductive occupations. The understating of munition works, the diminution of their efficiency by the use of aged and female labour, is the straight course to failure in this war. In X, in the forges and machine shops, I saw al* TANKS 163 ready too large a proportion of boys and grey heads. War is a thing that changes very rapidly, and we have in the Tanks only the first of a great series of offensive developments. They are bound to be im- proved, at a great pace. The method of using them will change very rapidly. Any added invention will necessitate the scrapping of old types and the production of the new patterns in quantity. It is of supreme necessity to the Allies if they are to win this war outright that the lead in inventions and enterprise which the British have won over the Germans in this matter should be retained. It is our game now to press the advantage for all it is worth. We have to keep ahead to win. We can- not do so unless we have unstinted men and un- stinted material to produce each new development as its use is realised. Given that much, the Tank will enormously en- hance the advantage of the new offensive method on the French front; the method, that is, of gun demolition after aerial photography, followed by an advance; it is a huge addition to our prospect of decisive victory. What does it do? It solves two problems. The existing Tank affords a means of advancing against machine gun fire and of de- stroying wire and machine guns without much risk of loss, so soon as the big guns have done their duty by the enemy guns. And also behind the Tank it- 164 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN self, it is useless to conceal, lies the possibility of bringing up big guns and big gun ammunition, across nearly any sort of country, as fast as the advance can press forward. Hitherto every ad- vance has paid a heavy toll to the machine gun, and every advance has had to halt after a couple of miles or so while the big guns (taking five or six days for the job) toiled up to the new positions. § 4 It is impossible to restrain a note of sharp urgency from what one has to say about these de- velopments. The Tanks remove the last technical difficulties in our way to decisive victory and a permanent peace; they also afford a reason for straining every nerve to bring about a decision and peace soon. At the risk of seeming an imaginative alarmist I would like to point out the reasons these things disclose for hurrying this war to a decision and doing our utmost to arrange the world's affairs so as to make another war improbable. Already these serio-comic Tanks, weighing something over twenty tons or so, have gone slithering and sliding over dead and wounded men. That is not an inci- dent for sensitive minds to dwell upon, but it is a mere little child's play anticipation of what the TANKS 165 big land ironclads that are hound to come if there is no world pacification, are going to do. What lies behind the Tank depends upon this fact; there is no definable upward limit of mass. Upon that I would lay all the stress possible, be- cause everything turns upon that. You cannot make a land ironclad so big and heavy but that you cannot make a caterpillar track wide enough and strong enough to carry it forward. Tanks are quite possible that will carry twenty -inch or twenty -five inch guns, besides minor armament. Such Tanks may be undesirable; the production may exceed the industrial resources of any empire to produce; but there is no inherent impossibility in such things. There are not even the same limi- tations as to draught and docking accommodation that set bounds to the size of battleships. It fol- lows, therefore, as a necessary deduction that if the world's affairs are so left at the end of the war that the race of armaments continues, the Tank, which at present weighs under twenty tons, will develop steadily into a tremendous instrument of warfare, driven by engines of scores of thousands of horse-power, tracking on a track scores of hun- dreds of yards wide and weighing hundreds or thousands of tons. Nothing but a world agreement not to do so can prevent this logical development 166 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN of the land ironclad. Such a structure will make wheel-ruts scores of feet deep; it will plough up, devastate and destroy the country it passes over altogether. For my own part I never imagined the land iron- clad idea would get loose into war. I thought that the military intelligence was essentially unimag- inative, and that such an aggressive military power as Germany, dominated by military people, would never produce anything of the sort. I thought that this war would be fought out without Tanks and that then war would come to an end. For of course it is mere stupidity that makes people doubt the ultimate ending of war. I have been so far justified in these expectations of mine, that it is not from military sources that these things have come. They have been thrust upon the soldiers from without. But now that they are loose, now that they are in war, we have to face their full pos- sibilities, to use our advantage in them and press on to the end of the war. In support of a photo- aero directed artillery, even our present Tanks can be used to complete an invincible offensive. We shall not so much push as ram. It is doubtful if the Germans can get anything of the sort into action before six months are out, and by that time we should be using vastly more formidable Tanks than those we are making now. We ought to get TANKS 167 the war on to German soil before the Tanks have grown to more than three or four times their pres- ent size. Then it will not matter so much how much bigger they grow. It will be the German landscape that will suffer. After one has seen the actual Tanks it is not very difficult to close one's eyes and figure the sort of Tank that may be arguing with Germany in a few months' time about the restoration of Belgium and Serbia and France, the restoration of the sunken tonnage, the penalties of the various Zeppe- lin and submarine murders, the freedom of seas and land alike from piracy, the evacuation of Poland, including Posen, and the guarantees for the future peace of Europe. The machine will be perhaps as big as a destroyer and more heavily armed and equipped. It will swim over and through the soil at a pace of ten or twelve miles an hour. In front of it will be corn land, neat woods, orchards, pasture, gardens, villages and towns. It will advance upon its belly with a swaying motion, devouring the ground beneath it. Behind it masses of soil and rock, lumps of turf, splintered wood, bits of houses, occasional streaks of red, will drop from its track, and it will leave a wake, six or seven times as wide as a high road, from which all soil, all cultivation, all semblance to cultivated or cul- tivatable land will have disappeared. It will not 168 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN even be a track of soil. It will be a track of sub- soil laid bare. It will be a flayed strip of nature. In the course of its fighting the monster may have to turn about. It will then halt and spin slowly round, grinding out an arena of desolation with a circumference equal to its length. If it has to re- treat and advance again these streaks and holes of destruction will increase and multiply. Behind the fighting line these monsters will manoeuvre to and fro, destroying the land for all ordinary agri- cultural purposes for ages to come. The first imag- inative account of the land ironclad that was ever written concluded with the words, " They are the reductio ad ahsurdum of war." They are, and it is to the engineers, the ironmasters, the workers and the inventive talent of Great Britain and France that we must look to ensure that it is in Germany, the great teacher of war, that this demonstration of war's ultimate absurdity is completed. For forty years Frankenstein Germany invoked war, turned every development of material and so- cial science to aggressive ends, and at last when she felt the time was ripe she let loose the new monster that she had made of war to cow the spirit of man- kind. She set the thing tramping through Bel- gium. She cannot grumble if at last it comes home, stranger and more dreadful even than she made it, TANKS 169 trampling the German towns and fields with Ger- man blood upon it and its eyes towards Berlin. This logical development of the Tank idea may seem a gloomy prospect for mankind. But it is open to question whether the tremendous develop- ment of warfare that has gone on in the last two years does after all open a prospect of unmitigated gloom. There has been a good deal of cheap and despondent sneering recently at the phrase, " The war that will end war." It is still possible to maintain that that may be a correct description of this war. It has to be remembered that war, as the aeroplane and the Tank have made it, has al- ready become an impossible luxury for any barbaric uncivilised people. War on the grade that has been achieved on the Somme predicates an immense in- dustrialism behind it. Of all the States in the world only four can certainly be said to be fully capable of sustaining war at the level to which it has now been brought upon the Western Front. These are Britain, France, Germany, and the United States of America. Less certainly equal to the effort are Italy, Japan, Russia, and Austria. These eight powers are the only powers in the world capable of warfare under modern conditions. Five are already Allies and one is incurably pacific. There is no other power or people in the world that 170 ITALY, PRANCE AND BRITAIN can go to war now without the consent and con- nivance of these great powers. If we consider their alliances, we may count it that the matter rests now between two groups of Allies and one neutral power. So that while on the one hand the devel- opment of modern warfare of which the Tank is the present symbol opens a prospect of limitless senseless destruction, it opens on the other hand a prospect of organised world control. This Tank development must ultimately bring the need of a real permanent settlement within the compass of the meanest of diplomatic intelligences. A peace that will restore competitive armaments has now become a less desirable prospect for every one than a continuation of the war. Things were bad enough before when the land forces were still in a primitive phase of infantry, cavalry and artillery, and when the only real race to develop monsters and destructors was for sea power. But the race for sea power before 1914 was mere child's play to the breeding of engineering monstrosities for land warfare that must now follow any indetermi- nate peace settlement. I am no blind believer in the wisdom of mankind, but I cannot believe that men are so insensate and headstrong as to miss the plain omens of the present situation. So that after all the cheerful amusement the sight of a Tank causes may not be so very unreasonable. TANKS 171 These things may be no more than one of these penetrating flashes of wit that will sometimes light up and dispel the contentions of an angry man. If they are not that then they are the grimmest jest that ever set men grinning. Wait and see, if you do not believe me. HOW PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE WAR DO THEY REALLY THINK AT ALL? All human affairs are mental affairs; the bright ideas of to-day are the realities of to-morrow. The real history of mankind is the history of how ideas have arisen, how they have taken possession of men's minds, how they have struggled, altered, proliferated, decayed. There is nothing in this war at all but a conflict of ideas, traditions, and mental habits. The German Will, clothed in con- ceptions of aggression and fortified by cynical false- hood, struggles against the fundamental sanity of the German mind and the confused protest of man- kind. So that the most permanently important thing in the tragic process of this war is the change of opinion that is going on. What are people making of it? Is it producing any great common understandings, any fruitful unanimities? No doubt it is producing enormous quantities of cerebration, but is it anything more than chaotic 172 DO THEY REALLY THINK AT ALL? 173 and futile cerebration? We are told all sorts of things in answer to that, things often without a scrap of evidence or probability to support them. It is, we are assured, turning people to religion, making them moral and thoughtful. It is also, we are assured with equal confidence, turning them to despair and moral disaster. It will be followed by (1) a period of moral renascence, and (2) a de- bauch. It is going to make the workers (1) more and (2) less obedient and industrious. It is (1) inuring men to war and (2) filling them with a passionate resolve never to suffer war again. And so on. I propose now to ask, what is really happen- ing in this matter? How is human opinion chang- ing? I have opinions of my own and they are bound to colour my discussion. The reader must allow for that, and as far as possible I will remind him where necessary to make his allowance. Now first I would ask, is any really continuous and thorough mental process going on at all about this war? I mean, is there any considerable num- ber of people who are seeing it as a whole, taking it in as a whole, trying to get a general idea of it from which they can form directing conclusions for the future? Is there any considerable number of people even trying to do that? At any rate let me point out first that there is quite an enormous mass of people who — in spite of the fact that their 174 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN minds are concentrated on aspects of this war, who are at present hearing, talking, experiencing little else than the war — are nevertheless neither doing nor trying to do anything that deserves to be called thinking about it at all. They may even be suffer- ing quite terribly by it. But they are no more mas- tering its causes, reasons, conditions, and the possi- bility of its future prevention than a monkey that has been rescued in a scorching condition from the burning of a house will have mastered the problem of a fire. It is just happening to and about them. It may, for anything they have learnt about it, hap- pen to them again. A vast majority of people are being swamped by the spectacular side of the business. It was very largely my fear of being so swamped myself that made me reluctant to go as a spectator to the front. I knew that my chances of being hit by a bullet were infinitesimal, but I was extremely afraid of being hit by some too vivid impression. I was afraid that I might see some horribly wounded man or some decayed dead body that would so scar my memory and stamp such horror into me as to reduce me to a mere useless, gibbering, stop-the-war-at-any- price pacifist. Years ago my mind was once dark- ened very badly for some weeks with a kind of fear and distrust of life through a sudden unexpected encounter one tranquil evening with a drowned DO THEY REALLY THINK AT ALL? 175 body. But in this journey in Italy and France, although I have had glimpses of much death and seen many wounded men, I have had no really hor- rible impressions at all. That side of the business has, I think, been overwritten. The thing that haunts me most is the impression of a prevalent relapse into extreme untidiness, of a universal dis- comfort, of fields, and of ruined houses treated dis- regardfully. . . . But that is not what concerns us now in this discussion. What concerns us now is the fact that this war is producing spectacular ef- fects so tremendous and incidents so strange, so remarkable, so vivid, that the mind forgets both causes and consequences and. simply sits down to stare. For example, there is this business of the Zep- pelin raids in England. It is a supremely silly business; it is the most conclusive demonstration of the intellectual inferiority of the German to the Western European that it should ever have hap- pened. There was the clearest a priori case against the gas-bag. I remember the discussions ten or twelve years ago in which it was established to the satisfaction of every reasonable man that ultimately the "heavier than air" machine (as we called it then) must fly better than the gas-bag, and still more conclusively that no gas-bag was conceivable that could hope to fight and defeat aero- 176 ITALY, FKANCE AND BKITAIN planes. Nevertheless the German, with that dull faith of his in mere "Will," persisted along his line. He knew instinctively that he could not produce aviators to meet the Western Euro- pean; all his social instincts made him cling to the idea of a great motherly, an almost sowlike bag of wind above him= At an enormous waste of resources Germany has produced these futile mon- sters, that drift in the darkness over England pro- miscuously dropping bombs on fields and houses. They are now meeting the fate that was demon- strably certain ten years ago. If they found us unready for them it is merely that we were unable to imagine so idiotic an enterprise would ever be seriously sustained and persisted in. We did not believe in the probability of Zeppelin raids any more than we believed that Germany would force the world into war. It was a thing too silly to be believed. But they came — to their certain fate. In the month after I returned from France and Italy, no less than four of these fatuities were exploded and destroyed within thirty miles of my Essex home. . . . There in chosen phrases you have the truth about these things. But now mark the perversion of thought due to spectacular effect. I find over the Essex countryside, which has been for more than a year and a half a highway for Zeppelins, a new and curious admiration for them DO THEY REALLY THINK AT ALL? 177 that has arisen out of these very disasters. Pre- viously they were regarded with dislike and a sort of distrust, as one might regard a sneaking neigh- bour who left his footsteps in one's garden at night. But the Zeppelins of Billericay and Potter's Bar are — heroic things. ( The Cuffley one came down too quickly, and the fourth one which came down for its crew to surrender is despised.) I have heard people describe the two former with eyes shining with enthusiasm. " First/' they say, " you saw a little round red glow that spread. Then you saw the whole Zep- pelin glowing. Oh, it was beautiful! Then it began to turn over and come down, and it flamed and pieces began to break away. And then down it came, leaving flaming pieces all up the sky. At last it was a pillar of fire eight thousand feet high. . . . Every one said, ' Ooooo ! ? And then some one pointed out the little aeroplane lit up by the flare — such a leetle thing up there in the night! It is the greatest thing I have ever seen. Oh! the most wonderful — most wonderful!" There is a feeling that the Germans really must after all be a splendid people to provide such mag- nificent pyrotechnics. Some people in London the other day were pre- tending to be shocked by an American who boasted he had been in " two bully bombardments," but 178 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN he was only saying what every one feels more or less. We are at a spectacle that — as a spectacle — our grandchildren will envy. I understand now better the story of the man who stared at the sparks raining up from his own house as it burnt in the night and whispered, " Lovely! Lovely! " The spectacular side of the war is really an enor- mous distraction from thought. And against thought there also fights the native indolence of the human mind. The human mind, it seems, was originally developed to think about the individual ; it thinks reluctantly about the species. It takes refuge from that sort of thing if it possibly can. And so the second great preventive of clear think- ing is the tranquillising platitude. The human mind is an instrument very easily fatigued. Only a few exceptions go on thinking restlessly — to the extreme exasperation of their neighbours. The normal mind craves for deci- sions, even wrong or false decisions rather than none. It clutches at comforting falsehoods. It loves to be told, " There, don't you worry. That'll be all right. That's settled" This war has come as an almost overwhelming challenge to mankind. To some of us it seems as if it were the Sphynx proffering the alternative of its riddle or death. Yet the very urgency of this challenge to think seems to paralyse the critical intelligence of very DO THEY REALLY THINK AT ALL? 179 many people altogether. They will say, " This war is going to produce enormous changes in every- thing." They will then subside mentally with a feeling of having covered the whole ground in a thoroughly safe manner. Or they will adopt an air of critical aloofness. They will say, " How is it possible to foretell what may happen in this tre- mendous sea of change?" And then, with an air of superior modesty, they will go on doing — what- ever they feel inclined to do. Many others, a de- gree less simple in their methods, will take some entirely partial aspect, arrive at some guesswork decision upon that, and then behave as though that met every question we have to face. Or they will make a sort of admonitory forecast that is con- ditional upon the good behaviour of other people. " Unless the Trade Unions are more reasonable/' they will say. Or, " Unless the shipping interest is grappled with and controlled." Or, " Unless England wakes up." And with that they seem to wash their hands of further responsibility for the future. One delightful form of put-off is the sage remark, " Let us finish the war first, and then let us ask what is going to happen after it." One likes to think of the beautiful blank day after the signing of peace when these wise minds swing round to pick up their deferred problems. . . . 180 ITALY, FBANCE AND BRITAIN I submit that a man has not done his duty by himself as a rational creature unless he has formed an idea of what is going on, as one complicated process, until he has formed an idea sufficiently definite for him to make it the basis of a further idea, which is his own relationship to that process. He must have some notion of what the process is going to do to him, and some notion of what he means to do, if he can, to the process. That is to say, he must not only have an idea how the process is going, but also an idea of how he wants it to go. It seems so natural and necessary for a human brain to do this that it is hard to suppose that every one has not more or less attempted it. But few people, in Great Britain at any rate, have the habit of frank expression, and when people do not seem to have made out any of these things for themselves there is a considerable element of secretiveness and inexpressiveness to be allowed for before we decide that they have not in some sort of fashion done so. Still, after all allowances have been made, there remains a vast amount of jerry-built and ready-made borrowed stuff in most of people's phi- losophies of the war. The systems of authentic opinion in this world of thought about the war are like comparatively rare thin veins of living men- tality in a vast world of dead repetitions and echoed suggestions. And that being the case, it is quite DO THEY EEALLY THINK AT ALL? 181 possible that history after the war like history be- fore the war, will not be so much a display of human will and purpose as a resultant of human vacil- lations, obstructions and inadvertencies. We shall still be in a drama of blind forces following the line of least resistance. One of the people who is often spoken of as if he were doing an enormous amount of concentra- ted thinking is " the man in the trenches." We are told — by gentlemen writing for the most part at home — of the most extraordinary things that are going on in those devoted brains, how they are getting new views about the duties of labour, re- ligion, morality, monarchy, and any other notions that the gentleman at home happens to fancy and wishes to push. Now that is not at all the impres- sion of the khaki mentality I have reluctantly ac- cepted as correct. For the most part the man in khaki is up against a round of tedious immediate duties that forbid consecutive thought; he is usually rather crowded and not very comfortable. He is bored. The real horror of modern war when all is said and done is the boredom. To get killed or wounded may be unpleasant, but it is at any rate interesting ; the real tragedy is in the desolated fields, the desolated houses, the desolated hours and days, the bored and desolated minds that hang behind the 182 ITALY, FBANCE AND BRITAIN melee and just outside the melee. The peculiar beastliness of the German crime is the way the German war cant and its consequences have seized upon and paralysed the mental movement of Western Europe. Before 1914 war was theoreti- cally unpopular in every European country; we thought of it as something tragic and dreadful. Now every one knows by experience that it is some- thing utterly dirty and detestable. We thought it was the Nemean lion, and we have found it is the Augean stable. But being bored by war and hating war is quite unproductive unless you are thinking about its nature and causes so thoroughly that you will presently be able to take hold of it and control it and end it. It is no good for every one to say unanimously, " We will have no more war," unless you have thought out how to avoid it, and mean to bring that end about. It is as if every one said, "We will have no more catarrh/' or "no more flies " or " no more east wind." And my point is that the immense sorrows at home in every Euro- pean country and the vast boredom of the combat- ants are probably not really producing any effec- tive remedial mental action at all, and will not do so unless we get much more thoroughly to work upon the thinking-out process. In such talks as I could get with men close up to the front I found beyond this great boredom DO THEY REALLY THINK AT ALL? 183 and attempts at distraction only very specialised talk about changes in the future. Men were keen upon questions of army promotion, of the future conscription, of the future of the temporary officer, upon the education of boys in relation to army needs. But the war itself was bearing them all upon its way, as unquestioned and uncontrolled as if it were the planet on which they lived. II THE YIELDING PACIFIST AND THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOK Among the minor topics that people are talking about behind the western fronts is the psychology of the Yielding Pacifist and the Conscientious Objector. Of course, we are all pacifists nowa- days; I know of no one who does not want not only to end this war but to put an end to war altogether, except those blood-red terrors, Count Keventlow, Mr. Leo Maxse — how he does it on a vegetarian dietary I cannot imagine ! — and our wild-eyed desperadoes of The Morning Post. But most of the people I meet, and most of the people I met on my journey, are pacifists like myself who want to make peace by beating the armed man un- til he gives in and admits the error of his ways, disarming him and reorganising the world for the forcible suppression of military adventures in the future. They want belligerency put into the same category as burglary, as a matter for forcible sup- pression. The Yielding Pacifist who will accept 184 THE YIELDING PACIFIST 185 any sort of peace and the Conscientious Objector, who will not fight at all, are not of that opinion. Both Italy and France produce parallel types to those latter, but it would seem that in each case England displays the finer developments. The Latin mind is directer than the English, and its standards — shall I say? — more primitive; it gets more directly to the fact that here are men who will not fight. And it is less charitable. I was asked quite a number of times for the English equivalent of an embusque. "We don't general- ise," I said, " we treat each case on its merits ! " One interlocutor near Udine was exercised by our Italian Red Cross work. " Here," he said, " are sixty or seventy young Englishmen, all fit for military service. ... Of course they go under fire, but it is not like being junior officers in the trenches. Not one of them has been killed or wounded." He reflected. " One, I think, has been decora- ted," he said. . . . My French and Italian are only for very rough common jobs ; when it came to explaining the Con- scientious Objector sympathetically they broke down badly. I had to construct long parentheti- cal explanations of our antiquated legislative meth- ods to show how it was that the "conscientious objector" had been so badly defined. The for- 186 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN eigner does not understand the importance of vague definition in British life. " Practically, of course, we offered to exempt any one who conscien- tiously objected to fight or serve. Then the Pacif- ist and Pro-German people started a campaign to enrol objectors. Of course every shirker, every coward and slacker in the country decided at once to be a conscientious objector. Any one but a British legislator could have foreseen that. Then we started Tribunals to wrangle with the objectors about their bona fides. Then the Pacifists and the Pro-Germans issued little leaflets and started cor- respondence courses to teach people exactly how to lie to the Tribunals. Trouble about the freedom of the pamphleteer followed. I had to admit — it has been rather a sloppy business. " The peo- ple who made the law knew their own minds, but we English are not an expressive people. " These are not easy things to say in Elementary (and slightly Decayed) French or in Elementary and Corrupt Italian. "But why do people support the sham consci- entious objector and issue leaflets to help him — when there is so much big work clamouring to be done? " " That," I said, " is the Whig tradition." When they pressed me further, I said: "I am really the questioner. I am visiting your country, THE YIELDING PACIFIST 187 and you have to tell me things. It is not right that I should do all the telling. Tell me all about Eomain Holland." And also I pressed them about the official social- ists in Italy and the Socialist minority in France until I got the question out of the net of national comparisons and upon a broader footing. In sev- eral conversations we began to work out in general terms the psychology of those people who were against the war. But usually we could not get to that; my interlocutors would insist upon telling me just what they would like to do or just what they would like to see done to stop-the-war pacifists and conscientious objectors; pleasant rather than fruitful imaginative exercises from which I could effect no more than platitudinous uplifts. But the general drift of such talks as did seem to penetrate the question was this, that among these stop-the-war people there are really three types. First there is a type of person who hates violence and the infliction of pain under any circumstances, and who has a mystical belief in the rightness ( and usually in the efficacy) of non-resistance. These are generally Christians, and then their cardinal text is the instruction to " turn the other cheek." Often they are Quakers. If they are consistent they are vegetarians and wear Lederlos boots. They do not desire police protection for their goods. 188 ITALY, FKANCE AND BEITAIN They stand aloof from all the force and conflict of life. They have always done so. This is an un- derstandable and respectable type. It has numer- ous Hindu equivalents. It is a type that finds little difficulty about exemptions — provided the indi- vidual has not been too recently converted to his present habits. But it is not the prevalent type in stop-the-war circles. Such genuine ascetics do not number more than a thousand or so, in all three of our western allied countries. The mass of the stop-the-war people is made up of quite other ele- ments. § 2 In the complex structure of the modern com- munity there are two groups or strata or pockets in which the impulse of social obligation, the gre- garious sense of a common welfare, is at its lowest ; one of these is the class of the Kesentful Employe, the class of people who, without explanation, ade- quate preparation or any chance, have been shoved at an early age into uncongenial work and never given a chance to escape, and the other is the class of people with small fixed incomes or with small salaries earnt by routine work, or half independ- ent people practising some minor artistic or liter- ary craft, who have led uneventful, irresponsible lives from their youth up, and never came at any THE YIELDING PACIFIST 189 point into relations of service to the state. This latter class was more difficult to define than the former — because it is more various within itself. My French friends wanted to talk of the " Psycho- logy of the Rentier." I was for such untransla- table phrases as the " Genteel Whig," or the " Don- nish Liberal." But I lit up an Italian — he is a Milanese manufacturer — with " these Floren- tine English who would keep Italy in a glass case." a I know/' he said. Before I go on to expand this congenial theme, let me deal first with the Resentful Employe, who is a much more consid- erable, and to me a much more sympathetic figure, in European affairs. I began life myself as a Besentfui Employe. By the extremest good luck I have got my mind and spirit out of the distortions of that cramping beginning, but I can still recall even the anger of those old days. He becomes an employe between thirteen and fifteen ; he is made to do work he does not like for no other purpose that he can see except the profit and glory of a fortunate person called his employer, behind whom stand church and state, blessing and upholding the relationship. He is not allowed to feel that he has any share whatever in the employ- er's business, or that any end is served but the employer's profit. He cannot see that the employer acknowledges any duty to the state. Neither 190 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN church nor state seem to insist that the employer has any public function. At no point does the employe come into a clear relationship of mutual obligation with the state. There does not seem to be any way out for the employe from a life spent in this subordinate, toilsome relationship. He feels put upon and cheated out of life. He is without honour. If he is a person of ability or stubborn temper he struggles out of his position; if he is a kindly and generous person he blames his "luck" and does his work and lives his life as cheerfully as possible — and so live the bulk of our amazing European workers ; if he is a being of great magnanimity he is content to serve for the ultimate good of the race; if he has imagina- tion he says, " Things will not always be like this," and becomes a socialist or a guild socialist, and tries to educate the employer to a sense of recip- rocal duty ; but if he is too human for any of these things, then he begins to despise and hate the em- ployer and the system that made him. He wants to hurt them. Upon that hate it is easy to trade. A certain section of what is called the Socialist press and the Socialist literature in Europe is no doubt great-minded; it seeks to carve a better world out of the present. But much of it is social- ist only in name. Its spirit is Anarchistic. Its real burthen is not construction but grievance; it THE YIELDING PACIFIST 191 tells the bitter tale of the employe^ it feeds and organises his malice, it schemes annoyance and in- jury for the hated employer. The state and the order of the world is confounded with the capi- talist. Before the war the popular so-called soci- alist press reeked with the cant of rebellion, the cant of any sort of rebellion. " I'm a rebel," was the silly boast of the young disciple. " Spoil something, set fire to something," was held to be the proper text for any girl or lad of spirit. And this blind discontent carried on into the war. While on the one hand a great rush of men poured into the army saying, " Thank God ! we can serve our country at last instead of some beastly prof- iteer," a sourer remnant, blind to the greater is- sues of the war, clung to the reasonless proposition, " the state is only for the Capitalist. This war is got up by Capitalists. Whatever has to be done — we are rebels." Such a typical paper as the British Labour Leader, for example, may be read in vain, number after number, for any sound and sincere construc- tive proposal. It is a prolonged scream of extreme individualism, a monotonous repetition of incoher- ent discontent with authority, with direction, with union, with the European effort. It wants to do nothing. It just wants effort to stop — even at the price of German victory. If the whole fabric 192 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN of society in western Europe were to be handed over to those pseudo-socialists to-morrow, to foe ad- ministered for the common good, they would fly the task in terror. They would make excuses and refuse the undertaking. They do not want the world to go right. The very idea of the world going right does not exist in their minds. They are embodied discontent and hatred, making trou- ble, and that is all they are. They want to be " rebels " — to be admired as " rebels." That is the true psychology of the Resentful Em- ploye. He is a de-socialised man. His sense of the State has been destroyed. The Resentful Employes are the outcome of our social injustices. They are the failures of our so- cial and educational systems. We may regret their pitiful degradation, we may exonerate them from blame; none the less they are a pitiful crew. I have seen the hardship of the trenches, the gay and gallant wounded. I do a little understand what our soldiers, officers, and men alike have endured and done. And though I know I ought to allow for all that I have stated, I cannot regard these con- scientious objectors with anything but contempt. Into my house there pours a dismal literature re- hearsing the hardships of these men who set up to be martyrs for liberty ; So and So, brave hero, has been sworn at — positively sworn at by a corporal ; THE YIELDING PACIFIST 193 a nasty rough man came into the cell of So and So and dropped several h's ; So and So, refusing to un- dress and wash, has been undressed and washed, and soap was rubbed into his eyes — perhaps pur- posely ; the food and accommodation are not of the best class; the doctors in attendance seem hasty; So and So was put into a damp bed and has got a nasty cold. Then I recall a jolly vanload of wounded men I saw out there. . . . But after all, we must be just. A Church and State that permitted these people to be thrust into dreary employment in their early teens, without hope or pride, deserves such citizens as these. The marvel is that there are so few. There is a poor thousand or so of these hopeless, resentment-poi- soned creatures in Great Britain. Against five willing millions. The Allied countries, I submit, have not got nearly all the conscientious objectors they deserve. § 3 If the Kesentful Employe provides the emotional impulse of the resisting pacifist, whose horizon is bounded by his one passionate desire that the par- ticular social system that has treated him so ill should collapse and give in, and its leaders and rulers be humiliated and destroyed, the intellectual 194 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN direction of a mischievous pacificism comes from an entirely different class. The Genteel Whig, though he differs very widely in almost every other respect from the Resentful Employe, has this much in common, that he has never been drawn into the whirl of the collective life in any real and assimilative fashion, This is what is the matter with both of them. He is a lit- tle loose shy independent person. Except for eat- ing and drinking — in moderation, he has never done anything real from the day he was born. He has frequently not even faced the common challenge of matrimony. Still more frequently is he child- less, or the daring parent of one peculiar child. He has never traded nor manufactured. He has drawn his dividends or his salary with an entire uncon- sciousness of any obligations to policemen or navy for these punctual payments. Probably he has never ventured even to re-invest his little legacy. He is acutely aware of possessing an exceptionally fine intelligence, but he is entirely unconscious of a fundamental unreality. Nothing has ever occurred to him to make him ask why the mass of men were either not possessed of his security or discon- tented with it. The impulses that took his school friends out upon all sorts of odd feats and adven- tures struck him as needless. As he grew up he turned with an equal distrust from passion or am- THE YIELDING PACIFIST 195 bition. His friends went out after love, after ad- venture, after power, after knowledge, after this or that desire, and became men. But he noted merely that they became fleshly, that effort strained them, that they were sometimes angry or violent or heated. He could not but feel that theirs were vulgar experiences, and he sought some finer exer- cise for his exceptional quality. He pursued art or philosophy or literature upon their more esoteric levels and realised more and more the general vul- garity and coarseness of the world about him, and his own detachment. The vulgarity and crudity of the things nearest him impressed him most; the dreadful insincerity of the Press, the meretricious- ness of success, the loudness of the rich, the base- ness of the common people in his own land. The world overseas had by comparison a certain glamour. Except that when you said " United States " to him, he would draw in the air sharply between his teeth and beg you not to. . . . Nobody took him by the collar and shook him. If our world had considered the advice of Wil- liam James and insisted upon national service from every one, national service in the drains or the na- tionalised mines or the nationalised deep-sea fish- eries if not in the army or navy, we should not have had any such men. If it had insisted that wealth and property are no* more than a trust for the pub- 196 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN lie benefit, we should have had no genteel indis- pensables. These discords in our national unanim- ity are the direct consequence of our bad social organisation. We permit the profiteer and the usurer; they evoke the response of the Eeluctant Employe, and the inheritor of their wealth becomes the Genteel Whig. But that is by the way. It was of course natural and inevitable that the German onslaught upon Bel- gium and civilisation generally should strike these recluse minds not as a monstrous ugly wickedness to be resisted and overcome at any cost, but merely as a nerve-racking experience. Guns were going off on both sides. The Genteel Whig was chiefly conscious of a repulsive vast excitement all about him, in which many people did inelegant and irra- tional things. They waved flags — nasty little flags. This child of the ages, this last fruit of the gigantic and tragic tree of life, could no more than stick its fingers in its ears and say, " Oh, please, do all stop ! " and then as the strain grew intenser and intenser set itself with feeble pawings now to clam- ber " Au-dessus de la Melee," and now to — in some weak way — stop the conflict, ( " Au-dessus de la Melee" — as the man said when they asked him where he was when the bull gored his sister. ) The efforts to stop the conflict at any price, even at the price of entire submission to the German Will, grew THE YIELDING PACIFIST 197 more urgent as the necessity that every one should help against the German Thing grew more mani- fest. Of all the strange freaks of distressed thinking that this war has produced, the freaks of the Gen- teel Whig have been among the most remarkable. With an air of profound wisdom he returns per- petually to his proposition that there are faults on both sides. To say that is his conception of impar- tiality. I suppose that if a bull gored his sister he would say that there were faults on both sides ; his sister ought not to have strayed into the field, she was wearing a red hat of a highly provocative type ; she ought to have been a cow and then everything would have been different. In the face of the his- tory of the last forty years, the Genteel Whig strug- gles persistently to minimise the German outrage upon civilisation and to find excuses for Germany. He does this, not because he has any real passion for falsehood, but because by training, circum- stance, and disposition he is passionately averse from action with the vulgar majority and from self- sacrifice in a common cause, and because he finds in the justification of Germany and, failing that, in the blackening of the Allies to an equal blackness, one line of defence against the wave of impulse that threatens to submerge his private self. But when at last that line is forced he is driven back upon 198 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN others equally extraordinary. You can often find simultaneously in the same Pacifist paper, and sometimes even in the utterances of the same writer, two entirely incompatible statements. The first is that Germany is so invincible that it is useless to prolong the war since no effort of the Allies is likely to produce any material improvement in their posi- tion, and the second is that Germany is so thor- oughly beaten that she is now ready to abandon militarism and make terms and compensations en- tirely acceptable to the countries she has forced into war. And when finally facts are produced to establish the truth that Germany, though still largely wicked and impenitent, is being slowly and conclusively beaten by the sanity, courage and per- sistence of the Allied common men, then the Gen- teel Whig retorts with his last defensive absurdity. He invents a national psychology for Germany. Germany, he invents, loves us and wants to be our dearest friend. Germany has always loved us. The Germans are a loving, unenvious people. They have been a little misled — but nice people do not insist upon that fact. But beware of beating Ger- many, beware of humiliating Germany ; then indeed trouble will come. Germany will begin to dislike us. She will plan a revenge. Turning aside from her erstwhile innocent career, she may even think of hate. What are our obligations to France, Italy, THE YIELDING PACIFIST 199 Serbia, and Kussia, what is the happiness of a few thousands of the Herero, a few millions of Bel- gians — whose numbers moreover are constantly di- minishing — when we weigh them against the dan- ger, the most terrible danger, of incurring perma- nent German hostility f . . . A Frenchman I talked to knew better than that. " What will happen to Germany,' ' I asked, " if we are able to do so to her and so; would she take to dreams of a Revanche? " " She will take to Anglomania," he said, and added after a flash of reflection, " In the long run it will be the worse for you." Ill THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL § 1 One of the indisputable things about the war so far as Britain and France goes — and I have rea- son to believe that on a lesser scale things are simi- lar in Italy — is that it has produced a very great volume of religious thought and feeling. About Russia in these matters we hear but little at the present time, but one guesses at parallelism. Peo- ple habitually religious have been stirred to new depths of reality and sincerity, and people are think- ing of religion who never thought of religion before. But as I have already pointed out, thinking and feeling about a matter is of no permanent value un- less something is thought out, unless there is a change of boundary or relationship, and it is an altogether different question to ask whether any definite change is resulting from this universal fer- ment. If it is not doing so, then the sleeper merely dreams a dream that he will forget again. . . . Now in no sort of general popular mental activity is there so much froth and waste as in religious ex- 200 THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 201 citements. This has been the case in all periods of religious revival. The people who are rather im- pressed, who for a few days or weeks take to read- ing their Bibles or going to a new place of worship or praying or fasting or being kind and unselfish, is always enormous in relation to the number whose lives are permanently changed. The effort needed if a contemporary is to blow off the froth, is always very considerable. Among the froth that I would blow off is I think most of the tremendous efforts being made in Eng- land by the Anglican church to attract favourable attention to itself apropos of the war. I came back from my visit to the Somme battlefields to find the sylvan peace of Essex invaded by a number of ladies in blue dresses adorned with large white crosses, who, regardless of the present shortage of nurses, were visiting every home in the place on some mis- sion of invitation whose details remained obscure. So far as I was able to elucidate this project, it was in the nature of a magic incantation ; a satisfactory end of the war was to be brought about by con- vergent prayer and religious assiduities. The mis- sion was shy of dealing with me personally, al- though as a lapsed communicant I should have thought myself a particularly hopeful field for Anglican effort, and it came to my wife and myself merely for our permission and countenance in an 202 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN appeal to our domestic assistants. My wife con- sulted the household; it seemed very anxious to escape from that appeal, and as I respect Christi- anity sufficiently to detest the identification of its services with magic processes, the mission retired — civilly repulsed. But the incident aroused an uneasy curiosity in my mind with regard to the general trend of Anglican teaching and Anglican activities at the present time. The trend of my enquiries is to discover the church much more in- coherent and much less religious — an any decent sense of the word — than I had supposed it to be. Organisation is the life of material and the death of mental and spiritual processes. There could be no more melancholy exemplification of this than the spectacle of the Anglican and Catholic churches at the present time, one using the tragic stresses of the war mainly for pew-rent touting, and the other paralysed by its Austrian and South German po- litical connections from any clear utterance upon the moral issues of the war. Through the opening phases of the war the Established Church of Eng- land was inconspicuous ; this is no longer the case, but it may be doubted whether the change is alto- gether to its advantage. To me this is a very great disappointment. I have always had a very high opinion of the intellectual value of the leading di- vines of both the Anglican and Catholic com- THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 203 munions. The self-styled Intelligenzia of Great Britain is all too prone to sneer at their equipment ; but I do not see how any impartial person can deny that Father Vaughan is in mental energy, vigour of expression, richness of thought and variety of information fully the equal of such an influential lay publicist as Mr. Horatio Bottomley. One might search for a long time among prominent lay- men to find the equal of the Bishop of London. Nevertheless it is impossible to conceal the impres- sion of tawdriness that this latter gentleman's work as head of the National Mission has left upon my mind. Attired in khaki he has recently been preaching in the open air to the people of London upon Tower Hill, Piccadilly, and other conspicuous places. Obsessed as I am by the humanities, and impressed as I have always been by the inferiority of material to moral facts, I would willingly have exchanged the sight of two burning Zeppelins for this spectacle of ecclesiastical fervour. But as it is, I am obliged to trust to newspaper reports and the descriptions of hearers and eye-witnesses. They leave but little doubt of the regrettable levity and superficiality of the bishop's utterances. We have a multitude of people chastened by losses, ennobled by a common effort, needing sup- port in that effort, perplexed by the reality of evil and cruelty, questioning and seeking after God. 204 ITALY, FEANCE AND BKITAIN What does the National Mission offer? On Tower Hill the Bishop seems to have been chiefly busy with a wrangling demonstration that ten thousand a year is none too big a salary for a man subject to such demands and expenses as his see involves. So far from making anything out of his see he was, he declared, two thousand a year to the bad. Some day when the church has studied efficiency, I sup- pose that bishops will have the leisure to learn something about the general state of opinion and education in their dioceses. The Bishop of Lon- don was evidently unaware of the almost automatic response of the sharp socialists among his hearers. Their first enquiry would be to learn how he came by that mysterious extra two thousand a year with which he supplemented his stipend. How did he earn that? And if he didn't earn it ! And secondly they would probably have pointed out to him that his standard of housing, clothing, diet and entertaining was probably a little higher than theirs. It is really no proof of virtuous purity that a man's expenditure exceeds his income. And finally some other of his hearers were left unsatis- fied by his silence with regard to the current pro- posal to pool all clerical stipends for the common purposes of the church. It is a reasonable pro- posal, and if bishops must dispute about stipends instead of preaching the kingdom of God, then they THE KELIGIOUS REVIVAL 205 are bound to face it. The sooner they do so, the more graceful will the act be. From these personal apologetics the bishop took up the question of the exemption, at the request of the bishops, of the clergy from military service. It is one of our con- trasts with French conditions — and it is all to the disadvantage of the British churches. Jn his Piccadilly contribution to -the National Mission of Repentance and Hope the bishop did not talk politics but sex. He gave his hearers the sort of stuff that is handed out so freely by the Cinema Theatres, White Slave Traffic talk, denunciations of " Night Hawks " — whatever " Night Hawks " may be — and so on. On this or another occasion the bishop — he boasts that he himself is a healthy bachelor — lavished his eloquence upon the Fall in the Birth Rate, and the duty of all married people, from paupers upward, to have children persistently. Now sex like diet is a department of conduct and a very important department, but it isn't religion! The world is distressed by international disorder, by the monstrous tragedy of war; these little hot talks about indulgence and begetting have about as much to do with the vast issues that concern us as, let us say, a discussion of the wickedness of eating very new and indigestible bread. It is talking round and about the essential issue. It is fogging the essential issue, which is the forgotten and neg- 206 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN lected kingship of God, The sin that is stirring the souls of men is the sin of this war. It is the sin of national egotism and the devotion of men to loyal- ties, ambitions, sects, churches, feuds, aggressions, and divisions that are an outrage upon God's uni- versal kingdom. § 2 The common clergy of France, sharing the mili- tary obligations and the food and privations of their fellow parishioners, contrast very vividly with the home-staying types of the ministries of the vari- ous British churches. I met and talked to several. Near Frise there were some barge gun-boats — they have since taken their place in the fighting but then they were a surprise — and the men had been very anxious to have their craft visited and seen. The priest who came after our party to see if he could still arrange that, had been decorated for gallantry* Of course the English too have their gallant chap- lains, but they are men of the officer caste, they are just young officers with peculiar collars; not men among men, as are the French priests. There can be no doubt that the behaviour of the French priests in this war has enormously dimin- ished anti-clerical bitterness in France. There can be no doubt that France is far more a religious THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 207 country than it was before the war. But if you ask whether that means any return to the church, any reinstatement of the church, the answer is a doubt- ful one. Religion and the simple priest are stronger in France to-day; the church, I think, is weaker. I trench on no theological discussion when I re- cord the unfavourable impression made upon all western Europe by the failure of the Holy Father to pronounce definitely upon the rights and wrongs of the war. The church has abrogated its right of moral judgment. Such at least seemed to be the opinion of the Frenchmen with whom I discussed a remarkable interview with Cardinal Gasparri that I found one morning in Le Journal. It was not the sort of interview to win the hearts of men who were ready to give their lives to set right what they believe to be the greatest outrage that has ever been inflicted upon Christendom, that is to say the forty -three years of military prepara- tion and of diplomacy by threats that culminated in the ultimatum to Serbia, the invasion of Belgium and the murder of the Vise villagers. It was adorned with a large portrait of " Benoit XV., " looking grave and discouraging over his spectacles, and the headlines insisted it was "La Pensee du Pape" Cross-heads sufficiently indicated the gen- eral tone. One read: 208 ITALY, FEANCE AND BEITAIN " Le Saint Siege impartial. . . . Au-dessus de la bataille. . . /* The good Cardinal would have made a good law- yer. He had as little to say about God and the gen- eral righteousness of things as the Bishop of Lon- don. But he got in some smug reminders of the severance of diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Perhaps now France will be wiser. He pointed out that the Holy See in its Consistorial Allocution of January 22nd, 1915, invited the belligerents to ob- serve the laws of war. Could anything more be done than that? Oh ! — in the general issue of the war, if you want a judgment on the war as a whole, how is it possible for the Vatican to decide? Surely the French know that excellent principle of justice, Audiatur et altera pars, and how under ex- isting circumstances can the Vatican do that? . . . The Vatican is cut off from communication with Austria and Germany. The Vatican has been de- prived of its temporal power and local independence (another neat point). . . . So France is bowed out. When peace is restored the Vatican will perhaps be able to enquire if there was a big German army in 1914, if German diplo- macy was aggressive from 1875 onward, if Bel- gium was invaded unrighteously, if (Catholic) Aus- tria forced the pace upon (non-Catholic) Eussia. THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 209 But now — now the Holy See must remain as im- partial as an unbought mascot in a shop win- dow. . . . The next column of he Journal contained an ac- count of the Armenian massacres ; the blood of the Armenian cries out past the Holy Father to heaven ; but then Armenians are after all heretics, and here again the principle of Audiatur et altera pars comes in. Communications are not open with the Turks. Moreover, Armenians, like Serbs, are worse than infidels; they are heretics. Perhaps God is punishing them. . . . Audiatur et altera pars, and the Vatican has not forgotten the infidelity and disrespect of both France and Italy in the past. These are the things, it seems, that really matter to the Vatican. Cardi- nal Gasparrfs portrait, in the same issue of Le Journal, displays a countenance of serene content- ment, a sort of incarnate " Told-you-so." So the Vatican lifts its pontifical skirts and shakes the dust of Western Europe off its feet. It is the most astounding renunciation in his- tory. Indubitably the Christian church took a wide stride from the kingship of God when it placed a golden throne for the unbaptised Constantine in the midst of its most sacred deliberations at Mcsea. But it seems to me that this abandonment of moral 210 ITALY, FKANCE AND BKITAIN judgments in the present case by the Holy See is an almost wider step from the church's allegiance to God. . . . § 3 Thought about the great questions of life, thought and reasoned direction, this is what the multitude demands mutely and weakly, and what the organised churches are failing to give. They have not the courage of their creeds. Either their creeds are intellectual flummery or they are the so- lution to the riddles with which the world is strug- gling. But the churches make no mention of their creeds. They chatter about sex and the magic effect of church attendance and simple faith. If simple faith is enough, the churches and their differences are an imposture. Men are stirred to the deepest questions about life and God, and the Anglican church, for example, obliges — as I have described. It is necessary to struggle against the unfavour- able impression made by these things. They must not blind us to the deeper movement that is in prog- ress in a quite considerable number of minds in England and France alike towards the realisation of the kingdom of God. What I conceive to be the reality of the religious revival is to be found in quarters remote from the religious professionals. Let me give but one in- THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 211 stance of several that occur to me. I met soon after my return from France a man who has stirred my curiosity for years, Mr. David Lubin, the prime mover in the organisation of the International In- stitute of Agriculture in Rome. It is a movement that has always appealed to my imagination. The idea is to establish and keep up to date a record of the production of food staples in the world with a view to the ultimate world control of food supply and distribution. When its machinery has devel- oped sufficiently it will of course be possible to ex- tend its activities to a control in the interests of civilisation of many other staples besides foodstuffs. It is in fact the suggestion and beginning of the economic world peace and the economic world state, just as the Hague Tribunal is the first faint sketch of a legal world state. The King of Italy has met Mr. Lubin's idea with open hands. ( It was because of this profoundly interesting experiment that in a not very widely known book of mine, The World Set Free (May, 1914), in which I repre- sented a world state as arising out of Armageddon, I made the first world conference meet at Brissago in Italian Switzerland under the presidency of the King of Italy.) So that when I found I could meet Mr. Lubin I did so very gladly. We lunched together in a pretty little room high over Knights- bridge, and talked through an afternoon. 212 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN He is a man rather after the type of Gladstone; he could be made to look like Gladstone in a cari- cature, and he has that compelling quality of in- tense intellectual excitement which was one of the great factors in the personal effectiveness of Glad- stone. He is a Jew, but until I had talked to him for some time that fact did not occur to me. He is in very ill health, he has some weakness of the heart that grips and holds him at times white and silent. At first we talked of his Institute and its work. Then we came to shipping and transport. When- ever one talks now of human affairs one comes pres- ently to shipping and transport generally. In Paris, in Italy, when I returned to England, every- where I found "cost of carriage" was being dis- covered to be a question of fundamental impor- tance. Yet transport, railroads and shipping, these vitally important services in the world's af- fairs, are nearly everywhere in private hands and run for profit. In the case of shipping they are run for profit on such antiquated lines that freights vary from day to day and from hour to hour. It makes the business of food supply a gamble. And it need not be a gamble. But that is by the way in the present discussion. As we talked, the prospect broadened out from a prospect of the growing and distribution of food to THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 213 a general view of the world becoming one economic community. I talked of various people I had been meeting in the previous few weeks. " So many of us," I said, " seem to be drifting away from the ideas of na- tionalism and faction and policy, towards some- thing else which is larger. It is an idea of a right way of doing things for human purposes, independ- ently of these limited and localised references. Take such things as international hygiene, for ex- ample, take this movement. We are feeling our way towards a bigger rule." " The rule of Righteousness," said Mr. Lubin. I told him that I had been coming more and more to the idea — not as a sentimentality or a metaphor, but as the ruling and directing idea, the structural idea, of all one's political and social activities — of the whole world as one state and community and of God as the King of that state. " But / say that," cried Mr. Lubin, " I have put my name to that. And — it is here!" He struggled up, seized an Old Testament that lay upon a side table, and flung it upon the table. He stood over it and rapped its cover. " It is here/' he said, looking more like Gladstone than ever, " in the Prophets." 214 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN That is all I mean to tell at present of that con- versation. We talked of religion for two hours. Mr. Lubin sees things in terms of Israel and I do not. For all that we see things very much after the same fashion. That talk was only one of a number of talks about religion that I have had with hard and practical men who want to get the world straighter than it is, and who perceive that they must have a leadership and reference outside themselves. That is why I assert so confidently that there is a real deep religious movement afoot in the world. But not one of those conversations could have gone on, it would have ceased instantly, if any one bearing the uniform and brand of any organised religious body, any clergyman, priest, mollah, or suchlike advocate of the ten thousand patented religions in the world, had come in. He would have brought in his sectarian spites, his propaganda of church- going, his persecution of the heretic and the illegiti- mate, his ecclesiastical politics, his taboos and his doctrinal touchiness. . . . That is why, though I perceive there is a great wave of religious revival in the world to-day, I doubt whether it bodes well for the professional religious. . . . The other day I was talking to an eminent Angli- THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL 215 can among various other people, and some one with an eye to him propounded this remarkable view. " There are four stages between belief and utter unbelief. There are those who believe in God, those who doubt him like Huxley the Agnostic, those who deny him like the Atheists but who do at least keep his place vacant, and lastly those who have set up a Church in his place. That is the last out- rage of unbelief." IV THE KIDDLE OF THE BRITISH § 1 All the French people I met in France seemed to be thinking and talking about the English. The English bring their own atmosphere with them ; to begin with they are not so talkative, and I did not find among them anything like the same vigour of examination, the same resolve to understand the Anglo-French reaction, that I found among the French. In intellectual processes I will confess that my sympathies are undisguisedly with the French; the English will never think nor talk clearly until they get clerical " Greek " and sham " humanities " out of their public schools and sin- cere study and genuine humanities in; our disin- genuous Anglican compromise is like a cold in the English head, and the higher education in Eng- land is a training in evasion. This is an always lamentable state of affairs, but just now it is par- ticularly lamentable because quite tremendous op- portunities for the good of mankind turn on the possibility of a thorough and entirely frank mutual 216 THE EIDDLE OF THE BKITISH 217 understanding between French, Italians, and Eng- lish. For years there has been a considerable amount of systematic study in France of English thought and English developments. Upon almost any question of current English opinion and upon most current English social questions, the best studies are in French. But there has been little or no reciprocal activity. The English in France seem to confine their French studies to La Vie Parisienne. It is what they have been led to expect of French literature. There can be no doubt in any reasonable mind that this war is binding France and England very closely together. They dare not quarrel for the next fifty years. They are bound to play a central part in the World League for the Preservation of Peace that must follow this struggle. There is no question of their practical union. It is a thing that must be. But it is remarkable that while the French mind is agog to apprehend every fact and detail it can about the British, to make the wisest and fullest use of our binding necessities, that strange English " incuria " — to use the new slang — attains to its most monumental in this matter. So there is not much to say about how the British think about the French. They do not think. They feel. At the outbreak of the war, when the per- formance of France seemed doubtful, there was an 218 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN enormous feeling for France in Great Britain; it was like the formless feeling one has for a brother. It was as if Britain had discovered a new instinct, If France had crumpled up like paper, the English would have fought on passionately to restore her. That is ancient history now. Now the English still feel fraternal and fraternally proud; but in a mute way they are dazzled. Since the German at- tack on Verdun began, the French have achieved a crescendo. None of us could have imagined it. It did not seem possible to very many of us at the end of 1915 that either France or Germany could hold on for another year. There was much secret anxiety for France. It has given place now to un- stinted confidence and admiration. In their aston- ishment the British are apt to forget the impres- sive magnitude of their own effort, the millions of soldiers, the innumerable guns, the endless torrent of supplies that pour into France to avenge the little army of Mons. It seems natural to us that we should so exert ourselves under the circum- stances. I suppose it is wonderful, but, as a sam- ple Englishman, I do not feel that it is at all won- derful. I did not feel it wonderful even when I saw the British aeroplanes lording it in the air over Martinpuich, and not a German to be seen. Since Michael would have it so, there, at last, they were. There was a good deal of doubt in France about THE RIDDLE OF THE BRITISH 219 the vigour of the British effort, until the Soinme offensive. All that had been dispelled in August when I reached Paris. There was not the shadow of a doubt remaining anywhere of the power and loyalty of the British. These preliminary assur- ances have to be made, because it is in the nature of the French mind to criticise, and it must not be supposed that criticisms of detail and method af- fect the fraternity and complete mutual confidence which is the stuff of the Anglo-French relationship. § 2 Now first the French have been enormously as- tonished by the quality of the ordinary British sol- diers in our new armies. One Colonial colonel said something almost incredible to me — almost incred- ible as coming from a Frenchman ; it was a matter too solemn for any compliments or polite exagger- ations; he said in tones of wonder and conviction, u They are as good as ours" It was his acme of all possible praise. That means any sort of British soldier. Unless he is assisted by a kilt the ordinary Frenchman is unable to distinguish between one sort of British soldier and another. He cannot tell — let the ardent nationalist mark the fact ! — a Cockney from an Irishman or the Cardiff from the Essex note. 220 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN He finds them all extravagantly and unquenchably cheerful and with a generosity — "like good chil- dren." There his praise is a little tinged by doubt. The British are reckless — recklessness in battle a Frenchman can understand, but they are also reck- less about to-morrow's bread and whether the tent is safe against a hurricane in the night. He is struck too by the fact that they are much more vocal than the French troops, and that they seem to have a passion for bad lugubrious songs. There he smiles and shrugs his shoulders, and indeed what else can any of us do in the presence of that mys- tery? At any rate the legend of the " phlegmatic " Englishman has been scattered to the four winds of heaven by the guns of the western front. The men are cool in action it is true; but for the rest they are, by the French standards, quicksilver. But I will not expand further upon the general impression made by the English in France. Philippe Millet's En Liaison avec les Anglais gives in a series of delightful pictures portraits of Brit- ish types from the French angle. There can be lit- tle doubt that the British quality, genial, naive, plucky and generous, has won for itself a real affec- tion in France wherever it has had a chance to dis- play itself. . . . But when it comes to British methods then the polite Frenchman's difficulties begin. Translating THE RIDDLE OF THE BRITISH 221 hints into statements and guessing at reservations, I would say that the French fall very short of ad- miration of the way in which our higher officers set about their work, they are disagreeably impressed by a general want of sedulousness and close method in our leading. They think we economise brains and waste blood. They are shocked at the way in which obviously incompetent or inefficient men of the old army class are retained in their positions even after serious failures, and they were pro- foundly moved by the bad staff work and needlessly heavy losses of our opening attacks in July. They were ready to condone the blunderings and floun- derings of the 1915 offensive as the necessary pen- alties of an " amateur " army, they had had to learn their own lesson in Champagne, but they were sur- prised to find how much the British had still to learn in July, 1916. The British officers excuse themselves because, they plead, they are still ama- teurs. " That is no reason," says the Frenchman, " why they should be amateurish." No Frenchman said as much as this to me, but their meaning was as plain as daylight. I tackled one of my guides in this matter; I said that it was the plain duty of the French military people to criticise British military methods sharply if they thought they were wrong. " It is not easy," he said. " Many British officers do not think they 222 ITALY, FKANCE AND BBITAIN have anything to learn. And English people do not like being told things. What could we do? We could hardly send a French officer or so to your headquarters in a tutorial capacity. You have to do things in your own way." When I tried to draw General Castelnau into this dangerous question by suggesting that we might borrow a French general or so, he would say only, " There is only one way to learn war, and that is to make war." When it was too late, in the lift, I thought of the answer to that. There is only one way to make war, and that is by the sacrifice of incapables and the rapid promotion of able men. If old and tried types fail now, new types must be sought. But to do that we want a standard of efficiency. We want a con- ception of intellectual quality in performance that is still lacking. . . . M. Joseph Keinach, in whose company I visited the French part of the Somme front, was full of a scheme, which he has since published, for the break- ing up and recomposition of the French and British armies into a series of composite armies which would blend the magnificent British manhood and material with French science and military experi- ence. He pointed out the endless advantages of such an arrangement; the stimulus of emulation, the promotion of intimate fraternal feeling between the peoples of the two countries. "At present," THE RIDDLE OF THE BRITISH 223 he said, "no Frenchman ever sees an Englishman except at Amiens or on the Somme. Many of them still have no idea of what the English are doing. . . ." " Have I ever told you the story of compulsory Greek at Oxford and Cambridge?" I asked ab- ruptly. " What has that to do with it? " " Or how two undistinguished civil service com- missioners can hold up the scientific education of our entire administrative class? " M. Reinach protested further. " Because you are proposing to loosen the grip of a certain narrow and limited class upon British af- fairs, and you propose it as though it were a job as easy as rearranging railway fares or sending a van to Calais. That is the problem that every decent Englishman is trying to solve to-day, every man of that Greater Britain which has supplied these five million volunteers, these magnificent tem- porary officers and all this wealth of munitions. And the oligarchy is so invincibly fortified! Do you think it will let in Frenchmen to share its con- trols? It will not even let in Englishmen. It holds the class schools; the class universities; the examinations for our public services are its class shibboleths; it is the church, the squirearchy, the permanent army class, permanent officialdom; it makes every appointment, it is the fountain of 224 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN honour; what it does not know is not knowledge, what it cannot do must not be done. It rules India, ignorantl j and obstructively ; it will wreck the em- pire rather than relinquish its ascendency in Ire- land. It is densely self-satisfied and instinctively monopolistic. It is on our backs, and with it on our backs we common English must bleed and blunder to victory. . . . And you make this pro- posal ! " § 3 The antagonistic relations of the Anglican oli- garchy with the greater and greater-spirited Britain that thrusts behind it in this war are probably paralleled very closely in Germany, probably they are exaggerated in Germany with a bigger military oligarchy and a relatively lesser civil body at its back. This antagonism is the oddest outcome of the tremendous de-mihtarisation of war that has been going on. In France it is probably not so marked because of the greater flexibility and adaptability of the French culture. All military people — people, that is, profes- sionally and primarily military — are inclined to be conservative. For thousands of years the mili- tary tradition has been a tradition of discipline. The conception of the common soldier has been a mechanically obedient, almost de-humanised man, THE EIDDLE OF THE BRITISH 225 of the officer a highly trained autocrat. In two years all this has been absolutely reversed. Indi- vidual quality, inventive organisation and indus- trialism will win this war. And no class is so inno- cent of these things as the military caste. Long accustomed as they are to the importance of moral effect they put a brave face upon the business ; they save their faces astonishingly, but they are no longer guiding and directing this war, they are being pushed from behind by forces they never fore- saw and cannot control. The aeroplanes and great guns have bolted with them, the tanks begotten of naval and civilian wits, shove them to victory in spite of themselves. Wherever I went behind the British lines the officers were going about in spurs. These spurs got at last upon my nerves. They became symbolical. They became as grave an insult to the tragedy of the war as if they were false noses. The British officers go for long automobile rides in spurs. They walk about the trenches in spurs. Occasion- ally I would see a horse ; I do not wish to be unfair in this matter, there were riding horses sometimes within two or three miles of the ultimate front, but they were rarely used. I do not say that the horse is entirely obsolete in this war. In war nothing is obsolete. In the trenches men fight with sticks. In the Pasubio 226 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN battle the other day one of the Alpini silenced a machine gun by throwing stones. In the West Afri- can campaign we have employed troops armed with bows and arrows, and they have done very valuable work. But these are exceptional cases. The mili- tary use of the horse henceforth will be such an exceptional case. It is ridiculous for these spurs still to clink about the modern battlefield. What the gross cost of the spurs and horses and trappings of the British army amount to, and how many men are grooming and tending horses who might just as well be ploughing and milking at home I cannot guess ; it must be a total so enormous as seriously to affect the balance of the war. And these spurs and their retention are only the outward and visible symbol of the obstinate re- sistance of the Anglican intelligence to the clear logic of the present situation. It is not only the external equipment of our leaders that falls behind the times ; our political and administrative services are in the hands of the same desolatingly inadapt- able class. The British are still wearing spurs in Ireland; they are wearing them in India; and the age of the spur has passed. At the outset of this war there was an absolute cessation of criticism of the military and administrative castes; it is be- coming a question whether we may not pay too heavily in blundering and waste, in military and THE RIDDLE OF THE BRITISH 227 economic lassitude, in international irritation and the accumulation of future dangers in Ireland, Egypt, India, and elsewhere, for an apparent ab- sence of internal friction. These people have no gratitude for tacit help, no spirit of intelligent service, and no sense of fair play to the outsider. The latter deficiency indeed they call esprit de corps and prize it as if it were a noble quality. It becomes more and more imperative that the foreign observer should distinguish between this narrower, older official Britain and the greater newer Britain that struggles to free itself from the entanglement of a system outgrown. There are many Englishmen who would like to say to the French and the Irish and the Italians and India, who indeed feel every week now a more urgent need of saying, " Have patience with us." The Riddle of the British is very largely solved if you will think of a great modern liberal nation seeking to slough an exceedingly tough and tight skin. . . . Nothing is more illuminating and self-educa- tional than to explain one's home politics to an in- telligent foreigner enquirer; it strips off all the secondary considerations, the allusiveness, the merely tactical considerations. One sees the forest not as a confusion of trees but as something with a definite shape and place. I was asked in Italy and in France, " Where does Lord Northcliffe come into 228 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN the British system — or Lloyd George? Who is Mr. Redmond? Why is Lloyd George a Minister, and why does not Mr. Redmond take office? Isn't there something called an ordnance department, and why is there a separate ministry of munitions? Can Mr. Lloyd George remove an incapable gen- eral? . . ." I found M. Joseph Reinach particularly pene- trating and persistent. It is an amusing but rather difficult exercise to recall what I tried to convey to him by way of a theory of Britain. He is by no means an uncritical listener. I explained that there is an " inner Britain," official Britain, which is Anglican or official Presbyterian, which at the outside in the whole world cannot claim to speak for twenty million Anglican and Presbyterian com- municants, which monopolises official positions, ad- ministration and honours in the entire British em- pire, dominates the court, and, typically, is spurred and red-tabbed. (It was just at this time that the spurs were most on my nerves.) This inner Britain, I went on to explain, holds tenaciously to its positions of advantage, from which it is difficult to dislodge it without upsetting the whole empire, and it insists upon treating the rest of the four hundred millions who constitute that empire as outsiders, foreigners, subject races and suspected persons. THE RIDDLE OF THE BRITISH 229 " To you," I said, " it bears itself with an appear- ance of faintly hostile, faintly contemptuous apa- thy. It is still so entirely insular that it shudders at the thought of the Channel Tunnel. This is the Britain which irritates and puzzles you so intensely — that you are quite unable to conceal these feel- ings from me. Unhappily it is the Britain you see most of. Well, outside this official Britain is 1 Greater Britain ' — the real Britain with which you have to reckon in future." (From this point a faint flavour of mysticism crept into my disserta- tion. I found myself talking with something in my voice curiously reminiscent of those liberal Rus- sians who set themselves to explain the contrasts and contradictions of " official " Russia and " true " Russia.) "This Greater Britain," I asserted, "is in a perpetual conflict with official Britain, strug- gling to keep it up to its work, shoving it towards its ends, endeavouring in spite of the tenacious mis- chievousness of the privileged, to keep the peace and a common aim with the French and Irish and Italians and Russians and Indians. It is to that outer Britain that those Englishmen you found so interesting and sympathetic, Lloyd George and Lord Northcliffe, for example, belong. It is the Britain of the great effort, the Britain of the smok- ing factories and the torrent of munitions, the Brit- ain of the men and subalterns of the new armies, 230 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN the Britain which invents and thinks and achieves and stands now between German imperialism and the empire of the world. I do not want to exag- gerate the quality of greater Britain. If the inner set are narrowly educated, the outer set is often crudely educated. If the inner set is so close knit as to seem like a conspiracy, the outer set is so loosely knit as to seem like a noisy confusion. Greater Britain is only beginning to realise itself and find itself. For all its crudity there is a giant spirit in it feeling its way towards the light. It has quite other ambitions for the ending of the war than some haggled treaty of alliance with France and Italy; some advantage that will invalidate German competition ; it begins to realise newer and wider sympathies, possibilities of an amalgamation of interests and a community of aim that it is ut- terly beyond the habits of the old oligarchy to con- ceive, beyond the scope of that tawdry word ' Em- pire ? to express. . . ." I descended from my rhetoric to find M. Reinach asking how and when this greater Britain was likely to become politically effective. V THE SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS " Nothing will be the same after the war." This is one of the consoling platitudes with which people cover over voids of thought. They utter it with an air of round-eyed profundity. But to ask in reply, " Then how will things be different? " is in many cases to rouse great resentment. It is almost as rude as saying, " Was that thought of yours really a thought?" Let us in this chapter confine ourselves to the social-economic processes that are going on. So far as I am able to distinguish among the things that are being said in these matters, they may be classi- fied out into groups that centre upon several typi- cal questions. There is the question of " How to pay for the war? " There is the question of the be- haviour of labour after the war. "Will there be a Labour Truce or a violent labour struggle? " There is the question of the reconstruction of Euro- pean industry after the war in the face of an Amer- ica in a state of monetary and economic repletion 231 232 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN through non-intervention. My present purpose in this chapter is a critical one ; it is not to solve prob- lems but to set out various currents of thought that are flowing through the general mind. Which cur- rent is likely to seize upon and carry human affairs with it, is not for our present speculation. There seem to be two distinct ways of answering the first of the questions I have noted. They do not necessarily contradict each other. Of course the war is being largely paid for immediately out of the accumulated private wealth of the past. We are buying off the " hold-up " of the private owner upon the material and resources we need, and pay- ing in paper money and war loans. This is not in itself an impoverishment of the community. The wealth of individuals is not the wealth of nations ; the two things may easily be contradictory when the rich man's wealth consists of land or natural resources or franchises or privileges, the use of which he reluctantly yields for high prices. The conversion of held-up land and material into work- able and actively used material in exchange for national debt may be indeed a positive increase in the wealth of the community. And what is hap- pening in all the belligerent countries is the taking over of more and more of the realities of wealth from private hands and, in exchange, the contract- ing of great masses of debt to private people. The SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 233 net tendency is towards the disappearance of a reality holding class and the destruction of realities in warfare, and the appearance of a vast rentier class in its place. At the end of the war much ma- terial will be destroyed for evermore, transit, food production and industry will be everywhere enor- mously socialised, and the country will be liable to pay every year in interest, a sum of money exceed- ing the entire national expenditure before the war. From the point of view of the state, and disregard- ing material and moral damages, that annual inter- est is the annual instalment of the price to be paid for the war. Now the interesting question arises whether these great belligerent states may go bankrupt, and if so to what extent. States may go bankrupt to the private creditor without repudiating their debts or seeming to pay less to him. They can go bankrupt either by a depreciation of their currency or — without touching the gold standard — through a rise in prices. In the end both these things work out to the same end; the creditor gets so many loaves or pairs of boots or workman's hours of labour for his pound less than he would have got under the previous conditions. One may imagine this process of price (and of course wages) increase going on to a limitless extent. Many people are inclined to look to such an increase in prices as a 234 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN certain outcome of the war, and just so far as it goes, just so far will the burthen of the rentier class, their call that is for goods and services, be light- ened. This expectation is very generally enter- tained, and I can see little reason against it. The intensely stupid or dishonest " labour " press, how- ever, which in the interests of the common enemy misrepresents socialism and seeks to misguide la- bour in Great Britain, ignores these considerations, and positively holds out this prospect of rising prices as an alarming one to the more credulous and ignorant of its readers. But now comes the second way of meeting the after-the-war obligations. This second way is by increasing the wealth of the state and by increas- ing the national production to such an extent that the payment of the rentier class will not be an over- whelming burthen. Rising prices bilk the creditor. Increased production will check the rise in prices and get him a real payment. The outlook for the national creditor seems to be that he will be partly bilked and partly paid; how far he will be bilked and how far paid depends almost entirely upon this possible increase in production ; and there is conse- quently a very keen and quite unprecedented desire very widely diffused among intelligent and active people, holding War Loan scrip and the like, in all the belligerent countries, to see bold and hopeful SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 235 schemes for state enrichment pushed forward. The movement towards socialism is receiving an impulse from a new and unexpected quarter, there is now a rentier socialism, and it is interesting to note that while the London Times is full of schemes of great state enterprises, for the exploitation of Colonial state lands, for the state purchase and wholesaling of food and many natural products, and for the syndication of shipping and the great staple indus- tries into vast trusts into which not only the British but the French and Italian governments may enter as partners, the so-called socialist press of Great Britain is chiefly busy about the draughts in the cell of Mr. Fenner Brock way and the refusal of Private Scott Duckers to put on his khaki trousers. The New Statesman and the Fabian Society, how- ever, display a wider intelligence. There is a great variety of suggestions for this increase of public wealth and production. Many of them have an extreme reasonableness. The ex- tent to which they will be adopted depends, no doubt, very largely upon the politician and perma- nent official, and both those classes are prone to panic in the presence of reality. In spite of its own interest in restraining a rise in prices, the old official " salariat " is likely to be obstructive to any such innovations. It is the resistance of spurs and red tabs to military innovations over again. This 236 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN is the resistance of quills and red tape. On the other hand, the organisation of Britain for war has " officialised " a number of industrial leaders, and created a large body of temporary and adventurous officials. They may want to carry on into peace production the great new factories the war has cre- ated. At the end of the war, for example, every belligerent country will be in urgent need of cheap automobiles for farmers, tradesmen, and industrial purposes generally. America is now producing such automobiles at a price of eighty pounds. But Europe will be heavily in debt to America, her in- dustries will be disorganised, and there will there- fore be no sort of return payment possible for these hundreds of thousands of automobiles. A country that is neither creditor nor producer cannot be an importer. Consequently though those cheap tin cars may be stacked as high as the Washington Monument in America, they will never come to Europe. On the other hand, the great shell fac- tories of Europe will be standing idle and ready, their staffs disciplined and available, for conver- sion to the new task. The imperative common- sense of the position seems to be that the European governments should set themselves straight away to out-Ford Ford, and provide their own people with cheap road transport. But here comes in the question whether this com- SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 237 monsense course is inevitable. Suppose the men- tal energy left in Europe after the war is insufficient for such a constructive feat as this. There will certainly be the obstruction of official pedantry, the hold-up of this vested interest and that, the greedy desire of " private enterprise " to exploit the occa- sion upon rather more costly and less productive lines, the general distrust felt by ignorant and un- imaginative people of a new way of doing things. The process after all may not get done in the ob- viously wise way. This will not mean that Europe will buy American cars. It will be quite unable to buy American cars. It will be unable to make any- thing that America will not be able to make more cheaply for itself. But it will mean that Europe will go on without cheap cars, that is to say it will go on more sluggishly and clumsily and wastefully at a lower economic level. Hampered transport means hampered production of other things, and an increasing inability to buy abroad. And so we go down and down. It does not follow that because a course is the manifestly right and advantageous course for the community that it will be taken. I am reminded of this by a special basket in my study here, into which I pitch letters, circulars, pamphlets and so forth as they come to hand from a gentleman named Gatti, and his friends Mr. Adrian Ross, Mr. Roy 238 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN Horniman, Mr. Henry Murray, and others. His particular project is the construction of a Railway Clearing House for London. It is an absolutely admirable scheme. It would cut down the heavy traffic in the streets of London to about one- third; it would enable us to run the goods traffic of Eng- land with less than half the number of railway trucks we now employ ; it would turn over enormous areas of valuable land from their present use as rail- ways goods yards and sidings; it would save time in the transit of goods and labour in their handling. It is a quite beautifully worked out scheme. For the last eight or ten years this group of devoted fanatics has been pressing this undertaking upon an indifferent country with increasing vehemence and astonishment at that indifference. The point is that its adoption, though it would be of enor- mous general benefit, would be of no particular benefit to any leading man or highly placed official. On the other hand, it would upset all sorts of indi- viduals who are in a position to obstruct it quietly — and they do so. Meaning no evil. I dip my hand in the accumulation and extract a leaflet by the all too zealous Mr. Murray. In it he denounces various public officials by name as cheats and scoundrels, and invites a prosecution for libel. In that fashion nothing will ever get done. There is no prosecution, but for all that I do not SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 239 agree with Mr. Murray about the men he names. These gentlemen are just comfortable gentlemen, own brothers to these old generals of ours who will not take off their spurs. They are probably quite charming people except that they know nothing of that Fear of God which searches the heart. Why should they bother? So many of these after-the-war problems bring one back to the question how far the war has put the Fear of God into the hearts of responsible men. There is really no other reason in existence that I can imagine why they should ask themselves the question, " Have I done my best? " and that still more important question, " Am I doing my best now?" And so while I hear plenty of talk about the great reorganisations that are to come after the war, while there is the stir of doubt among the rentiers whether, after all, they will get paid, while the unavoidable stresses and sacrifices of the war are making many people question the rightfulness of much that they did as a matter of course, and of much that they took for granted, I perceive there is also something dull and not very articulate in this European world, something resistant and inert, that is like the obstinate rolling over of a heavy sleeper after he has been called upon to get up. " Just a little longer. . . . Just for my time." One thought alone seems to make these more in- 240 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN tractable people anxious. I thrust it in as my last stimulant when everything else has failed. " There will be frightful trouble with labour after the war/' I say. They try to persuade themselves that military discipline is breaking in labour What does British labour think of the outlook after the war? As a distinctive thing British labour does not think. " Class-conscious labour/' as the Marxists put it, scarcely exists in Britain. The only con- vincing case I ever met was a bath-chairman of literary habits at Eastbourne. The only people who are, as a class, class-conscious in the British community are the Anglican gentry and their fringe of the genteel. Everybody else is " respectable." The mass of British workers find their thinking in the ordinary halfpenny papers or in John Bull. The so-called labour papers are perhaps less repre- sentative of British labour than any other section of the press; the Labour Leader, for example, is the organ of such people as Bertrand Russell, Ver- non Lee, Morel, academic rentiers who know about as much of the labour side of industrialism as they do of cock-fighting. All the British peoples are SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 241 racially willing and good-tempered people, quite ready to be led by those they imagine to be abler than themselves. They make the most cheerful and generous soldiers in the whole world, without in- sisting upon that democratic respect which the Frenchman exacts. They do not criticise and they do not trouble themselves much about the general plan of operations, so long as they have confidence in the quality and good-will of their leading. But British soldiers will hiss a general when they think he is selfish, unfeeling, or a muff. And the social- ist propaganda has imported ideas of public service into private employment. Labour in Britain has been growing increasingly impatient of bad or self- ish industrial leadership. Labour trouble in Great Britain turns wholly upon the idea crystallised in the one word " profiteer." Legislation and regu- lation of hours of labour, high wages, nothing will keep labour quiet in Great Britain if labour thinks it is being exploited for private gain. Labour feels very suspicious of private gain. For that suspicion a certain rather common type of employer is mainly to blame. Labour believes that employers as a class cheat workmen as a class, plan to cheat them, of their full share in the com- mon output, and drive hard bargains. It believes that private employers are equally ready to sacri- fice the welfare of the nation and the welfare of the 242 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN workers for mere personal advantage. It has a traditional experience to support these suspicions. In no department of morals have ideas changed so completely during the last eighty years as in relation to " profits." Eighty years ago every one believed in the divine right of property to do what it pleased with its advantages, a doctrine more dis- astrous socially than the divine right of kings. There was no such sense of the immorality of " hold- ing up " as pervades the public conscience to-day. The worker was expected not only to work, but to be grateful for employment. The property owner held his property and handed it out for use and development or not, just as he thought fit. These ideas are not altogether extinct to-day. Only a few days ago I met a magnificent old lady of seventy- nine or eighty, who discoursed upon the wicked- ness of her gardener in demanding another shilling a week because of war prices. She was a valiant and handsome personage. A face that had still a healthy natural pinkness looked out from under blond curls, and an elegant and carefully tended hand tossed back some fine old lace to gesticulate more freely. She had previously charmed her hearers by sweeping aside certain in- vasion rumours that were drifting about. "Germans invade Us!" she cried. "Who'd let 'em, I'd like to know? Who'd let 'em?" SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 243 And then she reverted to her grievance about the gardener. " I told him that after the war he'd be glad enough to get anything. Grateful ! They'll all be coming back after the war — all of 'em, glad enough to get anything. Asking for another shilling in- deed!" Every one who heard her looked shocked. But that was the tone of every one of importance in the dark years that followed the Napoleonic wars. That is just one survivor of the old tradition. An- other is Blight the solicitor, who goes about bewail- ing the fact that we writers are u holding out false hopes of higher agricultural wages after the war." But these are both exceptions. They are held to be remarkable people even by their own class. The mass of property owners and influential people in Europe to-day no more believe in the sacred right of property to hold up development and dictate terms than do the more intelligent workers. The ideas of collective ends and of the fiduciary nature of property had been soaking through the Euro- pean community for years before the war. The necessity for sudden and even violent co-operations and submersions of individuality in a common pur- pose, which this war has produced, is rapidly crystallising out these ideas into clear proposals. War is an evil thing, but people who will not 244 ITALY, FKANCE AND BBITAIN learn from reason must have an ugly teacher. This war has brought home to every one the supremacy of the public need over every sort of individual claim. One of the most remarkable things in the British war press is the amount of space given to the dis- cussion of labour developments after the war. This is in its completeness peculiar to the British situation. Nothing on the same scale is percepti- ble in the press of the Latin allies. A great move- ment on the part of capitalists and business organ- isers is manifest to assure the worker of a change of heart and a will to change method. Labour is suspicious, not foolishly but wisely suspicious. But Labour is considering it. " National industrial syndication/' say the busi- ness organisers. u Guild socialism/' say the workers. There is also a considerable amount of talking and writing about u profit-sharing " and about giv- ing the workers a share in the business direction. Neither of these ideas appeals to the shrewder heads among the workers. So far as direction goes their disposition is to ask the captain to command the ship. So far as profits go, they think the captain has no more right than the cabin boy to specula- tive gains; he should do his work for his pay SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 245 whether it is profitable or unprofitable work. There is little balm for labour discontent in these schemes for making the worker also an infinitesimal profiteer. During my journey in Italy and France I met several men who were keenly interested in business organisation. Just before I started my friend N., who has been the chief partner in the building up of a very big and very extensively advertised Ameri- can business, came to see me on his way back to America. He is as interested in his work as a scientific specialist, and as ready to talk about it to any intelligent and interested hearer. He was particularly keen upon the question of continuity in the business, when it behoves the older genera- tion to let in the younger to responsible manage- ment and to efface themselves. He was a man of five-and forty. Incidentally he mentioned that he had never taken anything for his private life out of the great business he had built up but a salary, "a good salary/' and that now he was going to grant himself a pension. " I shan't interfere any more. I shall come right away and live in Europe for a year so as not to be tempted to interfere. The boys have got to run it some day, and they had better get their experience while they're young and capable of learning it. I did." 246 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN I like N.'s ideas. " Practically/' I said, " you've been a public official. You've treated your business like a public service." That was bis idea. "Would you mind if it was a public service?" He reflected, and some disagreeable memory darkened his face. " Under the politicians? " he said. I took the train of thought N. had set going abroad with me next day. I had the good luck to meet men who were interesting industrially. Captain Pirelli, my guide in Italy, has a name familiar to every motorist; his name goes wher- ever cars go, spelt with a big long capital P. Lieu- tenant de Tessin's name will recall one of the most interesting experiments in profit-sharing to the student of social science. I tried over N.'s problem on both of them. I found in both their minds just the same attitude as he takes up towards his busi- ness. They think any businesses that are worthy of respect, the sorts of businesses that interest them, are public functions. Money-lenders and specu- lators, merchants and gambling gentlefolk may think in terms of profit ; capable business directors certainly do nothing of the sort. I met a British officer in France who is also a landowner. I got him to talk about his adminis- trative work upon his property. He was very keen SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 247 upon new methods. He said he tried to do his duty by his land. " How much land? " I asked. " Just over nine thousand acres," he said. " But you could manage forty or fifty thousand with little more trouble." " If I had it. In some ways it would be easier." " What a waste ! " I said. " Of course you ought not to own these acres; what you ought to be is the agricultural controller of just as big an estate of the public lands as you could manage — with a suitable salary." He reflected upon that idea. He said he did not get much of a salary out of his land as it was, and made a regrettable allusion to Mr. Lloyd George. "When a man tries to do his duty by the land," he said. . . . But here running through the thoughts of the Englishman and the Italian and the Frenchman and the American alike one finds just the same idea of a kind of officialism in ownership. It is an idea that pervades our thought and public dis- cussion to-day everywhere, and it is an idea that is scarcely traceable at all in the thought of the early half of the nineteenth century. The idea of service and responsibility in property has increased and is increasing, the conception of " hold-up," the usurer's conception of his right to be bought out 248 ITALY, FKANCE AND BEITAIN of the way, fades. And the process has been enor- mously enhanced by the various big-scale experi- ments in temporary socialism that have been forced upon the belligerent powers. Men of the most in- dividualistic quality are being educated up to the possibilities of concerted collective action. My friend and fellow-student Y., inventor and business organiser, who used to make the best steam omni- buses in the world, and who is now making all sorts of things for the army, would go pink with suspicious anger at the mere words "inspector" or " socialism " three or four years ago. He does not do so now. A great proportion of this sort of man, this en- ergetic directive sort of man in England, is think- ing socialism to-day. They may not be saying socialism, but they are thinking it. When labour begins to realise what is adrift it will be divided between two things : between appreciative co-opera- tion, for which guild socialism in particular has prepared its mind, and traditional suspicion. I will not offer to guess here which will prevail. § 3 The impression I have of the present mental process in the European communities is that while the official class and the rentier class is thinking SOCIAL CHANGES IN PROGRESS 249 very poorly and inadequately and with a merely obstructive disposition; while the churches are merely wasting their energies in futile self-adver- tisement; while the labour mass is suspicious and disposed to make terms for itself rather than come into any large schemes of reconstruction that will abolish profit as a primary aim in economic life, there is still a very considerable movement towards such a reconstruction. Nothing is so misleading as a careless analogy. In the dead years that fol- lowed the Napoleonic wars, which are often quoted as a precedent for expectation now, the spirit of collective service was near its minimum; it was never so strong and never so manifestly spreading and increasing as it is to-day. But service to what? I have my own very strong preconceptions here, and since my temperament is sanguine they neces- sarily colour my view. I believe that this impulse to collective service can satisfy itself only under the formula that mankind is one state of which God is the undying king, and that the service of men's collective needs is the true worship of God. But eagerly as I would grasp at any evidence that this idea is being developed and taken up by the general consciousness, I am quite unable to per- suade myself that anything of the sort is going on. I do perceive a search for large forms into which 250 ITALY, FKANCE AND BEITAIN the prevalent impulse to devotion can be thrown. But the organised religious bodies, with their creeds and badges and their instinct for self-preservation at any cost, stand between men and their spiritual growth in just the same way the forestallers stand between men and food. Their activities at present are an almost intolerable nuisance. One cannot say "God" but some tout is instantly seeking to pluck one into his particular cave of flummery and orthodoxy. What a rational man means by God is just God. The more you define and argue about God the more he remains the same simple thing. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, modern Hindu relig- ious thought, all agree in declaring that there is one God, master and leader of all mankind, in unending conflict with cruelty, disorder, folly and waste. To my mind, it follows immediately that there can be no king, no government of any sort, which is not either a subordinate or a rebel government, a local usurpation, in the kingdom of God. But no or- ganised religious body has ever had the courage and honesty to insist upon this. They all pander to nationalism and to powers and princes. They exist so to pander. Every organised religion in the world exists only to exploit and divert and waste the religious impulse in man. This conviction that the world kingdom of God is the only true method of human service, is so SOCIAL CHANGES IN PKOGRESS 251 clear and final in my own mind, it seems so inevi- tably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of blindman's buff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political ideas. The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners, he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he must surely find and hold and feel over and guess the name of the plainly visible quarry. Some of the French and Italian people I talked to said they were fighting for " Civilisation." That is one name for the kingdom of God, and I have heard English people use it too. But much of the contemporary thought of England still wanders with its back to the light. Most of it is pawing over jerry-built, secondary things. I have before me a little book, the joint work of Dr. Grey and Mr. Turner, of an ex-public schoolmaster and a manufacturer, called Eclipse or Empire? (The title World Might or Downfall? had already been secured in another quarter. ) It is a book that has been enormously advertised ; it has been almost im- possible to escape its column-long advertisements; it is billed upon the hoardings, and it is on the whole a very able and right-spirited book. It calls for more and better education, for more scientific methods, for less class suspicion and more social explicitness and understanding, for a franker and 252 ITALY, FRANCE AND BEITAIN fairer treatment of labour. But why does it call for these things? Does it call for thein because they are right? Because in accomplishing them one serves God? Not at all. But because otherwise this strange sprawling empire of ours will drop back into a secondary place in the world. These two writers really seem to think that the slack workman, the slacker wealthy man, the negligent official, the con- servative schoolmaster, the greedy usurer, the com- fortable obstructive, confronted with this alterna- tive, terrified at this idea of something or other called the Empire being " eclipsed," eager for the continuance of this undefined glory over their fel- low-creatures called " Empire," will perceive the error of their ways and become energetic, devoted, capable. They think an ideal of that sort is going to change the daily lives of men. ... I sympathise with their purpose, and I deplore their conception of motives. If men will not give themselves for righteousness, they will not give themselves for a geographical score. If they will not work well for the hatred of bad work, they will not work well for the hatred of Germans. This " Empire " idea has been cadging about the British empire, trying to collect enthusiasm and devotion, since the days of Disraeli. It is, I submit, too big for the mean- spirited, and too tawdry and limited for the fine SOCIAL CHANGES IN PEOGRESS 253 and generous. It leaves out the French and the Italians and the Belgians and all our blood brother- hood of allies. It has no compelling force in it. We British are not naturally Imperialist; we are something greater — or something less. For two years and a half now we have been fighting against Imperialism in its most extravagant form. It is a poor incentive to right living to propose to par- ody the devil we fight against. The blind man must lunge again. For when the right answer is seized it answers not only the question why men should work for their fellow-men but also why nation should cease to arm and plan and contrive against nation. The social problem is only the international problem in retail, the international problem is only the social one in gross. My bias rules me altogether here. I see men in social, in economic and in international affairs, alike eager to put an end to conflict, inexpressibly weary of conflict and the waste and pain and death it involves. But to end conflict one must abandon aggressive or uncordial pretensions. Labour is sick at the idea of more strikes and struggles after the war, industrialism is sick of competition and anxious for service, everybody is sick of war. But how can they end any of these clashes except by the definition and recognition of a common end 254 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN which will establish a standard for the trial of every conceivable issue, to which, that is, every other issue can be subordinated ; and what common end can there be in all the world except this idea of the w r orld kingdom of God? What is the good of orienting one's devotion to a firm, or to class solidarity, or La Repuhlique Frangaise, or Poland, or Albania, or such love and loyalty as people pro- fess for King George or King Albert or the Due d'Orleans — it puzzles me why — or any such in- termediate object of self-abandonment? We need a standard so universal that the platelayer may say to the barrister or the duchess, or the Red Indian to the Limehouse sailor, or the Anzac soldier to the Sinn Feiner or the Chinaman, " What are we two doing for it? " And to fill the place of that " it," no other idea is great enough or commanding enough, but only the world kingdom of God. However long he may have to hunt, the blind man who is seeking service and an end to bicker- ings will come to that at last, because of all the thousand other things he may clutch at, nothing else can satisfy his manifest need. VI THE ENDING OF THE WAR About the end of the war there are two chief ways of thinking: there is a simpler sort of mind which desires merely a date, and a more complex kind which wants particulars. To the former class be- long the most of the men out at the front. They are so bored by this war that they would welcome any peace that did not definitely admit defeat — and examine the particulars later. The " tone " of the German army, to judge by its captured letters, is even lower. It would welcome peace in any form. Never in the whole history of the world has a war been so universally unpopular as this war. The mind of the soldier is obsessed by a vision of home-coming for good, so vivid and alluring that it blots out nearly every other consideration. The visions of people at home are of plenty instead of privation, lights up, and the cessation of a hundred tiresome restrictions. And it is natural therefore that a writer rather given to guesses and forecasts 255 256 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN should be asked very frequently to guess how long the war has still to run. All such forecasting is the very wildest of shoot- ing. There are the chances of war to put one out, and of a war that changes far faster than the mili- tary intelligence. I have made various forecasts. At the outset I thought that military Germany would fight at about the 1899 level, would be lavish with cavalry and great attacks, that it would be re- luctant to entrench, and that the French and Brit- ish had learnt the lesson of the Boer War better than the Germans. I trusted to the melodramatic instinct of the Kaiser. I trusted to the quickened intelligence of the British military caste. The first rush seemed to bear me out, and I opened my paper day by day expecting to read of the British and French entrenched and the Germans beating them- selves to death against wire and trenches. In those days I wrote of the French being over the Rhine before 1915. But it was the Germans who en- trenched first. Since then I have made some other attempts. I did not prophesy at all in 1915, so far-as I can re- member. If I had I should certainly have backed the Gallipoli attempt to win. It was the right thing to do, and it was done abominably. It should have given us Constantinople and brought Bulgaria to our side ; it gave us a tragic history of administra- THE ENDING OF THE WAR 257 tive indolence and negligence, and wasted bravery and devotion. I was very hopeful of the western offensive in 1915 ; and in 1916 I counted still on our continuing push. I believe we were very near something like decision this last September, but some archaic dream of doing it with cavalry dashed these hopes. The " Tanks " arrived too late to do their proper work, and their method of use is being worked out very slowly. ... I still believe in the western push, if only we push it for all we are worth. If only we push it with our brains, with our available and still unorganised brains; if only we realise that the art of modern war is to invent and invent and invent. Hitherto I have always hoped and looked for decision, a complete victory that would enable the Allies to dictate peace. But such an expectation is largely conditioned by these delicate questions of adaptability that my tour of the front has made very urgent in my mind. A spiteful German American writer has said that the British would rather kill twenty thousand of their men than break one general. Even a gain of truth in such a remark is a very valid reason for lengthening one's estimate of the duration of the war. There can be no doubt that the Western allies are playing a winning game upon the western front, and that this is the front of decision now. It is not 258 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN in doubt that they are beating the Germans and shoving them back. The uncertain factor is the rate at which they are shoving them back. If they can presently get to so rapid an advance as to bring the average rate since July 1st up to two or three miles a day, then we shall still see the Allies dictating terms. But if the shove drags on at its present pace of less than a mile and four thousand prisoners a week over the limited Somme front only, if nothing is attempted elsewhere to increase the area of pressure,* then the intolerable stress and boredom of the war will bring about a peace long before the Germans are decisively crushed. But the war, universally detested, may go on into 1918 or 1919. Food riots, famine, and general disorgan- isation will come before 1920, if it does. The Al- lies have a winning game before them, but they seem unable to discover and promote the military genius needed to harvest an unquestionable victory. In the long run this may not be an unmixed evil. Victory, complete and dramatic, may be bought too dearly. We need not triumphs out of this war but the peace of the world. This war is altogether unlike any previous war, and its ending, like its development, will follow a course of its own. For a time people's minds * This was written originally before the French offensive at Verdun. THE ENDING OF THE WAR 259 ran into the old grooves, the Germans were going nach Paris and nach London; Lord Curzon filled our minds with a pleasant image of the Bombay Lancers riding down Unter den Linden. But the Versailles precedent of a council of victors dictat- ing terms to the vanquished is not now so evidently in men's minds. The utmost the Allies talk upon now is to say, " We must end the war on German soil." The Germans talk frankly of " holding out." I have guessed that the western offensive will be chiefly on German soil by next June; it is a mere guess, and I admit it is quite conceivable that the " push " may still be grinding out its daily tale of wounded and prisoners in 1918 far from that goal. None of the combatants expected such a war as this, and the consequences is that the world at large has no idea how to get out of it. The war may stay with us like a schoolboy caller, because it does not know how to go. The Italians said as much to me. " Suppose we get to Innsbruck and LaJbich and Trieste," they said, " it isn't an end ! " Lord Northcliffe, I am told, came away from Italy with the conviction that the war would last six years. There is the clearest evidence that nearly every one is anxious to get out of the war now. Nobody at all, except perhaps a few people who may be called to account and a handful of greedy profit- 260 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN seekers, wants to keep it going. Quietly perhaps and unobtrusively, every one I know is now trying to find the way out of the war, and I am convinced that the same is the case in Germany. That is what makes the Peace-at-any-price campaign so ex- asperating. It is like being chased by clamorous geese across a common in the direction in which you want to go. But how are we to get out — with any credit — in such a way as to prevent a subse- quent collapse into another war as frightful? ' At present three programmes are before the world of the way in which the war can be ended. The first of these assumes a complete predominance of our Allies. It has been stated in general terms by Mr. Asquith. Evacuation, reparation, due pun- ishment of those responsible for the war, and guarantees that nothing of the sort shall happen again. There is as yet no mention of the nature of these guarantees. Just exactly what is to happen to Poland, Austria, and the Turkish Empire does not appear in this prospectus. The German Chan- cellor is equally elusive. The Kaiser has stampeded the peace-at-any-price people of Great Britain by solemnly proclaiming that Germany wants peace. We knew that. But what sort of peace? It would seem that we are promised vaguely evacuation and reparation on the western frontier, and in addition there are to be guarantees — but it is quite evident THE ENDING OF THE WAR 261 they are altogether different guarantees from Mr. Asquith's — that nothing of the sort is ever to happen again. The programme of the British and their Allies seems to contemplate something like a forcible disarmament of Germany ; the programme of Germany hints at least at a disarmament and military occupation of Belgium, the desertion of Serbia and Russia, and the surrender to Germany of every facility for a later and more successful German offensive in the west. But it is clear that on these terms as stated the war must go on to the definite defeat of one side or the other or a Eu- ropean chaos. They are irreconcilable sets of terms. Yet it is hard to say how they can be modified on either side, if the war is to be decided only be- tween the belligerents and by standards of national interest only, without reference to any other con- siderations. Our Allies would be insane to leave the Hohenzollern at the end of the war with a knife in his hand, after the display he has made of his quality. To surrender his knife means for the Hohenzollern the abandonment of his dreams, the repudiation of the entire education and training of Germany for half a century. When we realise the fatality of this antagonism, we realise how it is that, in this present anticipation of hell, the weary, wasted and tormented nations must still sustain 262 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN their monstrous dreary struggle. And that is why this thought that possibly there may be a side way out, a sort of turning over of the present endlessly hopeless game into a new and different and man- ageable game through the introduction of some ex- ternal factor, creeps and spreads as I find it creep- ing and spreading. That is what the finer intelligences of America are beginning to realise, and why men in Europe continually turn their eyes to America, with a sur- mise, with a doubt. A point of departure for very much thinking in this matter is the recent conversation of speeches between President Wilson and Viscount Grey. All Europe was impressed by the truth and by Presi- dent Wilson's recognition of the truth that from any other great war after this, America will be un- able to abstain. Can America come into this dis- pute at the end to insist upon something better than a new diplomatic patchwork, and so obviate the later completer Armageddon? Is there, above the claims and passions of Germany, France, Britain, and the rest of them, a conceivable right thing to do for all mankind? That it might also be in the interest of America to support? Is there a Third Party solution, so to speak, which may possibly be the way out from this war? THE ENDING OF THE WAR 263 § 2 Let me sketch out here what I conceive to be the essentials of a world settlement. Some of the items are the mere commonplaces of every one who discusses this question ; some are less frequently in- sisted upon. I have been joining up one thing to another, suggestions I have heard from this man and that, and I believe that it is really possible to state a solution that will be acceptable to the bulk of reasonable men ail about the world. Directly we put the panic-massacres of Dinant and Louvain, the crime of the Lusitania and so on into the cate- gory of symptoms rather than essentials, outrages that call for special punishments and reparations, but that do not enter further into the ultimate settlement, we can begin to conceive a possible world treaty. Let me state the broad outlines of this pacification. The outlines depend one upon the other; each is a condition of the other. It is upon these lines that the thoughtful as dis- tinguished from the merely combative people, seem to be drifting everywhere. In the first place, it is agreed that there would have to be an identical treaty between all the great powers of the world binding them to cer- tain things. It would have to provide: That the few great industrial states capable of 264 ITALY, PRANCE AND BRITAIN producing modern war equipment should take over and control completely the manufacture of all munitions of war in the world. And that they should absolutely close the supply of such ma- terial to all the other states in the world. This is a far easier task than many people suppose. War has now been so developed on its mechanical side that the question of its continuance or abolition rests now entirely upon four or five great powers. Next comes the League of Peace idea; that there should be an International Tribunal for the dis- cussion and settlement of international disputes. That the dominating powers should maintain land and sea forces only up to a limit agreed upon and for internal police use only or for the purpose of enforcing the decisions of the Tribunal. That they should all be bound to attack and suppress any power amongst them which increases its war equip- ment beyond its defined limits. That much has already been broached in several quarters. But so far is not enough. It ignores the chief processes of that economic war that aids and abets and is inseparably a part of modern in- ternational conflicts. If we are to go as far as we have already stated in the matter of international controls, then we must go further and provide that the International Tribunal should have power to consider and set aside all tariffs and localised privi- THE ENDING OF THE WAR 265 leges that seem grossly unfair or seriously irritat- ing between the various states of the world. It should have power to pass or revise all new tariff, quarantine, alien exclusion, or the like legisla- tion affecting international relations. Moreover, it should take over and extend the work of the In- ternational Bureau of Agriculture at Eome with a view to the control of all staple products. It should administer the sea law of the world, and control and standardise freights in the common interests of mankind. Without these provisions it would be merely preventing the use of certain weapons; it would be doing nothing to prevent countries stran- gling or suffocating each other by commercial war- fare. It would not abolish war. Now upon this issue people do not seem to me to be yet thinking very clearly. It is the exception to find any one among the peace talkers who really grasps how inseparably the necessity for free ac- cess for every one to natural products, to coal and tropical products e.g., free shipping at non-dis- criminating tariffs, and the recognition by a Tri- bunal of the principle of common welfare in trade matters, is bound up with the ideal of a permanent world peace. But any peace that does not provide for these things will be merely the laying down of the sword in order to take up the cudgel. And a "peace" that did not rehabilitate industrial Bel- 266 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN gium, Poland, and the north of France, would call imperatively for the imposition upon the Allies of a system of tariffs in the interests of these countries, and for a bitter economic " war after the war " against Germany. That restoration is of course an implicit condition to any attempt to set up an eco- nomic peace in the world. These things being arranged for the future, it would be further necessary to set up an interna- tional boundary commission, subject to certain de- fining conditions agreed upon by the belligerents, to redraw the map of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This war does afford an occasion such as the world may never have again of tracing out the " natural map " of mankind, the map that will secure the maximum of homogeneity and the minimum of racial and economic freedom. All idealistic people hope for a restored Poland. But it is a childish thing to dream of a contented Poland with Posen still under the Prussian heel, with Cracow cut off and without a Baltic port. These claims of Poland to completeness have a higher sanction than the mere give and take of belligerents in congress. Moreover this International Tribunal, if it was indeed to prevent war, would need also to have power to intervene in the affairs of any country or region in a state of open and manifest disorder, for the protection of foreign travellers and of persons THE ENDING OF THE WAR 267 and interests localised in that country but foreign to it. Such an agreement as I have here sketched out would at once lift international politics out of the bloody and hopeless squalor of the present conflict. It is,. I venture to assert, the peace of the reasonable man in any country whatever. But it needs the attention of such a disengaged people as the Ameri- can people to work it out and supply it with — weight. It needs putting before the world with some sort of authority greater than its mere entire reasonableness. Otherwise it will not come before the minds of ordinary men with the effect of a practicable proposition. I do not see any such plant springing from the European battlefields. It is America's supreme opportunity. And yet it is the common sense of the situation, and the solu- tion that must satisfy a rational German as com- pletely as a rational Frenchman or Englishman. It has nothing against it but the prejudice against new and entirely novel things. §3 In throwing out the suggestion that America should ultimately undertake the responsibility of proposing a world peace settlement, I admit that I run counter to a great deal of European feeling. 268 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN Nowhere in Europe now do people seem to be in love with the United States. But feeling is a colour that passes. And the question is above mat- ters of feeling. Whether the belligerents dislike Americans or the Americans dislike the belligerents is an incidental matter. The main question is of the duty of a great and fortunate nation towards the rest of the world and the future of mankind. I do not know how far Americans are aware of the trend of feeling in Europe at the present time. Both France and Great Britain have a sense of righteousness in this war such as no nation, no people, has ever felt in war before. We know we are fighting to save all the world from the rule of force and the unquestioned supremacy of the mili- tary idea. Few Frenchmen or Englishmen can imagine the war presenting itself to an American intelligence under any other guise. At the inva- sion of Belgium we were astonished that America did nothing. At the sinking of the Lusitania all Europe looked to America. The British mind con- templates the spectacle of American destroyers act- ing as bottleholders to German submarines with a dazzled astonishment, " Manila/' we gasp. In England we find excuses for America in our own past. In '66 we betrayed Denmark; in '70 we de- serted France. The French have not these memo- ries. They do not understand the damning tempta- THE ENDING OF THE WAR 269 tions of those who feel they are " au-dessus de la melee." They believe they had some share in the independence of America, that there is a sacred cause in republicanism, that there are grounds for a peculiar sympathy between France and the United States in republican institutions. They do not realise that Germany and America have a common experience in recent industrial development, and a common belief in the " degeneracy " of all nations with a lower rate of trade expansion. They do not realise how a political campaign with the slogan of "Peace and a Full Dinner-Pail" looks in the Middle West, what an honest, simple, rational ap- peal it makes there. Atmospheres alter values. In Europe, strung up to tragic and majestic issues, to Europe gripping a gigantic evil in a death strug- gle, that would seem an inscription worthy of a pigstye. A child in Europe would know now that the context is, " until the bacon-buyer calls," and it is difficult to realise that adult citizens in Amer- ica may be incapable of realising that obvious con- text. I set these things down plainly. There is a very strong disposition in all the European countries to believe America fundamentally indifferent to the rights and wrongs of the European struggle; sen- timentally interested perhaps, but fundamentally indifferent. President Wilson is regarded as a 270 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN mere academic sentimentalist hj a great number of Europeans. There is a very widespread disposition to treat America lightly and contemptuously, to believe that America, as one man put it to me re- cently, " hasn't the heart to do anything great or the guts to do anything wicked." There is a strong undercurrent of hostility therefore to the idea of America having any voice whatever in the final settlement after the war. It is not for a British writer to analyse the appearances that have thus affected American world prestige. I am telling what I have observed. Let me relate two trivial anecdotes. X. came to my hotel in Paris one day to take me to see a certain munitions organisation. He took from his pocket a picture postcard that had been sent him by a well-meaning American acquaintance from America. It bore a portrait of General Lafayette, and under it was printed the words, " General Lafayette, Colonel in the United States army' 9 " Oh ! these Americans ! " said X. with a gesture. And as I returned to Paris from the French front, our train stopped at some intermediate station alongside of another train of wounded men. Ex- actly opposite our compartment was a car. It ar- rested our conversation. It was, as it were, an ambulance de grand luxe; it was a thing of very THE ENDING OF THE WAE 271 light, bright wood and very golden decorations; at one end of it was painted very large and fair the Stars and Stripes, and at the other fair-sized letters of gold proclaimed — I am sure the lady will not resent this added gleam of publicity — " Presented by Mrs. William Vanderbilt." My companions were French writers and French military men, and they were discussing with very keen interest that persistent question, " the ideal battery." But that ambulance sent a shaft of light into our carriage, and we stared together. Then Colonel Z. pointed with two fingers and remarked to us, without any excess of admiration : "America! " Then he shrugged his shoulders and pulled down the corners of his mouth. We felt there was nothing more to add to that, and after a litle pause the previous question was resumed. I state these things in order to make it clear that America will start at a disadvantage when she starts upon the mission of salvage and reconcilia- tion which is, I believe, her proper role in this world conflict. One would have to be blind and deaf on this side to be ignorant of European per- suasion of America's triviality. I would not like to be an American travelling in Europe now, and those I meet here and there have some of the air of men 272 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN who at any moment may be dunned for a debt. They explode without provocation into excuses and expostulations. And I will further confess that when Viscount Grey answered the intimations of President Wilson and ex-President Taft of an American initiative to found a World League for Peace, by asking if Amer- ica was prepared to back that idea with force, he spok& the doubts of all thoughtful European men. No one but an American deeply versed in the idiosyncrasies of the American population can an- swer that question, or tell us how far the delusion of world isolation which has prevailed in America for several generations has been dispelled. But if the answer to Lord Grey is " Yes," then I think history will emerge with a complete justification of the ob- stinate maintenance of neutrality by America. It is the end that reveals a motive. It is our ultimate act that sometimes teaches us our original inten- tion. No one can judge the United States yet. Were you neutral because you are too mean and cowardly, or too stupidly selfish, or because you had in view an end too great to be sacrificed to a mo- ment of indignant pride and a force in reserve too precious to dispel? That is the still open question for America. Every country is a mixture of many strands. There is a Base America, there is a Dull America, THE ENDING OF THE WAK 273 there is an Ideal and Heroic America. And I am convinced that at present Europe underrates and misjudges the possibilities of the latter. All about the world to-day goes a certain free- masonry of thought. It is an impalpable and hardly conscious union of intention. It thinks not in terms of national but human experience ; it falls into directions and channels of thinking that lead inevitably to the idea of a world-state under the rule of one righteousness. In no part of the world is this modern type of mind so abundantly de- veloped, less impeded by antiquated and perverse political and religious forms, and nearer the sources of political and administrative power, than in America. It does not seem to matter what thou- sand other things America may happen to be, see- ing that it is also that. And so, just as I cling to the belief, in spite of hundreds of adverse phenom- ena, that the religious and social stir of these times must ultimately go far to unify mankind under the kingship of God, so do I cling also to the persuasion that there are intellectual forces among the rational elements in the belligerent centres, among the other neutrals and in America, that will co-operate in enabling the United States to play that role of the Unimpassioned Third Party, which becomes more and more necessary to a generally satisfactory end- ing of the war. 274 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN § 4 The idea that the settlement of this war must be what one might call an unimpassioned settlement or, if you will, a scientific settlement or a judicial and not a treaty settlement, a settlement, that is, based upon some conception of what is right and necessary rather than upon the relative success or failure of either set of belligerents to make its Will the standard of decision, is one that, in a great variety of forms and partial developments, I find gaining ground in the most different circles. The war was an adventure, it was the German adven- ture under the Hohenzollern tradition, to dominate the world. It was to be the last of the Conquests. It has failed. Without calling upon the reserve strength of America the civilised world has de- feated it, and the war continues now partly upon the issue whether that adventure shall ever be re- peated or whether it shall be made forever impos- sible, and partly because Germany has no organ but its Hohenzollern organisation through which it can admit its failure and develop its latent readi- ness for a new understanding on lines of mutual toleration. For that purpose nothing more re- luctant could be devised than Hohenzollern im- perialism. But the attention of every combatant ' — it is not only Germany now — has been concen- THE ENDING OF THE WAR 275 trated upon military necessities; every nation is a clenched nation, with its powers of action centred in its own administration, bound by many strategic threats and declarations, and dominated by the idea of getting and securing advantages. It is inevi- table that a settlement made in a conference of bel- ligerents alone will be short-sighted, harsh, limited by merely incidental necessities, and obsessed by the idea of hostilities and rivalries continuing perennially; it will be a trading of advantages for subsequent attacks. It will be a settlement alto- gether different in effect as well as in spirit from a world settlement made primarily to establish a new phase in the history of mankind. Let me take three instances of the impossibility of complete victory on either side giving a solution satisfactory to the conscience and intelligence of reasonable men. The first — on which I will not expatiate, for every one knows of its peculiar difficulty — is Po- land. The second is a little one, but one that has taken hold of my imagination. In the settlement of boundaries preceding this war the boundary be- tween Serbia and north-eastern Albania was drawn with an extraordinary disregard of the elementary needs of the Albanians of that region. It ran along the foot of the mountains which form their summer 276 ITALY, FKANCE AND BRITAIN pastures and their refuge from attack, and it cut their mountains off from their winter pastures and market towns. Their whole economic life was cut to pieces and existence rendered intolerable for them. Now an intelligent third party settling Eu- rope would certainly restore these market towns., Ipek, Jakova, and Prisrend, to Albania. But the Albanians have no standing in this war; theirs is the happy lot that might have fallen to Belgium had she not resisted; the war goes to and fro through Albania; and when the settlement comes, more particularly if it is a settlement with the allies of Serbia in the ascendant, it is highly im- probable that the slightest notice will be taken of iUbania's plight in this region. In which case these particular Albanians will either be driven into exile to America or they will be goaded to revolt, which will be followed no doubt by the punitive procedure usual in the Balkan peninsula. For my third instance I would step from a mat- ter as small as three market towns and the grazing of a few thousand head of sheep to a matter as big as the world. What is going to happen to the shipping of the world after this war? The Ger- mans, with that combination of cunning and stu- pidity which baffles the rest of mankind, have set themselves to destroy the mercantile marine not THE ENDING OF THE WAR 277 merely of Britain and France but of Norway and Sweden, Holland, and all the neutral countries. The German papers openly boast that they are building a big mercantile marine that will start out to take up the world's overseas trade directly peace is declared. Every such boast receives careful at- tention in the British press. We have heard a very great deal about the German will-to-power in this war, but there is something very much older and tougher and less blatant and conspicuous, the Brit- ish will. In the British papers there has appeared and gained a permanent footing this phrase, " ton for ton." This means that Britain will go on fight- ing until she has exacted and taken over from Ger- many the exact equivalent of all the British ship- ping Germany has submarined. People do not real- ise that a time may come when Germany will be glad and eager to give Russia, France and Italy all that they require of her, when Great Britain may be quite content to let her allies make an advantage- ous peace and herself still go on fighting Germany. She does not intend to let that furtively created German mercantile marine ship or coal or exist upon the high seas — so long as it can be used as an economic weapon against her. Neither Britain nor France nor Italy can tolerate anything of the sort. 278 ITALY, PRANCE AND BRITAIN It has been the peculiar boast of Great Britain that her shipping has been unpatriotic. She has been the impartial carrier of the whole world. Her shippers may have served their own profit; they have never served hers. The fluctuations of freight charges may have been a universal nuisance, but they have certainly not been an aggressive national conspiracy. It is Britain's case against any Ger- man ascendancy at sea, an entirely convincing case, that such an ascendancy would be used ruthlessly for the advancement of German world power. The long-standing freedom of the seas vanishes at the German touch. So beyond the present war there opens the agreeable prospect of a mercantile strug- gle, a bitter freight war and a war of Navigation Acts for the ultimate control in the interests of Germany or of the Anti-German allies, of the world's trade. Now how in any of these three cases can the bar- gaining and trickery of diplomatists and the ad- vantage-hunting of the belligerents produce any stable and generally beneficial solution? What all the neutrals want, what every rational and far- sighted man in the belligerent countries wants, what the common sense of the whole world de- mands, is neither the " ascendancy " of Germany nor the "ascendancy" of Great Britain nor the " ascendancy " of any state or people or interest THE ENDING OF THE WAR 279 in the shipping of the world. The plain right thing is a world shipping control, as impartial as the Postal Union. What right and reason and the wel- fare of coming generations demand in Poland is a unified and autonomous Poland, with Cracow, Danzig, and Posen brought into the same Polish- speaking ring-fence with Warsaw. What every one who has looked into the Albanian question de- sires is that the Albanians shall pasture their flocks and market their sheepskins in peace, free of Serb- ian control. In every country at present at war, the desire of the majority of people is for a non-con- tentious solution that will neither crystallise a triumph nor propitiate an enemy, but which will embody the economic and ethnological and geo- graphical common sense of the matter. But while the formulae of national belligerence are easy, familiar, blatant, and insistently present, the gen- tler, greater formulae of that wider and newer world pacificism has still to be generally under- stood. It is so much easier to hate and suspect than negotiate generously and patiently; it is so much harder to think than to let go in a shrill storm of hostility. The national pacifist is ham- pered not only by belligerency but by a sort of malignant extreme pacificism as impatient and silly as the extremest patriotism. V 280 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN § 5 I sketch out these ideas of a world pacification from a third party standpoint, because I find them crystallising out in men's minds. I note how men discuss the suggestion that America may play a large part in such a permanent world pacification. There I end my account rendered. These things are as much a part of my impression of the war as a shell burst on the Carso or the yellow trenches at Martinpuich. But I do not know how opinion is going in America, and I am quite unable to esti- mate the power of these new ideas I set down, rela- tive to the blind forces of instinct and tradition that move the mass of mankind. On the whole I be- lieve more in the reason-guided will-power of men than I did in the early half of 1914. If I am doubt- ful whether after all this war will "end war," I think on the other hand it has had such an effect of demonstration, that it may start a process of thought and conviction, it may sow the world with organisations and educational movements, consid- erable enough to grapple with and either arrest or prevent the next great war catastrophe. I am by no means sure even now that this is not the last great war in the experience of men. I still believe it may be. The most dangerous thing in the business so far as the future is concerned is the wide disregard THE ENDING OF THE WAR 281 of the fact that national economic fighting is bound to cause war, and the almost universal ignorance of the necessity of subjecting shipping and over- seas and international trade to some kind of in- ternational control. These two things, restraint of trade and advantage of shipping, are the chief material causes of anger between modern states. But they would not be in themselves dangerous things if it were not for the exaggerated delusions of kind and difference and the crack-brained " loy- alties " arising out of these that seem still to rule men's minds. Years ago I came to the conviction that much of the evil in human life was due to the inherent vicious disposition of the human mind to intensify classification.* I do not know how it will strike the reader, but to me this war, this slaughter of eight or nine million people, is due almost en- tirely to this little, almost universal lack of a clear- headedness; I believe that the share of wickedness in making war is quite secondary to the share of this universal shallow silliness of outlook. These effigies of emperors and kings and statesmen that lead men into war, these legends of nationality and glory, would collapse before our universal derision, if they were not stuffed tight and full with the un- thinking folly of the common man. * See my " First and Last Things," Bk. I, and my " A Modern Utopia," Ch. X. 282 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN There is in us all, an indolent capacity for suf- fering evil and dangerous things that I contemplate each year of my life with a deepening incredulity. I perceive we suffer them; I record the futile pro- tests of the intelligence. It seems to me incredible that men should not rise up out of this muddy, bloody, wasteful mess of a world war, with a resolu- tion to end forever the shams, the prejudices, the pretences and habits that have impoverished their lives, slaughtered our sons, and wasted the world, a resolution so powerful and sustained that nothing could withstand it. But it is not apparent that any such will arises. Does it appear at all? I find it hard to answer that question because my own answer varies with my mood. There are moods when it seems to me that nothing of the sort is happening. This war has written its warning in letters of blood and flame and anguish in the skies of mankind for two years and a half. When I look for the collective response to that warning, I see a multitude of little chaps crawling about their private ends like mites in an old cheese. The kings are still in their places, not a royal prince has been killed in this otherwise uni- versal slaughter; when the fatuous portraits of the monarchs flash upon the screen the widows and orphans still break into loyal song. The ten thou- THE ENDING OF THE WAR 283 sand religions of mankind are still ten thousand religions, all busy at keeping men apart and hostile. I see scarcely a measurable step made anywhere towards that world kingdom of God, which is, I assert, the manifest solution, the only formula that can bring peace to all mankind. Mankind as a whole seems to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing in thirty months of war. And then on the other hand I am aware of much quiet talking. This book tells of how I set out to see the war, and it is largely conversation. . . . Perhaps men have always expected miracles to happen; if one had always lived in the night and only heard tell of the day, I suppose one would have expected dawn to come as a vivid flash of light. I suppose one would still think it was night long after the things about one had crept out of the darkness into visibility. In comparison with all previous wars there has been much more thinking and much more discussion. If most of the talk seems to be futile, if it seems as if every one were talking and nobody doing, it does not follow that things are not quietly slipping and sliding out of their old adjustments amidst the babble and be- cause of the babble. Multitudes of men must be struggling with new ideas. It is reasonable to argue that there must be reconsideration, there 284 ITALY, FRANCE AND BRITAIN must be time, before these millions of mental ef- forts can develop into a new collective purpose and really show — in consequences. But that they will do so is my hope always and on the whole, except in moods of depression and im- patience, my belief. When one has travelled to a conviction so great as mine it is difficult to doubt that other men faced by the same universal facts will not come to the same conclusion. I believe that only through a complete simplification of re- ligion to its fundamental idea, to a world-wide real- isation of God as the king of the heart and of all mankind, setting aside monarchy and national ego- tism altogether, can mankind come to any certain happiness and security. The precedent of Islam helps my faith in the creative inspiration of such a renascence of religion. The Sikh, the Moslem, the Puritan have shown that men can fight better for a Divine Idea than for any flag or monarch in the world. It seems to me that illusions fade and effigies lose credit everywhere. It is a very wonder- ful thing to me that China is now a republic. . . , I take myself to be very nearly an average man, abnormal only by reason of a certain mental rapid- ity. I conceive myself to be thinking as the world thinks, and if I find no great facts, I find a hundred little indications to reassure me that God comes. Even those who have neither the imagination nor THE ENDING OF THE WAR 285 the faith to apprehend God as a reality will, I think, realise presently that the Kingdom of God over a world-wide system of republican states, is the only possible formula under which we may hope to unify and save mankind. THE END PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA T HE following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by the same author. BY THE SAME AUTHOR God The Invisible King Ready, May, 1917 Readers of " Mr. Britling Sees It Through " were par- ticularly impressed with the religious note which it sounded especially in its closing pages. The funda- mental ideas of God and of the spiritual life of man therein set forth were responsible to no inconsiderable degree for the tremendous appeal of that story. These facts make this volume in which Mr. Wells sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible his religious belief, of great value. Mr. Wells describes the book himself as one written by a man " sympathetic with all sincere re- ligious feelings " and yet a man who feels that he must protest against those dogmas which have obscured, per- verted and prevented the religious life of mankind. The spirit of this book, he says, is like that of a missionary, who would only too gladly overthrow and smash some Polynesian divinity of shark's teeth and painted wood and mother-of-pearl. The purpose of the volume like* the purpose of that missionary is not primarily to shock and insult but to liberate — the author is impatient with the reverence that stands between man and God. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR Mr. Britling Sees It Through $1.60 "A powerful, strong story. Has wonderful pages . . . gems of emotional literature. . . . Nothing could express the whole, momentous situation in England and in the United States in so few words and such convincing tone. . . . For clear thinking and strong feeling, the finest picture of the crises in the Anglo-Saxon world that has yet been produced." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. " Not only Mr. Wells' best book, but the best book so far published concerning the war." — Chicago Tribune. " The most thoughtfully and carefully worked-out book Mr. Wells has given us for many a year. ... A ver- itable cross-section of contemporary English life . . . admirable, full of color and utterly convincing." — New York Times. " A war epic. ... To read it is to grasp, as perhaps never before, the state of affairs among those to whom war is the actual order of the day. Impressive, true, tender, . . . infinitely moving and potent." — Chicago Tribune. " For the first time we have a novel which touches the life of the last two years without impertinence. This is a really remarkable event, and Mr. Wells' book is a proud achievement. . . . The free sincerity of this book, with its unfailing distinction of tone, is beautiful ... a crea- tion with which we have as yet seen, in this country at least, nothing whatever to compare." — London Times. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR What is Coming? Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 This book is a forecast of the consequences of the war. The profound psychological changes, the industrial and diplomatic developments, the reorganizations in society which are sure to fol- low so great an upheaval of the established institutions, are sub- jects to which Mr. Wells devotes his deep insight into men's minds as well as his prophetic ability. Out of the materials of the past and the history-making present, he constructs a brilliant and persuasive picture of the future, as sure of touch as his daring, imaginative essays, as full of interest as his novels. Of special interest are his chapters on the United States, which set forth the belief that here in the New World there is being moulded a larger understanding of the kinship of nations; an awakening from the great mistake that ideals are geographically determined ; that in America there is the foundation of a capacity for just estimate, which will ultimately find its way into the handling and directing of international affairs. Out of the chaos will come a dominant peace alliance, in which the United States will take a leading part. "Wells speaks with remarkable sureness and conviction, nor are his prophetic conclusions, founded on facts, reasonable re- search and deep knowledge of human nature, to be doubted. The voice of the prophet is well tempered and moderate, and the nations discussed will do well to heed." — Chicago Herald. "Of widest interest and consequence are Mr. Wells's study and discussion of those present international tendencies, nascent needs and movements toward friendship out of which will have to grow, whose probable growth, indeed, he forecasts, some sort of leaguing together of the nations looking toward a greater measure of peace than the world has heretofore enjoyed." — New York Times. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Research Magnificent Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 A book of real distinction is this novel from the pen of an author whose popularity in America is no less than in his native England, where he is put in the front ranks of present-day writers. The Research Magnificent is pronounced by those critics who have read it to be the best work that Mr. Wells has done, realizing fully the promises of greatness which not a few have found in its immediate predecessors. The author's theme — the research mag- nificent — is the story of one man's search for the kingly life. A subject such as this is one peculiarly suited to Mr. Wells's literary genius, and he has handled it with the skill, the feeling, the vision, which it requires. " Displays the best in Wells as a thinker, as a critic of man, as a student of social and political crises, and — most of all — as a novelist." — Boston Transcript. "An Extraordinary ... a Wonderful Book." — New Republic, "A novel of distinct interest, with a powerful appeal to the intellect." — New York Herald. "Challenges discussion at a hundred points. It abounds in stimulating ideas." — New York Times. "A noble, even a consecrated work . . . the crown of his career." — New York Globe. "A notable novel, perhaps its author's greatest . . . might al- most be called an epitome of human existence." — Chicago Herald, THE MACMILLAN COMPANY* Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR BEALBY With frontispiece. Cloth, i2mo, $1.3$ This is the story of the revolt of a little boy who does not want to be a steward's helper or a member of the serving class but whose heart is set on accomplishing "something big." It is told with a delightful sense of the whimsical. The situa- tions abound in humor — that peculiarly fascinating humor for which Mr. Wells is so famous. Bealby, alias Dick Maltravers, Who runs away from his troubles only to encounter fresh ones, is as wholly charming a character as Mr. Wells has ever cre- ated and one whose ever changing fortunes the reader follows with unbroken interest. " 'Bealby* because of its sprightly style and multitude of inci- dents is never wearisome." — Boston Transcript "Such an excursion into the realm of fun as Wells Has not made since 'The History of Mr. Polly* . . . There are more sparkles to the square inch than in any other Wells book." — Cincinnati Enquirer. "Mr. Wells has written a book as unpolitical as 'Alice in Wonderland' and as innocent of economics as of astrology. A deliciously amusing comedy of action swift, violent, and fantastic." — New York Times. "It is Wells on a vacation, a vacation from the war; a vaca- tion that will be enjoyed by every one who takes it with himw" — New York Globe. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 " Easily the best piece of fiction of the book season." — Graphic. " The book has all the attractive Wells whimsies, piquancies, and fertilities of thought, and the story is absolutely good to read." — New York World. " This time Mr. Wells is very little of a socialist, con- siderably of a philosopher, prevailingly humorous, and always clever." — The Bellman. " A new novel by H. G. Wells is always a treat, and * The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman ' will prove no disap- pointment. . . . The book in many ways is one of the most successful this versatile sociologist has turned out. w — La Follette's Magazine. " A novel of unusual excellence told with fine literary skill. Mr. Wells has a way of going under the surface of things while presenting his incidents and characters." — Boston Globe. " The book is the most complete and successful of the group to which it belongs." — New York Times. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York BY THE SAME AUTHOR The War in the Air Illustrated, i2mo, $1.50 " It is not every man who can write a story of the improbable and make it appear probable, and yet that is what Mr. Wells has done in ' The War in the Air.' "—The Outlook. "A more entertaining and original story of the future has probably never been written." — Town and Country. " . . Displays that remarkable ingenuity for which Mr. Wells is now famous." — Washington Star. " Forcible in the extreme." — Baltimore Sun. " It is an exciting tale, a novel military "history."— N. Y. Post New Worlds for Old 'Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 'Macmillan Standard Library Edition, 50 cents. ". . . is a readable, straightaway account of Socialism; it is singularly informing and all in an undidactic way." — Chicago Evening Post. " The book impresses us less as a defence of Socialism than as a work of art. In a literary sense, Mr. Wells has never done anything better." — Argonaut. "... a very good introduction to Socialism. It will attract and interest those who are not of that faith, and correct those who are." — The Dial. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue Hew Yorfc > % / v- , x <^- * fe c9 -4 0^ v \ o -^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proc Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide , Treatment Date: msv 20(! Preservationtechnolog WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVA 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 V v* V '"-P. % p A V T *.**: W. W ,^% « * ♦/'** xOo W %/ - K %** **■ • o. 1,°°,. otf * .0° ^ W 'V % ' ' ; ^. ^ X^'^ ,** * ,\ .11! $0 * 8 I '•