HnCKLU m CUKUFC A PAPER PUBLISHED N THE INTEREST OF GOOD FELLOWSHIP AMONG ALL NATIONS. EUROPE COMPANY. FRANKFWt f MAIV MONDAY, AUGUST 5. 1918 LLOYD GEORGE, ADRESSING THE SAMMIES; "My boy, are yoa able to appreciate the high bom.-! that you are permit ted to die !< NEWSFROMAMERICA. Symptoms of imminent Awakening. Even the Cbteaga "Daily Tribune" takes ex- ception to Eaginh censoring of American WATH ARE YOU FIGHTING FOR, SAMMY? WAR NEWS. Tlie fifth Anniversary of ^ A ^t^a^. 1 ^ fhf o Kj!t,i il and -oi|,| km-vv that .in ftlropoan Har v PAGE OP THE GERMAN PROPAGANDA ORGAN, "AMERICA IK EUROPE/' PUBLISHED FOR CIRCULATION AMONG AMERICAN TROOPS The booty of the Central-] after four years of ws At the end of the. fourth yea] I the number of prisoners stalioned 3,800,000 of whom 2,300,00o'are in t by' 840,000 alone has merican to do bis duty ral called "the Germans be a great satisfaction ,;i,.l Hoard considers America! WitSOn'S Methods cat" t ru'th ? a ' What antouTln can>t vf ^ n * War - United Slate* aigainst truth! Spenking on Ihe various investigations of ation really means: Amenca i* , u. s . Aeria j serv ice Senator Brandegee German; as she of Connecticut according to the N.Y. Evening nd not ait fcnglaml has painted p O3t , naf | e ^ following drastic statement . . 1 in (be United State* Senate: ""'iTr linr'Siokl ^ST 1 "' rlle Prc w *ot nas already two reports l .Itliir it i. nil MiritnfTf "" 4 ""' ' r ' 1 ""^ knows "' ! ' " make ig bv-pliy liiwt >' Crw AT/} ""'"' I' ub!ic shoujd the ! be anytlting bad Tit Bits. THE WAR ASD THE TABLKXO The following :m ia th tMlstrargh Get itp, You laty mner! We ntwd the sbtels for UWtcloth And If, nfarly lint for dlnoer-. irstSanoiy The tbtttrtt itont go no itself to the its are rather ehool boards "The war, continued (be Senator, can't be won with privacy and mystery. If there ; ^ parkartigem Garten }j I ' ; ;, etrmen ErholungsaufenthaH m'h""ii during the same period cam, to 38,000, that of vehicle* fro ,000, Xot counting the destro the number of captured Tanks is ! Furthermore-, to the number of ri iddi'U since the first of August 1 on, to that of Artillerie ammui 200 million rounds. Moreover 30 motives and 28.000 railroad-cars TP< This enormous booty shows Herman General stuff accomplished weaken (he fighting-force of U md to decrease' their nalional-w jillions. SMODd Sammy: (after refection) What do of th. Colonel sa.? to lhaf- satisfy and further tun!at< halt >rmaay io the United Stales cvta Sowe i!ojm P ta Victoria aa*^**" Jibtwjt*. Quill appropriate! Yw BJ " he cabbage even otlr iu new denomi PALMENGARTEN FRANK1 BeJicbtester Vcrgoflgoneplati: Oro6-Fr :; Re*chhaltie Mitten- nad Abodl Erstkiasbig Blere ->Rein* neue u, Alt jedert Mittwoch i PAGE OF THE GERMAN PROPAGANDA ORGAN, "AMERICA IN EUROPE," PUBLISHED FOR CIRCULATION AMONG AMERICAN TROOPS SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR ELMER T. CLARK 1 ^HR| wl^^^^^^^^^^^m 1 11 IV , I I DR. ELMER T. CLARK IN TREXCH EQUIPMENT SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR BY ELMER T. CLARK ILLUSTRATED NEW XBJr YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, George H. Doran Company Printed in the United States of America PREFACE ONE is perhaps guilty of an unwarranted rashness when he submits another contribution to the multitude of discussions which have covered so many phases of the great world war, especially since it comes after hostilities have ceased, and I gather courage to risk it only from the fact that the subjects with which these essays deal have not been adequately interpreted to the American people. Indeed they have scarcely been touched at all, and yet they are of vital importance to our thinking and to the settlement of the lines along which our social effort is to proceed in the future. When there are so many voices calling us to follow them, and since so many of them are calling us in oppo- site directions, one should present his credentials be- fore he presumes to speak. During the time which I spent on the western front with the American armies, it fell to my unfortunate lot to be drafted many times for the purpose of guiding sight-seers through the sec- tor we occupied, and I became very familiar with the tourist who came out to spend a day and see "the ter- rible war." Many times they were veritable nuisances, yet from them we secured a great deal of amusement. These people, returning to America, have enlightened the public so thoroughly on all the events and move- rr i ; "V t '. fc 1 I U vi PREFACE ments of the war that one is sometimes inclined to think that nothing more remains to be said on the subject The shorter the stay abroad the more authority does one frequently throw into his utterances ; and so I am persuaded that every person who writes should attach to his writing a full statement of the experience which qualifies him to put his pen to paper. I remember one person who was quite frank in this regard. The regularity with which I guided tourists across No Man's Land had become a joke among the officers of the regiment, and we would sometimes gather in the evening to recount the experiences of these won- dering visitors at the front. One night the chaplain came into the assembly with a copy of a well-known magazine which contained an article on some general subject connected with the welfare of the American soldier. The writer began by announcing that he had the answer to all the questions the people had been asking about the welfare of their boys in France, and as proof of this he cited and numbered his experiences. He had spent ten days with five hun- dred officers, presumably on the transport which car- ried those officers to France. He had visited general headquarters, which was a hundred miles behind the lines, and had a conversation with Pershing. He had talked with doctors, officers, and leading people. He had lived four days in a Y. M. C. A. dug-out at the front. These and similar facts were the basis on which he rested his statement that he had the answers to all the questions the people were asking. Naturally, there PREFACE vii was great glee among the officers when the chaplain read to us the article in question. Nevertheless the journalist established a good precedent, and one which I shall here follow. Since the entry of the United States into the war I have made two extended trips through certain of the European nations involved, and I was accredited as a correspondent by the foreign offices of both Lon- don and Paris. The first trip was undertaken for the sole purpose of making intensive social investiga- tions for the daily and religious press of America; on the second I was commissioned to do some special jour- nalistic work for the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion, and also to continue the social studies I had pre- viously made for the press. On these journeys I have gone into all sections of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Italy, visiting all of the great cities and a multitude of smaller towns and villages. In more than one hundred and fifty centers I have studied social conditions in relation to the soldiers, the civilian pop- ulation, and the various institutions of the world's activities. I have gone into the churches, the schools, the universities, the factories, and the homes of the people; I have lived in the east end of London and shared the life of the people down Whitechapel way; in Rome, London, Dublin, Paris, and a hundred other places, I have mixed freely with the common people of the streets. Night after night and day after day I have watched the evil machinations of the most sinis- ter agencies working in European society, and for a viii PREFACE year I have delved into the facts and the causes of the reign of immorality in the warring countries; I know personally scores of persons involved, I have heard the stories in courts of justice, I have seen the workings of the devilish agencies with my own eyes. And in the same degree I have studied as hest I could the other social institutions and influences. As regards the actual war itself, I have not heen altogether lacking in opportunities for study. I have been in scores of military centers of all kinds; I have visited and personally inspected rest camps, base hos- pitals, convalescent camps, training centers, munition factories, ordnance plants, lumber camps, aerial train- ing centers, naval aviation stations, construction camps, mine bases, destroyer bases, submarine bases, army headquarters, and ports of entry. I have lived for an extended period with the fighting men of the American armies, marching with them across France and moving with them into the front lines. For months I have lived with a division under the enemy's fire, sleeping in the trenches and dug-outs, moving at will through support lines, front trenches, and outposts in No Man's Land, and in every way sharing the experiences of the men. I have driven a truck for many successive nights through the American sector, where nothing could move in the light of day, along roads choked with traf- fic and swept by the enemy's fire. I have messed and lived in the wrecked and ruined villages of northern France, and from the last observation post watched the enemy in his own lines. I have been through forty air PREFACE ix raids and a dozen gas attacks. I have spoken to soldier audiences in machine gun emplacements and dug-outs while the shells burst about us; I have associated with enemy prisoners, and have seen our own men mangled, bleeding, and dying. In the great hospitals I have undressed them, have served as a stretcher bearer, and have heard their stories as they lay pale and helpless at the door of death. But why prolong an egoistic recital! I have shared in the experiences of the sol- diers and have lived their life, I have seen the terrors of the war in all of its departments, and I have investi- gated social conditions as thoroughly as possible all over the allied nations which I visited. Out of this experience I give these essays. Two or three explanatory remarks should be made. One is that I approach all questions from the stand- point of the average man on the streets, and the con- clusions set forth are from his point of view. I have been criticized frequently, and my conclusions have been disputed, by clergymen and others who have looked at things through their own glasses. Especially have I been berated for my revelations concerning im- morality; some have denounced me because they doubted the statements, others because they did not think the situation should be revealed. I can only reply that I have simply told what I absolutely know to be the facts, and I think the truth should be told. Two of my close friends took offense when my dis- patches were first published in regard to the moral breakdown; I later met both of them in London, and x PREFACE both of them then apologized for the attitude they had taken prior to seeing matters for themselves. One in my position, after having been severely condemned early in 1917 for the publication of dispatches reveal- ing the deplorable situation in the cities of Europe, may be pardoned for welcoming the verifications, like that of Alfred No-yes in The Saturday Evening Post, which have been openly admitted since the cessation of hos- tilities. In these articles one will find certain repetitions here and there, and there will appear differences in the matter of tense, etc. It is sufficient to say that some of the material has been published in another form, and all of the articles were written independently and at different times. The New York Tribune and the St. Louis Republic have kindly consented to the reworking and republication of the material herein. I claim no un- usual degree of insight or information over other peo- ple who have visited the war zones ; I only seek to write from a different standpoint and with absolute freedom. If the essays throw any light on any phase of society in these times, and especially if they will enable any American organization to see how suffering Europe may be helped, I shall be amply repaid for the writing. ELMER T. CLARK. CONTENTS PREFACE PAGE I IMMORALITY IN EUROPE DURING THE WAR . 17 II WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 46 III THE ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION ... 66 IV THE POPE AND THE WAR 87 V THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN THE WAR . . 106 VI THE CLERGY AND THE PEOPLE 136 VII THE CHURCH AND THE WAR 152 VIII RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION AFTER THE WAR 171 IX THE CHALLENGE OF THE WAR TO THE CHURCH 201 X THE GERMANS AND THE TURKS .... 226 XI AMONG THE TOILERS 240 XII A HERITAGE OF HATE 252 XIII THE CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS . , 261 ILLUSTRATIONS DR. ELMER T. CLARK IN TRENCH EQUIPMENT Frontispiece PAGE PROCLAMATIONS OF THE MANSION HOUSE CON- FERENCE AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH URGING THE IRISH TO RESIST CONSCRIPTION . . 48 CORNER OF SACKEVILLE STREET IN DUBLIN AFTER THE SINN FEIN REBELLION OF 1916 .... 80 WRECKED SHOP IN DUBLIN AFTER THE SINN FEIN REBELLION OF 1916 80 IRISH ANTI-CONSCRIPTION PLEDGE 96 AMERICAN LUMBERMEN IN THE SCOTCH HIGHLANDS, THE FIRST CONTINGENT OF THE A. E. F. TO LAND ON EUROPEAN SOIL 128 Y. M. C. A. HUT IN THE WOODS MILES FROM ANY TOWN OR HABITATION 128 GERMAN PROPAGANDA: "!N THE TRENCHES 'BE- HOLD I AM WITH You ALWAYS' ' 232 GERMAN PROPAGANDA: "AT THE ADVANCE POSTS 1 AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD* ' 232 "Le VIEUX DIEU ALLEMAND." THE FRENCH CON- CEPTION OF THE GERMAN GOD 256 Xlll SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR CHAPTEE I IMMORALITY IN EUROPE DURING THE WAS, We are accustomed to hearing that war acts as a regenerator of the national life, bringing patriotism, sacrifice, unselfishness, and devotion to principle for- ward to such a degree as to produce a more virile and devoted citizenship. It may be that such a contention has a certain foundation in fact upon the one side, yet the most casual observer of events in the great Euro- pean war must be impressed with the fact that this struggle is breeding enough immorality and vice to overwhelmingly counter-balance any such spiritual gains that may perchance accrue. The war has bred viciousness in an amazing fashion, and there is a de- mand, therefore, for some very plain speaking and a frank recognition of a critical condition in order to insure our social salvation. To one interested in the problems of society the most apparent fact in connection with the war is this great 17 .18 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR s in immorality. In every European city vice is rampant. It stalks the streets openly, day and night, and with brazen effrontery flaunts itself in the face of the law, order, and all moral conceptions. So deplor- able has the situation become that there is small danger of exaggerating its seriousness. While there has been a decrease in what we usually regard as the more fla- grant forms of crime, burglary, highway robbery, mur- der, and the like, owing to the fact that the men, who usually commit such crimes, have been placed in the armies, misbehavior of the more unmentionable type has received the greatest impetus it has ever known. And to-day the streets of London, Paris, Rome, and other cities are veritable cesspools of iniquity. So much so, indeed, that the sojourner in these places feels as if they have abandoned all moral restraints and thrown to the winds all desires and attempts to pre- serve the purity and the health of their people. In all of these cities the streets are thronged with women of the underworld. There are thousands upon thousands of them, moving here and there in the dark- ened avenues and plying their trade with the utmost abandon and boldness. So prolific are they that it is nothing unusual to see four or five girls accost a man simultaneously and fall to disputing among themselves as to which has the prior claim upon his attentions; and so bold are they that they frequent constantly the lounges and the tea rooms of the best hotels with per- fect freedom and confidence. The courtesans have an especial predilection for the soldiers, and these men, IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 19 many of whom come from distant colonies overseas and are without friends in the great centers of European population, fall easy prey to their machinations. So alarming are the proportions which the vice problem has assumed on account of the war that the casual observer is almost constrained to believe that the whole moral fabric of the nations has been destroyed. The causes for such a state of affairs are vfcry ap- parent. In the first place the problem is aggravated by the thousands of refugees who have been driven into foreign cities. These refugees have furnished a large per cent of the immoral women, hundreds of them drifting to the street under the pressure of economic and social needs. Then there are the wives and the widows of the soldiers, who, in the absence of the husbands, have become degenerate. It is a remarkable fact that nearly all of these women claim to belong to this class; I have spoken to a large number of them, and almost without exception they have claimed that their husbands are in the army or have fallen on the fields. One may not judge whether the statements are true or whether the women believe there is an especial virtue in having a man with the colors, but it is well known that the absence of the men is one of the largest factors in the increase of crime. Here is a young woman whose husband has cared for her in all things, furnishing her the support, the companionship, and the amusement which her nature has desired. The young man is taken into the army, and at once the companion- ship, the amusement, and most of the support is with- 20 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR drawn. The young woman becomes the victim of an intense loneliness. She can no longer live in the man- ner to which she has become accustomed, and unless she is a strong character, or is willing to seek employ- ment, both for its income and for the occupation itself, she will have difficulty in adjusting herself to the new condition. She seeks companionship and diversion, finding both in the public house or saloon, which is a social institution and which prevalent ideas permit her to frequent without a compromise. JSTaturally, the friends she makes at the public house do not strengthen her moral determinations, and the liquor she drinks causes her to lose her sense of restraint. And from this environment she drifts to the streets through a gradual evolution, and in accordance with the funda- mental cravings of her nature. This is the history of thousands of women whose husbands serve with the armies in the field. Of the seriousness of this situation there can be no doubt. Hundreds of soldiers have returned on leave to their homes to find their wives gone, depraved, diseased, or the mothers of illegitimate children. The law courts, temperance societies, and all social agencies have been forced to take cognizance of the deplorable situation. Case after case has been brought to public notice until the list runs into the thousands. A corporal, who was declared by his officer to be the best type of soldier, came home from the Somme to spend Christmas with his family, and when he found the public house had caused the ruin of his wife he committed murder ; and in pro- IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 21 nouncing sentence the judge declared from the bench that "such a man, with such a character, ought not to be with criminals." "You should make trenches be- tween our homes and the public house," exclaimed a young soldier to a Member of Parliament who had urged his enlistment under promise that his family would be cared for. Another man, returning from the trenches, found that his wife had committed suicide, preferring death to facing her husband after her shame, leaving three children, including one just born, to break to their father the news of their mother's infidelity. Such happenings are so common that they are now scarcely exceptional; the tragic tales are told daily in the press and before the courts. So common, indeed, have they become that the British courts, for the first time in history, have recognized what in America is called "the unwritten law." It must not, however, be supposed that the wrong is confined exclusively to the women left at home, for the men have done their share in bringing about the condi- tion. I was told on good authority, by one who pro- fessed to know and who had every opportunity of know- ing, that there had been more than ten thousand proven cases of bigamy among the overseas troops of the Brit- ish Empire, and that the government was endeavoring to solve the difficult problem thus presented. I was one day approached by an officer in great distress of mind, because, having been summoned to testify regarding the suicide of a. Brother officer, he faced the necessity of perjuring himself or bearing a witness which would dis- 22 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR grace the memory and family of his friend. The truth was that the man had married a second wife in France and, ahout to be discharged from the army, committed, suicide to avoid the revelations which would inevitably follow his return to civil life. I have personal knowl- edge, also, of a case in which an officer attempted to marry a French girl; the girl, however, took the pre- caution of writing the mayor of the man's home town, and she received the intelligence that her suitor had a wife and children back at home. On another occasion I talked with a young woman who had been placed in a difficult situation. Her hus- band was an officer, the son of a wealthy English fam- ily, and when he returned from the front on leave he spent all of his time with another woman and openly refused to have further relations with his young wife. The result was that his family promised her a liberal allowance if she would go to London with one of the children and give the other to the mother-in-law. With- in a few months she was notified that the allowance would be reduced to a point which made it almost im- possible for her to live, and her protest brought infor- mation from a solicitor that the family were under no obligations to her, that her husband had nothing in his own right, and that she must either accept the reduc- tion or get nothing. It was evident that this action was preliminary to cutting her off entirely, and one could but be apprehensive of the result when such action should finally be taken. I know another case personally, sadder than either of IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 23 these mentioned. The husband was in a venereal hos- pital, from which he went to his home regularly on visits. Because his wife refused to receive him inti- mately on account of his condition he placed the small child in a hoarding school and withdrew all support from his wife, leaving her in London with nothing save the government allowance of one pound per week. In this case the man had long been carrying on improper relations with his wife's younger sister. The condition of which these cases are symptomatic seems to ramify through all classes of society. I have seen American officers and welfare workers with a large number of visiting cards bearing the names of women respectable in society, judging from their addresses, which had been given to them on trains, in the streets, and in motor busses, always with the suggestion of fur- ther acquaintanceship. I talked with the wife of a ma- jor in the British army, expressing my surprise at such a condition, and she said, in effect, "We are under such a strain that we have simply agreed to set aside our old conceptions. My own friends are doing things openly which would have caused their disgrace before the war. While the war continues we are seeing nothing and thinking nothing." In England the condition was brought prominently to the fore during the trial of Mr. Pemberton Billing, Member of Parliament, for libel, a trial which was a national scandal. Mr. Billing alleged that people of high estate were guilty of the most unspeakable ex- cesses, even mentioning in court the name of a former 24 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Prime Minister. It was declared that the Germans possessed a Black Book containing the names of 47,000 prominent English people thus guilty, and that this in- formation was used by the enemy not only to further the demoralization of the social life of England but also to prevent activity on- the part of the people thus known. Over and over again Mr. Billing was de- nounced by the judge who was trying the case, and he in turn gave and offered testimony* showing that the judge's own name was in the Black Book. At the con- clusion of the disgraceful trial the jury quickly acquit- ted the defendant, thus proving that they believed the story of the Book, to the great joy of the hangers-on. As an aftermath of this trial the journal John Bull, a very popular and influential weekly which possesses, however, little to commend it to the conservative or con- structive forces of the Empire, made these remarks: "For years past there have been persistent and never to be stifled whispers and rumors of the prevalence of these sexual vices on the part of both sexes amongst all the higher ranks of society. Artists, authors, poli- ticians, musicians, actors, actresses, the clergy all have contributed their quota to the volume of evil report. Go into any West End club, into any theatrical group, into any artistic coterie, or any political social gathering where men and women are free to speak and you hear the same names repeated. Go to any week-end party at a country house, and you find the same scientific selec- tion and grouping of guests. Before the war the Thing was bad enough to-day it is infinitely worse. So far IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 25 as women are concerned, the absence of their men at the front has undoubtedly aggravated the evil. On the other hand the nervous strain of the war and the idiotic talk about modern culture and all the rest of it, have had their effect upon the neurotic and erotic tempera- ments of men blase with the ordinary attractions of life with the result that to-day sexual perversity is more rife than ever it has been before. It is no part of my intention recklessly to pillory the principal de- votees of these devilish arts but I solemnly warn them that unless they take the hint given by recent events and disown and discard their abnormal practices, no consideration of either fear or convention will restrain me from publishing a Black Book of my own. I do not say it will contain forty-seven thousand names, but there are certainly forty-seven known to every man and woman about town the publication of which would shake the foundations of society. They include those of peers and their sons and daughters, of politicians and their wives, of actors and actresses, of authors and ar- tists, of clerics and ministers 'established' and non- conformist all famous in their respective spheres, and all at present protected by that weird free-masonry which is the gospel and moral of sexual perversity." That a vast deal of the immorality prevalent in Eng- land and France comes from Germany is the belief of thousands of those who are well versed in the methods of the enemy. "Le Vice Allemand," it is called. That such evil was prevalent in Germany to a horrid extent even before the war is well known, and since the out- 26 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR break of hostilities the world has heard the most atro- cious rumors of what was happening in the social life of the enemy country of how women were used like beasts for the propagation of the race, of how it became the acme of patriotic achievement for even girls "to present a future soldier to the emperor," of how men were instructed in regard to their social duty when sent away from the front on leave or discharged on account of wounds. The record of the Boche in Belgium and northern France and Poland bears witness to the fact that his militarism had bred viciousness in its worst form and corrupted an entire people. And there seems little cause to doubt that the wave of immorality in al- lied countries is at least aided and abetted by enemy spies. Thousands of the refugees are declared to be no refugees in the proper sense of the word, but common prostitutes sent by the enemy from Alsace, Lorraine, everywhere, to spread destruction in the social order and worm secrets from the people of allied lands. The fact that such a belief had been gaining adher- ents explains something of the anger of the people at the revelations made in the case of Pemberton Billing. Some of those whose names were mentioned had con- ducted affairs of state in a manner very displeasing to the people who were anxious "to get on with the war" ; they had refused to undertake a policy of reprisals in the matter of air raids, to intern all enemy aliens, to make cotton contraband, to stop the flow of German reservists from America to Germany, to adopt a more positive military policy than that of "wait and see." IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 27 There was, therefore, a storm of indignation when it was openly declared that some of those thus lax figured in the notorious Black Book. Could it be that the en- emy was blackmailing influential men into inactivity by virtue of a loathsome knowledge possessed about them? "How can it be wondered," asks John Bull, "that ordinary citizens what the superior folk call the 'common people' believe that German influence has been at work ? One mistake two mistakes of policy ; one blunder ten blunders favoring Germany, might be put down to ignorance. No government is fool-proof, but deliberate acts, defended often with venom, justified with heat, the critics either derided or denounced which have all helped the enemy and crippled us in the war need some other explanation than stupidity and God knows we have seen enough of that since August, 1914! The crowds that seethed about the Old Bailey the other day believed that one secret of much of this cruel incompetence and wicked weakness and inaction which until recently clogged the wheels of war is to be found in that Black Book, and the jury despite every rule of law accepted fully the story told them. "If the Hun was content to wallow in his own filth, to sink in the bog of his own bestiality, we might de- plore the decadence of a race never noted for moral strength and cleanliness. But there is a greater danger, and it is one against which this country must fight with all its might the danger of contamination from crea- tures like Bertha Trost the woman of unspeakable practices, who was kicked out of this country after war 28 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR had run some months its course, and who used her house not only to corrupt some of the best manhood of England, but to play the spy for Germany. There is enough evidence to convict our foul enemy of deliber- ately using men and women for the fell purpose of de- moralizing those who might from their position fall an easy prey to the careful inquisitiveness of those agents of the Hun. Not only in tha west end of London have these degenerate harpies designed their lairs, but in the big seaports of the country depraved women have been used by the Kaiser and his tools to worm the se- crets out of men and make them play traitor to their King and country. If ever there was a nation of des- picable creatures who subscribe to the gospel that 'the end justifies the means/ Germany is that nation. With- out common decency, ignorant of the meaning of honor, corrupt and corrupting, these skunks of Europe have played their loathsome game to the end that the purity of civilized communities might be defiled and honest men turned into miserable moral lepers. If the true story of the plots and schemes leading up to, and continuing during, the war is ever told, it will be found that decent men yes, and women, too have been art- fully enmeshed in the toils of lasciviousness, shackled in chains of unnatural vice, and held in bondage by the terror of their own evil doings." The realization that the enemy could thus intrigue to destroy even personal purity among the civilian popula- tion was responsible for a new outburst of hatred. "They have turned unnatural vice into a religion ; they IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 29 have their ritual for wrong doing and their orders of service for the most debased and bestial of practices. Among all decent men in any society where chastity is given honorable recognition, where the purity of young manhood and the virtue of women is counted a priceless possession the things which are spoken of in Germany with devilish arrogance and inhuman pride are only recognized in asylums for the insane, in re- treats for the mentally debased. Would it be believed that in the land of the Hun they would alter the very laws which bring to punishment those who debase phys- ical purity, and one of their most famous, or infamous, authors pleads for toleration of the most unspeakable crimes against naturehood, and contemplates the time when his false and perverted view shall have 'permeated the wide circles of the population' and when 'the old con- sciousness of right will be replaced by the new one, which will demand the repeal of a criminal law by which a natural phenomenon is regarded as a vice and is treated as infamous'? How can any decent man boast of finding a 'spiritual home' in this land of male perverts and female decadents? The time will come when the morally weak, and those whose patriotism is thin and anemic, will ask the manhood of Great Brit- ain to make friends with the nation of moral lepers. In God's name, let us keep our heads aye, and en- deavor by every means in our power to keep free from the contaminating touch of the Hun." Thus far has social looseness gone in England; thus far has it been recognized by a saddened people. Not SO SOCIAL STUDIES OF !THE WAR only is London thus affected, but the blight has spread to most of the cities and towns of the United Kingdom Liverpool is the worst of all. And the same condi- tions obtain in the other nations; in the degree of bad- ness I would arrange them thus: England, France, Italy, Scotland, Ireland. The nations have realized the necessity of some corrective measures but have been powerless to devise them. A proposition was made to place the wives of soldiers under control, but it was dropped because of the reflection which such an act would inevitably cast upon the families of the men giv- ing their lives for the country. There is another phase to the subject in connection with the causes for the carnival of crime ; it is found in the lack of restraint on the part of the womanhood of the lands towards the soldiers. At its heart this is founded upon a noble sentiment and has been encour- aged in many ways. Europe loves her soldiers. She will make any sacrifice for their comfort. The women have vied with one another in their efforts to entertain them and contribute to their well being. The best homes are opened to them and they are wined and dined con- tinuously. Each woman and girl seems to consider her- self a committee of one to do something for a soldier. Thus the restraint which in ordinary times hedges the freedom of association between the women and the men has been thrown aside. And beyond question this has contributed something to the ruin of the girls and the seriousness of the social evil. Now if this is the actual state of affairs in the bel- IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR SI ligerent countries, we might expect that superhuman ef- forts would be put forth to stem the tide of immorality and save the people. Yet the exact reverse is true. So far as the ordinary person is able to discover, there is absolutely no action being taken to control the evil. The laws, of course, stand on the statute books and we oc- casionally read of a conviction, but all this means noth- ing but a small fine, perhaps a brief imprisonment, notoriety through the public press, and then the victim is sent out worse than ever, hardened, resentful, and with the door of reformation effectually closed against her. The difficulties in such a situation are well known and are the same in all countries: the difficulty of se- curing evidence, the lack of any adequate corrective agencies, the general attitude which prevents reforma- tion, and the inability to grapple with the evil at its base by reaching the ultimate cause of it. To speak of the problem which such a reign of im- morality is preparing for the future is to raise at once the entire range of social questions. There is no form of crime which ramifies so thoroughly through the struc- ture of a people's life as the social evil, and the present carnival of misbehavior, which I am constrained to be- lieve rivals any similar situation which has ever faced the world in its history, is piling up for us trouble of a most serious kind. In the first place, we shall have to consider anew the question of illegitimacy, and this will involve a complete change of attitude toward unfortu- nate children if it is to be answered in a way that will preserve the best interests of the social order. It will 32 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR require more than a mere official edict or legal enact- ment ordering the legitimatizing of all children born out of wedlock; this, indeed, is a foolish proceeding, since it secures to the children nothing which they would not obtain without it except in unusual cases. The remedy must go deeper; it must secure to such children all the benefits of opportunity and respect, and this cannot be done until the attitude of society, which denies them these things, is changed. And this is the most difficult of all tasks, as well as the most dangerous. Deep seated prejudices, moral conceptions with centuries of time behind them, ideas of respectability which are the out- growth of the social experience of all ages, the instinc- tive sentiments of the heart to which violations of con- jugal confidence are repulsive no law or edict can change these things. And what if they are changed? In that case we face the danger of plunging the world into a very hell of crime by overthrowing all of its moral ideas. Surely the best interests of civilization will not be served by the cultivation of a spirit which ex- cuses illegitimacy and looks with toleration upon the violation of the seventh commandment ! For such a re- laxation could not be a temporary expedient ; our ideas are too fundamental to be changed and adjusted at will. In either case the social problem remains serious. Another aspect of this social problem will concern the preponderance in the number of the women over the men. This is a favorite subject of speculation, and the superficial suggestions for its adjustment range all the way from "equal rights for women," through polygamy, IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 33 to the complete abolition of the institution of marriage. But it is not nearly so serious as it has been pictured. Its economic aspects are, indeed, practically negligible. In this war the women have shown once for all that they are abundantly able and willing to take care of them- selves, so that their dependence upon the opposite sex for support is a thing of the past. In the matter of morality and the welfare of the home as an institution, however, the influence of the disparity of one sex will be felt. It will not be a good thing, either for the women or for the world, to throw the women into industry by the side of men, giving them the same wages and offer- ing them all inducements to become cogs in the ma- chine of industry. That thousands of them are forced to turn their activities into this channel is quite true, and in such cases simple justice demands that they be not discriminated against. But the well-worn argu- ment that "woman's place is in the home," however much it may be ridiculed by the radicals, is after all founded upon the most fundamental conception of our social life. Whatever adjustments we may be forced to make out of necessity, the fact will remain that the ideal life for the woman is in the home ; from this stand- point we will digress at our peril. Now the prepon- derance of women over the men will necessarily force us to make a wide digression from this ideal. Many thousands seem to be barred from the home life to which they are attracted by instinct and by training. But an industrial occupation cannot change human na- ture nor eradicate the deepest instincts of the life, while 34 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR the association and competition with men on a common basis will neither give the men a deeper respect for the women nor strengthen their moral conscience. Hence it seems certain that immorality will result from the new situation. The world is also threatened with having its confi- dence in and respect for the women undermined. It is already apparent that the men of Europe have really less respect for their women than they had before the be- ginning of hostilities. They are very proud of the won- derful things the women have done, and of this they may well be proud, but these achievements have not deepened their respect perhaps it would be better to say that they have given them a different kind of respect. But whether the difference be in kind or degree, it seems plain that the women do not occupy such an exalted place in the moral estimate of the men as they once held. This has been caused, or accompanied, by a de- cline in the tone of the women. Their familiar asso- ciation with the men, the profligate use of cigarettes, which the war has so heightened that it seems well-nigh universal, the masculinity which comes from doing the work of men, the increasing carelessness in the mat- ter of personal appearance these are the things about which the men are complaining. Then in connection with this there is the awful deluge of vice which has degraded so many thousands and resulted in so much disease. This situation has undoubtedly caused people to lose confidence in each other. There is a confusion of mind which partakes of doubt and suspicion. Men IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 35 do not know whether to trust the women, and women do not know whether to trust the men. And so this subtle attitude, which really fastens suspicion upon every- body, is another element in the social problem of the fu- ture. It will prevent reformation, cause more immo- rality, hinder marriage, and threaten the free and righteous relations of the people. It will be seen at once that all of these phases of the situation drive straight at the home. And this is the most serious element in it. To destroy or even to seri- ously injure the home is more dangerous than to have the immorality, the disease, and the illegitimacy amongst us ; and when we have the immorality, the dis- ease, and the illegitimacy present with us and combined in an attack upon the hjome, then the situation is peril- ous in the extreme. And that is exactly the case at the present time. The most discerning minds among us have known for many years that we were drifting into a state of being which was gradually assailing the home. The drift of population to the cities, the laxity of our laws concerning divorce, the forcing of our women into industry, their oppression by the capitalists, the modern feminist movement with its "votes for women" slogan each of these things has struck a blow at the home. Then came that immoral phase of socialism which openly ad- vocated the theory of the home's dissolution and urged the repeal of our notions concerning marriage. These things caused many people to be exceedingly anxious. If matters continued for a few more years in the same channel, and at the same rate of progress, soon there 36 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR would be no home; and since no substitute had been provided and nothing had been done to meet a situa- tion that was threatening to dethrone all our morality and place the world in a condition which moral senti- ment had always regarded as the extreme of corruption, there was ample cause for alarm. And now on top of all that there comes this war and brings with it a social problem at least as serious as any the world has ever faced before, a problem having all the various phases we have mentioned, with each phase leveling its attack at what was left of the home. If there lives a man whose highest hope for the future welfare of the world lies in the moral stability of the home, he must now be weep- ing his heart out over the danger which threatens this ancient and holy institution. And it will behoove him to bestir himself for a solution which will avert such danger. One naturally turns to the Church for something of promise in such a crisis, and in this he follows a right instinct; for the Church is the only purely moral insti- tution on earth, and it stands for nothing save the pres- ervation of moral values ; the home has always been its hobby, and rightly so. Therefore if the Church is not prepared to offer help in such a situation as that which prevails in Europe at the present time, we would be at a loss to know where to turn. But when one asks the European Church of the present day for light in this moral crisis, he meets the disappointment of his life. For the Church has no light; she is not seeking any light; she seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that any IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 37 light is needed. If she has any, it is snugly hid under the bushel of a smug self-satisfaction and the hollowest sort of a simulated patriotism which is in itself a sham. Surely these are the saddest days that the modern Church ever fell upon. She preaches enlistment and sets her holy sanction on the cruelest war of history. She stirs up the passions of the people to fight and hates her own members who urge conscientious objections to bear- ing arms. Her pulpits ring with bitter denunciations of sin, but it is always German sin. She pictures the coming of a golden era, but according to the will of God, that era must be achieved by blood and battle. On these things the Church is a unit, and if there is a dis- senter his voice is too puny to be heard. For once at least, the European Church has found something upon which it can unite. And all the while vice of the most repulsive sort flaunts itself before the very doors of the Church, cor- rupting the morals of the people, perverting all the righteous conceptions which hold together the social fabric, and nullifying both the message and activity of the Church. It is so flagrant that its presence cannot be unnoticed, even by the most innocent. The Sunday School children and the clergymen are brought into contact with it if they walk the streets or possess any knowledge of current events. And yet the Church says little and does less. The clergy seem to think that it would be treason to the state to suggest that England is corrupt ; to let it be known that England is rotten to the core and does not care, would be giving aid and com- 38 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR fort to the enemy. And so patriotism of the sort which consists wholly in hating the national enemy, rather than in seeking the purification of the motherland, holds sway. The Church still "practices respectability and calls it holiness," and she keeps herself respectable by turning her face away from horrid immoralities. It is like the ostrich escaping danger by hiding his head in the sand. At the beginning of the war, so it is said, Mr. H. G. Wells spent his time in the yard of a village Church, overwhelmed by the calamity which had overtaken the world, and lost in thought. He reflected that one of these Churches stood in each hamlet and settlement of the civilized world, and that no living person in these lands was beyond its influence. He knew that the Church stood upon the platform of Christ, urging love and goodness as against hate and violence, and that upon this platform it had come to be the most respected, the richest, and the most influential of all human forces. Then the question came upon him with crushing vio- lence : Why has there not gone out from this institution an influence which would make this war impossible? And because he could not answer this question Mr. Wells, converted by the war into a man keenly alive to the spiritual realities of the universe, became confused in his thinking, and has conjured up a kind of religion which even he does not understand and which offers nothing to the world. And when we contemplate the situation of the world in regard to the problem of vice, we are forced into the IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 39 same position in which Mr. Wells found himself. Why is it that the Church, with all its influence, power, mo- rality, and respectability, has done nothing whatever in checking this evil? It is a strange thing to contem- plate, that after the Church has been operating twenty centuries this form of wickedness is just as wide-spread and flagrant as it has ever been. It has been more re- pulsive, perhaps, but I doubt if there ever has been a moment in history when it was more common than at the present moment. Can it be that our ideas are wrong ? Are we disapproving of a thing which is such a funda- mental element of human nature that it cannot be eradicated, and must we admit our mistake and reform our morality so as to leave room for indiscriminate licentiousness? There are those who so think, and it seems that we must either adopt this attitude, or else be- stir ourselves to the application of our morality with greater care to the solution of this age-long problem. We will not easily believe that our ideas are wrong, but we must confess that we have hopelessly failed in applying Christianity to the problem before us. And Christianity has failed here for the same reason that it has failed in other departments of life simply because it has never been tried. Let us frankly admit that the Church has never tried to solve the question of social vice; she has not created any paraphernalia, she has not educated her people, she has not even preached upon the subject. In her way, there have been and still are mighty obstacles which she has not been able to sur- mount. And yet most of these obstacles are of her own 40 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR making and the task of unmaking them will be as diffi- cult as the surmounting. But it must be done. Here is one of the clearest challenges which the Church hears, and in responding she will come to one of the most diffi- cult tasks she ever attempted. She must bestir herself, and she must do it immediately; else the tidal wave of immorality which the war has set in motion will en- gulf us. One of the greatest difficulties between the Church and her task has been her inability to obtain access to the people she would help. It is quite true that the Church has made little attempt in this direction, but her reticence has been caused largely by the knowledge that a deep gulf, almost impassable, stretches between her and the denizens of the underworld. How could this be bridged? Street preaching, home missionaries, rescue schemes, have all failed, and even now we know no way by which a minister or any other religious worker can get in personal touch with depraved women in such a manner as to impress them with the sense of their sin. And this situation has been rendered more difficult by the type of persons who have taken upon themselves the task of such work. Usually they have been men or women of limited intellectual ability and with absolute- ly no grasp upon the details of their work; they have gone into the slums with a sentimental evangelistic mes- sage and have endeavored to convert the wayward out of hand. But they have had no conception of the social problem involved, and have been completely baffled at the first question, "Then what shall become of us ?" If IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 41 the underworld is to be evangelized, men and women of the very highest attainments, intellectually and spirit- ually, must take the task in hand. And at the outset, the Church must find some answer to return to the question, "Then what shall become of us?" The saddest fact in connection with the whole problem is that the sinful are practically barred from reforming and taking their places in a respectable so- ciety. This is the point to which immediate attention must be paid. We have no homes, no schools, and no other agencies to which these people can be taken and where they can be rehabilitated. And the situation would be bettered but little even if we had such agen- cies. To be known as the inmate of such an institution is as bad as to be known as a courtesan, and it is a true instinct which prompts most women to avoid them. What is needed is a different attitude on the part of society toward the unfortunate. Let us realize at once that the trouble is not all on the side of the sinner. They will reform in large numbers the moment we make up our minds to let them reform. The present attitude of society is the thing that keeps them in the immoral life, for it denies them employment, opportunity and respectability. How, then, can they reform ? Let us imagine what would happen in the average Church if a woman known to be a prostitute should prostrate herself at the altar and confess her sins, seek- ing and obtaining salvation in the way taught by the Church. Then what ? Could she take her place in the pew as a member of the Church on a level with the other 42 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Christians, say, on the level of the man who was re- sponsible for her ruin ? We all know she could not. If the pastor introduced her to his ladies' society she would be either spurned or treated with such reserve that life would he made unbearable. Not a woman in the con- gregation would give her employment in the home or as- sociate with her upon terms of equality. No man would care to seek her company, unless indeed he were seeking to drag her down again. Such a woman would have ab- solutely no hope because the Christian people in the Church would allow her none. And at the same time the man who had been responsible for her defection might associate with the best people of the community at his pleasure. The only chance for a reforming sinner, if she be a woman, is to live a life of deception, to hide her past from all the world; and this means to liv& in constant dread and haunted by a sense of her own hypoc- risy. In this state there can be no true religion and no reformation. But the fault is not upon the sinner ; it rests at the door of the respectable people, those who profess to be followers of the Christ who said, "Neither do I condemn thee ; go and sin no more." The plea is made that such an attitude is necessary for the protection of society. We all know how care- fully a mother should guard her daughter and shield her from persons and influences that might cause her ruin. But is it really true that we prevent immorality by making one false step fatal ? We have notified our girls severely enough that if they go wrong they are doomed forever, but the notification has not checked the sin. It IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 43 has only kept the girla in it after they enter. If this at- titude is right, in Heaven's name, let it be applied im- partially to men and women alike. At a state legislature before which a bill f oi the establishment of a segregated vice district was pending there appeared a woman who caused the introduction of a similar bill applying to all men frequenting the district ; the men were to be segre- gated and subjected to all the restrictions- which the bill ordered for the women. This was enough to prevent the enactment of the law. Yet there was no reason why one would not be as just and as safe as the other. It is a risky thing to advise the lowering of the stern attitude against fallen women, but since this attitude is the only thing that prevents reformation such advice must be given. This is not to say that the social evil must be regarded lightly. But it is to say that persons who have committed this sin have the same right of pardon as other sinners, and we have no moral justifica- tion for erecting a barrier against them. When thieves, murderers, and highwaymen are. allowed to repent and be respectable, we have no right to deny the privilege to the women who fall. They should be forced to prove their repentance by their works to be sure, but we must open the way for them to regain the place in society which they forfeited when they sinned. If we do not do this, then let us no longer claim to be the representa- tives of Christ on earth. For if the example of Christ teaches us anything, it surely is that women taken in sin have His utmost respect and sympathy and kindness. But how shall we protect our homes? There is but 44 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR one way, and this is educational. The lack of proper training in home, and school, and Church on this sub- ject is a national disgrace to us, I have never heard a sermon on the subject. I have never known it to he mentioned to any children in the home. I know of no school that takes notice of it in the curriculum. We are leaving our young people to their own devices, letting them grow up in- ignorance and gain all their informa- tion from the most vicious sources. And when we have thus dealt with them, we place the eternal brand of shame on their brows at the first false step. Then we wrap our sanctimonious cloak of respectability about ourselves and ease* our consciences, as Pilate washed from his hands the. blood of Christ. And yet at our own door crouches the. sin. On our own shoulders rests the responsibility. At our own hands shall the blood of a thousand erring girls be required. Let the Church give some of the thrfught which she now expends upon foolish intricacies of theology to this practical and urgent problem of sin and salvation. Let her put some of her wealth into agencies which will in- sure kindness and helpfulness to the fallen. Her ora- tory ought to be brought to bear upon the text: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Eevelation should claim less attention and Hosea more. Make it known that there is a gospel for those who fall, and that sympathy and comfort in the truest sense await such at the house of God. Let people who call themselves Christian display the spirit of Christ to those who are in truth their sisters. By laws and state regulation we IMMORALITY DURING THE WAR 45 should protect our girls and exterminate the breed of men who speculate in their blood, either openly or through the medium of factories and department stores. Then give us, through home, school, and Church, the most comprehensive and far-reaching educational move- ment we have ever seen, so thorough that no child who reaches the age of understanding can escape its influ- ence. When we have, done all this, we will be in a fair way to grapple seriously with the social evil. CHAPTER II WHAT DOES IBELAND INTEND? Since all the statesmen, diplomats, and publicists of Europe have failed to arrive at a solution of the Irish question, and since Irishmen themselves are hopelessly divided on a matter with which they are perfectly fa- miliar and in which they are vitally concerned, it ap- pears presumptuous for a casual observer, and he a foreigner, to venture any word upon it. But even sur- face impressions have a certain value, especially if they are arrived at without any previous bias. An American is perhaps the only person, from that standpoint, who is qualified to speak, for strict impartiality in regard to Ireland scarcely exists anywhere in Europe. Men are either pro-Irish or anti-Irish, so much so that one must read with care any of the innumerable books and pam- phlets which are issued in regard to the problem. I sup- pose that more passion, prejudice, enmity, and misrep- resentation have come about in this connection than has been true of any problem which ever vexed the public affairs of the world. One of the surprising things in the war is the loyalty with which the colonies have risen to the defense of the British Empire. The self-governing dominions adopted 46 WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 47 conscription, if they needed it, in order to furnisH a full quota of troops, and we have seen that Britain possessed a solidarity hitherto undreamed of. The southern prov- inces of Ireland have heen the only outstanding excep- tion to this rule; and the fact that opposition also de- veloped in the Catholic sections of Canada and Austra- lia serves only to make more prominent and regrettahle the defection of these Irish. For this has emphasized the religious difficulty which rests at the base of the Irish question, and the result has been to widen the breach already existing between the Protestant and Catholic elements in the population and to lay the Catho- lics open to the charges of treason and disloyalty. As an American sincerely attached to the principles that governments derive their just powers from the con- sent of the governed, as a democrat believing that the will of the majority should rule, and as a Protestant without prejudice against Rome or sympathy with anti- Catholic propaganda, I visited the various sections of Ireland for the purpose of obtaining first-hand informa- tion and personal impressions. And I came away with! the opinion that the attitude of southern Irishmen at the present time is altogether impossible, deplorable, and unworthy. Their program, if carried into execution, will mean anarchy in the Emerald Isle, it will threaten the stability of the British Empire and all that is thus represented, it will mean a harking back for many generations in that section of the world, and it will ul- timately mean the ruination of Ireland. Sinn Eeinism controls the south, and has been able 48 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR to unseat the ^Nationalists in Parliament ; in their stead radicals have been elected who refused to take their seats, and even boasted in the campaigns that if elected they would ignore the Commons. The result is that the places at Westminster have been vacated, no one is at hand to care for Irish interests, and we have the spec- tacle of the south standing apart and raving over prob- lems which they refuse to assist in settling. But this is to the liking of Sinn Fein, and the great majority of the southern people honestly believe that by such a proc- ess they are destined to obtain the independence they crave. The most outstanding feature of the present situation is the ardency with which these people defend their posi- tion and the eagerness with which they seek to obtain support from Americans. The time-worn arguments against England, all of them arranged without any his- torical sense whatever, have been mastered by men and women of all classes, and the American passing through the island is besieged constantly by enthusiastic apolo- gists. On trains, in hotels, on the streets, in jaunting carts, he is beleaguered, the people encompassing the earth to make one proselyte to their cause. Members of Parliament and other dignitaries are everywhere met with, and their cordiality is always the precursor of the eternal question, "What do you think of England's treatment of Ireland ?" The cart driver cannot take one three blocks until he inquires, "Why should we fight for England 2" Loungers in hotel lobbies seek out the trav- eler to demand, "What does America think of the Irish ?M IRELAND & CONSCRIPTION PROCLAMATIONS OF THE MANSION HOUSE CONFERENCE AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH URGING THE IRISH TO RESIST CONSCRIPTION WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 49 question ?" Shop-keepers greet the American genially, and at once lead np to the query, "If Mr. Wilson believes in self-determination for small nationalities, will he not right our wrongs ?" And so from one end of the country to another the poor wayfarer is sought, courted, cajoled, flattered, and fed on a diet of ancient argument which he has heard from his youth up. And a great propa- ganda machine is maintained to convince America that the Irish are friendly to the States, As to whether they really are friendly to us, one can only judge by events. The city of Cork has been placed "out of bounds" to American sailors because of the riots and brawls, resulting in actual bloodshed, which their presence in the city caused. Even at Queenstown I was informed that Americans riding bicycles along the roads had been stoned until they were forced to discontinue the exercise. When I arrived at Cork I was met by a Y. M. C. A. secretary in civilian clothing who explained that he had discarded his uniform to avoid trouble ; in London I was even advised to lay aside my uniform be- fore venturing into Ireland. On one occasion several men in khaki, with U. S. on their collars, deemed it the part of wisdom to remain in the hotel during the even- ing and were subjected to taunts through the windows from the young Irishmen on the streets. A religious director of the Young Men's Christian Association told me that he had been attacked on the street, and soon his story was verified in my own experience. I reached Cork one evening when the atmosphere was surcharged with the spirit of rebellion. A great Sinn 50 SOCIAL STUDIES OF [THE WAR Fein street meeting had been scheduled as a demonstra- tion against England, a large speakers' platform had been erected in the Grand Parade, and the young Irish- men had flocked in from the surrounding country to par- ticipate in the anti-English seance. The meeting had, however, been dissolved by order of the commander of the British garrison, the streets were guarded by con- stables with carbines, and the soldiers were patrolling with fixed bayonets; everywhere were groups of Sinn Eeiners, sullen, angry, muttering under their breath. As I passed as quietly as possible down the street I could hear remarks issuing from the various knots of young- sters: "There is a damned Yankee," "damned Ameri- can," and the like. Suddenly a man emerged from a group, lifted a small cane, and struck me violently across the face, while his action was greeted by roars and shouts of laughter from his compatriots. These actions indicate that the love of Sinn Fein for our country is not so wholehearted as it might be, and yet it would be an injustice to say that they are repre- sentative of the general sentiment prevailing among the more stable citizenship. At heart these people under- stand that they have no friends among the Allies except America, and for the most part they are anxious to cul- tivate this friendship for ulterior reasons; but their hatred of England is so deep, their desire to see her hu- miliated so intense, that among the young Irishmen, who constitute the strength of Sinn Fein, it often expresses itself in hostility towards all those who are assisting in WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 51 saving England from the defeat which is so cordially wished her. That this element is pro-German and traitorous to the cause for which we contended there can be little doubt. The British Government has apprehended them in many plots with the enemy, and it is a matter of common con- versation on the streets of Irish towns that the German submarines are making regular attempts to land ammu- nition and machine guns on Irish soil. Although I have tried repeatedly, I was never once able to induce a Sinn Feiner, or any other southerner, for that matter, to speak one word in condemnation of Germany. When in the midst of vehement strictures against England I have injected the question, "Would you prefer the dom- ination of Germany?" the result has been a quiet and hesitating "JNb," or a total silence; in either case the speaker refused to discuss the matter. Certain of them, however, have gone so far as to declare that "German rule could be no worse than English at any rate." This attitude of mind prevailing everywhere in the south, while it can hardly be explained, creates a dis- tinct atmosphere of hostility which can be felt most un- comfortably by the pro-ally traveler. It is constantly impressed upon him that there is something wrong with this country, that sedition and rebellion are in the very air, that respect for law and order has reached a low ebb. It is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that Sinn Fein is bending heaven and earth to arm it- self, in spite of the law against drilling and keeping arms. Burglary always follows a report that a citizen 52 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR has a rifle or pistol in liis house, and from the British garrison on Bere Island, as well as from the American submarine base and kite balloon station at Castletown Bere, the signal rockets and lights can be seen issu- ing from the hills as Sinn Fein calls her devotees to- gether or flashes communications to enemy submarines. One day I was standing on the pier at Castletown Bere when a man wearing a green hat appeared ; the hangers- on greeted him warmly and he remarked, "Remember tha green, Friday night" ; whereupon his hearers all sa- luted respectfully and the man rode away on a bicycle. The incident was significant of the plans and the organi- zation of Sinn Fein in this remote section of Ireland. When the present war broke out there were, of course, a large number of Irishmen who desired heartily to see England decisively defeated and humbled, and they saw in such a possibility the "liberation" of their island. Germany believed that Ireland was ripe for a rebellion and her propaganda was set to work in an effort to hasten that event, an effort which bore abundant fruit in the Easter rebellion. This fiasco settled, and in a manner by no means as harsh as the Irish agitators would have us believe, England was in a position to control the turbulent people if she had been able to adopt a definite and firm Irish policy. But as a matter of fact England had no Irish policy, and has never had. By using pa- cific methods with a people who have always refused to be pacified, she permitted, and even encouraged, the for- mation of other plots and the general dissatisfaction of the population. The Irish constantly complain against WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 53 the cruelty of England and the oppression to which, they are subjected at the hands of that power, but most disinterested people who visit Ireland are almost amazed at the laxity of her administration of the Defense of the Realm acts and at the insults and seditious encourage- ments which she tolerates. When we in easy-going and tolerant America were arresting men for remarking that the Red Cross was a "fake," England was permit- ting Irish people and newspapers to call the flag a ''floor-mat," stage giant demonstrations against the Empire and the war, and talk openly in severe denun- ciation of the government of which they are a part, even to the limit of declaring in open parliament that a re- bellion would be advised if the leaders could persuade themselves that it would be successful. In the Grand Parade in Cork there stands a great monument bearing the names of "the martyr vanguard," mostly men who have been executed for treason, and an inscription urg- ing young Irishmen to follow their example; and in the great Dublin cemetery one of the epitaphs reads thus: "I have been adjudged guilty of treason. Treason is a foul crime. Dante places traitors in the ninth circle of hell, I believe the lowest circle. But what kind of trai- tors are these? Traitors against country, kindred, and benefactors. But England is not my country and I have betrayed no friend. I leave the matter there." I doubt if there is a land on earth where such open sedition would be tolerated as is carried on daily in Ireland. Great Britain believes that Ireland would be pacified somewhat if she were placed on the footing with other 54 SOCIAL STUDIES OF [THE WAR self-governing dominions, and thus the home rule and conscription bills were prepared. But the result was an explosion more violent than any that had occurred hitherto. Sinn Fein did not desire and would not have Home Bule, Ulster of course set her face against it, and conscription was opposed like the plague. All over the south the anger of the people waxed hot, and that section became a seething caldron of disaffection and sedition. The population resolved to resist unto the last limit, and they pledged themselves, men and women alike, to op- pose conscription by all the means at their disposal. Anti-conscription pledges were signed everywhere, hun- dreds of thousands affixing their signatures and display- ing the little white buttons on their lapels as a token of their resistance. There were meetings, committees, plots, and movements in every city, town, and village to crystallize sentiment and weld together the opposition. The observer could not escape the knowledge that south- ern Ireland would have nothing to do with the war or allow the people to be conscripted. The young men of military age swarmed the streets of the larger towns by multiplied thousands, showing by their very numbers what Ireland could do in the way of supplying man power to the armies if she only would. And now for the first time the Church came openly to the front and assumed the leadership of the anti-British crusade. The Church, as is well known, had always been behind the sentiment against the Empire, but hitherto her influence had been more or less veiled ; now it is open and avowed. The priests head the committees, issue the WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 155 propaganda literature, handle the funds of rebellion, make the political speeches, and influence the people to sign the anti-conscription pledges. These pledges are always signed in the Churches after special masses, and fo each town there are great posters urging the people to attend the masses and sign the pledges. This is the text of the pledge and the inscription on the buttons: "Denying the right of the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist Conscription by the most effective means at our disposal." The women wear buttons which pledge them to refuse to take the place of any person conscripted and to assist the families of those who may suffer through resistance. The hierarchy made the following pronouncement, which was signed by Cardinal Logue and all the bishops and archbishops of Ireland: "The Bishops direct the clergy to celebrate a public Mass of intercession on next Sunday in every Church in Ireland to avert the scourge of conscription with which Ireland is now threatened. They further direct that an announcement be made at every public Mass on Sunday next of a public meeting to be held on that day at an hour and place to be speci- fied in the announcement, for the purpose of administer- ing the following pledge against compulsory conscription in Ireland: 'Denying the right of the British Govern- ment to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist con- scription by the most effective means at our disposal.' The clergy are also requested by the Bishops to announce 56 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR on Sunday next that a collection will be held at an early suitable date outside the Church gates for the purpose of supplying means to resist the imposition of compulsory military service. "An attempt is being made to force conscription upon Ireland against the will of the Irish nation and in de- fiance of the protests of its leaders. In view especially of the historic relations between the two countries from the very beginning up to the present moment, we con- sider that conscription forced in this way upon Ireland is an oppressive and inhuman law, which the Irish peo- ple have a right to resist by all the means that are con- sonant with the law of God. We wish to remind our people that there is a higher Power which controls the affairs of men. They have in their hands the means of conciliating that Power by strict adherence to the Divine law, by more earnest attention to their religious duties, and by fervent and persevering prayer. In order to secure the aid of the Holy Mother of God, who shielded our people in the days of their greatest trials, we have already sanctioned a National Novena in hon- or of Our Lady of Lourdes, commencing on the 3rd May, to secure general and domestic peace. We also exhort the heads of families to have the Rosary recited every evening with the intention of protecting the spir- itual and temporal welfare of our beloved country, and bringing us safely through this crisis of unparalleled gravity." This action on the part of the hierarchy followed the famous Mansion House Conference, attended by Irish WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 57 leaders and Members of Parliament and presided over by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. This Conference started the opposition to conscription by issuing the following state- ment : "Taking our stand on Ireland's separate and dis- tinct nationhood, and affirming the principle of liberty, that Governments of nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we deny the right of the British Government or any external authority to im- pose compulsory military service in Ireland against the clearly expressed will of the Irish people. The passing of the Conscription Bill by the British House of Com- mons must be regarded as a declaration of war on the Irish nation. The alternative to accepting it as such is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves slaves. It is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities to self-determination, which even the Prime Minister of England now preparing to employ naked militarism and force his Act upon Ireland himself officially announced as an essential condition for peace at the Peace Conference. The attempt to enforce it will be an unwarrantable aggression, which we call upon all Irishmen to resist by the most effective means at their disposal." These pronouncements are sufficient indications of the light in which the Irish regard conscription and the lengths to which they are determined to go in preventing its operation. The Lord Mayor of Dublin applied for passports to visit America in order to lay his case be- fore the President, and he was assured that such pass- ports would be granted him ; he refused, however, to per- 58 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR mit the proper authorities to examine the documents he was carrying and on this account the journey was not made. I was frequently asked about the attitude of America. "Are you coming here to shoot us down also ?" was a form which the query often took. And my reply always was the same : "I do not think America will have any part in the policing of Ireland. There has always existed in our country a great sympathy for the Irish cause, but I am quite sure the President and people will not look kindly upon any attempts or movements which are calculated to weaken England's efforts in the win- ning of the war." I was in Ireland during the spirited campaign in East Cavan between a nationalist candidate and Arthur Griffith, a Sinn Feiner who was at that time in Birming- ham prison on a charge of high treason. The Sinn Fein cause was being represented by various priests, and the result was a victory for Griffith, who gained strength by virtue of his prison experience, by a large majority. At this time excitement was running high. The proclama- tion of Lord French calling for 50,000 volunteers in lieu of conscription was referred to in the columns of "Young Ireland" as "the magnificent French farce," under a heading "Imperial Grand Theatre of Varieties." In re- gard to the call for the 50,000, the following is a char- acteristic editorial from the Sinn Fein press: "Like the Irish Times, we are certainly astonished at the very reasonable demand made by the Military Governor.and General Governor of Ireland. Fifty thou- sand ! Sure, boys, we would never miss that number of WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 59 fly-boys out of Ireland. Their fathers would still be here to contribute the 2,000 or 3,000 required monthly as from the first of October, 1918. We would, however, ad- vise Governor French not to expect too many of these fly-boys till about the day before the entries close, as they would not think of joining up in the middle of the season. They are getting nice and tanned at our seaside resorts, and, when caught, they will, we have no doubt, make good soldiers. Their papas, who only arrived over here recently, will be ready when their time comes. The younger fry are making themselves fit by constant exercise. As you will understand, hide and seek is a good fat-reducing medium, and, as most of them are continually 'on the run,' they will prove just the stuff you want, Jackie. The only request which they are likely to make is that they will be allowed to retain, when on more active service, their distinctive national costume broad trousers and hipped coats. They are looking after the alteration of the facial and nasal de- partments themselves. When you get these 50,000 and the 5,000,000 American troops, you will have about 5,- 000,000 good fighting men. If that is not enough, we know where more can be got. We append first lists : Irish Times Office : Editorial 9 likely, 2 fit. Works Many probables and fit. Offices 9 likely, 2 fit. Eeporters 4 likely, 4 fit. Young Ireland Offic3: Editorial None likely, all fit. 60 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Works None likely, all fit. Offices None likely, all fit. Reporters None likely, all fit. (Exemption claimed owing to the fact that theirs is work of national importance). Nationality Offices: (Same remarks as Young Ireland.^) Freeman's Journal Offices: Editorial 6 likely. (On government work.) Bariba 1 likely. (Cannot be spared, although as a fly-hoy he should go with the first 50,000.) Letter writers 20 likely. Works 20 likely. Offices 20 likely. Reporters 5 likely. (Grand total 82 prohahles.)" Perhaps one or two other quotations from Sinn Fein journals, picked up at random, will he illuminating. One paper thus observes: "Discovering plots is seem- ingly becoming an international (All-lies only) pastime. In France it is known as 'Boloism/ in England it is, we believe, called the 'Black Book, or the 47,000,' and America calls it 'Treason/ and, although enthusiasm dropped in the 'land of the free' after Police Inspector Flynn was deposed, it is now revived with a vengeance. Mr. Jeremiah O'Leary and five others have been in- dicted by the Federal Grand Jury on charges of Trea- Bon." WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 61 Everywhere the most strenuous means are adopted to make the opposition to conscription and England unani- mous. For example, when several leaders were arrested for treasonable communications and plots with the en- emy, Sinn Fein demanded that all Ireland denounce these arrests. The Clogheen Guardians declined to pass the required resolution, and at once a convention was held at Burntcour, which forced two of the Guardians to' resign and unanimously called on the others to do likewise. When Sinn Fein was declared to be a danger- ous organization the Armagh Asylum Committee dis- missed a store-keeper who was head of the local cumann, and the action was brought before every Sinn Fein club in the country, the members "being resolved to carry on the movement, as per instructions from the Executive in Dublin, regardless of any interference by the authori- ties." When the chairman of the Mullingar Board of Guardians was asked to resign his position as Justice of the Peace as a protest against conscription he declined, and immediately the board elected to succeed him a mem- ber of the Westmeath Sinn Fein Chaimhairle Ceann- tair. And the following item of news sheds an inter- esting light on Sinn Fein methods also : "Messrs. Thomas Hickey, Lisgibbon, and D. O'Brien, Golden, received a hearty welcome on their return home after two months' imprisonment in Belfast for drilling the local Volun- teers. They were met at the local station by a band and an enormous crowd, who escorted them to their homes." Now what does Ireland intend? Under the leader- ship of Sinn Fein she plans for complete and absolute 62 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR independence, the making of Ireland into a separate He- public. This Celtic I. W. W., this Irish Bolsheviki, will have no more to do with Home Rulers than she will with Ulster- the principles of both Nationalist and Unionist are alike rejected. In the attainment of their ambitions they do not ask any concessions or favors from Great Britain; the Sinn Eein members of Parliament refuse to take their seats at Westminster, and they maintain an attitude of aloofness from the motherland. They are at war with Great Britain, because the Mansion House Conference decreed that the conscription act was a dec- laration of hostilities. They go over the head of Parlia- ment and look to the Peace Conference for the righting of their wrongs and the establishment of the republic of their dreams. Drawing inspiration from the history and literature of their past, rejecting even the English lan- guage in so far as possible, they hope to appear at the conference table as a distinct and much-oppressed na- tionality clamoring for liberation. And on the Peace Conference they pin all their ho^es. Thus the matter is summed up by "Young Ireland": "When we said 'nation' did we mean a shire of England ; did we mean a colony of the British Empire; did we mean that the Irish people would be much obliged to their oppressors for allowing them to contribute towards their own deg- radation? Is a country that is content to pick up the crumbs of justice which may fall from the tables of her oppressor worthy of the honor of nationhood? What respect can a bully have for a cringing and fawning slave? 'Down on your knees, you dog/ sums up the WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 63 answer Ireland may expect to get for degrading herself by crawling through the filth of Westminster to kiss the feet of England's Prime Minister. If Ireland is a nation she can demand her rights at the Peace Con- ference. She cannot be content to remain in slavery." Supporting the plea for independence there is put for- ward a series of figures designed to prove that such a republic as Sinn Fein proposes could be self-support- ing. This has always been the difficulty encountered by the radicals, it having been a foregone conclusion that without Ulster, which shows no disposition to enter a republic and which possesses the wealth of Ireland, the new government could not maintain itself; therefore Sinn Fein has always coupled with a demand for inde- pendence a further demand that England grant to Ire- land a subsidy sufficient to pay the bills for a number of years. There now seems a disposition to abandon the latter phase of the matter, the leaders realizing its fu- tility and at the same time becoming convinced that they can support themselves. Their figures have been drawn up to show that Ireland has more square miles of ter- ritory than either Belgium, Holland, Denmark, or Switzerland, and about the same as Serbia, Greece, Por- tugal, and Bulgaria ; in the matter of population she is larger than Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland, and about the same in population as Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. It is pointed out that "Dublin Castle" rule cost Ireland last year 23,766,000 pounds, while Serbia, Greece, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Norway, and Denmark supported their governments at a much smaller expense. 64 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR "Liberty costs only 32s. per head in Bulgaria, 35s. in Serbia, 37s. in Switzerland, 40s. in Greece, 51s. in Sweden, 55s. in Portugal, and 60s. in Norway; in Ire- land subjection and corruption cost us 5 pounds 8 shil- lings per head." "Judged by any standard we may select, Ireland is admirably fitted for freedom. She is large enough, populous enough, and rich enough. For the money we paid England .last year we could run the gov- ernment business of Bulgaria, Norway, and Denmark, paying for all their police, soldiers, ships, and guns. Is not Ireland fooled and robbed long enough ? The hour for freedom and the Irish Eepublic has struck." It is unnecessary to discuss the correctness of these statistics or to inquire how they were obtained; to demonstrate their uselessness it is necessary only to point out that the statisticians quietly take it for granted that Ulster, the dominating factor in the matter of wealth and quite in- fluential in population and territory, will enter heartily into the new scheme. But this is by no means the case, for Ulster will have none of it ; and she stands ready to prove at any time to the entire satisfaction of the south that she cannot be coerced. Ireland has appeared clamoring at the Peace Confer- ence, and she has behind her the influence of the Vati- can. The whole course of recent events tends to con- firm this view. In every country where Irish propa- ganda is carried on, in America as well as in other lands, the movement is backed by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and headed by the adherents and priests of that communion; this fact makes it all WHAT DOES IRELAND INTEND? 65 the more deplorable that the United States should tol- erate an agitation which constantly endeavors to en- gender bitterness toward the nation which should be our best friend the British Empire. To those who have knowledge of the methods of the See of Rome it appears inconceivable that the Irish clergy would have launched on such a far-flung program of political aspiration with- out the consent of the Pope, and if that consent were given we may well inquire into the meaning of it. Does the Pope desire Ireland as another papal state? Will Ireland consent to be so placed ? That His Holiness de- sires a seat free from the sovereignty of any other power is well known, and Ireland is the only place on earth where his occupancy would meet with the approval of the population. That the Irishmen of the south would accept his lordship there seems not the slightest doubt that Ulster would not, goes without saying. But since Ulster cannot be included in any nationalistic scheme without her protest, it may be that some scheme of par- ition is considered. I say one may well believe that both the Pope and the southern Irish have some such plan in consideration. Yet it is needless to discuss it, for its consummation is not even in the range of remote possibilities. ~Not a single nation among the Powers would approve it. And yet none need be surprised if some such agitation appears. CHAPTER III THE BOOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION The antagonism on the part of the Irish toward Eng- land is as old as the relations between these two coun- tries. Its roots run deep in history, and it still flour- ishes because it is constantly watered by religious agita- tion and prejudice. The Irish regard themselves as a subdued people in a conquered country. Possessing no historical sense and exaggerating their own abilities and virtues, they are totally blind to their own crimes while those of England loom large before them. "Like a wounded animal, Celtic Ireland is always licking her sores and nursing her anger. Her leaders are forever raking into the embers, or rather the burnt-out cinders, of the past. To them there is no amnesty of complaints, and the remembrance of mistakes and wrongs is ever fresh. Time brings no limitation of offenses, and no healing on its wings. Without a single grievance in the present, the self-styled Nationalists are forever talking of the old tyranny of England, and her old oppression of Ireland. !N"ot a word do they utter of England's awakened conscience, or of her sincere desire to remedy every wrong, and to conciliate every subject throughout her Empire." 66 ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 67 That the crimes of England toward Ireland have been great, no man, not even the most loyal English- man, would care to deny, and no lover of justice can hold a brief for her in this regard. But Ireland's skirts are not clear. Her cruelty has rivaled that of England, and as for intolerance her guilt is deeper in that she has never repented or forsaken her ways. She will not understand that actions are to be judged by the prevailing moral standards of the age in which they are performed, and not by the more exalted standards of more enlightened times. And so she goes back into past centuries and finds there oppressions, cruelties, and in- justices on the part of England, and when she finds them she drags them across the centuries unchanged and holds them up in the light of present day morality, in which they naturally appear repulsive. "This is Eng- land," she exclaims. But it is not England. It is the seventeenth century in the light of the most tender conscience the world ever knew. And when such a proc- ess is coupled with complete forgetfulness of her own shortcomings, it constitutes injustice and misrepresen- tation on the part of Ireland of the worst sort. Suppose the horrors and the unspeakable villainy of Ireland's massacre of Protestants, than which no more vile crime stains the page of history, were to be pictured in its true colors and underneath it the legend were placed, a This is Ireland !" There would be a world-wide Irish protest, and justly so. Yet the stock in trade of Irish agitators even to-day is the painting of just such por- traits of England. And this in spite of the fact that no 68 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR people on earth have had greater concessions made to them than the Irish have received from England in the past two generations. Ireland is indeed a conquered country. She was in- vaded first hy the Normans at the close of the eighth century. In the middle of the twelfth century Pope Adrian IV granted Ireland to Henry II with instruc- tions .to possess the island "for the purpose of enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion." It surely seems that the Irish would respect the signature* on that deed ! From that day the soil of Ireland has been the scene of almost constant warfare. !N"o less than four times the country has been conquered, and the insurrections and rebellions have been innumerable. A history of Ireland is most wearisome reading, being as it is a long, verbose record of rebellions, plots, schemes, intrigues, injus- tice, oppression, and bloodshed. England found the ancient tribal system of land tenure in vogue in Ireland, and indeed the people have not yet gone beyond their ideals of such a tenure. The feudal system conflicted sharply with the holdings of the clan, and through the process of wars and consequent confiscation of the lands of the rebel chieftains the landlord system, which has been the curse of Ireland, was built up. These land- lords were largely absentees, holding lands from which the Irish themselves had been driven, exacting rents from the poverty-stricken peasants, and holding these at their mercy. Through the system of ejectments which ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 69 was practiced, thousands of persons were thrown from their homes and lands, and suffering untold became the consequence. And when on top of all this England passed laws to kill the Irish trade because of its compe- tition with English commerce, the climax of suffering was reached. To this there was added the religious persecution of the people. Henry VIII attempted to extirpate Cathol- icism, and the Penal Laws which were directed against the Catholics were oppressive in the extreme. They were denied some of the most fundamental of all human rights, and the steel entered their soul to leave a rancor that has never passed away. Religious persecution is never justified, but it is simple truth to say that the English in Ireland are not the only ones who will have to answer for crimes in this regard. Roman Catholics, of all people, can condemn Protestants for intolerance with the least consistency, for the entire history of this Church shows that it has also been one of her favorite weapons. And it has been used in -Ireland. Each time, declare the Protestants, that the Catholics have gained the ascendency they have been as bitter and as cruel against their enemies as any people have ever been to- ward themselves; in fact they have resorted to measures so extreme against Protestants that they shock the world even to-day. "We have learned from history," say the Protestants, "that the Irish or Celtic party, when it pos- sessed supreme power, abused the opportunity to plunder the wealthy and industrious Protestants ; and we can see 70 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR no change in the sentiments of a faction which has al- ways displayed rancor and race-hatred towards us." When we remember the prevailing ideas of the days in which these evils flourished we may find some sort of justification to apply to both sides. The confiscations were all according to law and were the result of rebel- lions on the part of the old holders. The Penal Laws were retaliations for the Catholic oppressions of Protes- tants under the reign of Tyrconnel. But nothing can be said for the commerce laws and the destruction of Irish trade. These were the results of the most selfish kind of perversity, and for them England deserves and has obtained the contempt of the civilized world. But for all other grievances one will have difficulty in deciding whose misdeeds weigh heaviest in the scales, unless we do as is common and follow the lead of our own preju- dices in the matter. And so if we expect to find in the past history of the English and Irish relations the basis for a just settlement of their present misunderstanding we will be disappointed ; the matter grounds in history, but this history is so tangled and crisscrossed with abuses and counter abuses that it is well-nigh impossible to disengage the various strands and estimate the compara- tive degrees of guilt. Ireland is a conquered country which has never rec- ognized the claims of the conqueror. She has been subjected to a long line of persecutions; her terri- tory has been devastated, her people have been killed, she has been taxed for the support of a foreign and minority Church, her land has been wrested from her, ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 71 and ignominy of a thousand sorts has been heaped upon her. This is her case. But England retorts that she has a case also. Ireland has refused to be pacified, and has endeavored to give aid and comfort to every enemy that England ever had. She has murdered Prot- estants, and has organized a long line of prowling bands for the purposes of terrorizing the Protestants, driving off their cattle, burning their homes, and devastating their fields. Her emigrants have plotted against Eng- land on the soil of all the civilized nations of the earth. And thus the case stands. Far better would it be to call the contest a draw, forget the past, and effect a settle- ment on the basis of the present day situation. And on this basis no man can truthfully accuse England of treat- ing Ireland with any degree of hardness; the exact op- posite is the case. The positions of the three different parties in Ireland are well known. First, and most important from every angle except in numerical strength, there are the Union- ists, commonly known as the Ulster Protestants. They possess the wealth, the energy, the ability, and the in- telligence of Ireland, and hold an unquestioned com- mercial supremacy. The inhabitants of northeast Ul- ster are descendants of English colonists, and their po- litical attitude is that of a steady loyalty to the British Empire. It is by no means true that they are not de- yoted to Ireland, but they take the position that the inter- ests of their island will be furthered by its connection with England. They are opposed to most phases of the Home Rule movement, and that for various reasons: 72 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR One is religious. The northern Protestants fear re- ligious oppression at the hands of the Catholic majority if political control is vested in that majority. They remember the former massacres and it is their convic- tion that the Irish character has not changed ; "I think it is not very unreasonable to suppose and believe that what the Irish people have done before they will do again," said Lord Hartington, and this expresses the sentiment of Ulster. Another reason is commercial. These Protestants possess the wealth and the industries' of Ireland. But they are in a minority, and self-govern- ment would mean that they would have to finance the government while its affairs were administered by their enemies. Under the Irish situation the control of poli- tics opens the way for abuses and oppressions of various kinds, and Ulster cannot be convinced that such would not be directed against her. Then there is the political side of the question. The north holds that there is no hope for Ireland detached from Britain. Such a Repub- lic as might be set up would be the center of foreign in- trigues and its position would make Ireland an easy and desirable prey for other powers. Her location on the shore of England would make all such movements in- imical to that country, and in the end that Power would have no course open to her except to again conquer Ire- land. Thus argue the Protestants. The second party, the one that for long was the most numerous, calls itself the Nationalists. It embraces that section of the people who have so long contended for Home Rule, and they believe that the entire control of ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 73 Irish affairs should be in the hands of the Irish them- selves. They have consistently demanded this of Eng- land. On their side they have most of the political argu- ments that appeal to the modern world ; they have been in the majority and their demand for control of their own affairs is legitimate. This party is predominantly Roman Catholic and it has always had the support of the hierarchy of the Church. Priests have been its leaders and agitators. And herein lies the reason of its failure thus far, and the basis for the suspicions of Ulster. The third group are the extremists who now call them- selves the Sinn Feiners. They are a continuation of the old Fenian movement, and they draw their inspiration from the history, genius, and literature of old Ireland. These people go the whole length, and demand abso- lute and final separation from England. Ireland must be erected into an independent Republic and her talents must be allowed free exercise in her own life. This is also a Catholic movement, although it is not so distinctly religious as the Nationalist party and really embraces many Protestants in its fold. Its leaders are for the most part sincere and enthusiastic patriots. But it com- prises the radical element of the country, and has been called the I. W. W. of Ireland. It opposes the aims of the Nationalists in that it will not agree to any half- way measures and advocates armed revolt against Eng- land. On this account it is regarded as a traitorous con- spiracy by the government, and the Easter revolt, ac- complished while the Empire was struggling for exis- 74 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR tence and with the connivance of the enemy, has em- bittered the English against it. In any settlement of the Irish Question these three groups must be dealt with, and the claim of Great Britain must also be considered. Britain demands, and has a right to demand, that any government set up on her shore, especially from a part of her own body, shall be friendly to herself and thoroughly trustworthy. But she has no reason to believe that any Irish Republic would be friendly to her ; the mind, history, and general attitude of Ireland make her think, indeed, that such a government would be hostile. Since the Irish have in- trigued with every enemy that England ever had, it is natural that such suspicions should be aroused. The problem of the pacification of Ireland is thus ex- ceedingly complicated by the fact that all four of the interests concerned stand upon platforms that are reason- able and legitimate. The suspicions of both England and Ulster are well founded, as history attests, and the safeguards demanded by both are legitimate. According to all our ideas of democracy the majority should rule and Ireland should have the right to direct her own af- fairs, and thus the Nationalists gain strength. And again, no man can dispute the fact that the Irish genius should have free exercise, and that no people should be held under an alien power against their own will, and here lies the power of Sinn Fein. But the real issue lies between Ulster and the Sinn Feiners, although neither of them will be likely to win in the contest. I say the real issue lies between them, because the aims of ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 75 the Nationalists are ultimately the same as those of the Sinn Feiners. While this party has been willing to take all that it could get, and has agitated for Home Rule in the halls of Westminster, no one has supposed that Ireland would be pacified when it was granted. If such had been the case it might have been had long ago. But the securing of Home Rule would have been nothing but a signal for the renewal of the agita- tion, this time directed at a complete break. Hence the Sinn Fein contingent drive directly at the thing which the Nationalists ultimately desire. One of the most acute analysts of Ireland has recently written: "I be- lieve that nothing short of complete self-government has ever been the object of Irish Nationalism. However ready certain sections have been' to accept installments, no Irish political leader ever had authority to pledge his countrymen to accept a half measure as a final set- tlement of the Irish claim. The Home Rule act, if put into operation to-morrow, even if Ulster were cajoled or coerced into accepting it, would not be regarded by the Irish Nationalists as a final settlement, no matter what may be said at Westminster. Nowhere in Ireland has it been accepted as final. Received without enthusiasm at first, every year which has passed since the bill was in- troduced has seen the system of self-government formu- lated there subjected to more acute and hostile criticism : and I believe it would be perfectly accurate to say that its passing to-morrow would only be the preliminary for another agitation, made fiercer by the unrest of the world, where revolutions and the upsetting of dynasties 76 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR are in the air, and where the claims of nationalities no more ancient than the Irish, like the Poles, the Finns, and the Arahs, to political freedom are admitted by the spokesmen of the great powers, Great Britain included, or are already conceded." (A. E. : "Thoughts for A Convention: Memorandum on the State of Ireland," 1917.) The position of England is well known ; she is willing for Ireland to have nearly anything that she wants, if the island can set her own house in order, settle her own internal troubles, and offer certainties that England and English people will not be threatened. But England is in a strained and unenviable position. Ireland is a con- stant menace to her, in this war, in every war, and even in times of peace. Far better would it be to throw Ire- land to the winds and let her take care of herself. But this cannot be done, because England is in duty bound to protect herself from the intrigues of a free Ireland, and also to protect English people in Ireland from oppression and destruction at the hands of the so-called native Irish. So the Irish Question is in all reality an Irish Question. It is an internal problem which the people themselves must work out. Of course the difficulty they will encounter will be Ulster. It seems somewhat strange that the most en- lightened and prosperous part of Ireland should be the very section wherein is contained the most determined and bitter opposition to Irish freedom. But it is easy to understand when we have even the most casual ac- quaintance with the history of Ulster and the mind of ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 77 the Ulster people. They are called Irishmen, but they have practically no Irish blood in their veins ; they are the descendants of the British colonists who were sent into Ireland to occupy the land under James and Crom- well. At the accession of James the land of Ulster was desolate, inhabited by a low Irish peasantry and owned by the great earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, the O'Neill and O'Donnell chieftains. After a rebellion in which they joined forces with the Spanish, the earls were forced to flee and their lands were forfeited to the Crown. James then conceived the idea of the Planta- tion of Ulster with border people from England, hoping to settle the border feuds in his own country and at the same time to introduce order and prosperity into north- ern Ireland. Other plantations had been attempted in Ireland and they had all failed, but to James it ap- peared that these failures had been due to the fact that the colonists had intermarried with the natives and thus been absorbed. His idea was to transplant a sturdier people and to send their women with them to prevent intermarriage. Thus were the Protestants sent, whether or no, to Ireland. The scheme of James worked, the presence of the English women and the barrier of re- ligion preventing intermarriage, and under the industry of these settlers Ulster began to blossom and to bear fruit. All went well until the fateful year of 1641, when the Irish Catholics rose at a signal and began the systematic butchery of the Protestants, and the massacre was fol- lowed by a civil war that continued twelve years. His- 78 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR torians have exhausted the powers of language in their attempts to depict the horrible cruelties of these wanton murders. Men, women, and children were drowned, burned, ripped open, and killed in every conceivable way in this attempt to exterminate the foreigners, and in the massacre and the war that followed it has been estimated that no less than 200,000 Protestants lost their lives. And thus the plantation of James failed. The rebel- lion was put down by Cromwell, who went about the task in his customary energetic way; in this he earned the never-dying hatred of the Irish, but it is likely that the measures of Cromwell were excusable according to the tenets of warfare then existing, and even mild and gen- erous in the case of non-combatants. Cromwell saw that the English colonists would always be in danger as long as the sullen Irish remained in the province, so he ban- ished them across the Shannon and divided, the land among his soldiers. This is the basis of the Irish griev- ance, and the reason why "the curse o' CrummeP is re-' membered to this day : the lands were then safely in the possession of the foreigners. Then began the midnight prowlings of the Kapparees, a proceeding for which the island is famous. Organized bands of cattle drivers and moonlight prowlers, the Rap- parees, the Houghers, the .White-Boys, the Right-Boys, the Defenders, the Molly Maguires, the Ribbonmen, the Moonlighters, the Land-Leaguers, and others, appeared to carry on systematic outrages against the fields, crops, stock, and persons of the settlers. Under the reign of the last of the Stuarts the Protestants were disarmed and ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 79 excluded from the army, thus placing them at the mercy of their foes. James II fled to Ireland and civil war broke out under his standard, but this was brought to an end by William of Orange, who was supported by the Protestants. In 179 8 another rebellion started under the leadership of the United Irishmen. This League had started some years before as a non-sectarian move- ment and some Protestants were connected with it, but it was soon discovered that the United Irishmen were the supporters of the prowling Defenders and the Protes- tants scented danger. When the rebellion began it soon developed into a Catholic war on the Protestants, and the cruelties and massacres perpetrated on the settlers out- did those of the days of 1641. They were impaled on pikes, roasted before slow fires, and tortured in many ways. It was from this war that the Orange Lodge and a defensive organization called the "Peep o' Day Boys" took their rise. Thus is indicated the historical basis of the Irish Question as it concerns Ulster. The antagonism of the Irish is based upon the fact that there are some thou- sands of foreign people in possession of land which three hundred years ago belonged to their fathers, and back of most of the agitation lies the desire to repossess this land. Generation after generation hand down the tradition, and they publish maps showing the fertile fields of Ul- ster parceled out among the old families. Never have they regarded the settlers in any other light than that of usurpers; never have they conceded their right to the lands of Ulster. Lord Ernest Hamilton, formerly a 80 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Member of Parliament from .ftTorth Tyrone, a man who for years was in the center of the political life of Ire- land, has thus stated the case from the standpoint of Ulster. "The only attraction of Home Rule to the inner soul of the Irish (especially in Ulster) is the hope that it will provide the machinery by which the British colo- nists can be got rid of and Irish soil revert once more to the Irish. In Ulster the cry of 'Ireland for the Irish 7 is not the mere innocent expression of a laudable patrio- tism; it has a deeper and a far more sinister meaning. It means the expulsion from Ireland of the Protestant colonists, and it is so understood clearly by both sections of the population. There are no sentimental illusions in Ulster, . whatever there may be in England. Home Bule holds out to the native Irish a coveted and substan- tial prize which lies under their very hands to pluck, and which faces them enticingly at every 'turn of their daily labor. Half the lands of Ulster, and that the best and the richest, are in the hands of the stranger within the gates. It matters nothing that these lands, when originally granted, were waste, and that the industry of the colonists has made them rich. It matters nothing that Ulster was then a sink of murder, misery, and vice, and that now it is a land of smiling prosperity. The natives know none of these things ; they are not politi- cally educated along these lines. All they know is that the lands were once theirs, and that they are now occu- pied by colonists of another race and another religion. And so they cry, or, rather, they mutter under their breath, 'Ireland for the Irish/ a cry which, under the ex- CORXER OF SACKVILLE STREET IX DUBLIX AFTER THE SI XX FEIX REBELLION OF 191() WRECKED SHOPS IX DUBLIX AFTER THE SIXX FEIX REBELLIOX OF 1916 ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 81 ponding influence of J". Kinahan, becomes freely trans- lated into 'to hell or to the sea with every bloody Protes* tant.' There is not a Roman Catholic in Ulster to whom the promise of Home Rule does not mean the promise of the recovery of forfeited lands. In some districts the lands of the Protestant farmers have already been offi- cially allotted .among the native population." ("The Soul of Ulster," 112, 117, 120-121.) As early as 1793 a Dr. Duigenan, who had been reared a Catholic *but who adopted Protestantism in manhood, pointed out this phase of the question in an address before the Irish Parliament. "The Irish Cath- olics," he said, "to a man esteem all Protestants as usurpers of their estates. To this day they settle those estates on 'the marriage of their sons and daughters. They have accurate maps of them. They have lately published in Dublin a map of this kingdom cantoned out among the old proprietors. They abhor all Protes- tants and all Englishmen as plunderers and oppressors, exclusive of their detestation of them as heretics." So the situation stands to-day. Behind both race and religion there lies the fact that the settlers are in pos- session of lands that once belonged to the Irish, and the deepest conviction of the Irish soul is that these lands should be restored. This means the expulsion of the English from Ireland. It is possible to work up a vast deal of sympathy for the Irish claim, when we remember how the lands came into English hands. But with all this, it is impossible to think that dispossession of the settlers would be either just or beneficial. It is unde- 82 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR niable that these settlers have made out of land once waste a province surpassing anything in southern Ire- land for fruitfulness, and have built up in Ulster a sys- tem of commerce upon which all Ireland depends for revenue. It is therefore apparent that the restitution of this section to the natives would work to the disad- vantage of the country. Then, entirely apart from the ethics of the planta- tions, it must not be forgotten that no one of the Eng- lish, and none of their ancestors remembered by them, were concerned. For three hundred years they have been in undisputed possession, and even at the time the natives were dispossessed the will of the settlers them- selves did not dictate governmental action. So however unjust the original settlement may have been, dispos- session at this late day would be a thousand times more unjust. Furthermore, according to the codes of that day, and it is unallowable to judge on the basis of any other code, the plantations were perfectly legal. The lands were declared confiscate on account of rebellion, the people were banished beyond the Shannon for the same reason, and all of the cruelties of which they so bitterly complain were thus caused. But this phase of the question carries us into the whole range of the morality of colonization, and this concerns practically the entire earth. Would it be right for the American Indians to insist upon a restitution of the land and the expulsion of the people who now occupy them ? If we grant the contention of the native Irish the principle should be carried further. Give ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 83 England back to the Welsh and expel France from Algiers, Canadians from Canada, and all European na- tions from India and Africa ! This would be the proper course of procedure to accompany the expulsion of the settlers from Ireland. This, then, explains the opposition of Ulster to Home Rule, an opposition that is stern, unbending, and uncom- promising. It will go to the full length. When the Home Rule bill which now stands on the statute books was enacted into law in 1914, Ulster announced her in- tention to fight, and she made ready her instruments of warfare. The operation of the law was suspended in view of this attitude. And a great injustice is done to the best citizenship of Ireland when people do not re- member that she opposes, not Home Rule, but the conse- quences of expulsion, robbery, murder, and oppression, which she believes would inevitably follow. She deems it not very unreasonable to suppose and believe that what the Irish people have done before they will do again. That Home Rule would give an opportunity for such injustice, even with all conceivable safeguards, is very true. There would be no more open murders, and per- haps no openly adverse legislation. But the offices would be filled with the hostile element, injustices would creep into the taxation, prowlings and rapine would be con" tinned, juries would be sympathetic, and even legislative and judicial bodies might take cognizance of the natives' plea that they were entitled to the lands of the north. All this is a possibility under Home Rule, and Ulster thinks she possesses enough knowledge of the native char- 84 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR acter to know tHat such opportunities are never lost And so the deadlock stands. If England should stand apart and allow the Irish to fight it out, Ulster could never be conquered. She stands ready at any time, with her facilities, to defeat three times her own number of na- tives. And a self-governing Ireland without Ulster can- not support herself, for the north possesses all the wealth of the island. This lends support to the Ulster side, for in spite of the doctrine of majority rule, there is ground for objection when the south expects the north to pay all the bills while the south, with all her hostility, runs the country. "What," asks Ulster, "if the Eed Indians outnumbered the Canadians five to two and the govern- ment should be placed in their hands ?" The venom recoils on the head of England, but she is in no way to blame. She has long stood ready to make any concession to Ireland when the people settled their own differences and made known their desires. But she cannot permit her own people to be dispossessed and destroyed, nor can she permit a Republic to be set up by her side which would harbor enemy agents and become the hot-bed of intrigue against her; the action of the Irish in every war the Motherland has ever waged makes England exceedingly and justifiably wary in this re- gard. In the meanwhile, she has gone to the most un- usual length in her attempts to pacify the unpacifiable people. Eealizing that the landlord system was making against the people, she arbitrarily and forcibly dispos- sessed the landlords through a series of land laws, and now the land has passed largely into the hands of the ROOT OF THE IRISH QUESTION 85 people themselves. If any Irishman aspires to become a landowner, the way is open to him. England will loan him all the money to make the purchase, she will com- pel the landlord to sell at a reasonable figure, and she will allow the native half a century to return the money at an insignificant rate of interest. If the native is a laborer and does not desire a farm, he is at no disad- vantage. For England will take a selected piece of ground, build upon it an elegant and adequate cottage, and let the cottage to the laborer for a rent that is a mere pittance. I do not know of any other people who are so treated. But these measures on the part of Eng- land meet with no gratitude from the Irish ; "what vir- tue is there," they ask, "in paying back in installments what was originally stolen en bloc?" The impartial observer will very likely believe that there is no salvation apart from the British Empire for the Irish. Ulster will never agree to cast her lot with such a Republic as the extreme Sinn Feiners propose, and they cannot compel the northern province. And without her no Republic can support itself. This is recognized, and the Sinn Fein faction go to the unusual length of demanding that England repay their treason and intrigues by setting them up as a Republic and at the same time making them an allowance large enough to pay their bills this, they claim, is what England owes to Ireland. At the present time this faction will accept nothing less. When England proposed the convention of all the Irish for the purpose of arriving at a solu- tion of their own differences, the Sinn Feiners held 86 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR back and refused their cooperation, thus placing them- selves in the position of obstructionists. It is difficult to believe that the Irish could really govern themselves on the Emerald Isle; it is quite certain they could not, either in finances or in peaceable administration, if Ulster held back. Sinn Fein should modify its demands and Ulster should modify hers, thus finding a basis of settlement on the Home Rul6 platform. Guarantees of the most sin- cere and liberal kind must be thrown about Ulster, and the connection with Great Britain must be retained. This, is not only true for the purpose of securing the al- legiance of the northern province, but also for the pro- tection of Ireland herself. A weak and struggling Re^ public, bordering the .coast of England, has no chance in these days in Europe. Her desire is to place herself under the protection of Germany, but in this she would be out of the frying pan into the fire, to say nothing of the menace this would afford to England. An Ire- land with the status of a dominion, enjoying a, degree of Home Rule that will protect her Protestant inhabit- ants, seems to be the solution of the problem until both sides grow into a more lenient attitude. CHAPTEK rv; THE POPE AND THE WAB The Pope of Rome is more deeply interested in the ex- ternal facts of the European war than the head of any other ecclesiastical organization, and the war naturally affects the communion of which he is the head more vitally than any other Church. This is true because of the nature, the claims, and the historical attitude of the Roman Catholicism. It once possessed temporal power greater than that of national rulers, and one of its fundamental tenets is that the Church, being the direct representative of God on earth, has a right to exercise external authority of various kinds. This principle not only applies to the affairs of state, perhaps we may say that in this field it urges its claim with less insist- ence than elsewhere; but in the matter of morals, the- ology, interpretation, and even history it insists upon a recognition of this authority. Protestants generally disapprove of such a claim, but there is something to be said for it nevertheless. The point here to be made, however, is that such an attitude inevitably gives the Pope, as the head of his Church, an interest in the diplo- matic affairs of all peoples, and when these affairs issue in war that interest is very much intensified. And if,. 87 88 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR as in the present instance, nations which recognize offi- cially the claims of the Pope axe pitted against each other, the interest becomes so vital that it could not possibly be ignored. And so the Eoman Catholic Church had a concern in the war that went far beyond the purely moral and spiritual interest which all com- munions shared in common. She is supposed to exert an influence in its settlement that is different in kind from the influence of other Churches the logic of her his- torical position makes this necessary. Accordingly, we have had many evidences that the war has been the subject of deep consideration on the part of the Vatican. The Pope has even gone beyond the defined attitude of the Church, and he has an- nounced that he regards all the belligerents as his chil- dren and himself as the common father, irrespective of the affiliations adopted by these people and their gov- ernments even though they are "not yet" Catholics, he puts it. Many times he has issued prayers, addresses, and appeals to the belligerent nations, urging peace. He made a strenuous effort to secure a Christmas truce, and as a matter of fact such an armistice was quite generally observed by the armies, although it was not accepted by the authorities; we are told by the soldiers themselves that at Christmas they sang across "No Man's Land" from trench to trench, exchanged cigarettes and delica- cies, and fraternized quite freely and generally. Then the Pope exerted a very great influence in securing the exchange of prisoners who were incapacitated for military service, in having thousands of prisoners trans- THE POPE AND THE WAR 89 ferred to Switzerland, where they received much better treatment and attention, and in securing commutation of sentences and pardons for a large number of con- demned persons. There is no doubt that in these mat- ters the Pope was able to exert an influence for great good ; he strengthened himself with a large element, and as far as he was able to go he really earned the gratitude of mankind. The Vatican therefore believes that it has added very much to its prestige during the war. Both England and Russia sent ministers of state to Rome accredited to the Vatican, which action is taken by the Church to mean that these countries are coming to recognize the authority of the Pope. But this is a mistaken idea. So far as England, at least, is concerned the action was taken solely because the representatives of the Central Powers were constantly in touch with the Pope, and England felt it necessary to have a representative on the ground to prevent possible intrigues. So these ambas- sadors are little better than secret service agents of the governments accrediting them, and instead of indicating a kindlier feeling towards the Church they really sig- nify a suspicion that is the very reverse of kindness. The simple truth is that the Pope is everywhere con- sidered pro-German. His enemies constantly accuse him of having been in league with the Central Powers. In the first place, there is the fact that Austria was the greatest Catholic nation on earth, and the relations be- tween the Vatican and Vienna are well known. It is impossible that the Pope should look with compla- 90 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR cence upon the prospect of seeing Austria crushed, for if there still remained a hope of regaining temporal supremacy or of securing another group of papal states, such a hope was undoubtedly closely bound up with the success of Austria. And that meant nothing but the triumph of Germany. In the second place, the Pope has been subjected to a vast deal of criticism because of his refusal, or failure, to denounce the invasion of Belgium and the outrages consequent upon such invasion. In view of the fact that Belgium was one of the countries still loyal to the papacy, some such action was expected; and when it failed to materialize an idea prevailed that the silence was due to the fact that such a protest would have been a denunciation of the Central Powers. Again, there are those who believe that the Church cherishes a deep resentment against France, once her favorite child, for having cast off the establishment some years ago, and that she would not have been averse to seeing France humiliated, especially if such humiliation were accompanied by advantages accruing to Austria. This is strenuously denied by Catholics; they declare that France is still the favorite daughter of the Vati- can in spite of her defection. But as a matter of fact, it is plain to be seen that there is a deep gulf between France and Kome. France was the last nation to ex- press any gratitude to the Pope for his services in the transfer of prisoners, and her reticence has been much commented upon. Then France is the only nation that does not exempt priests from military service ; thousands THE POPE AND THE WAR 91 of them were conscripted and fought in the trenches. While this action indicated a lack of consideration on the part of the government towards the Church, it has really been of great advantage to the Church. While in the other allied countries there is wide spread dissatis- faction because of the exemption of the clergy, which has lost to them much respect and prestige, the French priests have gained immeasurably in the opinions of the people because of their experience in the trenches. In addition to this alleged sentiment towards France, there exists the fact that the Vatican has no reason to ally herself closely to England. Here she gets no hope of a recognition of temporal authority. The actions of the priests in Ireland, and the disloyalty of the Catholic population in this island generally, have angered and ex- asperated England to such an extent that there is a deep prejudice against the Church which reaches even through the colonies of the British Empire. Then there is the further fact that the Pope is not on good terms with Italy, and Italy is not on good terms with the Pope. The Church regards the state as having usurped the au- thority and stolen the territory of the Pope, and the fiction of "the prisoner of the Vatican" keeps alive this attitude. All of these things naturally contribute to the feeling that the Pope desired the defeat of the allied cause. On the other hand, it is asserted that certain inter- ests and hopes bound the Church to the cause of the Central Powers. Austria was, of course, the strongest bond of attachment. But the Vatican was said to have 92 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR had interests in Germany also. It is quite true that this is the home of the Reformation and the anathematized Lutheranism ; but Germany has a large Catholic element in her population, and this element exerts a considerable influence. Several of the states are Catholic and con- tinue relations with Rome. And the Center Party is wholly Catholic. So even in Germany the Pope had a basis for hope, according to those who have conjectures upon such matters. Then again, the incident of Mgr. Gerlach's conviction contributed still more to the belief that Benedict XV is pro-German. Gerlach, although a German and a former officer in the German army, enjoyed the con- fidence and patronage of the Pope in a remarkable de- gree, and the Pope appointed him "Cameriere segreto participante" and Keeper of the Wardrobe. Suspicion fell upon him because of his connection with the Prus- sian agents in Rome, but even after Italy entered the war he was kept in his position in the Vatican. It later developed that Gerlach had taken charge of the Ger- man espionage system; he disbursed German money, subsidized the press, and managed the entire work of propaganda and spying. Although he was sentenced to death by the government, the priest made his escape into Germany. There is no evidence that his holiness was in any way concerned in the matter, but the mere fact that a traitor should be found among the papal officials, and that such a man was retained in office after Italy had declared war against his government, gave the enemies of the Vatican a chance to make capital against it. THE POPE AND THE WAR 93 Even the attempts of the Pope to secure peace were used against him by those who sought to convict him of being pro-German. It is well known that all of the peace offers came from the side of the Central allies, and when the voice of the Vatican was lifted it was considered to be a voice from the same side. And that is one reason so little attention was paid to such proposals looking to peace: they were considered by the Allies exactly as if they emanated from the enemy ; while this was not the official attitude, of course, it was the attitude of the people at large, and the one under which the governments were supposed to move. This at- titude was strengthened when the Pope put forth his definite peace program, for that was a proposition which Germany could have well afforded to accept. While it refused to Germany the annexations and indem- nities which she hoped to gain, it must be remembered that she had already practically despaired of ever ob- taining her ambitions; and even a return to the status quo ante bellum would still have left Germany dominat- ing Central Europe through her alliances, as President Wilson pointed out, and this would have been a prac- tical victory for her. There were several points in the Pope's proposal which could hardly have been accepted by the Allies. In the first place, it provided that Belgium should be evacu- ated and guaranteed independence nothing more. "Novf that was exactly the case with Belgium before she was outraged, and this proposal made no provision for a guarantee on the part of Germany that such inde- 94 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR pendence should be respected other than the Teutonic word of honor. Belgium had that word of honor, ratified by a solemn treaty, before this war began, and Germany declared it to be "a scrap of paper." So when nothing was offered to Belgium except another treaty of the same sort, it was plain to see that she could only reject it. There was no security in it, to say nothing of the injustice of having Germany simply evacuate after de- stroying Belgian property and life. In the second place, the proposal was voided by its treatment of the problems of Alsace-Lorraine and the Italian Irredenta. These territories, because of his- tory, nationality, and the desires of the people, should have been taken from Germany and Austria, and it was clearly no settlement of the questions to suggest "peace- able negotiation." If that would have sufficed, a set- tlement might have been effected years ago. In the third place, the very phrase "freedom of the seas" has a German sound. For what can this mean ? Germany has always had freedom of the seas so far as her commerce and legitimate pursuits are concerned. She has been restricted on the seas only in the matter of attacking England. The European arrangement has, of course, been for Germany to maintain supremacy on the land while England maintained supremacy on the sea, an arrangement entirely equitable owing to the charac- ter of the two nations. But since the Franco-Prussian war Germany has insisted upon being supreme upon both land and sea, a program which, of course, was aimed at England. It was this unreasonable demand upon the THE POPE AND THE WAR 95 part of Germany, that she dominate both sea and land, which nullified The Hague conferences and brought to nothing the repeated attempts on the part of England to secure a limitation of armaments. So to Germany the freedom of the seas means noth- ing except that she be allowed such domination, since she has always had freedom of every other sort. And when this suspicious phrase was discovered in the proposal of the Pope, it caused suspicion in- stantly. These fundamental defects were reenforced by many others. For example, why speak of disarmament with- out setting up some form of authority, in view of the historical facts that Germany has always rejected Eng- land's atempts to secure a limitation, that she has nulli- fied every Hague conference that has been held, and that she even refused to enter into peace treaties, which had been signed by all other nations? !N"o acceptance of such a proposal could change the German attitude or government, and hence autocracy would only be per- petuated by its acceptance. In dealing with a power which refused point-blank to declare that it would re- spect its own treaty, and which later declared it to be a mere "scrap of paper," it is plain that something more substantial than agreements made with the same parties must be a condition of any lasting peace. Now all of these things have been taken by the Al- lies to show that the Pope was not at heart really fa- vorable to their cause, and his enemies have not failed to turn every scrap of evidence against him. It is for 96 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR this reason that any peace proposal which emanated from the Vatican was regarded with suspicion. I have pointed out that the Pope was able to ac- complish much good in the war by securing a trans- fer of prisoners and other concessions. But in spite of what he has done, the chances are all in favor of a further decline of his influence. There is a widespread dissatisfaction with the Church, and in Italy and France it is naturally directed against the Koman Catholic Church, just as in England it is against the Anglicans. As a matter of fact, Rome, in spite of her relation to the Church, is perhaps the most anti-papal city of Eu- rope. Here one may hear more outspoken protests against the Vatican than anywhere else than in France, for example, where her influence has just been shaken off and where she is regarded with great sus- picion and reticence. This opposition is found in all ranks of society, from ministers of state down to waiters and carriage drivers. I was told by many people in Rome that the body of the late Pope could not be re- moved from its temporary tomb in St. Peter's to its final resting place in St. John Lateran because the Church feared a hostile demonstration on the part of the people. This attitude is toward the Church as an institution rather than against the Roman Catholic religion. In- deed, the very people who adopt it are good Catholics and may be seen regularly at worship in the Churches. The hostility is against the temporal pretensions of the Vatican, and in this direction it is quite intense. Com- paratively few communicants of the Church are mem- I i! JDtaOOOB lle^noe M$I> OB: M p5>^^% OE VA^^x ID en ij i n 5 r h e . 1 5 f i c o f r- 1 1 e B i ci s h :-^> (jovecnmenC r,oetipoce compulsory V^ 1 '- \ HvJ) ounsetves solemiiltj co one AnocheH UW Co ttesusc ConscRipcion by che tnosr, /w| w/ fpf eccive icf) feiri lei 6ucf> allefa MAffh2ftt9 GEUMAX PROPAGANDA "IN THE TRKNCHES 'BEHOLD^ i AM WITH YOU ALWAYS'" GEKMAX PROPAGANDA "AT THE ADVANCE POSTS e l AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD' " THE GERMANS AND THE TURKS diately. The Governor. Von der Goltz." "Notice to the Population. In order sufficiently to ensure the safety of our troops and the tranquillity of the popula- tion of Reims, the persons mentioned have heen seized as hostages by the Commander of the German Army. These hostages will be shot if there is the least disorder. On the other hand, if the town remains perfectly calm and quiet, these hostages will be placed under the pro- tection of the German Army. The General Command- ing." "Proclamation. Inhabitants of both sexes are strictly forbidden to leave their houses so far as this is not absolutely necessary for making short rounds, to buy provisions or water the cattle. They are absolutely forbidden to leave their houses at night under any cir- cumstances whatever. Whoever attempts to leave the place, by day or night, upon any pretext, whatever, will be shot. Potatoes can only be dug with the comman- dant's consent and under military supervision. The Ger- man troops have orders to carry out these directions strictly, by sentinels and patrols, who are authorized to fire on any one departing from these directions. The General Commanding." "Order. To the People of Liege. The population of Andenne, after making a display of peaceful intentions towards our troops, at- tacked them in the most treacherous manner. With my authorization, the General commanding these troops has reduced the town to ashes and has had 110 persons shot I bring this fact to the knowledge of the people of Liege in order that they may know what fate to ex- SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR pect should they adopt a similar attitude. General Von Billow." Comment on such proclamations as these is unneces- sary. They throw an interesting light on the German declaration that "amongst English statesmen there is not a single deeply pious man, capable of appealing to the hidden springs within his people. Now that Ger- mans and Turks have their way, things will be different. The German nation is certainly at the present moment the instrument of the spirit." With these things before us, we would naturally ex- pect Germans to be wrathful when Jerusalem, .the holy city of Christianity, was wrested from the vile Turk. At this event a thrill of joy ran around the world; it became the subject of optimism everywhere. The Pope has forbidden any Christian to lift his hand in an attempt to restore the holy city to the Turk, and faithful Jews are happy and hopeful in many lands. All Christians are happy save the Germans, the self- acclaimed Superchristians. Professor Delbriick has al- ready proclaimed that the city of the Cross must again be restored to the Turk, and an appeal has been issued to the Zionist Jews to rally to the cause of the German and Turk to help them raise the crescent over the ancient city of David again. This appeal to the Zionists is perhaps the most ridiculous manifesto which the Ger- mans have put out during the war. Closely allied to this is the action of Dr. Adolf Deiss- man, professor of theology in Berlin, in abjectly plead- ing with some of the Christian scholars of Europe to THE GERMANS AND THE TURKS 235 use their influence in securing a modification of the terms of the armistice imposed upon Germany, after having, at the beginning of the war, given expression to such sentiments as the following: "The German God is not only the theme of some of our poets and prophets, but also a historian like Max Lenz has, with fiery tongue and in deep thankfulness, borne witness to the revela- tion of the German God in our holy war. The German, the National, God ! . . . Has war in this case impaired, or has it steeled religion ? I say it has steeled it. ... This is no relapse to a lower level, but a mounting up to God Himself." "It is a persistent struggle for posses- sions, power and sovereignty that primarily governs the relations of one nation to another, and right is respected so far only as it is compatible with advantage." "In the age of the most tremendous mobilization of physical and spiritual forces the world has ever seen, we proclaim no, we do not proclaim it, but it reveals itself the Religion of Strength." The religious genius of the German peoples peculiarly fitted itself into the facts of this war and lent itself readily to the methods with which the war was waged. The religious life of the German Empire in the past few years has been rather sharply divided into two classes. First, there is the political Prussian state Church, the most dismal orthodoxy on earth. It preaches a thirteenth-century gospel and stands for a medieval theology. It is this orthodoxy which has bolstered the Emperor in his declaration of "divine right," and which caused him as late as 1903 to intervene in a theological 236 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR discussion, in the course of which, intervention he de- clared that his own grandfather had been the chosen of God. Under the henign influence of a state Church, the German Empire has the distinction of being the only nation of Christendom to adhere to the very last to the outgrown notion of the divine right of kings. This German orthodoxy retains the old Hebrew Jehovah as its God, a God of battles who has chosen Prussia from among the nations and assured to the Germans a mon- opoly of his favor. The preachers have referred to him as "dwelling above the cherubim and seraphim and the Zeppelins !" Edmond von Heyking, once a German consul in New York, referred to God as "our great Ally, who stands behind the German battalions, behind our ships and sub- marines, and behind our blessed militarism." Pastor W. Lehmann speaks of the German "defending God against the world," to the end that "the German soul," which is "God's soul," "shall and will rule over the world." Pastor Eump of Berlin issued a volume of "War Devotions," through the pages of which he fed the soldiers on such a wholesome diet as this: "We shall permeate, in the name of God, a world which has be- come poor and desolate." "We have become the heirs of Israel, the people of the Old Testament covenant. We shall be the bearers of God's promises." "The Bible is our book. It was given and assigned to us, and we read in it the original text of our destiny, which pro- claims to mankind salvation or disaster according as we will it." Pastor Tolzien believes that Germany is, "as [THE GERMANS AND T,HE TURKS 237 was Israel among the nations, the pious heart of Europe." Dr. Preuss, Licentiate of Theology, preached that "the thief who expiated a sinful past by his repent- ance in the last hour, and was outwardly subjected to the same suffering as our Lord, is the type of the Turkish nation, which now puts Christianity (outside Germany) to shame." This is German orthodoxy. On the other side of her religious life, Germany has the most advanced and reckless liberalism of the world ; her rationalism in theology is as severe as her orthodoxy. Any person who is at all familiar with the theories of German scholars with advanced theological ideas can tell the opinions of such scholars on any question in the domain of their science without having reference to their works, because these scholars invariably go to the last extremes of rationalism. They have declared most of the scripture writings to be unauthentic, they have banished miracles entirely, and they have reduced to the vanishing point the divine element in the nature of Christ. And these are not the so-called "f ree thinkers" ; they are the leaders of German theological thought. So far, this is not an unusual situation, since we have both extremes here in America. We have rationalists as "advanced" as any German. And we also have a group of literalists whose mechanical views issue in pre-mil- lenarianism, an orthodoxy as dismal and ancient as any- thing boasted by Germany. But neither of these ex- tremes exerts any appreciable influence in the religious life of America. The difference is that we have a mid- dle ground, while Germany has not. She knows noth- 238 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR ing of such an influence as that of our great Protestant denominations, which take account of changing condi- tions and incorporate all the ideas and discoveries of advancing knowledge without going to the absurd and unwarranted extremes of infidelity. Such an influence is so utterly unknown in Germany that the greatest scholar and philosopher of the land, Rudolf Eucken, when he discovered that the Church and a religious life are necessities and that neither Germany's orthodoxy nor her rationalism could contain the religious aspira- tions of the race, jumped to the conclusion that the whole organization of the Church must be overthrown. He had no conception of a progressive mean being al- ready in existence, because his horizon was bounded by the confines of the German Empire. Now what did that situation mean ? It gave us the great war ; orthodoxy as well as rationalism is to blame for it. Both contributed to making the people lose God ; the one gave them a false conception of His nature and the other caused them to lose His morality and His vital influence as dynamic powers in human life. Both, from opposite standpoints, gave the people an external God, and so both were ready for the war : the orthodox because God willed it, the rationalist because there is no moral God to care. The one made the state the supreme jend of God's purpose, as the Israelites did; the other placed the aims of the state above God's moral pur- poses. And when this had been done religious Ger- many was ready for the war, or for anything else. So when Belgium was invaded both could march side by GERMANS AND THE TURKS side, the one believing that the German God willed it even as the Israelitish God ordered the extermination of the Canaanites, and the other not having any relation- ship with God which enabled them to know that God took any interest in the matter. In both cases the state was supreme and common morality might be cast to the winds. And so I believe that the religious issues of the war will be the destruction of both orthodoxy and rational- ism. [Never again will men be able to commit crimes in the name of God. The passing of the greatest of all earthly calamities must leave the world politically and religiously better. Democracy and freedom will pre- vail throughout the world and autocracy can never re- turn, while the superficial clamors of those who are for- ever seeing the world going to hell and Christ return- ing will be silenced. Out of the changing order there seems destined to issue a more vital religious faith than anything we have ever known before. (CHAPTER XI AMONG THE TOILEBS The person who visits Europe with his eyes open in these days will soon understand that the people are being born. Democracy is in the air and the common- ality is coming into a standing which it never before possessed, for the world realizes that the ultimate man is the toiler and is according to him a new respect. To-day in Europe the laborer has a greater respect, more money, and more influence than he ever had before. One morning I chanced to glance through the "want ads" of a daily paper and the notice that caught and held my attention was this: "Wanted, a piano and a high-grade player by a lady munition worker with the ready money." A day later I saw this advertisement reproduced by another paper under the heading: "The Modern Plutocracy." And I chanced to overhear a con- versation in a tea room between two elderly ladies in which one of them complained that these munition workers had purchased all the good pianos so that it was impossible for "the better element" to obtain one. Previously I had waited over an hour in a shoe store before I could make a purchase, and at last the shoes I bought were fitted to my feet by a young lady; the 240 AMONG THE TOILERS manager explained that the government had taken ten of his twelve salesmen and it was practically impos- sible to accommodate the customers. Everywhere could be seen posters begging for men and women to accept positions of various kinds, and it was easy to under- stand that no person need be idle if he nad the least in- clination to work. He could be employed for twenty- four hours each day and seven days in the week if such were physically possible, and at wages higher than he could have obtained anywhere before the war. Thus I became intensely interested in the life of the workers in the warring countries and set out upon the quest for fuller information concerning them. I found that there was no problem of the unemployed for the simple reason that there was no such class to create a problem, except as it might have been made up of a few who would not work under any circumstances. Of course there was a scarcity of workers ; it could not have been otherwise with such an army in the field. And this scarcity, together with the great increase in munition works and allied industries taken over by the government, had set in motion the competitive machin- ery which had boosted wages to such a point. The work- ers were no more dominated by the altruistic and patri- otic spirit in war times than they had been in the days of peace; they were out for the cash and did not hesi- tate to take advantage of the severe situation in order to better their own condition, being spurred on in this by their unions and the agitators. I welcomed gladly an invitation from the govern- SOCIAL STUDIES OF [THE WAR merit to pay visits to the various munition factories. Up at Gretna there were twenty thousand young women making great shells, at Woolwich still more were work- ing in the arsenal plant turning out the great field guns, and at Enfield I watched them making the famous Enfield rifle and rebuilding German machine guns to be sent back and turned against the former owners. The commandant in charge of one of these plants told me that a certain group of workers, which he designated, who were by no means the most highly paid in the fac- tory, earned by piece work more than $40.00 per week and that most of the women were making three times as much as they had ever made before. These amounts seem very large to the English workers and they are happy, even if they are not contented ; it would be dif- ficult to make them contented, which is perhaps a good thing for society all around. I observed that the conditions under which the peo- ple live have been appreciably improved, although their machines did not seem to be well equipped with safety appliances. The cleanliness of the plants and the perfect order which prevailed were particularly no- ticeable. There were few hotels maintained in the munition centers, and I found the commandants more or less opposed to their establishment, but; the dining rooms are all very clean and the food is wholesome and cheap. I was at Enfield at the noon hour. The workers eat in shifts of 5,000 each, the men dining separately from the women, and at the sound of the whistle the first 5,000 came trooping out, AMONG THE TOILERS 243 their coats on and their hands washed. I asked if they were allowed to "knock off" a few minutes early to perform their ablutions, and the commandant replied: "They are supposed to run their machines until the whistle sounds, but as a matter of fact they are like all other workers they keep their eyes on the clock." Here I visited the savings bank, in charge of a clergy- man, and found that the energetic campaign he had introduced to educate the people in the matter of economy had been so successful that thousands were laying up a surplus. How were the poor being affected in their homes and personal life by the war ? This question occurred to me so insistently that I resolved to make some excursions into the east end in order to investigate the social life in these conditions. I started from the neighborhood of the great Methodist community center on Commercial Road. Under the escort of the social workers from this mission I secured a knowledge of the neighborhood and was ready to begin my prowlings. First I was anxious to visit some of the public houses, the "poor men's clubs," as they are apologetically called even in England, in the evening when the gayety was at its height. Here I encountered difficulty, because the restrictions thrown about the traffic in liquor had caused a great reduction in the jollity of the east end; some of the "pubs" were forced to display a sign early in the afternoon informing their customers that the allotted supply of ale had been exhausted for the day. But I found a place which usually held back during the day- SOCIAL STUDIES OF V THE WAR light hours that joy might he unconfined in the evening, and this establishment I resolved to visit. I strolled in early in the evening, ahout ten o'clock. It was filled with a motley crew, moving here and there in the dense clouds of tohacco smoke, standing at the har, and sitting at the tables. There were a few sailors, one or two soldiers, a couple of men in civilian clothing, and per- haps twenty women; the women outnumbered the men more than two to one. It was the most revolting scene I had thus far encountered. The vile language of the sailors, almost equaled by that of the women, the thick- ness of the smoke, the stench of the atmosphere laden with ale-fumes, the familiarity of the bar-maids, and the general lowness of the environment was quite re- pulsive. At first I was the recipient of many suspicious glances in this "pub" and felt exceedingly uncomfort- able, but the knowledge of the friends who were escort- ing me and the expenditure of a few shillings on "drinks for the crowd" seemed to reassure those who at first re- sented the presence of a stranger in the camp. We fell into a jolly party over there in a corner a soldier, a sailor, and three young women. These girls were fairly intelligent, and a short conversation served to dispel the impression that I had formed concerning them. They were not at all the class of womanhood I had expected them to be the kind they would have been if they had been found in an American saloon. The three were wives of soldiers at the front and one of them had ac- cepted employment in a munition factory. They smoked cigarettes incessantly and drank their "stout" with the AMONG THE TOILERS 245 confidence of confirmed topers, and they were filled with wonder that I should be there and yet refuse the taste of their ale. To them this public house was a social institution, and they frequented it with the same assur- ance that an American girl would visit an ice cream parlor. They were by no means immoral yet. "It seems to me that the government would prohibit the sale of intoxicants during the war," I ventured. They glanced up quickly and scrutinized my face. "Let 'em/' they exploded. "They've took our lads, an' they've took our bread, an' they've took our sugar, an' they've turned off the light. Now will they tike our ale?" "But, you know," I continued, "the lads cannot fight when they drink much ale, and its manufacture is the waste of grain that should be used in bread." But my logic was lost on the party. They were deeply resentful and insisted on keeping their ale whether the war was won or not. "We might as well 'ave the 'un as to 'ave no liberty left any'ow," was the conclusion of the whole matter. When the crowd dwindled somewhat and but two of the girls remained I asked them what they were doing at the "pub." One of them spoke for the other. "Ye see, sir, me man 'e's out there and 'as been out there these months and I've 'ad never a glimpse of 'im. Me heart was so lonesome and I was terrible afraid 'e wouldn't come back again. An' what did the govern- ment give me but a pittance ? I had to find friends to keep me poor heart from breakin', an' so I comes down 246 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR to the pub in the evenin' to be 'appy. If I stayed at 'ome I'd go ravin' mad with the fright and the worry." "Do you go out with the friends you make here some- times ?" I inquired warily. "Ye wouldn't blime me if we went to a show now and then, would ye? I don't mean no 'arm, and if me 'usband knowed ? e wouldn't blime ,me neyther, 'cause when ? e left he told me to ? ave a good time and not be miserable." I went away from that public house deeply impressed. Indeed, I could not "blime" them if they sought a res- pite from the horror of a lonely room somewhere, and the "pub" was the only place where such a respite might be found. But what would it lead to ? I could picture to myself a thousand ruined girls and wrecked homes, and that many soldiers returning to blasted firesides and all because of the public house. And under my breath I cursed England for a land without a conscience, selling the blood and hearts of her people to a group of brewers, some of whom wrote M. P. after their names and occupied places, directly or indirectly, in the gov- ernment itself. In time of war these "pubs" should have been the first to feel the righteous indignation of an outraged people and should have had meted out to them the death which they have deserved so long that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. For the girls to whom I had spoken were not exceptions; they were representative of multiplied thousands whose ruin is being accomplished by the liquor traffic while "the y usband is out there." AMONG THE TOILERS 247 !N"ow I went to the "Mahogany Bar." It was once the most noted music house in the east end but has been turned into a social settlement. The concert hall is now an auditorium of the mission, seated with rough benches in lieu of the tables and chairs that once were used. But the trapdoors are still in the floor. These doors were immediately under the chairs at the tables in the good old days, and it was an easy matter to dump a drunken sailor into the cellar without overmuch confusion ; once in the cellar and the formality of robbing him, even to the taking of the clothing that covered his body, had been completed the unfortunate was carried by under- ground passages to the street several blocks distant. When he awoke in the morning, if indeed he ever did awake, he knew nothing of the passage through which he had been carried, and since he was found far from the resort it was a difficult matter to fasten suspicion upon the place. The superintendent in charge of "the Bar" told me that even now, since the resort has been converted into a community kitchen, he frequently finds nude sailors lying in the alley close by, having been robbed during a spree the night before. Then I went to "Paddy's Goose." This was in for- mer days another noted music hall, and it has likewise been changed into a mission it is a branch of the Stepney mission, like the Mahogany Bar. "The Goose" obtained its name in an interesting way. There is an immense metal swan mounted over the door on the roof, and it one day became the object of a heated discussion between a "bouncer" named Paddy and one 248 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR of his compatriots; Paddy insisted that it was a goose and his friend was quite convinced that it was a swan. In the course of events Paddy was forced to vindicate his position by force of fists, and he did this to the entire satisfaction of the party of the second part. After that, no one dared to deny that the figure was that of a goose, and the resort retains the name of "Paddy's Goose" to this day. Here there are no trapdoors, but the patrons had the convenience of a draw-bridge which, when lowered, spanned a court between the "Goose" and some nearby buildings; in this way the friends of the establishment could escape in times of stress, and unfor- tunate sailors could be carried far from the scenes of their excesses. But the mighty have fallen ! Like the Mahogany Bar, Paddy's Goose is now a mission of the Methodist Church, and here is carried on a great round of war-time activities and benevolent service. The con- version of this place has been celebrated by George R. Sims ("Dagonet") as follows: I stand awhile to muse and glance, Where Jack of old would sing and dance. I pause and hear sweet sounds within The old-time haunt of shame and sin; And gentle voices softly raise To God their songs of prayer and praise. Good folks have turned to Christian use The devil's temple " Paddy >s Goose. " "In the days and nights when the drunken sailor of the world reeled along the highway from the dram- shops to the dancing-rooms, and from the dancing-rooms AMONG THE TOILERS 249 to the back alleys and courts of Artichoke Hill, where they were always robbed and sometimes murdered, 'Paddy's Goose' was accepted as a characteristic Brit- ish institution. And now the old 'White Swan/ which was 'Paddy's Goose/ is a meeting-house of the Wes- leyan East End Mission. The 'Old Mahogany Bar/ which was almost as notorious as the 'Goose/ has been converted converted is a happy word into a center of religious and social uplifting." "What is the social effect of the increased wages the working people are now receiving?" I asked the super- intendent of Stepney. "In many instances it is good," he replied. "Fre- quently the additional money is expended for better quarters, clothes, and food. Some of the people have moved out of the old neighborhood and are taking their places in a better social environment, while there is a marked improvement in the matter of amusement and recreation. But this exodus is from the ranks of the more steady element, and in nearly all cases it removes some of the workers at our missions. It is gradually leaving us without workers and members, but of course we are glad to struggle along in our poverty if our people can be improved." I called to my side a beautiful little girl whom I found in the mission. She had formerly lived near, but her parents had removed to other sections when the prosperous times came upon them, and now the little girl was visiting one of her friends among the social workers. "And how do you like your new home?" I 250 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR asked her. "I don't like it one bit," she emphatically exclaimed, "and I wish I could come back down here. Why, I have not seen a fight since I left, and the Bobby comes down the street all by himself 1" In the old en- vironment she had been accustomed to seeing the police- men going about in pairs for protection. It is not always the case, however, that more wages brings more comforts to the home. Often it only affords more means for enjoyment at the public house. If the worker is not steady in his habits, if he frequents the saloons with any degree of regularity, his increased pay nearly always means more ale and dissipation. And in the end this will mean more misery at home and the loss of his new prosperity. Everywhere it is evident that a great upheaval is go- ing on in the ranks of labor. The unions are becoming more aggressive and the socialists are exultant. The workers are determined that they will not go back to the pre-war conditions, and they are organizing to make good their claims. But many voices are calling to them, and the course of the socialistic agitator is be- setting them. They should have a care lest these "reds" lead them astray into a radicalism that will prevent the reforms that should really be made permanent. Once I clambered up some rickety stairs to find the edi- torial sanctum of a radical labor journal. Those in charge are a socialistic, irreligious horde of agitators who are moving heaven and earth to make the workers demand more benefits than they are now receiving and to set in motion the machinery that will enable them. AMONG THE TOILERS 251 to retain such benefits after the war. "A Pound a Day" that is their motto, and this pound a day for the workers is to be guaranteed by the state and paid through a system of conscription of wealth. The state must own all industries, and then these industries must be placed in the hands of the workers. The House of Lords is to be abolished, along with all titles an excel- lent reform, by the way and an industrial department or chamber of the government is to be created to take its place. The soldiers must receive a living wage and be given complete self-government, while wives and all others engaged in household duties are to receive regu- lar wages. There must be political rights for all per- sons regardless of sex or condition and the workers are to be closely organized to prevent another war. Certainly this is a comprehensive program, and the agitators boldly announce that this is but the beginning. Most of the details will be likely to end at this begin- ning, for I do not find that the movement is taken seri- ously by the people at large and no great per cent of the workers themselves are enlisted in it. The agitators sought to succeed through the organization of a Sol- diers and Workers Council, an idea no doubt borrowed from the Russian revolutionists, but recent events in Russia have perhaps served to blast the hopes of those who pinned their faith to the methods there adopted. But out of it all there will come a more democratic England. It is the day of the people. They are just being born. And their birth is the greatest need of Britain and all the other nations of the earth. CHAPTER XII A HERITAGE OF HATE The most deplorable effect of the war is not the de- struction of property or even the tremendous sacrifice of human life; it is, rather, the storm of bitter hatred which sweeps the world and fills human hearts with its poison. It is perhaps inevitable that in a struggle so fierce and prolonged as the present conflict, antagonism of the most intense degree should arise, but it is .some- what shocking to find that nations deliberately and of- ficially seek to cultivate and instill such venom into the souls of their people. Most people seem to believe that such sentiments are not only unavoidable, but that they are also necessary and salutary, in that they secure soli- darity of opinion and public support for the war. It is argued that men will fight better and civilians will sac- rifice more if they are made to despise the people against whom their country battles. One side of this argument, however, seems to be negatived by the fact that the sol- diers do not hate nearly so fiercely as they fight, and that the people at home possess almost a monopoly of the venom. This is the theory, however, upon which Europe is proceeding, and it is destined to bequeath to the people a heritage of hatred which will adversely affect the na- 252 A HERITAGE OF HATE 253 tional character for two or three generations and prevent fraternal intercourse between the people of the nations now pitted against each other even after peace has been declared. Germany led the way in this propaganda of hate. The world was rightly shocked when the Germans pub- lished their "Hymn of Hate" against England, for it showed a side of the Germanic character which most of us did not know existed. And since that time it has been amazing to witness the deliberateness with which this nation has encouraged her people, even the chil- dren in the schools, to hate the foe especially England, since England's entrance into the war effectually blocked the plans of conquest which the German mili- tary machine had so carefully laid. If any efficiency comes from it, surely this nation has reaped the full benefit. Men who were known around the world as the exponents of the purest idealism men like Eucken, Deissman, Harnack at the beginning of hostilities threw to the dogs their lifelong principles and sent out manifestoes and pronouncements so absurd and bitter that they amazed the world; Eucken's deliverance on "The Perfidy of England," for example, is the negation of everything this philosopher has taught in the course of his long life. The Germans have sung their Hymn of Hate, they have spread stories of English surgeons plucking out the eyes of the wounded and prisoners, they have exulted and celebrated when their aircraft have raided defenseless cities and destroyed hospitals, their preachers have declared the will of God demanded tne SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR destruction of the enemy, they have prayed that their shell-fire might have divine direction, they have declared that the man who cannot put away pity is no true Christian, and they have denounced as anti-German the person who felt sympathy with the murdered innocents on the Lusitania,. All these things they have done while the world stood in amazement, and Germany has fought so furiously because of the venom that rankled in the hearts of these people. Germany, with official sanction, deliberately stirred up her people to hate America, Americans, and every- thing American ; she stamped "Gott Strafe England und America" on her currency, she draped the Stars and Stripes with a border of crepe, she printed a bloody hand on the Declaration of Independence, she struck a medal in caricature of President Wilson and Uncle Sam and another to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania, she published a newspaper for the express purpose of carry- ing on a propaganda against the United States, and she insulted our citizens and diplomatic officials in her bor- ders and all this while we were at peace with her. And all the while her poets, singers, teachers, philoso- phers, scientists, writers, theologians, and preachers were breathing forth denunciations so vile and calumny so bitter that they inflamed the hearts of the populace with a hatred hitherto unknown in the world. As we read these statements, which are reenforced by the doctrine that Germany is the "kingdom of God on earth," that she is the center of God's plans, that the Bible is her peculiar possession, that the sufferings of Christ were A HERITAGE OF HATE 255 the types of the present suffering of the Fatherland, and that all others outside Germany constitute the hosts of Antichrist, we cannot repress a shudder at the cold- bloodedness of this campaign of hatred. (These teach- ings are reproduced for us in the American govern- ment's publication, "Conquest and Kultur," "Ger- many's Madness" by Reich, "Gems of German Thought," compiled by William Archer, and especially in "Hurrah and Hallelujah/' by Dr. J. P. Bang.) We must not, however, imagine that the Germans have a monopoly on hatred and that the Allied nations return good for evil in this regard. It is true that they have not cultivated the spirit as a national policy nor given official encouragement to it as have the Germans, nor is their hatred nearly so venomous as that of their enemy, to judge from the evidences in our possession. Among the Allies it seems to spring mainly from the lower orders of society, instead of from the upper strata as in Germany. And in spite of it all the Entente have kept themselves within bounds and have conducted the war according to the established usages, while the Ger- mans have been guilty of barbarities and atrocities which have shocked the world. Nevertheless there blazes in Europe the most intense hatred of Germany, so wide- spread and universal that one who presumes to question or deplore it at once lays himself liable to the suspicion of disloyalty. On one occasion I chanced to voice the dismay with which I beheld such hatred to a prominent French journalist in Paris. "Why should we not hate 256 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR the Germans?' 7 lie answered quickly. "Consider the things they have done, the outrages they have committed without provocation. Does not this war and all that it means justify hatred of the people who caused it ? Wait until your American casualty list begins to grow, and then you will hate them as cordially as we. Anyway, how can you support a war without making the rank and file of the people hate the enemy so heartily that they will endure any sacrifice in order to exterminate him ?" I was of the opinion that it were more prefer- able to support the war by pure patriotism and loyalty to righteousness and truth. But they cannot see the matter in this light ; the doctrine of loving one's enemy has been thoroughly repudiated in this war, and the im- precatory Psalms are at last vindicated from a mass of calumny which has been cast upon them. All over Europe I saw signs in the windows of the business houses informing the people that no native of an enemy country is in the employ of that firm; my hotel in London displayed this placard : "No German, Austrian, Bulgarian, or Turk, whether naturalized or not, is in our service." Names of streets, parks, towns, firms, and even families have been changed because of their German origin or sound. There has been an agi- tation in London to change the name of Jermyn street because its pronunciation reminds one of "German," I was informed that the all-British manufacturers of a certain well-known brand of Egyptian cigarettes had suffered severe reverses because of the Turkish sound of the name, and many factories have been forced to "LE VIEUX DIEU ALLEMAND" THE FRENCH CONCEPTION OF THE GERMAN GOD A HERITAGE OF HATE 257 abandon the names under which their products had long heen made and popularized. These things reached the height of absurdity when the King of England, Ger- man to the core in his ancestry, went to the extreme of changing the name of his house. One woman advocated to me the theory that all persons with German blood "from royalty down" should be interned, while it is nothing unusual to hear men insist that in order to save food the armies should take no more prisoners. I was crossing the Channel one night and learned that a cer- tain passenger was of German extraction. This fact I unwittingly revealed to some of the voyagers, and it instantly created a sensation on board ; "Good God," ex- claimed an officer in a horrified tone. The matter was duly reported to the military officials at Southampton, and although the man was a native-born British subject, and although his credentials were all in good shape, he was detained at the port and was in custody when my train left. In Eome the populace regards one end of the Quirinal Palace as tainted, and I was told that the King would no longer occupy it, because it was used by the Kaiser on the occasion of his visit to Victor Emmanuel. There has even been a demand for the destruction of the magnificent marble statue of Goethe which the Kaiser presented to Italy and which stands in the Park of Rome, and this demand became so insistent that it was necessary to throw about the statue a cordon of soldiers. One day I was in the Vatican galleries look- ing upon a painting which depicted a thrilling battle SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR between the ancient Romans and an army of Huns un- der the terrible Attila, and when I remarked upon the beauty of the picture to a man standing near he replied : "They were the only people who knew how to treat the Germans." These little incidents, and such things occur daily in all parts of Europe, so much so that if one kept a record the number coming under his observa- tion would soon number into the thousands, indicate in a small way the deep-seated nature of the prejudice and bitter hatred which has taken hold on the hearts of the people. I do not hesitate to declare that this is the most unfortunate phase of the war none the less unfortunate because unavoidable and necessary. We can repopulate the world more quickly than we can eradicate from human character the baneful results of such sentiments. All over Europe little children have their souls filled with the venom of hatred, and one grieves to think of the effect which this condition will exert on the budding life. There is in England a large and influential Anti- German Society which was established for the avowed purpose of carrying on a relentless crusade against all things German and there is a powerful French so- ciety, with its solemn watchword, "Remember," which exists for a similar purpose. In the first place, this society undertook the task of bringing about the intern- ment of all the Germans in the country, "whether natr uralized or not." They were ferreted out carefully and were diligently observed for any clew upon which a A HERITAGE OF HATE 259 charge of suspicious action might be hung; sometimes it was no more serious than using the German language ; and so successful was this campaign that practically all who were in any way connected with an enemy country are to-day prisoners. Their business connections have been ruined, their properties confiscated, and even the German Churches have been taken over in some places. The next move was to turn the guns upon the German language, and there arose a widespread protest against the inclusion of this language in the curricula of the schools. This movement met with some opposition, how- ever, and I encountered a book, written by a professor whose task was the teaching of this language, strongly opposing the movement. But in spite of this antagonism the German prisoners of war in all lands of the Allies are well treated and seem perfectly content with their lot; they are indeed the happiest people I encountered in Europe. They sing as they are marched in from the fronts, and they wear the most genial of smiles as they work in the vari- ous camps or on the streets. They surrender very read- ily, and none of those I encountered displayed the slight- est desire to get away from their present environment. The treatment these prisoners receive is in marked con- trast to what they have been told awaited them should they fall into the hands of the enemy; it is also in marked contrast to the treatment accorded by the Ger- man authorities to the prisoners who are so unfortunate as to be taken by them witness the case cited by Am- bassador Gerard wherein certain German townspeople 260 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR were published as being unworthy of the German name because they had "mistreated prisoners of war," the "mistreatment" being the act of giving cold water to the famishing unfortunates. The spirit of hate in some quarters, however, resents this mild treatment of the prisoners, and it is not too much to say that if some Englishmen had a free hand the actual situation in England would coincide approx- imately with the situation in Germany as it is pictured by the English press and believed to be by the people. Recently it was reported that a captured German officer of high rank was taken to a social function by the offi- cers in command of the prison camp, and this incident became the text for a bitter protest on the part of a well-known London newspaper. I read one day an ad- vertisement in a paper to the effect that a widow would rent some rooms and that "persons of enemy extraction were not excluded." A day later there appeared in another periodical a furious denunciation of this ad- vertisement, and this editorial ended with the state- ment: "We will be false to the dead if we ever learn to tolerate the unspeakable Hun." This bitterness has gone to such an extreme that the Anti-German Society has actually opposed all the social agencies which have sought to do work among the pris- oners. The Y. M. C. A. carries on an extensive work among them, supplying them with books, games, teach- ers, preachers, and sermons printed in their own lan- guage. In this work it has met the steady opposition of the Anti-German Society, which takes the position A HERITAGE OF HATE 261 that nothing should be done for the prisoners whatever. The headquarters for this work were transferred to the American Y. M. C. A. and placed in charge of an American secretary, but still it was hampered and hindered in many ways by the organized hatred. The intensity of this hatred finds a lurid reflection through the press and sometimes in the public utter- ances of well placed men. Even after hostilities had ceased and the German fleet had been surrendered, no less a person than Admiral Sir David Beatty, Com- mander-In-Chief of the British grand fleet, delivered himself of these remarks to his men: "We know that the British sailor has a large heart and a short memory. Try to harden the heart and lengthen the memory. And remember, the enemy which you are looking after is a despicable beast, neither more nor less. He is not worthy of the life of one blue jacket in the grand fleet." Surely this is as Hunnish a sentiment as anything we have attributed to the German. On one occasion a German prisoner, in reply to a taunt, spat at an ex-soldier who had been wounded ; the Englishman at once knocked down the prisoner, for which offense he was fined four shillings. Relative to this case a certain journal published the following edi- torial : "Few more humiliating pictures have been presented to the mind's eye than that of a decent German-hating Englishman being fined and lectured by an English magistrate. I don't know the name of the Chairman of the Long Ashton Bench who committed this offense. SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR If I did I would print it in the biggest type I could find, and in spite of the D. O. R. A. and every other influence which prevents honest men expressing their opinions, I would denounce him from one end of the country to the other. And at the same time I would write the name of the prisoner in letters of gold. For Charles Ridge is a hero. He knocked down a dirty German prisoner who spat at him and said, 'If a Ger- man spits at me again I shall knock him down again,' Bravo, Charles Ridge ! We are proud of you. "Every one has read with burning shame the case of Charles Ridge. He is lame ; he has served in the Mer- cantile Marine, in the Navy, in the Army. When he was at Ostend early in the war he saw many mutilated Belgian women. He remembers, and he hates. And so when he saw a group of our pampered German pris- oners walking along a country road singing and smok- ing, his spirit burned within him. He asked the soldier in charge of these Huns if any of them spoke English, and of one who could he inquired whether he remem- bered the Lusitania. The answer of the swine was to spit in his face. And promptly Charles Ridge knocked him down. The dirty Hun can do as he pleases; the honest Englishman who has fought and has been lamed fighting, is expected to turn the other cheek. Ridge would have been unworthy of his fine record, of his British manhood, if he had failed to reply to the insult. Thank God, he did not fail ! "So let us pay tribute to the manliness of Charles Ri3ge, and do so by remembering and hating. Nearly A HERITAGE OF HATE 263 four years of war with a bestial and despicable foe, and we do not yet hate him properly. I should like to see every man who hates Germany and the Germans yes, and every woman, too, for the women are the best haters of the Hun joined together in solemn league and cov- enant to keep this hate for the Hun alive so long as they have breath in. their bodies and then to hand on the legacy of hate to their children. A League of Hate that is what we want. "In the face of infamies unmentionable, with the knowledge of foul murders by sea and land, in the face of accumulated evidence and piled-up horrors, there are those who to-morrow would make friends with the Hun and take his blood-stained hand in the grasp of amity. In the name of true patriotism, let us exalt the deed of Charles Ridge. Remember and Hate!" When Count Mirbach, the German Ambassador to Russia, was assassinated a full column leading editorial in a prominent London daily contained such sections as these : "We hope his fate will be shared by the rest of the criminals who have lied, murdered, oppressed, and vio- lated at the command of the German Emperor. There are in truth but two appropriate endings for these peo- ple. One is the assassin's knife; the other the hang- man's rope. We should prefer, as a matter of taste, that justice in the case of these men should take an orderly and decent course; but the main thing is that justice should be done. 264 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR "We can readily imagine that these remarks will cause some pain in certain English circles, in which a Prussian aristocrat may still be regarded as 'almost an English boy.' We can quite understand the shock the Foreign Office mind experiences when approval is openly expressed of the removal of an Ambassador and a Count to boot. "But English people, we believe, will feel no such emotion of outraged propriety. They will see in Mir- bach's fate justice and nothing more. "The only hopeful kind of peace is one of which the essential preliminary is the punishment of men like Mirbach, either by the rough justice of assassination or the more ordered operation of a revolutionary tribunal. And the German people, we think, should be told plainly what is expected of them if they are ever to regain their place in the company of civilized nations." The following article from the London Evening Standard will speak for itself: "It fills us with amazement to read that, after nearly four years of war with Germany, any body of British subjects should be ready to address to Germans such a communication as the appeal of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem to the Prussian Order of St. John. "No doubt this thing has been done with the worthiest motives. It is an attempt to restore and maintain the 'highest standard of Christian generosity, charity, mercy, and honor' in the conduct of the war. But the princely and noble members of the Order of St. John A HERITAGE OF HATE 265 hardly seem to realize what is implied in this respect- fully worded and even humble appeal to the 'Most Il- lustrious Grand Master of the Bailiwick of Branden- burg and the Knights of Justice, Knights of Honour, the other Members of the Johanniter Order.' "Who are these Knights of Justice and Knights of Honour of the Prussian Order of St. John ? They are members of the Prussian aristocracy. They are pre- cisely the men who plotted this war, who prepared for it with an organized hypocrisy such as the world has never seen before, and who have carried it on with cool, deliberate, and appalling brutality. The Protector of the Prussian Order of St. John is the Kaiser himself; its Grand Master is a Prussian notable ; its knights are the same kind of people who have bombed our towns, sunk our ships, murdered our women and children, or- dered massacres, burnings and rapings in France, Bel- gium, Serbia, Poland and Rumania, made war on our wounded, starved our prisoners, and to cut short the catalogue been guilty of every kind of crime and meanness which the most perverted imagination can con- ceive and the bloodiest hand can carry out. "These people are rightly looked on by the average Briton as criminals of the lowest type. Ordinary peo- ple, who have given their dearest for this crusade against Germany, regard these princely robbers and murderers as occupying precisely the same moral level as the late Charles Peace and Dr. Crippen. They regard them as more culpable than the brutal German private who kills 266 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR young girls and twirls babies on his bayonet. The pri- vate is no doubt a willing pupil in blackguardism, but he is only a pupil ; the true inspiration in f rightf ulness conies from above. "Yet these Prussian blackguards are addressed as if they were civilized gentlemen the social and moral equals of our own Princes and Nobles. It is gently hinted that Germany may have been led into some small errors of taste in her waging of war. 'Certain bellig- erent acts/ say the petitioners for they occupy that position 'appear to us to be opposed to the declara- tions, maxims, and professions of our ancient and illus- trious Order of Christian Chivalry.' The British mem- bers 'beg' the 'noble' German members to exercise their influence with 'His Imperial Majesty the German Em- peror,' and they 'regret' to record their opinion that the Imperial Government has 'not always acted up to the ideals and laws of our Christian brotherhood.' But they 'appeal with confidence' to the 'eminent members' in Germany to unite in upholding the ideals of the Order. "How, in the name of common sense, can we expect the German people to repudiate, as beyond the pale of decency, their rulers, when our own Notables treat them as if they were men of honor?" It is a deplorable state into which the world has drifted. To move in such an atmosphere is decidedly depressing and it is gradually robbing the people of their finer sensibilities. Profanity springs more easily to their lips when venom rankles in the breast. We A HERITAGE OF HATE 267 should pray to be delivered from it, even though in the present crisis, in view of the unspeakable barbarities committed by the enemy, it is perhaps as justifiable as such sentiments can ever be. CHAPTER XIII THE CITIES OF HOEKIBLE NIGHTS "This war would be a jolly show if there were no nights/' said an officer on the Western front; and the people back at home might have said, "And we could keep our spirits up much better if it were always day- time." Nearly all the cities of Europe during the war were cities of horrible nights. There were no lights, the streets were enveloped in dismal darkness, through the gloom taxicabs dashed here and there, the throngs moved along like specters through a mist, and the courtesans flocked out by thousands to follow their uninterrupted solicitations. At nightfall every window and door must be closed and every curtain drawn, for severe penalties were visited on those who allowed beams of light to escape from store or apartment. In the the- aters and cafes there were scenes of riotous jollity and brilliancy, but on the streets all was darkness and gloom. The situation "got on my nerves," for the facts and the agencies of darkness so constantly confronted became decidedly depressing. But the real horror of the nights was constituted by what did and what might happen while they spread blackness over the world. Then villainy of the most 268 CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS 269 unspeakable kind was enacted, then men and women sacrificed their honor, their souls, their homes and the happy homes of other people also then the soldiers from overseas were set upon by harpies and tricksters, and then the enemy avions came to spread death among helpless women and little children. The most terrible experiences of the war, at home and on the fronts, in its actual effects, occurred at night. I have been in the center of more than forty air raids, and this number does not include hundreds of air battles which have taken place above my head on the front or the large number which I have witnessed from a distance, and of them all only two occurred in the light of day. The first one I ever experienced was in London at nine o'clock in the morning, and this was the largest day-time raid which ever reached the English capital; the last raid I ever saw in London began at eleven o'clock in the night and passed at three o'clock in the morning, and this was the worst raid ever experi- enced by any city, either in the day or night. When the Boche raiders came to London that July morning I had taken a taxicab and was being driven to the Liverpool Street station. The taxicab was directly in front of the great General Post Office, and suddenly there was a crashing roar more thunderous than any- thing I had ever heard before. The machine careened and plunged about in the street until it brought up on its side against a nearby pole, the earth trembled as if in the grasp of a mighty earthquake, and the air was suddenly full of flying debris stone, wood, and glass. 270 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR I pulled myself together and glanced through the door of the taxicab and understood that the General Post Office had been struck by a bomb dropped from an en- emy aircraft. I crawled out of the damaged automobile and, looking into the sky, witnessed the greatest spec- tacle of its kind ever enacted since the world began one which a few months before belonged wholly in the realm of dreams; it was the world's greatest battle in the sky. I saw a flotilla of great enemy airships advance over the unprotected city in battle formation, spread out like a mighty fan, or a flock of geese flying south in the fall, led by the conspicuous machine of the commander, with the bomb carriers protected in the center of the V. They were flying very low and their speed seemed lei- surely enough, although they must have been moving at the speed of at least seventy-five miles an hour. Their lines were straight and it was apparent that they were under a strict discipline, evidently in anticipation of an attack from the British machines. The whirr of the engines could be distinctly heard; occasionally the sharp, clear rattle of a machine gun would pierce the morning air, then the deep boom of an anti-aircraft defense gun from the street, and a crashing roar of a bursting bomb dropped by the Hun. It was so sudden, so startling, so magnificent, that I stood riveted to the spot and scarcely comprehended what was taking place above and around me. Now the British planes ascended. They circled and swept gracefully until they had attained the proper alti- CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS 271 tilde, and then without the slightest hesitancy drove full at the foe. So fierce was the onslaught that they broke his formation, and then the multitude of great battleships of the air mingled in an indiscriminate mass. Friend could not be distinguished from foe as they bat- tled in the clouds above my head. It would be vain to attempt an adequate description of this struggle, or to enable the average person to understand its grandeur or the awe with which a witness beheld it. They circled and dashed here and there madly, they maneuvered for position, they struggled with deadly fury. It was a floating and whirling mass of demons fighting furiously in the sky. Twice I saw machines swerve to one side from the group, reel unsteadily in the air for a moment, and then plunge downward, turning over and over as the pilots endeavored to regain control. And all the while the engines whirred, the machine guns rattled, the defense guns roared, and the bombs came streaking through the air to fall upon the heads of the helpless women and children on the streets and to burst with a thunderous crash, spreading death and destruction everywhere. I was stunned by sentiments of wonder, pity, hatred, and fear ; I did not know how to move or where. Slowly I made my way through the crowd surrounding a wrecked building ; the devastation was terrible, fire was spreading, the dead were being removed, and the wounded were crying for help. Over in Piccadilly the street was littered with broken glass and bits of stone, scattered by the falling shrapnel. Near the gate of St. SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR Paul's lay a great unexploded bomb, closely guarded by the police until soldiers should come and remove it. I came to a little church which had been utterly de- stroyed ; a young girl had been arranging flowers on the altar for the service on the following day when the deadly missile came crashing through the roof and there lay her mangled body in the wreckage of the sacred altar she loved. Here was a row of flats housing many families, three stories high; a bomb had struck near the corner on the roof and had eaten its way to the ground, leaving a gaping wound through which one could see the interior of each apartment. Down in the east end the havoc was frightful ; the east always suffered from the raids, because the foe followed the course of the Thames in approaching London and naturally aimed at the docks and the Tower and Bridge, which presented a visible target to the raiders; this is why the poor people who inhabit this end of the city suffered so in- tensely from these attacks. In front of the Tower gate was a gaping hole in the stone street deep enough to bury a piano, some of the great iron pickets in the fence had been cut in two by the flying shrapnel, all of the windows in many blocks were broken, and here and there the little pools of blood upon the pavement told a sadder story. Some school children had been passing that way if the enemy had known of it he would doubt- less have rubbed his hands in glee, for his record shows that he has a special predilection for children ! When the papers reached the streets they carried many columns about the great air-raid, but the censor CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS had been busy. ~No definite place could be mentioned in the stories lest the papers fall into the hands of the enemy and enable him to tell what section of London he was over, "A great public building had been wrecked" but they dare not say it was the General Post Office. "A bomb fell in the yard of a prominent church," but the name of the cathedral was carefully shielded. The power of the censor was strikingly seen when I read these accounts after witnessing the actual battle and personally visiting the destroyed sections. "No pictures must be made until the official photographer sees fit to make them ! Standing near me on East Com- mercial street was a man with a large and fancifully carved cigarette holder, and when he fingered it loosely he was at once in the toils of the police ; " 'Ow do I know but it's a thing to tike pictures with as you've got ?" was the explanation which was given for its con- fiscation. And the official reports issued by the war office! They destroyed in me all confidence in official reports thereafter. It was announced that there were twenty-two enemy machines, and on the same page of a paper which published the report was a remarkable photograph made from the roof of a building showing more than sixty ! The officials reported that the British had sustained no injury whatever, and that evening in a hotel I met one of the aviators engaged who was weep- ing his heart out because the machine driven by his dearest friend had been brought down by shrapnel from a defense gun shell and both occupants instantly killed. It was the usual thing after the raid, and after 274 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR every raid, to hear people everywhere making prophe- cies concerning the forthcoming official report and its attempt to underestimate the damage done. But all of this was taken good-naturedly "by the populace, since the people appreciated the necessity of preserving morale and courage and keeping all gratifying information from the enemy. The greatest raid of all occurred on the night of Whit Sunday, the anniversary of Pentecost ; at the close of the day when all England celebrated the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles came the air Huns to send death down upon sleeping people ; it was a Pente- cost of frightfulness for suffering London. I had just retired and extinguished my light when the alarm came, given by bursting "maroons," and a friend entered to invite me out into the hall, where a little group had already assembled ; his invitation was accepted, because the large windows in each of the rooms of my suite con- stituted a very great menace. We sat upon the steps for more than three hours during the world's greatest air attack. Twenty minutes after the first alarm a deep booming in the distance proved that the enemy had broken through the coast barrage and was proceeding to Lon- don, and for a few minutes we could mark his progress by the advancing roar. Then there was a sudden thun- dering near at hand as the guns of London came into action and began throwing a curtain of fire in the path of the Gotha fleet. ]$To one of our party spoke, for all were enthralled with interest as we listened to the great CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS 275 batteries striving so hotly for our protection. there came a crash so thunderous that all the others were surpassed in volume, the building trembled from the force of the concussion, the windows began the rattle that scarcely ceased until the raiders had gone, one of the women gave a frightened little scream and stopped her ears with her hands the foe was upon us and his first torpedo had scored a direct hit. "Now the streets were silent but the skies were full of din. Taxicabs no longer went honking about, motor busses had ceased their rumbling, and the crowds did not create their customary hubbub, for the avenues were deserted. But above our heads we could hear the inter- mittent whirring of the peculiar German engine, the sharp, clear rattle of machine guns, and the sullen burst- ing of British shells ; while ever and anon the very earth would stagger as a missile well placed wrought its havoc. Twice I went to the door and surveyed the scene above. It was wonderful! A score of mighty search- lights were stabbing the darkness and sweeping the heavens while the lovely star-shells hanging here and there illuminated the skies. There were just enough clouds to make a background for the bursting shells, and against them the lurid and devilish flashes were con- stantly playing. Here and there one caught momentary glimpses of an enemy air craft, as it emerged from or disappeared behind a cloud, or as it was caught in the sweep of a searchlight. Once three great rays focussed on one of the machines, and its maneuvers were remark- able ; it dashed upwards and then turned downward, it 276 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR swept from side to side, it plunged and careened in des- perate attempts to escape the revealing light, and all the while hundreds of shells were screaming towards it. I saw the plane reel unsteadily in the air for a moment and then dip downward suddenly, flames shot up and enveloped it, the pilot leaped away into the air, to fall two miles and strike upon the London pavement, while the burning battleship of the sky came down a ruined mass. It was a remarkable scene, but I was haunted for weeks by the memory of that man leaping free from his machine. This continued for more than three hours, as we sat on the steps and waited until the trumpets of the Boy Scouts sounded "All Clear." There was no use in seek- ing a better refuge; the best protection was always to remain at home and be quiet, for any good wall would resist shrapnel bits and none of them could protect their occupants in the event of a direct hit. The tubes were safe enough if one dared to go through the streets to reach them, but comparatively few people sought their shelter. It fell to my lot to carry into the subway dur- ing one raid a lady who fainted before my door, and then I understood the prejudice against the places which kept the "better element" away. It was filled with a motley crowd of Jews and foreigners, although it was in the west end of London. Children lay about the floor on dirty and tattered blankets, filthy and disrep- utable-looking specimens of humanity thronged the place, and the odor was intolerable. Most people pre- ferred the bombs of the Boche to the germs of the under- CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS 277 ground. This situation in the tubes was immortalized by a popular painting in which the artist depicted the crowds in the Elephant and Castle station during an air- raid in a most realistic manner. As we sat upon the steps no fear was visible in our little company, even though one young lady was so nervous that she must needs rest her head on her pro- tector's knee. There were wine and cigarettes in abun- dance and one friend produced some biscuits ; one of the maids read her book and made scarcely a comment. The conversation dwelt on other things for the most part and concerned the air-raid only when a bomb fell un- usually near or some one returned from the door with a new report. Nowhere in Europe, be it said, did I ever see any noticeable fear on the part of the people, save in one or two detached instances in which single indi- viduals weretconcerned. After the raid we went out to observe the effects. It seemed that half of London must have been razed by the terrible bombardment, yet it required diligent search to find any damage that had been done. A few poor houses destroyed, several women and children killed that was all. But one aerial torpedo wrought an unbelievable havoc. It fell in Maida Vale and scored a direct hit on a block of stone mansions, three or four stories in height. Eive of these were leveled as completely as if house wreckers had been at work, the top stories of three houses across the street were knocked down and these houses were set on fire, and all the buildings in the' block, on both sides of the street, about 278 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR fifty of them, were so injured as to be rendered unin- habitable. The residents were evacuated, the block was boarded in and placed under guard, and there it remains until this day. Such was the force of one torpedo. I had often wondered how the people acted and felt during an air-raid. They were perfectly helpless, of course, and there was little to be done save to seek shel- ter in the most secure spot. Hundreds of them came flocking out to observe, and while bombs rained down the people gazed curiously and the school children, if the raid was in day time, stood at "attention" and sang "Rule Britannia." I saw little terror on the streets dur- ing any raid and heard little comment to indicate that such warfare spread any noticeable degree of panic among the people. Mainly the people kept inside and trusted to Providence; the curious flocked to the street to observe "the show." Perhaps the greatest danger is not from the descending bombs of the foe; rather is it from the flying shrapnel of the friend. Each shell sent against the enemy must come down somewhere, and the falling pieces of steel destroy windows and injure peo- ple over a wide area. The wonderfully preserved morale of the people indi- cated to me the fact that Germany was defeating her own purpose by such barbarous methods of murdering the helpless non-combatants in undefended cities. (But of course Germany does not regard London as unde- fended, since she excused herself for these attacks by issuing a manifesto declaring that London was no longer unfortified, since she had mounted anti-aircraft defense CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS 279 guns!) Her purpose was the same as that back of the unspeakable ruthlessness which she has practiced and encouraged in Belgium, France, Poland, Serbia, Ru- mania, Armenia, and everywhere else she has planted her hoof to terrorize the people and break their spirits to such a degree that they will demand peace. But the actual result was to anger the people and make them more determined in their conviction that such a foe must be completely crushed. Hence nothing that Ger- many could have done would have had such a tendency to unify the sentiment of the nation. Ruthlessness run- ning amuck enabled Great Britain to raise by the vol- unteer system a mighty army, and it steadily and surely defeated its own aim. The air-raids always gave a new impetus to the pop- ular movement for reprisals, until they were under- taken. The king came out upon the street to view the dev- astation of one raid, and as he stood gazing upon a wrecked building he remarked, "I wish that those who oppose reprisals could witness this scene." The king fa- vored a reprisal policy, but of course the will of his maj- esty has not the least influence in the conduct of affairs in Great Britain ! England for a long time held herself aloof from such methods, under the pressure of a senti- ment molded and led by such men as the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr. Sanday of Oxford. The argument was that the English skirts were clear and must be kept so, and the fact that Germany so far forgot herself as to violate international precedent and outrage righteous conceptions by slaughtering the innocents would not 280 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR justify England in adopting the same tactics. This was a noble stand to be taken by a nation which went to war in defense of a weaker power and a solemn treaty, and if it had been maintained until the end of the war it would have cleared the English name of many a blot which her past actions have placed upon it. In the matter of air raids the cities of France nat- urally suffered more than the cities of England ; I was in Paris when the avions came over eleven successive nights, while at the same time the "gros Bertha" was bombarding the beautiful capital of the French and the deep imprecations of the guns thundering at the gates could be heard constantly. Everywhere in Paris and in other French towns there were signs pointing to the nearby "Abris contre bombardment," and these "caves" were designated by posters stating the number of per- sons who could take refuge there in the event of an attack. The barrage north of Paris and around the city was quite efficient, but anti-aircraft guns were always surprisingly helpless in beating off an attack or keeping the foe behind his own lines. I have seen flotillas of German airships sail calmly on through a stream of shells sweeping their path so thoroughly that the ex- plosions left patches of smoke forming practically solid lines across the sky, and it was not at all unusual to see the airmen go above a barrage, sailing so high that they absolutely disappeared in the blue heavens. On one occasion I went into Paris for the express purpose of associating with the people in an hour of supreme crisis. The city was being bombarded during CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS 281 the day and raided at night ; there was a sinister story in the laconic communiques of the war office: "The long-range gun resumed the bombardment of the Paris district this morning," and "a fleet of enemy aircraft crossed our lines last night going in the direction of Paris at 11 P. M. ; the 'all clear' was given at 1 A. M." On the very first night of this visit the unearthly shriek of the siren sounded on schedule time, and as its shrill voice died away there was silence. One could hear no excited voices and no sound of frightened feet scurrying to shelter. A group gathered in the tea room of the hotel, away from the windows, and awaited the visitors. They arrived in due time, accompanied by the rumble of the guns and the general din of battle, and remained as unwelcome guests for nearly an hour. While this raid, which did not materially differ from all others of its kind, was in progress there was a smaller degree of excitement in this group and among the general popula- tion than was usually observed in London on similar occasions. But the tension among our company in the hotel was relieved by a belated discovery which caused great amusement: we found that in our eagerness to avoid windows and places of undue hazard we had taken refuge in a tea room built in the court of the hotel, and the only barrier between us and the bombs of the Hun had been the art glass roof above our heads ! More terrible were the afflictions which the Boche visited upon the cities near the fronts; and more demoralizing to the nerves of the people in such places were their experiences, I was in Toul one night when 282 SOCIAL STUDIES OF THE WAR there were six air-raids, and there for the first and only time I suffered from excessive fear. Time and again during the night we heard the siren warn the people and there was little respite from danger, while there were some unusual features which made the raid seem more terrible here than elsewhere. The city was much smaller than Paris and the guns and enemy planes could be heard more distinctly, so that one was prone to believe the enemy was hovering imme/liately over his head and taking accurate aim at the cot on which he happened to be lying. Still worse were the cathedral bells, for in Toul the bells began ringing when the enemy reached the city and continued until he was well on his way back to his own lines. And then there were the automatic rifles. In bombarding a small city the aviators must of necessity fly much lower than in the case of London or Paris, and in so doing they came oftentimes in range of the automatics; and these guns were very effective in keeping the enemy high. The rattling of these weapons was unusually terrifying, for they made a noise for all the world like the creaking of a great tree in the agony of falling. When I heard them in Toul my first thought was that the cathedral had been bombed and one of the towers or walls was beginning to fall, but since the unearthly noise continued my con- clusion had to be revised. By all means the most terrifying of all my experiences were these air-raids in Toul. The sirens, the bells, the defense barrage, the automatics, the bombs, the engines, the crashes of splintered houses all of these things so CITIES OF HORRIBLE NIGHTS 283 heightened the sense of danger that terror was struck into my soul for the first time. I lay on my cot trem- bling like an aspen leaf and covered with the perspira- tion of fear. But the people did not seem to share my apprehension, for no more anxiety was observed in Toul than in other and larger cities which were subjected to similar torments. On one occasion I was dining in a company when the siren sounded ; not one of the diners gave the slightest heed, the topic under consideration was not changed, no mention was made of the alarm, and there was not even a pause in the conversation. Thus calmly did the people regard the terror that flieth by night UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. PAGE THREE" OF WAR cofttinuM:. EP 8 14Dec'53SS B British Government and Ireland. IB the Government gone stark, staring in every incident of its actions towards n rdgan! t,i Ireland?" ."k* Jos(lk Loofl^ t'Ara Of 15m-4,'24 rlE BEST COGNAC RODESHEIM (Rhein) Q ! / I cities" and Common r ranklin Hospital. English Atrocities. Enulish Kill their Aliie's Wounded. - Orsastrous Raid on Largest Frncti Field Hospital by Briliih Flying Squadron. Operation hall destroyed - Hundred victims. Aga higher-ups". iaf.tr of n in,..,, v >r following Christ's immands! 176 AMUSEMENTS. GROSS-FRANKFUR1 x WEIN-KLAUSE :-: 1 1NT1MES THEATER An Her Hauptwnctio - Anfan 8 Uhi "~~'yund Kunsttfinie. roStr Erfolg! mann- Theatei > Mctropoltheaters Kol ,,Wenn fm FrChlini md Emmy Strang-Sttirm ail Ga FLER-PALAST .RKADIA ^ .ugust Oastspiel des Qhmten Qiansoniers N.MOREAU s tibrige erstklassige ; Programm :-: :-: UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA LIBRARY >t a pice* o Reuter rei> fe Atlantic )is of hu >dpr big fi Mtrneaa wit iu|ers go t Jtttthcy sh (gelling a hold on Ihc taui|., a.M if itulhm/ AMUSEMENTS. KURH AUS BAD HOMBURG ZS THEATER g, den 9. August 1918 Gcw, Preiie. Ende gegn 10 Zum letztcn Male; ,4ur ein Traum. Litslsplel in 3 Aktttt von Lolhar Schmidt. nstag, 10, twm) 8 Uhr: Fumille HajiMmi CABARETT MAXIM Antattf Uhr Zell t MAX WALOE, Opwn- m) UcdCTsanjer ELFRIEDE SANZI. Priroa BaUerin vo Su