Where Wars Go to Die

by W. D. Wetherell

  At last we were allowed to proceed, but not for long. Next morning not far from Dover we were stopped again and there we were held motionless for four mortal days, almost like prisoners of war. We chafed and fretted and telegraphed and brought to bear all the influence that we could command, but there we stuck, not allowed to land, not allowed to have any one come aboard. When telegrams were possible, they were severely censored, and no indication of our whereabouts was allowed.

  As the days slipped by and the date of the Congress drew nearer and people spoke of possible weeks of delay, it grew harder and harder to bear. At last, we were released as mysteriously as we had been stopped, and by Tuesday afternoon were landing in Rotterdam …

  The Congress was too large for any of the rooms at the Peace Palace and met in a great hall at the Dierentuin. In general the mornings were given over to business and the evenings to public addresses. The programme and rules of order agreed on from the first shut out all discussions of relative national responsibility for the present war or the conduct of it or of methods of conducting future wars. We met on the common ground beyond—the ground of preparation for permanent peace.

  The two fundamental planks, adherence to which was a condition of membership, were: (a) That international disputes should be settled by pacific means; (b) that the Parliamentary franchise should be extended to women …

  What stands out most strongly among all my impressions of those thrilling and strained days at The Hague is the sense of the wonder of the beautiful spirit of the brave, self-controlled women who dared ridicule and every sort of difficulty to express a passionate human sympathy, not inconsistent with patriotism, but transcending it.

  There was something profoundly stirring and inexpressibly inspiriting in the attitude of these women, many of them so deeply stricken, so closely bound to the cause of their country as they understand it, yet so full of faith in the will for good of their technical enemies and so united in their common purpose to find the principles on which permanent relations of international friendship and cooperation can ultimately be established.

  There was not one clash or even danger of a clash over national differences; on every hand was the same moving consciousness of the development of a new spirit which is growing in the midst of the war as the roots of wheat grow under the drifts and tempests of winter. In the distress of mind that the war breeds in every thinking and feeling person, there is a poignant relief in finding a channel through which to work for peace. The soldiers in the hospitals say to their nurses: “We don’t know why we are fighting. Can’t you women help us? We can’t do anything.” That is the very question we are trying to answer.

  From Women at the Hague, by Emily G. Balch, Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton; Macmillan; New York, 1916.

  The Bitterness of Gall

  —Scott Nearing

  They lied to us!

  Consciously, deliberately, with premeditation and malice aforethought, they lied to us! The shepherds of the flock, the bishops of men’s souls, the learned ones, the trusted ones—with fear in their hearts and a craven falsehood on their lips, they betrayed us.

  Not all of them!

  There were some who believed sincerely that they were in the right; there were some who knew no better; there were some who should have known better and were duped, and there were some, oh!, so very, very few, who kept the faith—all through the bitter years—and who were reviled, attacked and jailed—but we had trusted them all and most of them betrayed us.

  First of all—most conspicuous and most notorious there were the newspapers—the channels of information that reached the greatest number of American people—that shamelessly and almost without exception, threw their news-columns as well as their editorial pages on the side, first of preparedness and then of war. A meeting called to advocate war would be heralded beforehand in blazing type across the page, and would be reported in elaborate detail. A meeting of the same number of people, addressed by speakers of equal ability, called to consider peace, would be treated with indifference or ignored. Every device that could be relied upon to stimulate fear and to arouse hate was resorted to—the papers seeming to vie with each other in their efforts to lash American public opinion to a spate of war fury.

  My life has brought me into contact with many newspaper men. I sat in the office of one managing editor recently, discussing this very matter. At first, by way of defense, he insisted that there was only one side to the question. Then, when I asked him whether he, as a newspaper man of long experience, was willing to state that there was only one side to the greatest public issue that had confronted the world for a generation, he protested, shamefacedly, that the owner of the paper, a business man of prominence, was for war, “and that settles the matter as far as this paper is concerned,” he said.

  The great, outstanding, bitter fact is that the newspapers, instead of informing us, lied to us—consistently.

  The newspapers were not alone. Others lied to us whose conduct is far less excusable than that of the press. There were the scientists, teachers, research-men—who have given their lives to study; men charged with the sacred duty of seeking out the truth and telling it to the people. And they lied to us. The same thing that has happened in Europe has happened also in the United States and the college halls and class rooms, almost without exception, have been ringing with a note of partisanship, antagonism, and hate that is not met even in the recruiting station or the training camp.

  Children come out of the schools with an unintelligent acceptance of war as a matter of course. Many of them come out feeling that war is a grand, fine, splendid thing. The kind of emphasis now laid in the American schools upon war and military training is bad for the children and bad for the nation, nor is it of any particular value in creating the basis for successful army or military life. It is jingoistic and militaristic in the cheapest sense in which these terms may be used.

  Then there are the churches. Here and there a minister has raised his voice for peace and brotherhood, but his has been merely one voice, crying in the wilderness of militaristic propaganda.

  When I think that these men of the cloth, sworn servants of God and followers of Jesus of Nazareth, the men trusted as the spiritual advisers of the people, have been among the most ardent propagandists of hatred and bitterness, I think that I may be pardoned if I simply remind the reader that their Leader, after commanding purity, meekness, justice and peace, said “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you, falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for so prosecuted they the prophets that were before you,” and to note that, in this immense world crisis, most of the clergy have escaped reviling and persecution.

  The mighty ones—the masters in the land—the favored, trusted leaders of American public opinion turned militaristic, and after denouncing German jingoism, developed a jingoism of their own, more vicious, because more unjustifiable than that of the Germans. And the great mass of the common people of the land, who relied upon those elect ones and trusted them, have turned away empty, or else with the bitterness of gall and wormwood on their lips.

  Shepherdless—for the moment leaderless—the common folk of America are turning this way and that, in an effort to extricate themselves from the network of falsehood that has enmeshed their minds and poisoned their souls. Perhaps, in seeking they may decide with the common people of Russia that the only sure way to have a thing done right is to do it for themselves.

  From The Menace of Militarism, by Scott Nearing; The Rand School of Social Science; New York, 1917.

  Crime Against the Individual

  —Reinhold Niebuhr

  The incurable optimists who feel called upon to find a saving virtue in every evil and in every loss a compensation have been comforting the world since the outbreak of the great war with the assurance that the nations of Europe would arise purified and ennobled from the ashes of the war’s destruction. It is not difficult to share this hope,
but it gives us little comfort if we have any sense of proportion and are able to see what the individual is paying for a possible ultimate gain to the nations. We cannot help but think of the thousands of graves on the countryside of Europe that are mute testimonies to the tragedy of individual life as revealed in this war, when we are asked to accept these optimistic assurances. The heroes and victims will not arise from their graves, though Europe may rise from its destruction …

  No cause was too petty to be advanced by blood; no price in human values too high to be paid for its advancement. History is not lacking in national ventures that can be morally justified, but on the whole it presents a dismal succession of petty jealousies, often more personal than national, of cheap ambition and unrighteous pride, all of which claimed the individual as victim. To this history of individual life this war is a tragic climax, because it convinces us that the forces of history have not favored the individual as much as we thought. Modern warfare is cruel, not only because of its extravagant waste of human life, but because of its barbaric indifference to personal values …

  What a pitiful thing it is that the Pomeranian peasant or the miner of Wales is asked to sacrifice his life in a struggle that is to determine whether future generations of Hamburg or Liverpool merchants shall wax rich from overseas commerce and the exploitation of undeveloped countries! That is the tragedy of modern nationalism—it offers modern man, with all his idealism and sensitive moral instincts, no better cause to hallow his sacrifices than the selfish and material one of securing his nation’s prosperity …

  By peculiar irony, history applies other standards to the actions of men than those of the tribunals of contemporary opinion. It sees many men as fools who were heroes in their own time. For its loyalty is not an end in itself. It looks to the ends that this virtue may serve. That is the reason posterity often honors men for their non-conformity, while contemporary opinion respects them for their conformity; that is why there are as many rebels as patriots on the honor rolls of history …

  The willingness of men to die in struggles that effect no permanent good and leave no contribution to civilization makes the tragedy of individual life all the more pathetic. The crime of the nation against the individual is, not that it demands his sacrifices against his will, but that it claims a life of eternal significance for ends that have no eternal value.

  From “The Nation’s Crime Against the Individual,” by Reinhold Niebuhr; The Atlantic Monthly Magazine; November 1916.

  This Saturnalia of Massacre

  —E. D. Morel

  To the Belligerent Governments

  Wider and wider the spread of your devastations.

  Higher and higher the mountains of the dead—the dead because of you.

  Ever more extensive the boundaries of the cemetery you fashion.

  All the wars and all the plagues were as nought to the madness of your doings.

  Like until the breath of a pestilence this madness sweeps through the plains and valleys of Europe, destroying in multitudes the children of men.

  The weeping of women is unceasing; their tears mingle with the blood which flows continuously at your bidding.

  What have the people done to you that you should treat them so?

  Have they not sweated for you?

  Have they not groveled to you and licked the hand that smote them?

  Have they not stocked your Treasuries?

  Have they not lacked that you might be filled?

  Have not great masses of them submissively endured poverty, squalor and want while you prated to them of Liberty and Equality and Patriotism and Empire?

  Continuously, cynically, deliberately, you have sacrificed them to your secret maneuvers and your sordid quarrels.

  You murder the body and you putrefy the mind.

  For you are all guilty—every one.

  One and all you prepared for this saturnalia of massacre.

  From Truth and the War, by E. D. Morel; National Labour Press; London, 1916.

  Chapter Seven:

  Mourn

  Writers, along with the inarticulate and illiterate, would have mourning, deep mourning, thrust upon them during the war; talent with words brought no immunity when it came to loss. At least ten million soldiers died in the trenches; boys from the combatant nations born between 1892 and 1895, ages 19–22 when the fighting started, had their ranks reduced by over 35 percent. Their survivors would mourn them the rest of their lives. “Every day one meets saddened women, with haggard faces and lethargic movements, and one dare not ask about their husband or son,” Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary in 1918. Writers, even the most illustrious, joined the ranks of the bereaved, having lost sons, brothers, nephews, colleagues, students, protégés, lovers, friends.

  It’s surprising then, reading the books they wrote while the war was still in progress, how few did their mourning in print. They wrote of tanks, trenches, cannon, strategy and tactics, political ramifications, moral issues, even the sick and wounded, but few wrote descriptions of the dead, especially their dead, and hardly any could bring themselves to describe their feelings of loss while the blow was still fresh. It seems, looking back on this now, as if they suffered a reversal of the usual order of things; they could write movingly of the larger tragedy, murder en masse, but the death of a single individual was too much for them to bear.

  This reticence, in a confessional age like ours, can be hard to understand. Was the death of a friend or relation too painful for words, straining the limits of what even a Nobel Prize winner could do with language? Was it better, literarily speaking, to wait until later, when the war ended and perspective could be gained? Better to keep a stiff literary upper lip while everyone else suffered in silence? Had the long years of peace and security, writers’ own privileged status, ill equipped them to write of sorrow?

  When the dead appear, it’s often as nameless bodies that move the writers to pity, but are too anonymous to mourn. Those going on VIP tours of the trenches did not often see corpses, and when they did, their reactions could be coldly impersonal. Edith Wharton, allowed farther into the front lines than ordinary visitors, spots “halfway between cliff and cliff, a gray uniform huddled in a dead heap,” and feels, not sadness, not grief, but “relief to find it was after all a tangible enemy hidden over there across the meadow.”

  The ambulance drivers and war correspondents, writers like Henry Beston and Richard Harding Davis, saw more of death, and wrote about it with more specificity. Poets like Jean Cocteau, trying to make sense of the massacre, retreated (and, reading it now, it can seem like retreat) to the formalism of classic poetry. Writers like Katherine Mansfield, unable to deal with their losses publicly, wrote about them movingly in the privacy of their diaries, which were published only once the war was over.

  In the end, their reactions were like those of everyone else whose loved ones died. Shock, horror, incomprehension, sadness, anger, fantasies of revenge. Wells’s Mr. Britling experiences them all in one overwhelming wave when his son is killed, and whatever emotions he is spared are left for his young widowed friend Letty to express with a passion and intensity that can still burn when you read it today.

  There is one aspect of the mourning writers did do in print that is striking, particularly among the British writers. The dead in their books that are actually named, mourned with specificity, are all upper-class officers, or, at the minimum, brilliant young graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. John Buchan, in his long bestselling book on the Somme, gives the specific name of only one of the dead hundred thousands, the son of the prime minister and his friend.

  This kind of discrimination, while not particularly praiseworthy, is at least understandable. Writers, often enjoying a privileged position inside the elite, would know mostly officers, their prewar friends, or students; and with the war being particularly dangerous for junior officers, many of these would die. Enlisted men from Glasgow or York would not have novelist friends to mourn them, at least not until the 1920s, when t
he soldier-writers published their own memoirs and talked about the men they led.

  You get the feeling, reading those elegies we do have, that writers were waiting for the war to end to do their serious mourning, until they had time—if they would ever have time—to make sense of it all. For now, the pain was too raw, the suffering too enormous. “The scarlet doom,” Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren called this mood, while the war was yet in progress, “the scarlet doom hurled over a grave-strewn world.” Few writers could lift it.

  George Santayana’s Spanish-Catholic background made him an outsider at prewar Harvard, and he left for Europe before the war started. He was fifty-two, and had a reputation as an urbane, skeptical philosopher and novelist, enhanced by his widely praised The Last Puritan. He’s in Bartlett’s for his quote, “Only the dead have seen the last of war,” and, more famously, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

  Bertrand Russell, in his autobiography, remembered Santayana’s wartime attitude: “He had not enough respect for the human race to care whether it destroyed itself or not.”

  When Edith Wharton sent out invitations to the leading authors of the day to contribute to her fund-raising The Book of the Homeless, Jean Cocteau, at twenty-three, was by far the youngest writer asked. By the time the war started, his reputation for a genius kind of self-absorption was already immense, though it wasn’t until after the Armistice that his novels, poems, paintings, and films made him one of the leading lights of the French avant-garde. Today he’s remembered mostly for his movie La Belle et la Bete, and his play La Voix Humaine.

  A portrait of him is included in The Book of the Homeless, an “unpublished crayon sketch” by the Russian artist and Diaghilev set designer Leon Bakst. No less military figure could be imagined, with his finely chiseled yet delicate features, the open neck of his tunic, and his doe-like, curiously cold eyes, topped off by a Bohemian shock of wavy hair. A recruiting board would have taken one look at him and thrown up their hands; though, like so many other writers, he put in a shift, a short shift, as an ambulance driver in Belgium. (He was soon dismissed and sent home in disgrace, though biographies are vague on exactly why.) “How the Young Men died in Hellas” is very typical of his output at this stage of his career, with his intense interest in all things Greek.