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New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 by Various

V >> Various >> New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915




"May not a large part of the spirit which animates these young men be a
healthy love of adventure?" I asked.

The question seemed to open up such depths that Mr. James considered a
moment and began:

"I, of course, don't personally know many of our active associates, who
naturally waste very little time in London. But, since you ask me, I
prefer to think of them as moved, first and foremost, not by the idea of
the fun or the sport they may have, or of the good thing they may make
of the job for themselves, but by that of the altogether exceptional
chance opened to them of acting blessedly and savingly for others,
though indeed if we come to that there is no such sport in the world as
so acting when anything in the nature of risk or exposure is attached.
The horrors, the miseries, the monstrosities they are in presence of are
so great surely as not to leave much of any other attitude over when
intelligent sympathy has done its best.

"Personally I feel so strongly on everything that the war has brought
into question for the Anglo-Saxon peoples that humorous detachment or
any other thinness or tepidity of mind on the subject affects me as
vulgar impiety, not to say as rank blasphemy; our whole race tension
became for me a sublimely conscious thing from the moment Germany flung
at us all her explanation of her pounce upon Belgium for massacre and
ravage in the form of the most insolent, 'Because I choose to, damn you
all!' recorded in history.

"The pretension to smashing world rule by a single people, in virtue of
a monopoly of every title, every gift and every right, ought perhaps to
confound us more by its grotesqueness than to alarm us by its energy;
but never do cherished possessions, whether of the hand or of the
spirit, become so dear to us as when overshadowed by vociferous
aggression. How can one help seeing that such aggression, if hideously
successful in Europe, would, with as little loss of time as possible,
proceed to apply itself to the American side of the world, and how can
one, therefore, not feel that the Allies are fighting to the death for
the soul and the purpose and the future that are in _us_, for the
defense of every ideal that has most guided our growth and that most
assures our unity?

"Of course, since you ask me, my many years of exhibited attachment to
the conditions of French and of English life, with whatever fond play of
reflection and reaction may have been involved in it, make it inevitable
that these countries should peculiarly appeal to me at the hour of their
peril, their need and their heroism, and I am glad to declare that,
though I had supposed I knew what that attachment was, I find I have any
number of things more to learn about it. English life, wound up to the
heroic pitch, is at present most immediately before me, and I can
scarcely tell you what a privilege I feel it to share the inspiration
and see further revealed the character of this decent and dauntless
people.

"However, I am indeed as far as you may suppose from assuming that what
you speak to me of as the 'political' bias is the only ground on which
the work of our corps for the Allies should appeal to the American
public. Political, I confess, has become for me in all this a loose and
question-begging term, but if we must resign ourselves to it as
explaining some people's indifference, let us use a much better one for
inviting their confidence. It will do beautifully well if givers and
workers and helpers are moved by intelligent human pity, and they are
with us abundantly enough if they feel themselves simply roused by, and
respond to, the most awful exhibition of physical and moral anguish the
world has ever faced, and which it is the strange fate of our actual
generations to see unrolled before them. We welcome any lapse of logic
that may connect inward vagueness with outward zeal, if it be the zeal
of subscribers, presenters or drivers of cars, or both at once,
stretcher-bearers, lifters, healers, consolers, handy Anglo-French
interpreters, (these extremely precious,) smoothers of the way; in
short, after whatever fashion. We ask of nobody any waste of moral or of
theoretic energy, nor any conviction of any sort, but that the job is
inspiring and the honest, educated man a match for it.

"If I seem to cast doubt on any very driving intelligence of the great
issue as a source of sympathy with us, I think this is because I have
been struck, whenever I have returned to my native land, by the
indifference of Americans at large to the concerns and preoccupations of
Europe. This indifference has again and again seemed to me quite beyond
measure or description, though it may be in a degree suggested by the
absence throughout the many-paged American newspaper of the least
mention of a European circumstance unless some not-to-be-blinked war or
revolution, or earthquake or other cataclysm has happened to apply the
lash to curiosity. The most comprehensive journalistic formula that I
have found myself, under that observation, reading into the general case
is the principle that the first duty of the truly appealing sheet in a
given community is to teach every individual reached by it--every man,
woman and child--to count on appearing there, in their habit as they
live, if they will only wait for their turn.

"However," he continued, "my point is simply my plea for patience with
our enterprise even at the times when we can't send home sensational
figures. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' and the essence of
our utility, as of that of any ambulance corps, is just to be there, on
any and every contingency, including the blessed contingency of a
temporary drop in the supply of the wounded turned out and taken
on--since such comparative intermissions occur. Ask our friends, I beg
you, to rid themselves of the image of our working on schedule time or
on guarantee of a maximum delivery; we are dependent on the humors of
battle, on incalculable rushes and lapses, on violent outbreaks of
energy which rage and pass and are expressly designed to bewilder. It is
not for the poor wounded to oblige us by making us showy, but for us to
let them count on our open arms and open lap as troubled children count
on those of their mother. It is now to be said, moreover, that our
opportunity of service threatens inordinately to grow; such things may
any day begin to occur at the front as will make what we have up to now
been able to do mere child's play, though some of our help has been
rendered when casualties were occurring at the rate, say, of 5,000 in
twenty minutes, which ought, on the whole, to satisfy us. In face of
such enormous facts of destruction--"

Here Mr. James broke off as if these facts were, in their horror, too
many and too much for him. But after another moment he explained his
pause.

"One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as
to endure one's thoughts. The war has used up words; they have weakened,
they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of
other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the
happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages
before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms,
or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through increase of
limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to
walk."

This sounded rather desperate, yet the incorrigible interviewer,
conscious of the wane of his only chance, ventured to glance at the
possibility of a word or two on the subject of Mr. James's present
literary intentions. But the kindly hand here again was raised, and the
mild voice became impatient.

"Pardon my not touching on any such irrelevance. All I want is to invite
the public, as unblushingly as possible, to take all the interest in us
it can; which may be helped by knowing that our bankers are Messrs.
Brown Brothers & Co., 59 Wall Street, New York City, and that checks
should be made payable to the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps."




A Talk With Belgium's Governor

By Edward Lyall Fox

[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 11, 1915.]

Copyright, 1915, by the Wildman News Service.


"It would have been a very grave mistake not to have invaded Belgium.
It would have been an unforgivable military blunder. I justify the
invading of Belgium on absolute military grounds. What other grounds are
there worth while talking about when a nation is in a war for its
existence?"

It is the ruler of German Belgium speaking. The stern, serious-faced
Governor General von Bissing, whom they call "Iron Fist," the man who
crushes out sedition. Returning, I had just come up from the front
around Lille, and almost the only clothes I had were those on my back;
and the mud of the trenches still clung to my boots and puttees in
yellow cakes. They were not the most proper clothes in which to meet
King Albert's successor, but in field gray I had to go.

The Governor General received me in a dainty Louis Quinze room done in
rose and French gray, and filled incongruously with delicate chairs and
heavy brocaded curtains, a background which instantly you felt precisely
suited his Excellency. In the English newspapers, which, by the way, are
not barred from Berlin cafes, I had read of his Excellency as the "Iron
Fist," or the "Heavy Heel," and I rather expected to see a heavy,
domineering man. Instead, a slender, stealthy man in the uniform of a
General rose from behind a tapestry topped table, revealing, as he did,
a slight stoop in his back, perhaps a trifle foppish. He held out a
long-fingered hand.

General von Bissing spoke no English. Somehow I imagined him to be one
of those old German patriots who did not learn the language simply
because it was English. Through Lieut. Herrmann I asked the Governor
General what Germany was doing toward the reconstruction of Belgium. I
told him America, when I had left, was under the impression that
Belgium was a land utterly laid waste by the German armies. I frankly
told him that in America the common belief was that the German military
Government meant tyranny; what was Germany doing for Belgium?

"I think," replied Governor General von Bissing, "that we are doing
everything that can be done under the circumstances. Those farm lands
which you saw, coming up from Lille to Brussels, were planted by German
soldiers and in the Spring they will be harvested by our soldiers.
Belgium has not been devastated, and its condition has been grievously
misstated, as you have seen. You must remember that the armies have
passed back and forth across it--German, Belgian, English, and
French--but I think you have seen that only in the paths of these armies
has the countryside suffered. Where engagements were not fought or shots
fired, Belgium is as it was.

"There has been no systematic devastation for the purpose of
intimidating the people. You will learn this if you go all over Belgium.
As for the cities, we are doing the best we can to encourage business.
Of course, with things the way they are now, it is difficult. I can only
ask you to go down one of the principal business streets here, the Rue
de la Neuf, for instance, and price the articles that you find in the
shops and compare them with the Berlin prices. The merchants of Brussels
are not having to sacrifice their stock by cutting prices, and, equally
important, there are people buying. I can unhesitatingly say that things
are progressing favorably in Belgium."

The conversation turned upon Belgian and English relations before this
war. The Governor General mentioned documentary evidence found in the
archives in Brussels, proving an understanding between these countries
against Germany. He spoke briefly about the point that the subjects of
King Albert had been betrayed into the hands of English financiers and
then laconically said: "The people of Belgium are politically
undisciplined children.

"They are the victims of subtle propaganda that generally takes the form
of articles in French and neutral newspapers," and General von Bissing
looked me straight in the eyes, as though to emphasize that by neutral
he meant the newspapers of the United States. "I can understand the
French doing this," he said, "because they always use the Belgians and
do not care what happens to them. It is beyond my comprehension, though,
how the Government of any neutral country permits the publication of
newspaper articles that can have but one effect, and that is to
encourage revolt in a captured people. A country likes to call itself
humanitarian, and yet it persists in allowing the publication of
articles that only excite an ignorant, undisciplined people and lead
them to acts of violence that must be wiped out by force," and the
Governor General's mouth closed with a click.

"Do you know that the people of Brussels, whenever a strong wind carries
the booming of heavy guns miles in from the front, think that French and
English are going to recapture the city? Any day that we can hear the
guns faintly, we know that there is an undercurrent of nervous
expectancy running through the whole city. It goes down alleys and
avenues and fills the cafes. You can see Belgians standing together,
whispering. Twice they actually set the date when King Albert would
return.

"This excitement and unrest, and the feeling of the English coming in,
is fostered and encouraged by the articles in French and neutral
newspapers that are smuggled in. I do not anticipate any uprising among
the Belgians, although the thoughtless among them have encouraged it. An
uprising is not a topic of worry in our councils. It could do us no
harm. We would crush it out like that," and von Bissing snapped his thin
fingers, "but if only for the sake of these misled and betrayed people,
all seditious influences should cease."

I asked the Governor General the attitude of officials of the Belgian
Government who were being used by the Germans in directing affairs.

"My predecessor, General von der Goltz," he replied, "informed me that
the municipal officials in Brussels and most Belgian cities showed a
good co-operative spirit from the start. The higher officials were
divided, some refusing flatly to deal with the German administration. I
do not blame these men, especially the railway officials, for I can see
their viewpoint. In these days railway roads and troop trains were
inseparable, and if those Belgian railway officials had helped us, they
would have committed treason against their country. There was no need,
though, for the Post Office officials to hold out, and only lately they
have come around. Realizing, however, that without their department the
country would be in chaos, the officials of the Department of Justice
immediately co-operated with us. Today the Belgian Civil Courts try all
ordinary misdemeanors and felonies. Belgian penal law still exists and
is administered by Belgians. However, all other cases are tried by a
military tribunal, the Feld Gericht."

I asked General von Bissing if there was much need for this military
tribunal. I shall not forget his reply.

"We have a few serious cases," he said. "Occasionally there is a little
sedition but for the most part it is only needle pricks. They are quiet
now. They know why," and, slowly shaking his head, von Bissing, who is
known as the sternest disciplinarian in the entire German Army, smiled.

We talked about the situation in America.

"The truth will come out," said von Bissing slowly. "Your country is
renowned for fair play. You will be fair to Germany, I know. Your
American Relief Commission is doing excellent work. It is in the highest
degree necessary. At first the German Army had to use the food they
could get by foraging in Belgium, for the country does not begin to
produce the food it needs for its own consumption, and there were no
great reserves that our troops could use. But the German Army is not
using any of the Belgian food now."

[Illustration: H.M. MOHAMMED V.

Sultan of Turkey.

_(Photo from P.S. Rogers.)_]

[Illustration: H.M. VITTORIO EMANUELE III.

King of Italy.]

I asked the Governor General if the Germans had not been very glad that
America was sending over food.

"It is most important," he said, "that America regularly sends
provisions to Belgium. Your country should feel very proud of the good
it has done here. I welcome the American Relief Committee; we are
working in perfect harmony. Despite reports to the contrary, we never
have had any misunderstanding. Through the American press, please thank
your people for their kindness to Belgium.

"But," he continued impressively, referring back to the justification of
Germany's occupation and speaking with quiet force, "if we had not sent
our troops into Belgium, the English would have landed their entire
expeditionary army at Antwerp, and cut our line of communication. How do
I know that? Simply because England would have been guilty of the
grossest blunder if she had not done that, and the man who is in charge
of England's Army has never been known as a blunderer."




A CHARGE IN THE DARK

By O.C.A. CHILD.


Out of the trenches lively, lads!
Steady, steady there, number two!
Step like your feet were tiger's pads--
Crawl when crawling's the thing to do!

Column left, through the sunken road!
Keep in touch as you move by feel!
Empty rifles--no need to load--
Night work's close work, stick to steel!

Wait for shadows and watch the clouds,
When it's moonshine, down you go!
Quiet, quiet, as men in shrouds,
Cats a-prowl in the dark go slow.

Curse you, there, did you have to fall?
Damn your feet and your blind-bat eyes!
Caught in the open, caught--that's all!
Searchlights! slaughter--we meant surprise!

Shrapnel fire a bit too low--
Gets us though on the ricochet!
Open order and in we go,
Steel, cold steel, and we'll make 'em pay.

God above, not there to win?
Left, while my men go on to die!
Take them in, Sergeant, take them in!
Go on, fellows, good luck--good-bye!




A New Poland

By Gustave Herve


Gustave Herve, author of the article translated below, which
appears in a recent number of his paper, La Guerre
Sociale--suppressed, it is reported, by the French
authorities--has been described as "the man who fights all
France." He is 44 years old, and has spent one-fourth of his
life in prison, on account of Socialistic articles against the
French flag and Government. He used to continue writing such
articles from prison and thus get his sentences lengthened.

Herve has always opposed everything savoring of militarism and
conquest. From his article on Poland it will be seen that,
although he says nothing anti-French or antagonistic to the
Allies in general, he desires a Russian triumph over Germany
not for his own sake, but as a preliminary to a reconstruction
of the Polish Nation out of the lands wrested from Poland by
Russia, Germany, and Austria.

In spite of its vagueness, the Grand Duke Nicholas's proclamation
justifies the most sanguine hopes. This has been recognized not only by
all the Poles whom it has reached, those of Russian Poland, and the
three million Polish refugees who live in America, but moreover, all the
Allies have interpreted it as a genuine promise that Poland would be
territorially and politically reconstructed.

What would it be right to include in a reconstructed Poland, if the
great principle of nationality is to be respected?

First, such a Poland would naturally include all of the Russian Poland
of today--by that I mean all the districts where Poles are in a large
majority. This forms a preliminary nucleus of 12,000,000 inhabitants,
among whom are about 2,000,000 Jews. This great proportion of Jews is
accounted for by the fact that Poland is in the zone where Jews are
allowed to live in Russia.

Our new Poland would not comprise the ancient Lithuania--the districts
of Wilno, Kovno, and Grodno--although Lithuania formerly was part of
Poland and still has about one million Polish inhabitants who form the
aristocracy and bourgeoisie. Lithuania, which is really the region of
the Niemen, is peopled by Letts, who have their own language, resembling
neither Polish nor Russian, and they likewise hope to obtain some day a
measure of autonomy in the Russian Empire, with the right to use their
language in schools, churches, and civil proceedings. One thing is
certain: they would protest, and rightly, against actual incorporation
into the new Poland.

The 125,000 square kilometers and 12,000,000 inhabitants of Russian
Poland, lying around Warsaw, would constitute the nucleus of
reconstructed Poland.

Must we add to this the 79,000 square kilometers and 8,000,000
inhabitants of Galicia, which was Austria's share in the spoils of old
Poland? Certainly, so far as western Galicia around Cracow is concerned,
for this is a wholly Polish region, the Poles there numbering 2,500,000.

As for eastern Galicia, of which the principal city is Lemberg, (Lvov in
Polish,) the question is more delicate. Though Eastern Galicia has over
1,500,000 Poles and 600,000 Jews, most of the population is Ruthenian.
Now these Ruthenians, who are natives, subjugated in former times by the
conquering Poles, and who still own much of the big estates, are related
to the "Little Russians," the southerners of Russia, and speak a dialect
which is to Russian what Provencal is to French.

Besides, whereas the Poles are Catholics, the Ruthenians are Greek
Orthodox Christians like the Russians, but differ from the latter in
that they are connected with the Roman Church, and are thus schismatics
in the eyes of the Russian priests.

Should these Ruthenians be annexed to Russia along with the 1,500,000
Poles and 500,000 Jews, among whom they have lived for centuries, they
would scarcely look upon this as acceptable unless they were certain of
having under Russian rule at least equal political liberty and respect
for their dialect and religion as they have under Austrian rule.

Should they be incorporated with the rest of Polish Galicia into the new
Poland? It is hardly probable that they desire this, having enjoyed
under Austria a considerable measure of autonomy as regards their
language and schools. Would not the best solution be to make of Eastern
Galicia an autonomous province of the reconstructed Poland, guaranteeing
to it its local privileges?

That leaves for consideration the portion of Poland now forming part of
Prussia.

There can be no question as to what should be done with the districts of
Posen and Thorn. These are the parts of Poland stolen by Prussia, which
the Prussians, a century and a quarter after the theft, have not
succeeded in Germanizing.

North of the Posen district is Western Prussia, whose principal city is
Dantzic; that too is a Polish district, stolen in 1772. Since then
Dantzic has been Germanized and there are numerous German officials and
employes in the other towns of the region. All the rural districts and a
part of the towns, however, have remained Polish in spite of attempts to
Germanize them as brutal as those applied to Posnania. But, if united
Poland should include Western Prussia, as she has the right to do--there
being no rule against what is right--Eastern Prussia, including
Koenigsberg, will be cut off from the rest of Germany.

Now, Eastern Prussia, with the exception of the southern part about the
Masurian Lakes, which has remained Polish, has been German from early
mediaeval times. It is the home of the most reactionary junkers of all
Prussia, a cradle of Prussian royalty and of the Hohenzollerns. Despite
our hatred for these birds of prey, could we wish that the new Poland
should absorb these 2,000,000 genuine Germans?

If the region of Koenigsberg remains Prussian and the Masurian Lakes
region is added to Poland, why not leave to Germany the strip of land
along the coast, including Dantzic, in order that Eastern Prussia may
thus be joined to Germany at one end?

Another question: There is in Prussian Upper Silesia a district, that of
Oppeln, rich in iron ore, which was severed in the Middle Ages from
Poland, but which has remained mostly Polish and which adjoins Poland.
If the majority of Polish residents there demand it, would it not be
well to join it once more to Poland, which would become, by this
addition, contiguous to the Czechs of Bohemia?

To sum up:

Without laying hands on the German district of Koenigsberg, united
Poland, by absorbing all the territory at present held by Prussia, in
which the majority of the inhabitants are Poles, will take from the
latter 70,000 square kilometers and 5,700,000 inhabitants. With these,
the new Poland would have 24,000,000 inhabitants, including Eastern
Galicia.

If Russia gave to this Poland in lieu of actual independence the most
liberal autonomy and reconstructed a Polish kingdom under the suzerainty
of the Czar--a Poland with its Diet, language, schools and army--would
not the present war seem to us a genuine war of liberation and Nicholas
II. a sort of Czar-liberator?

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Poster poems: Ballads
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Fidel and Che: a revolutionary friendship

After last week's fairly open theme, I thought I'd go with something a bit more structured this time. As I type this, I'm listening to Steeleye Span and thinking about the great ballad traditions of Britain and Ireland. What is a ballad? I suppose the most inclusive definition would be that it's a singable narrative poem: that covers a multitude but will do for the moment.

Ballads in English stretch back to the middle ages, with fine examples to be found among the Scottish border ballads and the English Robin Hood poems. These early ballads are among the best-known poems and stories in the language, and form part of the common heritage of English speakers everywhere. They gave rise to a tradition of ballad-making that endures down to the present day.

In fact, most poets since have tried their hand at the ballad at one time or another, and the result has been to deny any definition more specific than the one I ventured in my first paragraph. If you look around the internet, you'll come up with a wide selection of poems that are called ballads but have little in common formally. Stanza length varies from two to 10 or more lines, and all sorts of metrical and rhyming patterns are used. A good number will be singable in only the loosest possible sense, and at times the narrative tends to get lost in a mesh of more-or-less successful verbal embroidery.

So, what should a ballad be? Well, "proper" ballad stanzas are quatrains in which the first and third lines have four stresses and the second and third have three. The lines will rhyme A-B-C-B or A-B-A-B. It's as simple, and as difficult, as that. Here's an example, from Robert Burns's extremely singable Comin Thro' the Rye:

Gin a body meet a body
          Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body –
          Need a body cry.

Burns wrote a good number of ballads, and his lead was followed by many 19th-century poets. Two examples that I particularly like are Robert Browning's Confessions and Christina Rossetti's Up-Hill, but you can find ballads by just about any Romantic or Victorian poet if you look for them.

There is a long, strong tradition of ballads and ballad singers in Ireland, too. It is hardly surprising, then, that the great appropriator of tradition, WB Yeats, tried his hand at the form. At least four of his poems have the word "ballad" in the title; the pick of the bunch, for my money, is The Ballad of Father Gilligan, which may have benefited from having been written with a specific tune in mind.

Ballads continued to be written in the 20th century; perhaps the most unexpected exponents were Ezra Pound, with his Ballad of the Goodly Fere, and WH Auden. In fact, the ballad The Quarry is probably my favourite Auden poem.

And so, this week I invite a chorus of balladeering. You may choose to go the whole hog and write in ballad stanzas or you might prefer to take a more liberal view of the formal requirements. Either way, sing up and – as they say at all the best Irish sessions when calling for a bit of hush for the singer – one voice please.

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