My War Experiences in Two Continents Part 18

The day wasn't quite satisfactory, but one must remember that a queer spirit is evoked in war-time which is very difficult of a.n.a.lysis.

Primarily there is "a right spirit renewed" in every one of us. We want to be one in the great sacrifice which war involves, and we offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies in great causes, only to find that there is some strange unexplained quality of resistance meeting us everywhere.

Mary once said to me in her quaint way, "Your duty is to give to the Queen's Fund as becomes your position, and to get properly thanked."

This lady-like behaviour, combined with cheque-writing on a large scale, is always popular. It can be repeated and again repeated till cheque-writing becomes automatic. Then from nowhere there springs a curious cla.s.s of persons whom one has never heard of before, with skins of invulnerable thickness and with wonderful self-confidence. They claim almost occult powers in the matter of "organisation," and they generally require pity for being overworked. For a time their names are in great circulation, and afterwards one doesn't hear very much about them.

Florence Nightingale would have had no distinction nowadays. It is doubtful if she would have been allowed to work. Some quite inept person in a high position would have effectually prevented it. Most people are on the offensive against "high-souled work," and prepared to put their foot down heavily on anything so presumptuous as heroism except of the orthodox kind, and even the right kind is often not understood.

There is a story I try to tell, but something gets into my throat, and I tell it in jerks when I can.

[Page Heading: FOOTBALL UNDER FIRE]

It is the story of the men who played football across the open between the enemy's line of trenches and our own when it was raked by fire. When I had finished, a friend of mine, evidently waiting for the end of a pointless story, said, "What did they do that for?" (Oh, ye G.o.ds, have pity on men and women who suffer from fatty degeneration of the soul!)

Still, in spite of it all, the Voice comes, and has to be obeyed.

_30 October._--We lunched at the Emba.s.sy yesterday to meet the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Victoria. She is a striking-looking woman, tall and strong, and she wore a plain dark blue cloth dress and a funny little blue silk cap, and one splendid string of pearls. At the front she does very fine work, and we offered our services to her. I have begun to write a little, but after my crowded life the days feel curiously empty. Lady Heron Maxwell came to call.

We were telling each other spy stories the other night. Some of them were very interesting. The Germans have lately adopted the plan of writing letters in English to English prisoners of war in Germany.

These, of course, are quite simple, and pa.s.s the Censor in England, but, once on the other side, they go straight to Government officials, and whereas "Dear Bill" may mean nothing to us, it is part of a German code and conveys some important information. Mr. Philpotts at Stockholm discovered this trick.

On the Russian front a soldier was found with his jaw tied up, speechless and bleeding. A doctor tried to persuade him to take cover and get attention; but he shook his head, and signified by actions that he was unable to speak owing to his damaged jaw. The doctor shoved him into a dug-out, and said kindly, "Just let me have a look at you." On stripping the bandages off there was no wound at all, and the German in Russian uniform was given a cigarette and shot through the head.

In Flanders we used to see companies of spies led out to be shot--first a party of soldiers, then the spies, after them the burying-party, and then the firing-party--marching stolidly to some place of execution.

How awful sh.e.l.l-fire must be for those who really can't stand it! I heard of a Colonel the other day--a man who rode to hounds, and seemed quite a sound sort of fellow--and when the first sh.e.l.l came over, he leapt from his horse and lay on the ground shrieking with fear, and with every sh.e.l.l that came over he yelled and screamed. He had to be sent home, of course. Some people say this sort of thing is purely physical.

That is never my view of the matter.

[Page Heading: MISS CAVELL]

Miss Cavell's execution has stirred us all to the bottom of our hearts.

The mean trickiness of her trial, the refusal to let facts be known, and then the cold-blooded murder of a brave English woman at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning in a prison yard!

It is too awful to think about. She was not even technically a spy, but had merely a.s.sisted some soldiers to get away because she thought they were going to be shot. A rumour reached the American and Spanish Legations that she had been condemned and was to be shot at once, and they instantly rang up on the telephone to know if this was true. They were informed by the Military Court which had tried and condemned her that the verdict would not be p.r.o.nounced till three days later. But the two Legations, still not satisfied, protested that they must be allowed to visit the prisoner. This was refused.

The English chaplain was at last permitted to enter the prison, and he saw Miss Cavell, and gave her the Sacrament. She said she was happy to die for her country. They led her out into the prison yard to stand before a firing-party of soldiers, but on her way there she fainted, and an officer took out his revolver and shot her through the head.

Petrograd! the stage of romance, and the subject of dazzling pictures, is one of the most commonplace towns I have ever been in. It has its one big street--the Nevski Prospect--where people walk and shop as they do in Oxford Street, and it has a few cathedrals and churches, which are not very wonderful. The roadways are a ma.s.s of slush and are seldom swept; and there are tramways, always crowded and hot, and many rickety little victorias with damp cushions, in which one goes everywhere. Even in the evening we go out in these; and the colds in the head which follow are chronic.

The English colony seems to me as provincial as the rest of Petrograd.

The town and its people disappoint me greatly. The Hotel Astoria is a would-be fashionable place, and there is a queer crowd of people listening to the band and eating, as surely only in Russia they can eat.

It is all wrong in war-time, and I hate being one of the people here.

N.B.--Write "Miss Wilbraham" as soon as possible, and write it in gusts.

Call one chapter "The Diners," and try to convey the awful solemnity of meals--the grave young men with their goblets of brandy, in which they slowly rotate ice, the waiter who hands the bowl where the ice is thrown when the brandy is cool enough, and then the final gulp, with a nose inside the large goblet. Shade of Heliogabalus! If the human tummy must indeed be distended four times in twenty-four hours, need it be done so solemnly, and with such a pig-like love of the trough? If they would even eat what there is with joy one wouldn't mind, but the talk about food, the once-enjoyed food, the favourite food, is really too tiresome.

"Where to dine" becomes a sort of test of true worth. Grave young men give the names of four or five favoured places in London. Others, hailed and acknowledged as really good judges, name half-a-dozen more in Paris where they "do you well." The real toff knows that Russia is the place to dine. We earnestly discuss blue-point oysters and caviare, which, if you "know the man," you can get sent fresh on the Vienna Express from Moscow.

[Page Heading: BERNARD SHAW]

I once asked Bernard Shaw to dinner, and he replied on a postcard: "Never! I decline to sit in a hot room and eat dead animals, even with you to amuse me!"

I always seem to be sitting in hot rooms and eating dead animals, and then paying amazing high prices for them.

_4 November._--I dined with the ----s the other night. Either the hot rooms, or the fact that I am anaemic at present, causes me to be so sleepy in the evenings that I dislike dining out. I sway with sleep even when people are talking to me. It was a middle-cla.s.s little party, such as I often enjoy. One's friends would fain only have one see a few fine blooms, but I love common flowers.

We have been to see "Peter's little house." There was a tiny shrine, crowded with people in wraps and shawls, who crossed themselves ceaselessly, to the danger of their neighbours' faces, for so fervid were their gesticulations that their hands flew in every direction! They shoved with their elbows to get near the wax candles that dripped before the pictures of the black-faced Virgin and Child, who were "allowing"

soldiers to be painfully slaughtered by the million.

Ye G.o.ds, what a faith! What an acrobatic performance to try and reconcile a Father's personal care for His poor little sparrows and His indifference at seeing so many of them stretched bleeding on the ground!

Religion so far has been a success where martyrs are concerned, but we must go on with courage to something that teaches men to _live_ for the best and the highest. This should come from ourselves, and lead up to G.o.d. It should not require teaching, or priests, or even prayer.

Humanity is big enough for this. It should shake off cords and chains and old Bible stories of carnage and killing, and get to work to find a new, responsible, clean, sensible, practical scheme of life, in which each man will have to get away from silly old idols and step out by himself.

There is nothing very difficult about it, but we are so beset by bogies, and so full of fears and fancies that we are half the time either in a state of funk, or in its ant.i.thesis, a state of cheekiness.

Schoolmaster-ridden, we are behaving still like silly children, and our highest endeavour is (school-boy-like) to resemble our fellows as nearly as possible. The result is stagnation, crippled forms, wasted energy, people waiting for years by some healing pool and longing for someone to dip them in. All the release that Christ preached to men is being smothered in something worse than Judaism. We love chains, and when they are removed we either turn and put them on again, or else caper like mad things because we have cast them off. Freedom is still as distant as the stars.

_5 November._--Yesterday we lunched with the English chaplain, Mr.

Lombard. He and I had a great talk walking home on a dark afternoon through the slush after we had been to call on the Maxwells. I think he is one of the "exiles" whom one meets all the world over, one of those who don't transplant well. I am one myself! And Mr. Lombard and I nearly wept when we found ourselves in a street that recalled the Marylebone Road. We pretended we were in sight of Euston Station, and talked of taking a Baker Street bus till our voices grew choky.

How absurd we islanders are! London is a poky place, but we adore it.

St. James's Street is about the length of a good big ship, yet we don't feel we have lived till we get back to it! And as for Piccadilly and St.

Paul's, well, we see them in our dreams.

Our little unit has not found work yet. I was told before I joined it that it had been accepted by the Russian Red Cross Society.

[Page Heading: "CHARITY" AND WAR]

I have been hearing many things out here, and thinking many things.

There is only one way of directing Red Cross work. Everything should be--and must be in future--put under military authority and used by military authority. "Charity" and war should be separate. It is absurd that the Belgians in England should be housed and fed by a Government grant, and our own soldiers are dependent on private charity for the very socks they wear and the cigarettes they smoke. Aeroplanes had to be inst.i.tuted and prizes offered for them by a newspaper, and ammunition wasn't provided till a newspaper took up the matter. To be mob-ridden is bad enough, but to be press-ridden is worse!

Now, war is a military matter, and should be controlled by military authorities. Mrs. Wynne, Mr. Bevan, and I should not be out here waiting for work. We ought to be sent where we are needed, and so ought all Red Cross people. This would put an end, one hopes, to the horrid business of getting "soft jobs."

_7 November._--Whenever I am away from England I rejoice in the pa.s.sing of each week that brings me nearer to my return. I had hardly realised to-day was the 7th, but I am thankful I am one week nearer the grey little island and all the nice people in it.

Yesterday I went to Lady Georgina Buchanan's soup-kitchen, and helped to feed Polish refugees. They strike me as being very like animals, but not so interesting. In the barracks where they lodge everyone crowds in.

There is no division of the s.e.xes, babies are yelling, and families are sleeping on wooden boards. The places are heated but not aired, and the smell is horrid; but they seem to revel in "frowst." All the women are dandling babies or trying to cook things on little oil-stoves. At night-time things are awful, I believe, and the British Amba.s.sador has been asked to protect the girls who are there.

_8 November._--This afternoon I went to see Mrs. Bray, and then I had an unexpected pleasure, for I met Johnnie{8} Parsons, who is Naval Attache to Admiral Phillimore, and we had a long chat. When one is in a strange land, or with people who know one but little, these encounters are wonderfully nice.

The other night I dined with the Heron Maxwells, and had a nice evening and a game of bridge. Some Americans, called de Velter, were there. I think most people from the States regret the neutrality of their country.

[Page Heading: VISIONS OF PEACE]

Everyone brings in different stories of the war. Some say Germany is exhausted and beaten, others say she is flushed with victory, and with enormous reserves of men, food, and ammunition. I try to believe all the good I hear, and when even children or fools tell me the war will soon be over, I want to embrace them--I don't care whether they are talking nonsense or not. Sometimes I seem to see a great hushed cathedral, and ourselves returning thanks for Peace and Victory, and the vision is too much for me. I must either work or be chloroformed till that time comes.

_9 November._--I think there is only one thing I dislike more than sitting in an hotel bedroom and learning a new language, and that is sitting in an hotel bedroom and nursing a cold in my head. Lately I have been learning Russian--and now I am sniffing. My own fault. I would sleep with my window open in this unhealthiest of cities, and smells and marsh produced a feverish cold.

Out in the square the soldiers drill all the time in the snow, lying in it, standing in it, and dressed for the most part in cotton clothing.