The Better Germany in War Time Part 29

I looked at her in horror, thinking that fright had turned her brain. I could find no words to reply. I turned to go to my own room, when she added:

"In any case, the 'Boches' won't know of it for the bodies are buried under a heap of stones."

I left her with the words of the woman of Orchies echoing through my brain: "Who can tell which side is the more barbarous?"

Some of these people I had known before the war to be peaceful, quiet citizens; they now appeared to me to have suddenly turned into devils.

Fear and danger had made them crazy with hatred. Everywhere one went it was the same. If I tried to escape it, and took refuge in the street, I seemed to feel hatred rising from the very ground.

Amongst the fugitives one saw, many had run away before even seeing a German helmet, but all were full of atrocious tales, all were mad with hatred and revenge.

Not until the actual sh.e.l.ling of the town began did I fully realise the havoc that fear and hatred can work! To feel helpless while sh.e.l.ls go whirling over one's head at the rate of sixty a minute, while houses are burning on either side of one, is a horrible experience. To have to bear all these horrors without being able to put a stop to them, is maddening. At such moments one feels like a mouse caught in a trap. One would have to be more than human not to feel terror.

We all felt this at Lille, the great majority were so panic-stricken that they made for the gates, quite oblivious of the fact that the gates were closed and that fighting was going on there.

It is usually in these moments of supreme fear that the lurking hatred in the soul takes full possession of it, distorting the imagination, bringing back the most atavistic moral ideas, giving birth to falsehoods of every description, and widening the gulf of misunderstanding which seems to part the nations.

I have always known that hatred is the offspring of war. I am well aware that ever since the beginning of the present crisis the newspapers and the warmongers have been daily adding fuel to the fire of hatred for fear that if the fire died out the war would do the same. But over there, at Lille, I felt that hatred had fallen on the hearts of many people like a fatal malediction with which they are to be cursed all their life long and which they will transmit to their descendants.

These people whom fear has driven, like cattle, from their burning houses, who have suddenly been left without a roof over their heads or food to eat, are not likely easily to give up their hatred when this pa.s.sion of war is a thing of the past. Deep in their hearts will be written the word "revenge" even though France does not lose a second Alsace-Lorraine.

This same overpowering feeling of hatred I found amongst most of the staff of the hospital where I was working, and I was able to note at first hand the effect it had in the dealings of the nursing staff with the German wounded.

After October 13, 1914, the Germans took control of all the hospitals at Lille, and soon they were crowded with German wounded, while, little by little, as soon as they were able to travel, the French and British were evacuated and taken to Germany as prisoners of war.

At Hospital 105 the French staff were asked if they would agree to remain under the German authorities, and most of the doctors and nurses elected to remain at their post. The hospital was controlled by the "Societe des femmes de France," who financed it and managed the entire establishment. Many of these women were society ladies and, with the exception of two or three, most incompetent. Before the German occupation their activities had mostly been of a showy character. They were all dainty, smart, and useless, and so they remained under German rule-those, at least, who did not run away. They avoided nursing Germans with great skill, and overcrowded the French and English wards.

They were very diplomatic in their dealings with the enemy, as silly and pitiful in their hatred of the German and their cautious dealings with him as they were in their other activities. Their hatred was of the emptyheaded kind, but all the more dangerous for being based on frivolity of heart and cra.s.s ignorance.

Side by side with them were a few intellectual women, professors and teachers. Most of them followed in the wake of their sisters and behaved in a similar manner. One of them, a woman I had known before, had spent many years of her life in Germany and had taught the German language for nearly twenty years. Before the war she had often told me how lovable she had found the German people, what good friends she had in Germany and how she always enjoyed a holiday there, so that when some of my German patients asked me for books, I thought she would be the very person to whom to apply for some.

To my astonishment she flew into a pa.s.sion when she heard my request.

"Want books, do they? They will soon ask for chickens and lobsters."

Walking into my ward, she exclaimed haughtily: "So you are asking for books! As you set fire to everything, there are no books left for you!"

Very little of the nursing was done by these women, however, who, instead of being a real help for the most part, put spokes in the wheels of the more useful helpers. The hardships of overwork, of long hours, of day and night duties in succession, fell all the more heavily on the shoulders of a few willing women, the other part of the female element proving so unreliable.

These women, whose devotion never flagged, comprised three trained nurses and nine or ten women clerks or teachers, of quite another type to those mentioned above. It is true they were not all free from hatred, but, if I may so express it, theirs was almost a hopeful hatred compared with the blind stupidity of those others.

Amongst the three professional nurses I remember a tall, handsome girl of 22 or thereabouts. Hers was an ardent soul, one of those souls which keep young in spite of advancing years. Whatever task this girl sets herself to do she will carry it through with skill and earnestness.

Whichever cause she champions she will do so in no light spirit, and it was thus that she hated the Germans with the strongest hatred and yet nursed them with utter devotion, for she was as earnest a nurse as she was keen a patriot. There was almost a kind of healthiness about her hatred, based as it was on deep-rooted feelings, knowing no caution and no fear. One might hope more for her who, fearless of consequences, could wave the French flag and shout "Vive la France" when French prisoners were led away, than for all the fine ladies whose little souls were filled with great fear and ignorant hatred.

I remember also a small, fair nurse, silent for the most part, but up at all times of the night as well as working hard all day. She sometimes opened her heart to me and I found there, as deep-rooted as her colleague's hatred, a great and sincere love for all men and women, an unflinching hope that in the long run "brotherhood" will be the watchword of all humanity.

Amongst these hard-working women many were of this silent type, going about with sealed lips, but with treasures of unconscious kindliness and love hidden in their hearts, known only to G.o.d.

My daily intercourse with the men on our hospital staff was on the whole never sufficiently intimate to allow me to speak here of their mental att.i.tude towards "the enemy." The French doctors I never saw except when I was on duty, and I had little or no opportunity of speaking with them, being only an a.s.sistant nurse, but I recollect one little incident connected with Professor L--, a man of acknowledged skill in France.

At the time of which I speak, I had been transferred to a German ward, and one day, finding myself short of boiled water for the men to drink, I went to the chemist to ask for some. There I met Professor L--, who said:

"So you want boiled water for your friends the Germans? What would you say if I were to put in it a few microbes of cholera morbus?"

"I would hardly believe it of you!"

"Of course, you would not, for I am told that you are surprisingly good to these Germans. But believe me, if it were not for the fear of spreading the disease far and wide, this would be the best thing to do."

I have, however, no means of ascertaining that this incident is typical of the att.i.tude of the average Frenchman on the male staff towards the Germans. As a matter of fact, they had very little to do with the German wounded, as these were left entirely in the hands of the German doctors, aided by the French nurses.

After my transfer to the German wards, where we were very short of nurses, I soon found myself in sole charge of from 16 to 26 wounded, a burden which I felt rather too heavy for me, as I had had but little experience in nursing previous to the war. But it was during this time, when my duties involved greater responsibility, that I came into closer contact with doctors, but they were German doctors, of course.

I remember one of them, a small man, somewhat round, whom we had nicknamed "pupuce" (little flea). Pupuce always appeared to me to be kindness itself: intent on his work, good to his men and fair to his helpers. His position as head of a hospital where most of the men were French, was not an easy one. He was disliked by the majority of the nurses, mostly those who had not been willing to work under him; yet I never saw him manifest anything but the greatest tolerance and courtesy towards all.

But where one felt the smallest amount of hatred existing on either side was amongst the men who had fought and been wounded.

Being left so much alone with my German patients I got to know them well. I never had to complain of my "Boches." They were so much like our own men; yes, so much like them! They were grateful for what was done for them just in the same way. They showed me photographs of their dear ones and told me stories of them which made my heart beat ever so quickly.

But some of them were very funny. They ate, ate, so that one marvelled.

They showed me plainly that I was to heap potatoes and other food on their plates. It was never too thick or too much for them. These men were of the peasant type, heavy in features and in general appearance. I found but few like them amongst our French men. They seemed to feel kindly towards me. Some of them used to pat me on the back heavily and call me: "Goode Pet.i.te Madam." But their kindness was cow-like, so to speak, and reminded me of the animals when they have been well fed.

But, of course, all were not like that. I remember many handsome and intelligent faces of men who seemed to have been born for better things than butchery. Here was a young man, a student of science, as gentle as a woman. He seemed to be the soul of all his comrades, so great was his influence for good over them. Day and night he was ready to help and to go to the a.s.sistance of his fellows, so far as his own wounds would allow him to do so.

There were many of this type, and many others who seemed like children, and who could hardly be expected to realise how they got into such a sc.r.a.pe. One, a young mechanic, a lad with a bright rosy face, discovered that I was a Socialist, and, with finger on lip, he told me that he also was one. He whispered the great names of Jaures, Keir Hardie, and Liebknecht; I could read in his eyes the hope these names roused in him, but I could also see that he was scarcely old enough to know his own mind, and that he might be brutally killed ere he had lived long enough to strengthen his hopes and to see his goal clearly through the maze of his youthful dreams.

There were types on the French side corresponding more or less closely to these.

It is true that the French peasant drinks wine in the place of beer, eats less than the German, is lighter in build and in wits, but apart from these superficial differences there is much similarity. Under an outside show of brains, both are often of dull and shallow intelligence.

The German cracks heavy jokes and the French cynical ones: it is difficult to choose between them as both show little culture and an inherent commonplaceness of mind.

Men of greater sensibility, of refined culture, I have found on either side, and be they French or German, I have nearly always found their behaviour correspond to that which I have here tried to delineate.

Most of these men had seen many ghastly things, the horrors of which often remained impressed in their eyes for days and days after their arrival in hospital. It is often said that the trade of war, the heavy slaughter in which they have partic.i.p.ated, is bound to brutalise them. I readily believe this to be so in the case of the most vulgar types on either side, though, even on these, the brutalising and demoralising effect of the war seems less to be feared than amongst their corresponding types among the civilians.

It is amongst the soldiers and officers of the fighting ranks that I have found the greater readiness to fraternise with the enemy, to acknowledge the good points of the other side.

The men in my ward one day having sent coffee to their French comrades, the latter replied by sending cigarettes, and soon both sides were conversing together. The men who have stood face to face in the fight, who have seen their enemies falling as bravely as they themselves have done, have little hatred left in their hearts; but those who have suffered all the horrors of war and who have not found either in work, or even in partic.i.p.ation in the war itself, a means to cool their overheated feelings, are those who const.i.tute the real danger for the future work of the pacifists, as, after all, the brutalising effect of war is not due so much to the use of physical force as to the hatred which such physical force, bent on destruction, brings in its wake.

What I say here of the men does not, however, apply to the professional officers. Amongst the Germans these are mostly of the aristocracy. Their haughty, scarred faces were always repellent to me. Luckily I was not told off to nurse them. They had a special room of their own.

Once only, at lunch time, when their usual nurse was away at her lunch, one of them beckoned to me as I was pa.s.sing their door. Thinking that he wanted something, I went up to him, but he received me by putting out his tongue and taking a "sight" at me, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of all his friends. This young scamp was no other than Lieutenant von W--, the son of General von W--. We all knew that he was a cad and Pupuce himself seemed to find him rather a handful.

I met very few French officers during my stay at Lille, but my knowledge of the professional military man in time of peace, leads me to believe that the type I have described, is far from uncommon in France. He is the embodiment of militarism anywhere, and neither in Germany nor elsewhere will these men's brutal instincts be checked through war, or even through defeat.

After leaving Lille, and during my subsequent journey through Northern France and Belgium, I had the opportunity to note the dealings of the Germans with the population of these invaded lands.

After the numerous accounts of monstrous atrocities which were perpetrated over there, I hardly dare to mention here that personally I did not meet with any of these. I do not mean to imply by this that atrocities have not happened, but simply that it has been my good fortune not to come across any.

At Lille itself, the Germans behaved decently when once in occupation.

Posters were put on the walls of the town inviting the population to keep quiet. It is true that a few days later fresh bills appeared, worded in very peremptory fashion, warning the inhabitants to keep away from the bridges, railways, and so forth, under penalty of death for disobedience. However, to my knowledge, no disturbances occurred. There, as elsewhere, the Germans tried to reorganise ordinary life as quickly as possible; they helped to put out fires and to restore quiet and order amongst the civilians.