War's Dark Frame/Battle, Zeppelins, and Democracy
CHAPTER III
BATTLE, ZEPPELINS, AND DEMOCRACY
AS far from the front as London it became obvious that the nearer one approaches this war the nearer one visualises a vivid growth of democracy. A number of incidents, at the time apparently trivial, assume in retrospect a very real importance.
I had been interested in the women's share. I had visited hospitals, watching the nurses at their merciful work. I had seen them, with an amusing diffidence, accomplishing men's tasks on trams and busses, even at the wheels of taxicabs. I knew of their labour in the munition factories. I was not prepared, however, for the surprise an English friend offered me when I went to visit him at his home in Surrey. He was a man of wealth and influence.
I was curious when his daughter didn't appear for luncheon.
"I'll show you this afternoon what she's at," he promised mysteriously.
He wouldn't say anything else.
We set off in his automobile, stopping at a soldiers' convalescent home to pick up two wounded men, for Englishmen don't like to use automobiles without sharing their luxury with the sufferers.
We halted at a neat farm in a hollow. A horsey-looking individual appeared.
"Where's the young lady?" my host asked.
The other took his pipe from his mouth and pointed with it in the direction of a distant rise.
"In summit field with Jerry and Jinny."
How's she coming on?"
The horsey man puffed thoughtfully at his pipe.
"Better," he said grudgingly, " than I calculated. She knows something about horses."
We went on to the top of the rise. The soldiers, because of their wounds, couldn't leave the automobile, but my host led me down a lane to a broad field. A solitary, dusty figure crossed the field with long strides, calling cheerily to the rawboned horses she drove, clinging with real skill to the handle of a plough.
My daughter," my wealthy host announced.
Real pride rang in his voice.
She was a very pretty girl—all the handsomer, one felt, for a thorough coat of tan. Nor could her corduroy skirt or her khaki blouse diminish the grace of her figure. It was easy to understand her father's pride. She talked pleasantly with us about her work. There was no attempt to make light of it. She didn't define it in terms of sacrifice.
"I'm sorry I missed you this morning," she said in her casual, educated voice, absurdly at variance with her occupation. But, you see, I must be at work by six, so I leave home at five. I carry my luncheon in a basket, and it's jolly good at noon, even in solitude."
"When do you get home?” I gasped.
"Usually in time for a late dinner. You know I must cover this field to-night, or I'll have no dinner at all."
We watched her as she called to her horses and strode gracefully away.
“That's her life," her father reflected," and, on the whole, I fancy it's better for her than teas and dances and the things girls used to do. She loves horses, so she's capable."
"But why." I began.
Don't you understand? ?" he said. She releases one man more to go to war."
An aeroplane whirred across the downs towards France. The wounded soldiers welcomed us back to the automobile. I gazed at their bandages and crutches.
Certainly the plough girl was democratic. Yet, you couldn't help thinking, it was a pity her devo
The Germans made a more thorough job here than in Louvain
tion should have no more beautiful object than the release of a man to become, let us say, like one of these maimed fellows who somehow managed to colour their invalid pallor with smiles for us.
At every turning the sign posts of a social change meet you. I remember a middle-aged woman in black who rode ahead of me one afternoon on the top of a bus. A newsboy in Haymarket burst the bounds of propriety with a strident yell. We all had a partial glimpse of the poster in his hand, announcing the sinking of a British ship.
The woman, who in peace times, you felt, would have been in an automobile, turned to me with a cry of fright.
“Did you see the name of the ship?" she asked. "I couldn't."
I had noticed one of the posters just before mounting the bus.
"It's the Blank," I answered. " She was sunk in the Mediterranean."
The colour rushed back to her face. The sharp anxiety faded from her eyes.
"Thanks," she said, and turned away.
After a moment she looked back. It was evident she felt the need of an explanation.
"You see," she said, "I have lost my brother in the navy, and my son is with the high seas fleet. One goes about expecting news like that all the time. I ought not to be glad it was in the Med. iterranean, for there are many women whose fear will grow when they hear that word. Thank you. You understand?"
“I understand."
I descended, thinking:
"A little more than two years ago this woman would not have spoken to a stranger, no matter what her sudden doubt."
So the perpetual strain, its general distribution, draws people to each other for comfort, because so many of them can say:
"I understand."
Any one will tell you that the Zeppelin raids have encouraged such a community of feeling. They have destroyed in every portion of the population of the London and East Coast districts the comfortable aloofness from actual warfare to which English civilians have for centuries been accustomed. The fact that non-combatants have frequently been the only victims has intensified this impression of a common outrage, and a common sympathy.
The Germans, it is fair to assume, haven't bothered about who might be hurt, but, as a matter of fact, in proportion to the energy and ammunition expended, together with the loss of Zeppelins and their crews, the results have been nearly negligible. It is, all the more on that account, ironical that the innocent should have been the chief sufferers.
"If they go after a factory," an officer said to me," they get a workingman's house a mile or so away. If they go for a barracks they get a farm. It's small comfort for the old men and the women and children done in that no real damage has been accomplished."
No one seems to know what the Zeppelins were after the night they dropped bombs in one of the great inns of law. A house of some peaceful barristers here, the shattering of some ancient carvings and glass in a chaper there, and about the lawns a few gaping holes—that was the extent of the damage. Zeppelin raids have all the casual inconsistency of a tempest.
London, when I was in the city, had learned about as thoroughly as Paris to take care of this menace. With the decline of the moon a little nervousness was apparent, but for the most part people faced the prospect calmly. During one week after the departure of the moon had made the heavens safer for aircraft we had three of these visits in a row. At tea on the afternoon of the first raid I heard a retired admiral and a famous editor discussing it as one talks of an approaching horse race or a ball game.
“Everything is quite perfect for them. The wind of the last fortnight has died away," the admiral said, rubbing his hands. "Now if you want to lay a wager— "
At the theatre that night, although the audience shared this sense of anticipation, the play progressed cheerfully. When we came out after the final curtain we saw that the heavens were torn by the groping fingers of countless searchlights. From the wide spaces of Trafalgar Square we could watch occasionally shrapnel bursting close to the shafts of light, and we pointed out to each other what we imagined to be the minute shape of a Zeppelin, flying high.
"Mybe the bloke fawncics 'es over Lunnon," a constable said. "If so, Gawd 'elp 'im when 'e tries to fly back."
Aw, they dawn't get over the 'eart of Lunnon these days," said a cab driver, lounging by in the hope of a fare. Show ayn't worth the price of stying out. 'Ome for you, gentlemen?”
Later, in a room overlooking the Embankment, a party of us watched in darkness. The fingers of light still groped, but there was no more shrapnel. A pretty young girl grasped her father's arm. She cried out, her voice vibrating with disappointment:
“Daddy! You promised I should see a Zep to-night." “Never mind, my dear," the father said indulgently. “Bobby, suppose you call up Blank at the War Office and ask where the rascals have gone."
After a time Bobby returned from the telephone. He was apologetic.
"Blank says they're headed for the home fires." Our host drew the curtain and snapped on the lights. We blinked. The pretty girl pouted. She seemed to think her father had somehow failed her.
“A game of bridge," he suggested," or is it too late?
One was rather relieved that the German admiralty couldn't see London intimately that night. Its chagrin would have been too painful. Some time later I chanced to see a quotation from a Munich paper which, recalling that very date, threatened London with similar "nights of terror.”
During the same week I lunched with an officer of one of the guard regiments.
"Of course you know the Zeps were fussing about again last night," he said. I told him I had seen the lights and had shared a little of the excitement.
"I was in barracks at ” he chatted. "I don't know how many of the things there were. One of them sailed directly over the barracks square. We were crowded in looking up. What a place for a bomb!
This fellow dropped a number in some empty fields as usual. You could see their fuses twisting down. Then he showed a red light on his tail—some kind of a signal, I fancy, and swung towards the channel. I think our air guns were spoiling his evening. At least the shrapnel was bursting all about.
Last we saw of him. He must have felt an awful fool, but they ought to be getting accustomed to that."
Before the moon had come again one had nearly forgotten with the Londoners to be apprehensive of the great dirigibles. In such indifference lies the tragedy of Count Zeppelin.
If, however, such considerations as Zeppelins and anxiety for relatives at the front have accented the virtues of democracy, its faults have also fattened through the war. The French and the English appreciated that during the first few months. It challenged me during my brief trip to Ireland during the Sinn Fein rebellion. I have no inten tion of taking up the military or political phases of that affair. They have been sufficiently dissected and fought over.
My chief recollection, indeed, is of confusion. It began at Euston where they had no idea whether the boat would leave Holyhead or not. Haggard women wept, and men ran up and down with an anxiety for which the officials had no antidote. A young fellow in the uniform of the naval Aying corps came along and held out an envelope and a bundle of newspapers.
“If you get through, please try to mail these in Ireland," he said to me. "I can't go, and my family's in Dublin. I've heard nothing."
"If the Zeps come to-night," a bystander offered, "nobody'll get through. The train won't budge from London."
But the Zeppelins didn't come, and we left, and in the train the confusion persisted. An army officer shared a compartment with another correspondent and myself. We turned out the lights, rolled ourselves in our overcoats, and tried to sleep. But we couldn't sleep. There was too much noise in the corridors, and a monotonous undertone issued from the other compartments where people, full of misgivings for relatives and friends, discussed the future which they approached with uncertain steps. There were black clouds in the sky through which the moon was like a dying lamp.
"I'm used to roughing it," the officer said. "I've slept often enough less comfortably at the front. It isn't that that worries me. I've been transferred to a regiment stationed at some distance from Dublin. If they tell me at Holyhead the trains aren't running on the other side I'll have to go back to London."
At Holyhead the confusion sent him back to London, because nobody seemed to know anything certainly.
The boat, however, lay against the dock with steam up. During the minute examination of our papers rain added to the shivering discomfort of those black hours before the dawn. Reluctantly we were permitted to embark. We tried to settle ourselves in the midst of a confusion which increased.
There was wild but serious talk of a fleet of new and gigantic German submarines which were sup- posed to be somewhere in the Irish Sea preparing to co-operate with the rebels.
"They're sure to give us a chase," a man whispered.
Many agreed. You couldn't help admiring these people who went forward in face of such a belief. Ireland loomed out of a haze touched by the first grey light. The haze seemed a veil for sinister things. The passengers arose and stretched themselves, as if emerging from the shadow of one disaster to gather strength to elude another.
And at the dock the confusion, for us at any rate, culminated. Here it had the whimsical, lovable quality of the country. An officer stopped us at the gangplank.
"Where are you going?"
“Ashore for breakfast, for a lodging, to look around.”
"You can't land without a pass from the provost marshal in Kingstown."
"You mean," I asked, "that we will have to go back on this boat?"
"Oh, no," he answered scriously, “because you can't leave on this boat without a pass from the provost marshal in Kingstown."
By strategy and fair words we got ashore and to the provost marshal. Of the confusion there, as I have suggested, enough has been written already. When I left on a clear, ruddy evening it occurred to me that rather too much undemocratic order was emerging from the hurly-burly, for I had to run a gauntlet of Scotland
Yard men, of the British army, of the Irish Con-
stabulary, of Mr. Redmond's Nationalist Volun-
teers. On the boat, however, the old state was
in evidence. We were crowded by the first
refugees from Dublin—men and women with
nerves over-taut who knew of that story of the
gigantic German submarines. Moreover, the
barricades on the water front at Kingstown had seemed to give the rumour rather too much body.
We crept out of the harbour double-shrouded. Canvas light shields were stretched along the sides. The portholes were closely shuttered. Only one entrance, far forward and completely dark, was left open to the lower deck.
There was a dim light in the smoke-room, and we counted the minutes there while the refugees, a trifle hysterical, exchanged experiences.
Suddenly what everybody had feared seemed to spring upon us. The lights snapped out. Through a blackness nearly palpable a cry cut.
"Submarines!"
The thought of panic in this shrouded boat was more oppressive than the sudden night.
"Sit still!"
Then a man spoke wistfully and saved the situation.
"What are you afraid of? It couldn't be any worse than a happy Easter in Dublin." Some of us laughed. Gradually the ominous stirring subsided. Every one sat still until by and by the lights came on and we looked at each other and smiled. A man ran in, crying breathlessly:
"Holyhead light! I say, I can see Holyhead light!"
A great sigh went up. We all crowded to the front deck to watch that red and friendly greeting.