Getting Together Part 1

Getting Together.

by Ian Hay.

CHAPTER ONE

For several months it has been the pleasant duty of the writer of the following deliverance to travel around the United States, lecturing upon sundry War topics to indulgent American audiences. No one--least of all a parochial Briton--can engage upon such an enterprise for long without beginning to realize and admire the average American's amazing instinct for public affairs, and the quickness and vitality with which he fastens on and investigates every topic of live interest.

Naturally, the overshadowing subject of discussion to-day is the War, and all the appurtenances thereof. The opening question is always the same. It lies about your path by day in the form of a newspaper man, or about your bed by night in the form of telephone call, and is simply:

"When is the War going to end?"

(One is glad to note that no one ever asks _how_ it is going to end: that seems to be settled.)

The simplest way of answering this question is to inform your inquisitor that so far as Great Britain is concerned the War has only just begun--began, in fact, on the first of July, 1916; when the British Army, equipped at last, after stupendous exertions, for a grand and prolonged offensive, went over the parapet, shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of France, and captured the hitherto impregnable chain of fortresses which crowned the ridge overlooking the Somme Valley, with results now set down in the pages of history.

Having weathered this conversational opening, the stranger from Britain finds himself, as the days of his sojourn increase in number, swept gently but irresistibly into an ocean of talk--an ocean complicated by eddies, cross-currents, and sudden shoals--upon the subject of Anglo-American relations over the War. Here is the substance of some of the questions which confront the perplexed wayfarer:--

1. "Do your people at home appreciate the fact that we are thoroughly pro-Ally over here?"

2. "How about that Blockade? What are you opening our mails for--eh?"

3. "Would you welcome American intervention?"

4. "What do you propose to do about the submarine menace?"

5. "You don't _really_ think we are too proud to fight, do you?"

6. "Are you in favour of National Training for Americans?"

7. "Do you expect to win outright, or are both sides going to fight themselves to a standstill?"

_And_

8. "Why can't you Britishers be a bit kinder in your att.i.tude to us?"

CHAPTER TWO

Let us take this welter of interrogation categorically, and endeavour to frame such answers as would occur to the average Briton to-day.

But first of all, let it be remembered that the average Briton of to-day is not the average Briton of yesterday. Three years ago he was a prosperous, comfortable, thoroughly insular Philistine. He took a proprietary interest in the British Empire, and paid a munificent salary to the Army and Navy for looking after it. There his Imperial responsibilities ceased. As for other nations, he recognized their existence; but that was all. In their daily life, or national ideals, or habit of mind, he took not the slightest interest, and said so, especially to foreigners.

"I'm English," he would explain, with a certain proud humility.

"That's good enough for yours truly!"

This sort of thing rather perplexed the American people, who take a keen and intelligent interest in the affairs of other nations.

But to-day the average Briton would not speak like that. He will never speak like that again. He has been outside his own island: he has made a number of new acquaintances. He has been fighting alongside of the French, and has made the discovery that they do not subsist entirely upon frogs. He has encountered real Germans, at sufficiently close quarters to realize that the "German Menace" at which his party leaders encouraged him to scoff in a bygone age was no such phantom after all. Altogether he is a very different person from the complacent, parochial exponent of the tight-little-island theories of yester-year. He has encountered things at home and abroad which have purged his very soul. Abroad, he has seen the whole of Belgium and some of the fairest provinces of France subjected to the grossest and most b.e.s.t.i.a.l barbarity. At home, he has seen inoffensive watering places bombarded by pirate craft which came up out of the sea like malignant wraiths and then fled away like panic-stricken window-smashers. He has seen Zeppelins hovering over close-packed working-cla.s.s districts in industrial towns, raining indiscriminate destruction upon men, women, and children. In fact, he has seen things and suffered things that he never even dreamed of, and they have broadened his mind considerably.

Last year, under stress of these circ.u.mstances, the average Briton relinquished his age-long propensity to "let George do it," and evolved a sudden and rather inspiring sense of personal responsibility for the safety and welfare of his country. He no longer limited his patriotism to the roaring of truculent choruses at music-halls, or the decorating of his bicycle with the flags of the Allies. He went and enlisted instead. Now he has faced Death in person--and outfaced him.

He has ceased to attach an exaggerated value to his own life. Life, he realizes, like Peace, is only worth retaining on certain terms, the first of which is Honour, and the second Honour, and the third Honour.

Finally, he regards the present War as a Holy War--a Crusade, in fact.

He went into it with no ulterior motives: his sole impulse was to stand by his friends, France and Belgium, in the face of the monstrous outrage that was being forced upon them. He is out, in fact, to save civilization and human decency. Consequently he finds it just a little difficult to understand how a warm-hearted and high-spirited nation can be expected to remain "neutral even in thought."

With this much introduction to the man and his point of view, we will allow him to speak for himself.

CHAPTER THREE

"Do I realize that you are pro-Ally over here? Well, somehow I have always felt it, but now I know it. When I get home I shall rub that fact into everyone I meet. What our people at home don't grasp is the fact that America is inhabited by two distinct races--Americans, and others. The others appear to me--mind you, I'm only giving you a personal impression--to consist either of alien immigrants who have not yet absorbed their new nationality, or professional anti-Ally propagandists, or people of mixed nationality with strong commercial interests in Germany, whose heart is where their treasure is. These make a surprising amount of noise, and attract a disproportionate amount of attention: but I know, and I intend the people at home to know, that the genuine American is with us in this business heart and soul.

"What's that? The Blockade? Yes, I want to talk to you about that. I take it you will admit that a blockade is a justifiable expedient of war. There have been one or two of them in history. In the American Civil War, for instance, the North established a pretty successful blockade against the Southern ports. British cotton s.h.i.+ps were everlastingly trying to run through that cordon. In fact, I rather think we exchanged a few cousinly notes on the subject. Of course blockades are irksome and irritating to neutrals. But we look to you here to endure the inconvenience, not merely as one of the chances of war, but rather to show us that you in this country do recognize and indorse the ideal for which we are fighting. We _are_ fighting for an ideal, you know: I think the way the old country came into this war, all unprepared and spontaneously, just because she felt she _must_ stand by her friends, was the finest thing she has ever done. Of course no sane person expected America to saddle herself gratuitously with a European War--without good and sufficient reason, that is--but we in England would like to feel that your acquiescence in the inconveniences caused by our blockade is your contribution to the cause--your slap on the back, signifying:--Go in and win!

"Open your mails? Yes, I'm afraid we do. And we find a good lot inside them! Do you know, there is a great warehouse in London filled from top to bottom with rubber, and nickel, and other commodities for which the Hun longs, disguised as all sorts of things--rubber fruit, for instance--taken from the most innocent-looking parcels--all dispatched from the United States to neutral countries in touch with Germany?

But we are most punctilious about it all. Every single article retains its original address-label, and will be forwarded direct to its proper consignee, directly the war is over. Can you beat that?

"Would we welcome Intervention? My dear sir, is it likely? Supposing _you_ had been caught entirely unprepared, and had been sticking your toes in for two years--fighting for time and playing a poor hand pretty well--and were at last ready to hit back, and hit back, until you had rendered your opponent incapable of further outrage, and were in a fair way to fix this war so that it never could happen again--would you welcome Mediation, or offers of Mediation? I think not.

"Submarines? We aren't attaching _too_ much importance to submarine frightfulness. It is true we have lost a number of merchant s.h.i.+ps, and that a number of innocent lives have been sacrificed. But let us put our hearts in the background for the present and look at the matter from the economic and military point of view. We have lost, in twenty-seven months, about one tenth of our original merchant fleet.

Against that you have to set the fact that we have been steadily building new merchant s.h.i.+ps during the same period. The dead loss of merchandise involved amounts to about one half per cent. of the total value--ten s.h.i.+llings in every hundred pounds; or fifty cents per hundred dollars. That won't starve us into submission.

"But the Germans will build more and more submarines? Very probably.

Still, I think we can leave it to the British and French navies to prevent undue exuberance in that direction. Our sailors have not been exactly garrulous during this war, but I think we may take it that they have not been entirely idle. Has it ever occurred to you that although there are hundreds of Allied wars.h.i.+ps patrolling the ocean to-day, you hardly ever hear of one being torpedoed by a submarine?

Pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps and freight s.h.i.+ps suffer to the extent I have quoted, but not the wars.h.i.+ps. Why is that? Don't ask me: ask Jellicoe! But it rather looks as if the submarine, as an instrument of naval warfare--as opposed to a baby-killing machine--had rather failed to deliver the goods.

"The Deutschland? I take off my hat to Captain Koenig: he is a plucky fellow. The _U 53_? I have no remarks to offer, except to repeat my previous reference to baby-killing machines. As for the presence of these two vessels in American waters--in American ports--I won't presume to offer an opinion. Still, not long ago the U 53 sank six British or neutral vessels off the American coast, just outside territorial waters. Fortunately for the pa.s.sengers, an American cruiser was in the neighbourhood, to guard against violation of American waters, and picked them up. But the whole incident looks to me like a deliberate German plan to jockey an American cruiser into becoming a German submarine tender.

"Let me see--what else? Too proud to fight? Not much! We know the American people too well. Besides, we suffer from politicians ourselves, and know what political catch-phrases are. So don't let that worry you.

"National Training for America? There I am neither qualified nor ent.i.tled to offer advice. I know the difficulties with which the true American has to contend in this matter. I know that this vast country of yours is more of a continent than a country, and that so long as your enormous tide of immigration continues, it will be a matter of immense difficulty developing a national sense of personal responsibility. I also know that your Middle West is inhabited by people, many of whom have never even seen the sea, who are rendered incapable, by their very environment, of realizing the immensity of the external dangers which threaten their country. These must see things differently from the more exposed section of the community, and I see how dangerous it would be to enforce upon them a measure which they regard as ridiculous. But on this great subject of Preparedness, I can refer you to the case of my own country--not as an example, but as a warning. _We_ were caught unprepared. In consequence, we had to sacrifice our best, our very best, the kind that can never be replaced in any country, just because they hurried to the rescue and allowed themselves to be wiped out, while the country behind them was being aroused and prepared. That is the price that we have paid, and no ultimate victory, however glorious, can recompense us for that criminal waste of the flower and pride of our youth and manhood at the outset.

"Do we expect to win the war outright? Yes, we do."

It is true that the Central Powers have recently succeeded in devastating another little country, though they have not destroyed its army. On the other hand, during the past few months the Allied gains on the Somme have included, among other items, a chain of fortresses. .h.i.therto considered impregnable, four or five hundred pieces of artillery, fourteen hundred machine-guns, and about ninety-five thousand unwounded German prisoners. Moreover, the French at Verdun have regained in a few weeks all the ground that the Crown Prince wrested from them, at the price of half a million German casualities, in the spring. German colonies have ceased to exist; German foreign trade is dead; the German navy is cooped up in Kiel harbour; and Germany is so short of men that she has resorted to outrageous deportations from Belgium in order to obtain industrial labour. On the other hand, our supply of munitions now, at the opening of 1917, is double what it was six months ago, and our new armies are not yet all in the field. The British Navy, despite all losses, has increased enormously both in tonnage and personnel. So I don't think we are fought to a standstill yet.

"Yes, you are right. All this bloodshed is dreadful. But responsibility for bloodshed rests not with the people who end a war but with the people who began it. As for discussing terms of peace now, what terms _could_ be arranged which Germany could be relied upon to observe a moment longer than suited her? Have you forgotten the way the War was forced on the world by Prussian militarism? The trick played on Russia over mobilization? The violation of Belgian neutrality? Malines, Termonde, Louvain? The official raping in the market-place at Liege? The _Lusitania_? Edith Cavell? The Zeppelin murders? Chlorine gas? The deportations from Belgium and Lille?

Wittenburg typhus camp, where men were left to rot, without doctors, or medicine, or bedding? How can one talk of "honourable peace" with such a gang of criminal lunatics? Ask yourself who would be such a fool as to propose to end a war upon terms which left the safety of the world exposed to the prospect of another outbreak from the same source?

"You, sir? _Why can't you people in England be a bit kinder in their tone to us here in America?_ Ah, now you are talking! Let us get away from this crowd and go into the matter--get together, as you say."