Yet life, in spite of the current of war twisting so many things
askew, does proceed in England calmly, and in something like
order. As we looked back upon our London experience it seemed to
Henry and me that we were hurrying from luncheons to teas and
teas to dinners and from dinners to the second act of good shows
all the time. For in London we had no Red Cross duties. We were
on our way home, and people were kind to us, and best of all we
could speak the language--after a fashion--and understand in a
general way what was going on. We had dined at two American
embassies on the continent and had worn our tail coats. Of course
Red Cross uniforms were proper evening regalia at any social
function. But someway a flannel shirt and a four-in-hand
tie--even a khaki coloured tie, did not seem to Henry and me de
rigueur. We weren't raised that way and we couldn't come to it.
So we wore our tails. We noticed in France and Italy that other
men wore dinner coats, and we bemoaned our stupidity in bringing
our tails and leaving our dinner coats in New York. We fancied in
our blindness that on the continent no one noticed the
difference. But in England, there doubt disappeared. Whenever
we went to an English dinner, in our tails, some
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--299
English ladyship through a lorgnette or a spy-glass of some kind
gave us the once-over with the rough blade of her social
disapproval and we felt like prize boobs suddenly kidnapped from
a tacky party and dropped into a grand ball. But we couldn't help
it. How should we have known, without our wives to pack our
trunks for us in New York, that tails had atrophied in European
society and that uniforms and dinner coats had taken their place.
But other things have disappeared from Great Britain since war
began, and Henry was doomed to walk the island vainly looking for
the famed foods of old England. All through Italy and France,
where onion soup and various pastes were served to us, Henry ate
them, but in a fond hope that when we got to England he would
have some of the "superior comestibles" which a true lover of
Dickens had a right to expect. The French were given to ragouts
and Latin translations of Mulligan stews, and braised veal
smothered in onions and carrots and a lot of staple and fancy
green groceries, and these messed dishes irritated Henry. He is
the kind of an old-fashioned man who likes to take his food
straight. If he eats onions, he demands that they shall be called
onions, or if they serve him carrots, he must know
300--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
specifically that he is eating carrots, and he wants his
potatoes, mashed, baked, boiled, or fried and no nonsense about
it. Similarly he wants his veal served by itself, and when they
bring him a smoking brown casserole of browned vegetables,
browned gravy and browned meat, he pokes his fork into it,
sniffs, "another cat mess," pushes it aside and asks for eatable
food! So all over the continent he was bragging about what he was
going to do to "the roast beef of old England," and was getting
ready for Yorkshire pudding with it. It was sweet to hear Henry's
honest bark at spaghetti and fish-salads, bay deep-mouthed
welcome to Sam Weller's "'am and weal pie," and even Pickwick's
"chops and tomato sauce," and David Copperfield's toasted
muffins, as we drew near the chalk cliffs of England. Also he was
going to find what an "eel pie" was, and he had a dozen
Dickensonian dishes that he proposed to explore, dishes whose
very names would make a wooden Indian's mouth water. But when he
got there the cupboard was bare. England was going on rations.
Fats were scarce, sugars were rare, starches were controlled by
the food board. And who could make a currant tart without these?
He dropped two bullet-sized brown biscuits with a hazelnut of
butter under
And we felt like prize boobs suddenly kidnapped from
a tacky party and dropped into a grand ball
(blank page follows)
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--303
his vest the first three minutes of our first breakfast and asked
for another round, after he had taken mine.
"That's your allowance, sir," said the waitress, and money would
buy no more.
He noticed a cube of sugar by his coffee cup; that was his
allowance of sugar. We went out to lunch. Henry ordered the roast
beef of old England at the best club in London and got a pink
shaving, escorted in by two boiled potatoes and a hunk of green
cabbage, boiled without salt or pork. And for dessert we had a
sugarless, lardless whole-wheat-flour tart! It puckered his
mouth like a persimmon. It fell to me to explain to Mr. H.G.
Wells, who gave the luncheon, that Henry had just come from the
continent, where he had scorned the food, and one could see from
the twinkle in Mr. Wells's eyes that he was going to put Henry in
a book. And he certainly was a hero during those London days--the
hero of a great disillusion. Of course the British cooking was
good. The English are splendid cooks, and they were doing their
best; but Henry's picture of the great boar's head triumphantly
borne into the hall on the shoulders of four stout butlers, and
his notion of the blazing plum pudding as large as a hassock, and
his preconceived idea of
304--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
England as Dickens's fat boy forever stuffing and going to sleep
again, had to be entirely revised. For if the English are proud
of the way they conceal the bitterness of their sorrow in this
war, also they have a vast pride in the way they are sacrificing
their creature comforts for it. In Latin countries there is more
or less special privilege. But in England, the law is the law and
men glory in its rigours by obeying it in proud self-sacrifice.
If our dinners sometimes were Spartan in simplicity we found the
talk ample, refreshing and filling. We, however, had some trouble
with our "Who's Who." One evening they sat me opposite a handsome
military man who talked of airships and things most wonderfully
and it took me three days to learn that he was the authority on
air fighting in Europe! He was a Lord of somewhere, and Earl of
something and a Duke of somewhat--all rolled into one. Henry
hooted at me for two days. But finally he gave me some comfort.
"At least," he said, "you are as well-known in London as your
Duke's mixture is in Emporia, and London is a bigger town!" Then
it came Henry's turn. At our very grandest dinner they sat Henry
between Lord Bryce and one of the most distinguished
men of contemporary English letters. Henry
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--305
shone that night as he never shone before and when Henry turns on
his talk he is a wizard. Meredith Nicholson, who has heard Henry
talk at a dinner, in a recent number of Scribner's
magazine, said of him: "He's the best talker I've ever heard. It
was delightful to listen to discourse so free, so graphic in its
characterization, so coloured and flavoured with the very soil,"
and that night at the English dinner, all of Henry's cylinders
were hitting and he took every grade without changing gears. But
my ears were eager for the man on Henry's right. He told some
stories; my neck craned toward them. Henry returned the Scotch
stories with Kansas stories and held the table.
Then going home in the taxi Henry, recalling
his dinner companion, said: "Bill, who was that
little man on my left, that man they called
Barrie!"
It seemed impossible. Yet those were Henry's very words.
"Henry, Henry, have you never heard of 'Peter Pan,' nor 'The
Little Minister, 'nor' Sentimental'--" his friend's answer got no
further. Henry's snort of shame almost stopped the taxi.
"No, Bill--no--not that. Well, for Heav-
306--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
en's sake! and I sat by him all evening braying like a jack.
Bill--Bill, you won't ever tell this in Wichita, will you?"
So it must remain forever a secret!
That was a joyful hour for me, but the next day, Henry had his
laugh. We came in from tea and found a card on the table in the
snug little room near the elevator, which passes for a hotel
office in London. The card was from Lord Bryce inviting us to tea
the next afternoon. It fell to Henry's lot to go out for the day
in the country, and to me to lunch with Granville Barker. So
half-past four saw me rushing into the hotel from a taxi, which
stood waiting outside, and throbbing up a two-pence every minute.
Then this dialogue occurred.
From me: "Is Mr. Allen in his room?"
From the hall boy: "He is, sir; shall I go for him, sir?"
From me: "If you will, please, and tell him I'm in an ungodly
hurry, and we have a taxi at the door chewing up money like a
cornsheller!"
The hall boy had to find someone to go on watch. Time was moving.
The tea was at five. The Bryce apartment was a mile away, and the
chug of that taxi by the door moved me impulsively toward the
elevator. But the elevator
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--307
was still three steps away, when the manager of the hotel
sauntered out from a side door, looked me over leisurely, and
asked blandly:
"You'll be going to tea with Lord Bryce this afternoon--I
presume!"
My hand was on the elevator button jabbing it fiercely, and my
lips replied, "Yes--yes--say-- Do you know whether Mr. Allen is
in our room? It is getting late and he must hurry or--"
The manager continued to look me over still leisurely, then he
smiled persuasively, but spoke firmly; realizing that something
would have to be done for the good name of his hotel: "Well now,
sir, you wouldn't be wearing those brown shoes to Lord Bryce's
tea, would you, Mr. White?" And while that taxi ground out two
shillings, black shoes slowly but nervously enveloped two Emporia
feet, while Henry stood by and chortled in ghoulish Wichita glee!
But if we made a rather poor fist of our social diversions, at
least we had a splendid time at the London shows. And then there
was always the prospect of an exciting adventure getting home
after the performance was over. The hotel generally found a taxi
which took us to the theater. But once there we had to skirmish
for ourselves
308--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
and London is a big town, and hundreds of thousands of Londoners
are hunting taxis at eleven at night, and they are hard to catch.
So we generally had the fun of walking back to Brook Street in
the dark. And it is dark in London toward midnight. Paris is
merely gloomy. Rome is a bit somber, but London is as black as
the inside of your hat. For London has been bombed and bombed by
the German airmen, until London in the prevailing mist which
threatens fog becomes mere murk. Night after night we wandered
the crooked streets inquiring our way of strangers, some of whom
were worse lost than we; one night we took a Londoner in charge
and piloted him to Leicester Square; and then got lost ourselves
finding Piccadilly and Regent Street! So that whenever we went
out after dinner we were never without dramatic excitement, even
if it was not adequately supplied by the show. The London taste
in shows seems to sheer away from the war. In the autumn last
past but two shows had a war motive: One "General Post," a story
of the fall of caste from English life during the war, telling
how a tailor became a general; the other "The Better 'Ole," a
farce comedy, with a few musical skits in it, staged entirely "at
the front." "The Better
"Well now, Sir, you wouldn't be wearing those brown
shoes to Lord Bryce's tea, would you, Mr. White?"
(blank page follows)
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--311
Ole" could be put on in any American town and the fun would raise
the roof! There is no story to it; the show is but a series of
dialogues to illustrate Bairnsfather's cartoons.
A soldier comes splashing down the trench. His comrade cries,
"Say, Alf, take yer muddy feet out o' the only water we got to
sleep in." Again a soldier squats shivering with fear in a shell
hole, while the bombs are crashing over him, and dirt threatens
to bury him. A comrade looks in and to his captious remarks the
squatting soldier answers, "If you knows where there's a better
'ole, go to it!" Three men seated on a plum jam box during a
terrific bombardment. Trees are falling, buildings crumbling, the
landscape heaving, and Bert says, "Alf--we'll miss this old war
wen it's over!" As the shells strike nearer and nearer and a
great crater yawns at their feet they crawl into it, are all but
buried alive by the dirt from another shell, and Bert exclaims,
"Say, Alf, scare me--I got the iccoughs!" And so it goes for a
whole evening, while Bert, making love to an interminable string
of girls at each place where he is billeted at the front, gives
away scores of precious lockets with his mother's hair in them,
and Alf tries forever, unavailingly, to make his
312--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
cigarette lighter work, and Old Bill dreams of his wife at home
who keeps a "pub"!
The prohibitionist in America would probably insist that she keep
a soda fountain or a woman's exchange; but no other alterations
would be needed to get the play over the footlights in any
English speaking town on the globe.
The British soldiers crowd the house where "The Better 'Ole" is
given, but their friends don't like it. The raw rollick of the
game with death, which is really Shakespearean in its directness
and its horse play--like the talk of the soldiers in "Henry IV"
or the chaffing of the grave-diggers in "Hamlet," or the common
people in any of Shakespeare's plays, offends the British
home-staying sense of propriety, and old ladies and gentlemen
write to the Times about it. But the boys in khaki jam
the
theater and howl their approval.
Curiously enough in musical programs one finds no prejudice
against German music in London as one finds it in Paris. To get
Beethoven in Paris one had to lower the windows, close the
shutters, pull down the shades and pin the curtains tight. At the
symphony concerts in London one can hear not only Beethoven, but
Wagner, who is almost modern in his aggressive Teu-
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--313
tonism. But the English have little music of their own, and so
long as they have to be borrowing they seem to borrow impartially
of all their neighbours, the French, the Slavs, the Germans, and
the Italians. Indeed, even when British opinion of Russia was at
its ebb, the London Symphony Orchestra put in an afternoon with
Tschaicovsky's Fourth Symphony. And yet if, in a few months we
could form even a vague notion of the public minds of England,
and of France, one might say that England seemed more implacable
than France. In France, where one heard no music but French and
Italian music in the concerts, at the parks, in opera, one heard
a serious discussion going on among school teachers about the
history to be taught after the war.
Said one side: "Let's tell the truth about this war and its
horrors. Let's tell of murdered women and children, of ravished
homes, of pillaged cities, of country-sides scourged clear down
to their very milestones! Let's tell how German rapacity for land
began the war, and kept it up to its awful end."
Says the other side: "Germany is our permanent neighbour. Our
children will have to live with Germany, and our children's
children to the end of time. War is a horrible thing. Hate
314--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
breeds war. Why not then let the story of this war and its
barbarities die with this generation? Why should we for ever
breed hate into the heart of our people to grow eternally into
war?"
England has no such questions in her mind. England will surely
tell the truth and defy the devil. But the Briton in matters of
music and the other arts is like 'Omer when he "smote 'is
bloomin' lyre"; the Briton also will go and take what he may
require, without much sentiment in the matter.
But the things that roll off the laps of the gods, after humanity
has put its destinies there, sometimes are startlingly different
from the expected fruits of victory. We fight a war for one
thing, win the war and get quite another thing. The great war now
waging began in a dispute over spheres of influence, market
extensions, Places in the Sun and Heaven knows what of that sort
of considerations. Great changes in these matters, of course,
must come out of the war. But boundaries and markets will
fluctuate with the decades and centuries. The important changes
that will come out of this war--assuming that the Allies win
it--will be found in the changed relations of men. The changes
will be
social and economic and they will be institutional and lasting.
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--315
For generally speaking, such changes as approach a fair
adjustment of the complaints of the "have nots" against the
"haves" in life, are permanent changes. Kings, overlords,
potentates, politicians, capitalists, high priests--masters of
various kinds--find it difficult to regain lost privileges and
perquisites. And in this war Germany stands clearly for the
"haves." If Germany wins, autocracy will hood its losing ground
all over the world. For the same autocracy in Berlin lives in
Wall Street, and in the "city" in London, and in the caste and
class interests of Italy and France. But junkerdom in Germany
alone among the nations of the earth rests on the divine right of
kings that is the last resort of privilege. In America we have
the democratic weapons to break up our plutocracy whenever we
desire to do so. In England they are breaking up their caste and
economic privileged classes rapidly. In France and Italy
junkerdom is a motheaten relic. And when junkerdom in Germany is
crushed, then at least the world may begin the new era, may
indeed begin to fight itself free. In the lands of the Allies the
autocracy will be weakened by an allied victory. In Germany the
junkers will be strong if they win the war, and their strength
will revive junkerism all
316--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
over the earth. If the Allies win, it will weaken junkerdom
everywhere. Germany, it is true, treats her working classes
better than some of the Allies treat their working people. But it
is with the devilish wisdom of a wise slave holder, who sees
profit in fat slaves. The workers get certain legal bonuses. They
have economic privileges, not democratic rights of free men under
German rule. And the roaring of the big guns out at the front,
seemed to Henry and me to be the crashing walls of privilege in
the earth.
Of course in this war, while some of the strange things one sees
and hears in Europe may pass with the dawn of peace--woman, for
instance, may return indoors and come out only on election day,
yet unquestionably most of the changes in economic adjustment
have come to stay. They are the most important salvage that will
come out of the wreck and waste of this war. In England, for
instance, the new ballot reform laws are fundamental changes.
They provide virtually for universal manhood suffrage and
suffrage for women over thirty upon something of the same terms
as those provided for men. So revolutionary are the political
changes in England that after the war, it is expected--conceded
is hardly too strong a word, that the first political cabinet to
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--317
arise after the coalition cabinet goes, will be a labour cabinet.
Certainly if labour does not actually dominate the British
government, labour will control it indirectly. And the labour
gains during the war will not be lost. Wages in England, and for
that matter in most of the allied countries are now being
regulated by state ordinance and not by competitive rates. "The
labour market" has passed with the slave market. Wages are based
not upon supply and demand in labour, but upon the cost of what
seems to be a decent standard of subsistence. This change, of
course, is fundamental. It marks a new order in the world. And
the labour party of England recently adopted a program which
provides not merely for the decent living wage for workmen,
independent of the "labour market," but also provides for the
democratic control of industry: national railways, national
mines, national electricity, national housing, and national land
tenure. And as if that were not enough the demands of the labour
party include the permanent control of the prices of all the
necessaries of life, without relation to profits and independent
of supply and demand. Such things have been done during the war,
and in a crisis. Labour demands that they be done permanently.
318--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
And still further to press home its claims upon society, British
labour demands a system of taxation levied conspicuously and
frankly at the rich to bring their incomes and their holdings
only to a moderate rise above the common level--a rise in some
relation to the actual differences of mind and heart and soul and
service between men, and not a difference based on birth and
inheritance and graft and grabbing. It is, of course, revolution.
But Labour now has political rights in England, and has time and
again demonstrated that it has a majority in every part of the
United Kingdom, and it is closely organized and rather
determined, and probably will have its way. In France and in
Italy where for ten years the Socialists have more or less
controlled assemblies and named cabinets, demands like those of
the English are being made.
And when the Allies win it will not be so much a change in
geography that shall mark off the world of the nineteenth century
from the world of the twentieth, as the fundamental social and
economic changes in society. The hungry guns out there at the
front have eaten away the whole social order that was!
For conditions in this war are new in the world.
In every other war, soldiers have dreamed high
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--319
dreams of their rewards. But they have not taken them--chiefly
because their dreams were impractical, somewhat because the
dreams that were practical were not held by a majority; or to
some extent because if they were held by a majority the majority
had no power. Now--even Henry admitted this is no mere theory--we
have a new condition. In Europe for two decades the labour
problem has been carefully thought out. Labour is in a numericalmajority and the majority has political power and political
purpose. Labour has been asking and getting about the same things
in every country. It has been asking and getting a broader
political control in order to assume a firmer economic control.
But one day we read in the London papers of an incident that
indicated how far the state control of industry has gone in
England. A strike occurred and an important industry was
threatened--not over wages, not over hours, not over shop
conditions, but over the recognition of the union. Pig-headed
managing directors stood firm against recognizing the unions.
Then the government stepped in and settled the strike and has
compelled the owners of the plant to remove the managing director
and to put in men satisfactory to the workers! Labour now is
begin-
320--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
ning all over Europe to formulate a demand for a place in the
directorate of industries. This place in the directorate of
industries is demanded that labour may have an intelligent
knowledge of the profits of a business so that labour honestly
may share those profits with capital. That this condition is
coming in Europe no one will deny who sees the rush of events
toward a redistribution of the profits of industry.
Having the vision and having the power to get what it desires,
only the will to use the power is needed. And that will is
motived by the great shadow that is hanging over the world--the
shadow of public debt in this war. Someone must pay that debt.
Heretofore war debts have fallen heaviest upon the poor. Those
least able to pay have paid the most. But those least able to pay
are coming out of this war too smart for the old adjustment of
the debt. Education, for the past fifty years has made a new man,
who will refuse to be over-taxed. During our visit to the front
the soldiers were forever saying to Henry and me: "We have
offered our lives. Those who stayed at home must give up their
riches."And as we went about in England we were always hearing
about the wisdom of a heavy confiscatory tax. Among the
conservatives them-
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--321
selves who presumably have a rather large share of the national
wealth, there is a serious feeling that immediately after the war
a tax-measure should be passed which would at once confiscate
a certain portion of the property of the country--one hears
different per cents discussed; some declare that ten per cent is
enough, while others hold that it will require 25 per cent. This
confiscatory tax is to be collected when any piece of property
changes hands, and the accruing sum is to be used for paying off
the national debt, or a considerable portion of it at once. The
situation is completely changed from that which followed the
Napoleonic wars, where war taxes fell largely upon labour. So in
self-preservation, capital is considering turning over a part of
its property to the state to avoid the slow and disintegrating
grind that otherwise inevitably must come.
A curious side light on the way in which democracy is conducting
this war is found in the way by which it finances the war. The
great debt of the war, piled up mountain high, is of course,
converted into bonds. These bonds, similar to our Liberty Bonds,
have been purchased not exclusively by the bankers as in former
wars, but by the people of the middle class and of the labouring
class. Thus democ-
322--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
racy has its savings in war bonds, which would be wiped out by an
indemnity to Germany, but would be greatly inflated by an Allied
victory; and where the treasure is, there the heart is! Perhaps
it was political strategy which placed the war bonds in the hands
of the people. But more than likely it was financial necessity.
For the tremendous financial burden of this war was too great for
the investing classes to bear unaided. So even the financing of
the war has been more or less democratized. In fact, the whole
conduct of the war is democratized.
One of the corroborating proofs that this is after all not a
king's war, but a people's war, is found in the kind of stories
they were forever telling Henry and me about the war. They are
not hero stories. Mostly they are funny stories, more or less
gently guying the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war," for it
is the proud boast of the British army that this is a noncoms'
war. Doubtless the stories have small basis in fact, but the
currency of these blithe stories reflects the popular mind. Thus
they say that when General Haig and his staff came down to review
the Canadian troops and pin a carload of hardware on their
men for bravery in battle, medals of one sort and another, the
Canadian
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--323
General lined his huskies up, and as the staff approached he
cried anxiously, " Say, boys--here he comes. Now see if you can't
stand to attention, and for Heaven's sake, fellows, don't call me
Bill while he is here!" And then they say that after the heavy
hardware and shelf goods were distributed a British officer
lifted his voice to say: "Men, you have written a brave page upon
our history. No more splendid courage than yours ever has been
known in the annals of our proud race. But with such magnificent
courage, why can you not display other soldierly qualities. Why
are you so loose in your discipline? Why don't you treat your
officers with more respect?" And in the pause a voice from the
ranks replied, "They're not a bad lot, sir. We like 'em all
right. But we have 'em along for mascots!"
The French also seem to have their easy-going ways. For current
smoking room fiction relates that last spring after a troop of
French soldiers had been hauled out to be shot for refusing to go
into battle under orders, a whole division revolted and demanded
new officers--and got new officers--before they would move
forward. And the same smoking room fiction says that in the
revolt the men were right and the officers wrong.
324-- Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
"Why," asked a new English officer of some Russian troops who had
made a splendid assault on a German position in the spring of
1917, an assault that required high courage and great soldierly
skill, "why did you men all lift up your hands just before the
charge was made?" The noncom grinned and answered, "We were
taking a vote upon the matter of the charge, sir!"
In a theater on the boulevards in Paris recently a hit was made
by introducing a stage scene showing the princes and nobility in
poverty, looking down from a gallery at the top of the theater,
on the rich working people in the boxes below; the princes and
nobility were singing a doleful ditty and dancing a sad dance
about the changed circumstances that were glooming up the world.
Simultaneously across the channel in England, they were telling
this one. Lord Milner, who in Germany would be one of the All
Highest of the High Command, was calling at an English house
where the children were not used to nobility. They heard their
father refer to Lord Milner as "my lord." And one child edged up
to him in awe and asked, "O sir. were you indeed born in a
manger?" The All Highest smiled and quoth in reply, "No, my
child, no, I was not born in
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--325
a manger, but if they keep on taxing me, I fear I shall die in
one!"
The Italians have high hopes of harnessing their nine millions of
horsepower in Alpine waterfalls, running their state-owned
railroads and public utilities with it, and introducing
electricity as an industrial power into Italian homes, thus
bringing back to the homes of the people the home industries like
weaving which steam took away a century ago. But this is only a
dream. Yet sometimes dreams do come true. And dreams are wishes
unexpressed; and in this day of democratic power, a wish with a
ballot behind it becomes a will, and soon hardens into a fact.
The times are changing. But of course human nature remains much
the same. Men under a given environment will do about the same
kind of things under one set of circumstances. But we should not
forget in our computations that laws, customs, traditions, the
distribution of wealth. make an entirely new environment, and
that circumstances are not the same when environment differs.
That the surroundings of those people known collectively as "the
poor" have changed, and changed permanently by the war, no one
who sees them in Europe can doubt. They are well-fed,
326--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
well-housed, and are determined to be well-educated. They know
that they can use their ballots to get their share of the wealth
they produce. They are never going to be content again with
crusts. They are motived now by hope rather than by fear, and
they are going to react strangely during the next ten years on
the social structure of this old world. But even the new majority
will not change everything of course. Grass will grow, water will
run down hill, smart men will lead fools, wise men will have the
places of honour and power, in proportion to the practicality of
their wisdom. But for all that, we shall have in a rather large
and certainly in a keenly interesting degree a new heaven and a
new earth.
Now as these speculations upon the new order came to us as our
journey drew to its close in England, the war seemed slowly to
change its meaning. It became something more than a conflict; it
seemed to be a revolution--world-wide, and all encompassing. Then
we thought of "the front" in new terms.
We realized that behind the curtain in Germany, a despotic will,
scientifically guided, is controlling the food, the munitions,
the assembling of men and materials for this war. But on this
side of the German curtain at the "front"
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--327
which we knew, a democratic purpose is doing these things. The
view of that democratic purpose at work, to me at least, was my
chief trophy of the war. The laws which make food conservation
possible, which direct shipping, mobilize railroads, control
industry, regulate wages, prescribe many of the habits of life to
fit the war, all rise out of the experience of the people. There
is a vast amount of the "consent of the governed" in this whole
war game, so far as the Allies are concerned. And as it is in
democratic finance, so also is it in the taste and talent and
capacity for war. That also is democratic. What a wide range of
human activity is massed in this business of war!
For days and days after we left the continent, in our minds we
could see armies moving into the trenches somewhere along the
"far flung battle line," and other armies moving out. The
picture haunted us. It seemed to me a cinematograph of democracy.
For the change of an army division from the trenches, tired, worn
and bedraggled, moving wearily to its station of rest, with
another army division, fresh and eager, moving up from its
station of rest to the front, is indeed a social miracle. It is a
fine bit of human machinery. So in terms of our modern
328--MartiaI Adventures of Henry and Me
democracy it may be well to review the interminable panorama of
this democratic war. Fifty years ago it would have been a
memorable achievement. Waterloo itself was not such a miracle.
Yet somewhere in this war, this wonder is done every day and no
record is made of it. Imagine hundreds of miles of wide, white
roads, hard-surfaced and graded for the war, leading to a sector
of the line. To make and keep these roads, itself is a master's
job. Imagine the roads filled all day with two long lines of
trucks, passing and repassing; one line carrying its guns and
camp outfit, its whole paraphernalia of war, going to the battle
front in the hills; another never-ceasing procession with its
martial impedimenta coming out of the hills to rest. A few horses
hauling big gun carriages straggle through the crust. Here and
there, but rarely, is a group of marching men--generally men
singing as they march. Occasionally a troop of German prisoners
marching with the goose step, comes swinging along carrying their
shovels at a martial angle--road menders--which proves that we
are more than thirty kilos from the firing line; now and then a
camp-kitchen rattles past. But ever in one's ears is the rich
rumble of trucks, recalling the voluptuous sound of the circus
wagon on the
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--329
village street. But always there are two great circus parades,
one going up, one coming down. Lumbering trucks larger than city
house-moving vans whirl by in dust clouds; long--interminably
long--lines of these trucks creak, groan and rumble by. Some of
the trucks are mysteriously non-committal as to their
contents--again reproducing the impression of the circus parade.
Probably
they hide nothing more terrible than tents or portable ice
plants. But most of the trucks that go growling up and come
snarling down the great white roads, bear men; singing men,
sleeping men, cheering men, unshaved men, natty men, eating men,
smoking men, old men and young men, but always cheerful
men--private soldiers hurrying about the business of war; to
their
trenches or from their trenches, but always cheerful. Sometimes a
staff officer's car, properly caparisoned, shuttles through the
line like a flashing needle; sometimes a car full of young
officers of the line tries to nose ahead of the men of the
regiment, but rather meekly do these youngsters try to sneak
their advantage, as one swiping an apple; no great special
privilege is theirs. Interminable lines of truck-mounted guns
rattle along, each great gun festively named, as for instance,
"The Siren," or "Baby" or
330--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
"The Peach" or "The Cooing Dove." Curious snaky looking objects
all covered with wiggly camouflage--some artist's pride--are
these guns, and back of them or in front of them and around them,
clank huge empty ammunition wagons going out, or heavy ones
coming in. At short intervals along the road are repair furnaces,
and near them a truck or a gun carriage, or an ambulance that has
turned out for slight repairs. In the village are great stores of
gasoline and rubber, huge quantities of it assembled by some
magic for the hour's urgent need.
What a marvel of organization it is; no confusion, no distraught
men, no human voice raised except in ribald song. From the ends
of the earth have come all these men, all these munitions, all
this food and tents and iron and steel and rubber and gas and
oil. And there it centers for the hour of its need on this one
small sector of the front; indeed on every small sector of the
long, long trail, these impedimenta of war come hurrying to their
deadly work. And it is not one man; not one nation even, not one
race, nor even one race kindred that is assembling this endless
caravan of war. It is a spirit that is calling from the vasty
deep of this world's treasure, unto material things to rise, take
shape
"A New Heaven and a New Earth"--331
and gather at this tryst with death. It is the spirit of
democracy calling across the world. The supreme councils of the
Allies--what are they? They change, form and reform. Generals,
field marshals, staff officers in gold lace, cabinets,
presidents, puppet kings, and God knows what of those who strut
for a little time in their pomp of place and power--what are they
but points on the drill of the great machine whose power is the
people of the world, struggling in protest against despotism,
privilege autocracy and the presence of the few to play greedily
at the master game. The points break off, or are worn off--what
difference does it make? Joffre, French, Cardona, Neville,
Asquith, Painleve, Kitchener, Haig--the drill never ceases; the
power behind it never falters. For once in the world the spirit
of democracy is organized; organized across lines of race, of
language, of national boundary! A score of million men, in arms,
a score of billions of people--workers, captains of industry,
local leaders, little governors and commercial princelets,
bosses, farmers, bankers, skilled labourers, and men and women of
fumbling hands and slow brains, teachers, preachers,
philosophers, poets, thieves, harlots, saints and sinners--all
the free people of
332--Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
the world, giving what talents Heaven has bestowed upon them to
make the power of this great machine that moves so smoothly, so
resistlessly, so beautifully along the white ribbons of roads up
to the battle.
When the battle ceases, of course, that organization will depart.
But always democracy will know that it can organize, that it can
rise to a divine dignity of courage and sacrifice. And that
knowledge is the great salvage of this war. More than written
laws, more than justice established, more than wrongs righted in
any nation and in all the nations will be the knowledge of this
latent power of men!