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Winston Churchill >> A Traveller in War Time
A TRAVELLER IN WARTIME.
By Winston Churchill
PREFACE
I am reprinting here, in response to requests, certain recent experiences
in Great Britain and France. These were selected in the hope of
conveying to American readers some idea of the atmosphere, of "what it is
like" in these countries under the immediate shadow of the battle clouds.
It was what I myself most wished to know. My idea was first to send home
my impressions while they were fresh, and to refrain as far as possible
from comment and judgment until I should have had time to make a fuller
survey. Hence I chose as a title for these articles,--intended to be
preliminary, "A Traveller in War-Time." I tried to banish from my mind
all previous impressions gained from reading. I wished to be free for
the moment to accept and record the chance invitation or adventure,
wherever met with, at the Front, in the streets of Paris, in Ireland, or
on the London omnibus. Later on, I hoped to write a book summarizing the
changing social conditions as I had found them.
Unfortunately for me, my stay was unexpectedly cut short. I was able to
avail myself of but few of the many opportunities offered. With this
apology, the articles are presented as they were written.
I have given the impression that at the time of my visit there was no
lack of food in England, but I fear that I have not done justice to the
frugality of the people, much of which was self-imposed for the purpose
of helping to win the war. On very, good authority I have been given to
understand that food was less abundant during the winter just past;
partly because of the effect of the severe weather on our American
railroads, which had trouble in getting supplies to the coast, and partly
because more and more ships were required for transporting American
troops and supplies for these troops, to France. This additional
curtailment was most felt by families of small income, whose earners were
at the front or away on other government service. Mothers had great
difficulty in getting adequate nourishment for growing children. But the
British people cheerfully submitted to this further deprivation. Summer
is at hand. It is to be hoped that before another winter sets in,
American and British shipping will have sufficiently increased to remedy
the situation.
In regard to what I have said of the British army, I was profoundly
struck, as were other visitors to that front, by the health and morale of
the men, by the marvel of organization accomplished in so comparatively
brief a time. It was one of the many proofs of the extent to which the
British nation had been socialized. When one thought of that little band
of regulars sent to France in 1914, who became immortal at Mons, who
shared the glory of the Marne, and in that first dreadful winter held
back the German hosts from the Channel ports, the presence on the battle
line of millions of disciplined and determined men seemed astonishing
indeed. And this had been accomplished by a nation facing the gravest
crisis in its history, under the necessity of sustaining and financing
many allies and of protecting an Empire. Since my return to America a
serious reverse has occurred.
After the Russian peace, the Germans attempted to overwhelm the British
by hurling against them vastly superior numbers of highly trained men.
It is for the military critic of the future to analyse any tactical
errors that may have been made at the second battle of the Somme.
Apparently there was an absence of preparation, of specific orders from
high sources in the event of having to cede ground. This much can be
said, that the morale of the British Army remains unimpaired; that the
presence of mind and ability of the great majority of the officers who,
flung on their own resources, conducted the retreat, cannot be
questioned; while the accomplishment of General Carey, in stopping the
gap with an improvised force of non-combatants, will go down in history.
In an attempt to bring home to myself, as well as to my readers, a
realization of what American participation in this war means or should
mean.
A TRAVELLER IN WAR-TIME
CHAPTER I
Toward the end of the summer of 1917 it was very hot in New York, and
hotter still aboard the transatlantic liner thrust between the piers.
One glance at our cabins, at the crowded decks and dining-room, at the
little writing-room above, where the ink had congealed in the ink-wells,
sufficed to bring home to us that the days of luxurious sea travel, of
a la carte restaurants, and Louis Seize bedrooms were gone--at least for
a period. The prospect of a voyage of nearly two weeks was not enticing.
The ship, to be sure, was far from being the best of those still running
on a line which had gained a magic reputation of immunity from
submarines; three years ago she carried only second and third class
passengers! But most of us were in a hurry to get to the countries where
war had already become a grim and terrible reality. In one way or
another we had all enlisted.
By "we" I mean the American passengers. The first welcome discovery
among the crowd wandering aimlessly and somewhat disconsolately about the
decks was the cheerful face of a friend whom at first I did not recognize
because of his amazing disguise in uniform. Hitherto he had been
associated in my mind with dinner parties and clubs.
That life was past. He had laid up his yacht and joined the Red Cross
and, henceforth, for an indeterminable period, he was to abide amidst the
discomforts and dangers of the Western Front, with five days' leave every
three months. The members of a group similarly attired whom I found
gathered by the after-rail were likewise cheerful. Two well-known
specialists from the Massachusetts General Hospital made significant the
hegira now taking place that threatens to leave our country, like
Britain, almost doctorless. When I reached France it seemed to me that I
met all the celebrated medical men I ever heard of. A third in the group
was a business man from the Middle West who had wound up his affairs and
left a startled family in charge of a trust company. Though his physical
activities had hitherto consisted of an occasional mild game of golf, he
wore his khaki like an old campaigner; and he seemed undaunted by the
prospect--still somewhat remotely ahead of him--of a winter journey
across the Albanian Mountains from the Aegean to the Adriatic.
After a restless night, we sailed away in the hot dawn of a Wednesday.
The shores of America faded behind us, and as the days went by, we had
the odd sense of threading uncharted seas; we found it more and more
difficult to believe that this empty, lonesome ocean was the Atlantic in
the twentieth century. Once we saw a four-master; once a shy, silent
steamer avoided us, westward bound; and once in mid-ocean, tossed on a
sea sun-silvered under a rack of clouds, we overtook a gallant little
schooner out of New Bedford or Gloucester--a forthfarer, too.
Meanwhile, amongst the Americans, the socializing process had begun.
Many elements which in a former stratified existence would never have
been brought into contact were fusing by the pressure of a purpose, of a
great adventure common to us all. On the upper deck, high above the
waves, was a little 'fumoir' which, by some odd trick of association,
reminded me of the villa formerly occupied by the Kaiser in Corfu
--perhaps because of the faience plaques set in the walls--although I
cannot now recall whether the villa has faience plaques or not. The room
was, of course, on the order of a French provincial cafe, and as such
delighted the bourgeoisie monopolizing the alcove tables and joking with
the fat steward. Here in this 'fumoir', lawyers, doctors, business men
of all descriptions, newspaper correspondents, movie photographers, and
millionaires who had never crossed save in a 'cabine de luxe', rubbed
elbows and exchanged views and played bridge together. There were
Y. M. C. A. people on their way to the various camps, reconstruction
workers intending to build temporary homes for the homeless French,
and youngsters in the uniform of the American Field Service, going over
to drive camions and ambulances; many of whom, without undue regret,
had left college after a freshman year. They invaded the 'fumoir',
undaunted, to practise atrocious French on the phlegmatic steward; they
took possession of a protesting piano in the banal little salon and sang:
"We'll not come back till it's over over there." And in the evening, on
the darkened decks, we listened and thrilled to the refrain:
"There's a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams."
We were Argonauts--even the Red Cross ladies on their way to establish
rest camps behind the lines and brave the mud and rains of a winter in
eastern France. None, indeed, were more imbued with the forthfaring
spirit than these women, who were leaving, without regret, sheltered,
comfortable lives to face hardships and brave dangers without a question.
And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to provide
for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction they
gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities with
which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even the
possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them. When the sun
fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins below
were sealed--and thus become insupportable--they settled themselves for
the night in their steamer-chairs and smiled at the remark of M. le
Commissaire that it was a good "season" for submarines. The moonlight
filtered through the chinks in the burlap shrouding the deck. About
3 a.m. the khaki-clad lawyer from Milwaukee became communicative, the Red
Cross ladies produced chocolate. It was the genial hour before the final
nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the sound of squeegees and brooms
to find the deck a river of sea water, on whose banks a wild scramble for
slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably ensued. No experience could have
been more socializing.
"Well, it's a relief," one of the ladies exclaimed, "not to be travelling
with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box! Oh, yes, I realize what I'm
doing. I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable houses with
twenty cots and no privacy and wear the same clothes for months, but it's
better than thrashing around looking for something to do and never
finding it, never getting anything real to spend one's energy-on. I've
closed my country house, I've sublet my apartment, I've done with teas
and bridge, and I'm happier than I've been in my life even if I don't get
enough sleep."
Another lady, who looked still young, had two sons in the army. "There
was nothing for me to do but sit around the house and wait, and I want to
be useful. My husband has to stay at home; he can't leave his business."
Be useful! There she struck the new and aggressive note of emancipation
from the restricted self-sacrifice of the old order, of wider service
for the unnamed and the unknown; and, above all, for the wider
self-realization of which service is but a by-product. I recall
particularly among these women a young widow with an eager look in clear
grey eyes that gazed eastward into the unknown with hope renewed. Had
she lived a quarter of a century ago she might have been doomed to slow
desiccation. There are thousands of such women in France today, and to
them the great war has brought salvation.
From what country other than America could so many thousands of pilgrims
--even before our nation had entered the war--have hurried across a wide
ocean to take their part? No matter what religion we profess, whether it
be Calvinism, or Catholicism, we are individualists, pragmatists,
empiricists for ever. Our faces are set toward strange worlds presently
to rise out of the sea and take on form and colour and substance--worlds
of new aspirations, of new ideas and new values. And on this voyage I
was reminded of Josiah Royce's splendid summary of the American
philosophy--of the American religion as set forth by William James:
"The spirit of the frontiers-man, of the gold-seeker or the
home-builder transferred to the metaphysical or to the religious
realm. There is a far-off home, our long lost spiritual fortune.
Experience alone can guide us to the place where these things are,
hence indeed you need experience. You can only win your way on the
frontier unless you are willing to live there."
Through the pall of horror and tragedy the American sees a vision;
for him it is not merely a material and bloody contest of arms and men,
a military victory to be gained over an aggressive and wrong-minded
people. It is a world calamity, indeed, but a calamity, since it has
come, to be spiritualized and utilized for the benefit of the future
society of mankind. It must be made to serve a purpose in helping to
liberate the world from sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and
cant.
II
One night we entered the danger zone. There had been an entertainment in
the little salon which, packed with passengers, had gradually achieved
the temperature and humidity of a Turkish bath. For the ports had been
closed as tight as gaskets could make them, the electric fans, as usual,
obstinately "refused to march." After the amateur speechmaking and
concert pieces an Italian violinist, who had thrown over a lucrative
contract to become a soldier, played exquisitely; and one of the French
sisters we had seen walking the deck with the mincing steps of the
cloister sang; somewhat precariously and pathetically, the Ave Maria.
Its pathos was of the past, and after she had finished, as we fled into
the open air, we were conscious of having turned our backs irrevocably
yet determinedly upon an era whose life and convictions the music of the
composer so beautifully expressed. And the sister's sweet withered face
was reminiscent of a missal, one bright with colour, and still shining
faintly. A missal in a library of modern books!
On deck a fine rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a
phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving
the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating
the sinister blackness of the night. We were, apparently, a beacon in
that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters were lurking.
There were on board other elements which in the normal times gone by
would have seemed disquieting enough. The evening after we had left New
York, while we were still off the coast of Long Island, I saw on the poop
a crowd of steerage passengers listening intently to harangues by
speakers addressing them from the top of a pile of life rafts.
Armenians, I was told, on their way to fight the Turks, all recruited in
America by one frenzied woman who had seen her child cut in two by a
German officer. Twilight was gathering as I joined the group, the sea
was silvered by the light of an August moon floating serenely between
swaying stays. The orator's passionate words and gestures evoked wild
responses from his hearers, whom the drag of an ancient hatred had
snatched from the peaceful asylum of the west. This smiling, happy folk,
which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now
transformed, atavistic--all save one, a student, who stared wistfully
through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened,
when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place to
a singer. He had been a bootblack in America. Now he had become a bard.
His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour of that
age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now determined to
avenge. Their conventional costumes were proof that we had harboured
them--almost, indeed, assimilated them. And suddenly they had reverted.
They were going to slaughter the Turks.
On a bright Saturday afternoon we steamed into the wide mouth of the
Gironde, a name stirring vague memories of romance and terror. The
French passengers gazed wistfully at the low-lying strip of sand and
forest, but our uniformed pilgrims crowded the rail and hailed it as the
promised land of self-realization. A richly coloured watering-place slid
into view, as in a moving-picture show. There was, indeed, all the
reality and unreality of the cinematograph about our arrival; presently
the reel would end abruptly, and we should find ourselves pushing our way
out of the emptying theatre into a rainy street. The impression of
unreality in the face of visual evidence persisted into the night when,
after an afternoon at anchor, we glided up the river, our decks and ports
ablaze across the land. Silhouettes of tall poplars loomed against the
blackness; occasionally a lamp revealed the milky blue facade of a house.
This was France! War-torn France--at last vividly brought home to us
when a glare appeared on the sky, growing brighter and brighter until, at
a turn of the river, abruptly we came abreast of vomiting furnaces,
thousands of electric lights strung like beads over the crest of a hill,
and, below these, dim rows of houses, all of a sameness, stretching along
monotonous streets. A munitions town in the night.
One could have tossed a biscuit on the stone wharfs where the workmen,
crouching over their tasks, straightened up at sight of us and cheered.
And one cried out hoarsely, "Vous venez nous sauver, vous Americains"
--"You come to save us"--an exclamation I was to hear again in the days
that followed.
III
All day long, as the 'rapide' hurried us through the smiling wine country
and past the well-remembered chateaux of the Loire, we wondered how we
should find Paris--beautiful Paris, saved from violation as by a miracle!
Our first discovery, after we had pushed our way out of the dim station
into the obscurity of the street, was that of the absence of taxicabs.
The horse-drawn buses ranged along the curb were reserved for the
foresighted and privileged few. Men and women were rushing desperately
about in search of conveyances, and in the midst of this confusion,
undismayed, debonnair, I spied a rugged, slouch-hatted figure standing
under a lamp--the unmistakable American soldier.
"Aren't there any cabs in Paris?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, they tell me they're here," he said. "I've given a man a
dollar to chase one."
Evidently one of our millionaire privates who have aroused such burnings
in the heart of the French poilu, with his five sous a day! We left him
there, and staggered across the Seine with our bags. A French officer
approached us. "You come from America," he said. "Let me help you."
There was just enough light in the streets to prevent us from getting
utterly lost, and we recognized the dark mass of the Tuileries as we
crossed the gardens. The hotel we sought was still there, and its menu,
save for the war-bread and the tiny portion of sugar, as irreproachable
as ever.
The next morning, as if by magic, hundreds of taxis had sprung into
existence, though they were much in demand. And in spite of the soldiers
thronging the sunlit streets, Paris was seemingly the same Paris one had
always known, gay--insouciante, pleasure-bent. The luxury shops appeared
to be thriving, the world-renowned restaurants to be doing business as
usual; to judge from the prices, a little better than usual; the
expensive hotels were full. It is not the real France, of course, yet it
seemed none the less surprising that it should still exist. Oddly enough
the presence of such overwhelming numbers of soldiers should have failed
to strike the note of war, emphasized that of lavishness, of the casting
off of mundane troubles for which the French capital has so long been
known. But so it was. Most of these soldiers were here precisely with
the object of banishing from their minds the degradations and horrors of
the region from which they had come, and which was so unbelievably near;
a few hours in an automobile--less than that in one of those dragon-fly
machines we saw intermittently hovering in the blue above our heads!
Paris, to most Americans, means that concentrated little district de luxe
of which the Place Vendome is the centre, and we had always unconsciously
thought of it as in the possession of the Anglo-Saxons. So it seems
today. One saw hundreds of French soldiers, of course, in all sorts of
uniforms, from the new grey blue and visor to the traditional cloth
blouse and kepi; once in a while a smart French officer. The English and
Canadians, the Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans were much in
evidence. Set them down anywhere on the face of the globe, under any
conditions conceivable, and you could not surprise them; such was the
impression. The British officers and even the British Tommies were
blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the "five o'clock
tea," as the French delight to call it. That these could have come
direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable. The
Anzacs, with looped-up hats, strolled about, enjoying themselves, halting
before the shops in the Rue de la Paix to gaze at the priceless jewellery
there, or stopping at a sidewalk cafe to enjoy a drink. Our soldiers had
not seen the front; many of them, no doubt, were on leave from the
training-camps, others were on duty in Paris, but all seemed in a hurry
to get somewhere, bound for a definite destination. They might have been
in New York or San Francisco. It was a novel sight, indeed, to observe
them striding across the Place Vendome with out so much as deigning to
cast a glance at the column dedicated to the great emperor who fought
that other world-war a century ago; to see our square-shouldered officers
hustling around corners in Ford and Packard automobiles. And the
atmosphere of our communication headquarters was so essentially one of
"getting things done" as to make one forget the mediaeval narrowness of
the Rue Sainte Anne, and the inconvenient French private-dwelling
arrangements of the house. You were transported back to America. Such,
too, was the air of our Red Cross establishment in the ancient building
facing the Palace de la Concorde, where the unfortunate Louis lost his
head.
History had been thrust into the background. I was never more aware of
this than when, shortly after dawn Wednesday, the massive grey pile of
the Palace of Versailles suddenly rose before me. As the motor shot
through the empty Place d'Armes I made a desperate attempt to summon
again a vivid impression, when I had first stood there many years ago,
of an angry Paris mob beating against that grill, of the Swiss guards
dying on the stairway for their Queen. But it was no use. France has
undergone some subtle change, yet I knew I was in France. I knew it when
we left Paris and sped through the dim leafy tunnels of the Bois; when I
beheld a touch of filtered sunlight on the dense blue thatch of the
'marroniers' behind the walls of a vast estate once dedicated to the
sports and pleasures of Kings; when I caught glimpses of silent chateaux
mirrored in still waters.
I was on my way, with one of our naval officers, to visit an American
naval base on the western coast. It was France, but the laughter had
died on her lips. A few women and old men and children were to be seen
in the villages, a bent figure in a field, an occasional cart that drew
aside as we hurried at eighty kilometers an hour along deserted routes
drawn as with a ruler across the land. Sometimes the road dipped into a
canyon of poplars, and the sky between their crests was a tiny strip of
mottled blue and white. The sun crept in and out, the clouds cast
shadows on the hills; here and there the tower of lonely church or castle
broke the line of a distant ridge. Morning-glories nodded over lodge
walls where the ivy was turning crimson, and the little gardens were
masses of colours--French colours like that in the beds of the Tuileries,
brick-red geraniums and dahlias, yellow marigolds and purple asters.
We lunched at one of the little inns that for generations have been
tucked away in the narrow streets of provincial towns; this time a Cheval
Blanc, with an unimposing front and a blaze of sunshine in its heart.
After a dejeuner fit for the most exacting of bon viveurs we sat in that
courtyard and smoked, while an ancient waiter served us with coffee that
dripped through silver percolators into our glasses. The tourists have
fled. "If happily you should come again, monsieur," said madame, as she
led me with pardonable pride through her immaculate bedrooms and salons
with wavy floors. And I dwelt upon a future holiday there, on the joys
of sharing with a friend that historic place. The next afternoon I
lingered in another town, built on a little hill ringed about with
ancient walls, from whose battlements tide-veined marshes stretched away
to a gleaming sea. A figure flitting through the cobbled streets, a
woman in black who sat sewing, sewing in a window, only served to
heighten the impression of emptiness, to give birth to the odd fancy that
some alchemic quality in the honeyed sunlight now steeping it must have
preserved the place through the ages. But in the white close surrounding
the church were signs that life still persisted. A peasant was drawing
water at the pump, and the handle made a noise; a priest chatted with
three French ladies who had come over from a neighbouring seaside resort.
And then a woman in deep mourning emerged from a tiny shop and took her
bicycle from against the wall and spoke to me.