Out To Win: The Story of America in France

England, wondering whether my ship was to be allowed to sail. There had been great excitement all day, bands playing the Marseillais

unity for carnival. Throughout all the pyramided city the Tri-colour and the Union Jack were waving. At the foot of the Heights, the broad basin o

ss high spirits. They linked arms with girls as they marched and were lost, laughing in the dusk. If a French reservist could be found who was sailing in the first ship bound for the slaughter, he became the hero of the

it of Wolfe kept watch and brooded. It was under these circumst

centre of the crowd's attention. In the window stood another man. Like myself he was waiting for his ship to sail, but not to England-to France. He was a returning French reservist. Across the many miles of ocean the hand of duty had stretched and touched him; he was ecstatically glad that he was wanted. In those first days this ecstasy of gladness was a little hard to understand. Thank God we all share it instinctively now. He was spe

and a reservist in the British Navy. He had received his orders that day to report back in England for duty; he knew that he was going to be torpedoed on his voyag

r in the air already. All this spurious gaiety-what was it? Nothing but the chatter of lonely children who were afraid to listen to the silence-afraid lest they might hear th

he might be dead-horribly dead with a bayonet through him. That thought was in the minds of all who watched him; it gave him an added authority. Yet he was not thinking of himself, of wounds, of

r circumstances, joined up now so that this might be the final carnage. Nations left their desks and went into battle voluntarily, long before self-interest

t could be found destroyed. Nevertheless, over a million were secretly printed and circulated in Germany, and it was translated into every major European language. The book I refer to was known under its American title as, The Human Slaughter-House. It told very simply how men who had played the army game of sticking dummies, found themselves c

ent by socialism and friendly intercourse, that never again would statesmen be able to launch attacks of nations against nations. Governments might

ming, turned out to be a bad guess. It made no allowance for what happens when a mad dog starts running through the world. One may be tender-hearted. One may not like killin

is book propounds: the more brutal side conquers. While the Blonde Beast runs abroad spreading rabies, the only idealist who counts is

die, this war would not be the last; it would be only the preface to the next. To paraphrase the words of Mr. Wells, "We had been prepared to take life in

miles away and hurl them into eternity unconfessed. And this we do with pity in our hearts, both for them and for ourselves. And why? Because they have given us no choice. They have promised, unless we defend ourselves, to snatch our souls from us and fashion them afresh into souls which shall bear the stamp of their own image. Of their souls we have seen samples; they date back to the dark ages-the souls of Cain, Judas and C?sar Borgia were not unlike them. Of what such souls a

t we would beat Germany-we have never doubted that. But could we beat her so thoroughly that she would never dare to reperpetrate this horror? Could we prove to her that war is not and never

ure ages should have to pass through his Gethsemane. He consciously gave himself up as a scapegoat, that the security of human sanity should be safeguarded against a recurrence of this enormity. The spirit-man, framed in the dusky window above the applauding c

ded, can build an impregnable wall for peace about the world. The plunderer who knew that it was not Great Britain, nor France, nor America, but all three of them united as Allies that he had to face, no matter how tempted he was to prove that armed force meant big business, would be persuaded to expand his com

an gain as a result of its heroism is an Anglo-American alliance, which will fortify the world against all such future terrors. There never ought to have been anything but alliance between my two grea

growing friendship is perpetrating a crime against humanity as grave as that of the first armed Hun who stepped across the Be

ther. If those magnanimities are welcomed and made permanent, our soldier-idealists will not have d

E

set to work to create this hell for the second time. Most of the places referred to below are o

ne" may be by the time this book is published. I visited Noyon