Читать книгу Joy in the Morning - Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The scene it the same trench in the year 2018. It is five o'clock of the same summer afternoon. An officer of the American Army and an English cabinet member come, together, to visit the old trench. The American has a particular reason for his interest; the Englishman accompanies the distinguished American. The two review the story of the trench and speak of other things connected, and it is hoped that they set forth the far-reaching work of the soldiers who died, not realizing their work, in the great fight of the Charging Blank th.

Englishman

It's a peaceful scene.

American

(Advances to the side of the ditch. Looks down. Takes off his cap.) I came across the ocean to see it. (He looks over the fields.) It's quiet.

Englishman

The trenches were filled in all over the invaded territory within twenty-five years after the war. Except a very few kept as a manner of monument. Object-lessons, don't you know, in what the thing meant. Even those [pg 027] are getting obliterated. They say this is quite the best specimen in all France.

American

It doesn't look warlike. What a lot of flowers!

Englishman

Yes. The folk about here have a tradition, don't you know, that poppies mark the places where blood flowed most.

American

Ah! (Gazes into the ditch.) Poppies there. A hundred of our soldiers died at once down there. Mere lads mostly. Their names and ages are on a tablet in the capitol at Washington, and underneath is a sentence from Lincoln's Gettysburg speech: "These dead shall not have died in vain, and government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Englishman

Those are undying words.

American

And undying names—the lads' names.

Englishman

What they and the other Americans did can never die. Not while the planet endures. No nation at that time realized how vital was your country's entrance into the war. Three [pg 028] months later it would have been too late. Your young, untried forces lifted worn-out France and England and swept us to-victory. It was America's victory at the last. It is our glory to confess that, for from then on America has been our kin.

American

(Smiles.) England is our well-beloved elder sister for all time now.

Englishman

The soldiers who died there (gestures to the ditch) and their like did that also. They tied the nations together with a bond of common gratitude, common suffering, common glory.

American

You say well that there was common gratitude. England and France had fought our battle for three years at the time we entered the war. We had nestled behind the English fleet. Those grim gray ships of yours stood between us and the barbarians very literally.

Englishman

Without doubt Germany would have been happy to invade the only country on earth rich enough to pay her war debt. And you were astonishingly open to invasion. It is one of the historical facts that a student of history of [pg 029] this twenty-first century finds difficult to realize.

American

The Great War made revolutionary changes. That condition of unpreparedness was one. That there will never be another war is the belief of all governments. But if all governments should be mistaken, not again would my country, or yours, be caught unprepared. A general staff built of soldiers and free of civilians hampering is one advantage we have drawn from our ordeal of 1917.

Englishman

Your army is magnificently efficient.

American

And yours. Heaven grant neither may ever be needed! Our military efficiency is the pride of an unmilitary nation. One Congress, since the Great War and its lessons, has vied with another to keep our high place.

Englishman

Ah! Your Congress. That has changed since the old days—since La Follette.

American

The name is a shame and a warning to us. Our children are taught to remember it so. The "little group of wilful men," the eleven who came near to shipwrecking the country, were [pg 030] equally bad, perhaps, but they are forgotten. La Follette stands for them and bears the curses of his countrymen, which they all earned.

Englishman

Their ignominy served America; it roused the country to clean its Augean stables.

American

The war purified with fire the legislative soul.

Englishman

Exactly. Men are human still, certainly, yet genuine patriotism appears to be a sine qua non now, where bombast answered in the old day. Corruption is no longer accepted. Public men then were surprisingly simple, surprisingly cheap and limited in their methods. There were two rules for public and private life. It was thought quixotic, I gather from studying the documents of the time, to expect anything different. And how easily the change came!

American

The nation rose and demanded honesty, and honesty was there. The enormous majority of decent people woke from a discontented apathy and took charge. Men sprang into place naturally and served the nation. The old log-rolling, brainless, greedy public officials were [pg 031] thrown into the junk-heap. As if by magic the stress of the war wrung out the rinsings and the scourings and left the fabric clean.

Englishman

The stress of the war affected more than internal politics. You and I, General, are used to a standard of conduct between responsible nations as high as that taken for granted between responsible persons. But, if one considers, that was far from the case a hundred years ago. It was in 1914, that von Bethmann-Hollweg spoke of "a scrap of paper."

American

Ah—Germans!

Englishman

Certainly one does not expect honor or sincerity from German psychology. Even the little Teutonic Republic of to-day is tricky, scheming always to get a foothold for power, a beginning for the army they will never again be allowed to have. Even after the Kaiser and the Crown Prince and the other rascals were punished they tried to cheat us, if you remember. Yet it is not that which I had in mind. The point I was making was that today it would be out of drawing for a government even of charlatans, [pg 032] like the Prussians, to advance the sort of claims which they did. In commonplace words, it was expected then that governments, as against each other, would be self-seeking. To-day decency demands that they should be, as men must be, unselfish.

America

(Musingly.) It's odd how long it took the world—governments—human beings—to find the truth of the very old phrase that "he who findeth his life must lose it."

Englishman

The simple fact of that phrase before the Great War was not commonly grasped. People thought it purely religious and reserved for saints and church services. As a working hypothesis it was not generally known. The every-day ideals of our generation, the friendships and brotherhoods of nations as we know them would have been thought Utopian.

American

Utopian? Perhaps our civilization is better than Utopian. The race has grown with a bound since we all went through hell together. How far the civilization of 1914 stood above that of 1614! The difference between galley-slaves and [pg 033] able-bodied seamen, of your and our navy! Greater yet than the change in that three hundred years is the change in the last one hundred. I look at it with a soldier's somewhat direct view. Humanity went helpless and alone into a fiery furnace and came through holding on to God's hand. We have clung closely to that powerful grasp since.

Englishman

Certainly the race has emerged from an epoch of intellect to an epoch of spirituality—which comprehends and extends intellect. There have never been inventions such as those of our era. And the inventors have been, as it were, men inspired. Something beyond themselves has worked through them for the world. A force like that was known only sporadically before our time.

American

(Looks into old ditch.) It would be strange to the lads who charged through horror across this flowery field to hear our talk and to know that to them and their deeds we owe the happiness and the greatness of the world we now live in.

Englishman

Their short, Homeric episode of [pg 034] life admitted few generalizations, I fancy. To be ready and strong and brave—there was scant time for more than that in those strenuous days. Yet under that simple formula lay a sea of patriotism and self-sacrifice, from which sprang their soldiers' force. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." It was their love—love of country, of humanity, of freedom—which silenced in the end the great engine of evil—Prussianism. The motive power of life is proved, through those dead soldiers, to be not hate, as the Prussians taught, but love.

American

Do you see something shining among the flowers at the bottom of the ditch?

Englishman

Why, yes. Is it—a leaf which catches the light?

American

(Stepping down.) I'll see. (He picks up a metal identification disk worn by a soldier. Angélique has rubbed it so that the letters may mostly be read.) This is rather wonderful. (He reads aloud.) "R.V.H. Randolph—Blankth Regiment—U.S." I can't make out the rest.

[pg 035]

Englishman

(Takes the disk.) Extraordinary! The name and regiment are plain. The identification disk, evidently, of a soldier who died in the trench here. Your own man, General.

American

(Much stirred.) And—my own regiment. Two years ago I was the colonel of "The Charging Blankth."