England and Germany Part 15

Chaos, waste and a variety of abuses that pressed heavily on the poorer cla.s.ses marked the efforts made by the Russian Government to cope with the scarcity of fuel, corn and other necessaries which began to be felt soon after the war. The rolling stock, it was complained, was utterly insufficient, yet it was found possible to transport 1,000,000 poods[127] weight of mineral water of doubtful quality. When trains arrived bringing supplies to the suffering population, it turned out that there were no hands to unload the waggons. And when labour was requisitioned, vehicles were not to be had. In October 1915 on the rails of Moscow station five thousand waggons, laden with life's necessaries, stood waiting and waiting in vain for the unskilled labour which ought to have been abundant, considering the number of the population and of the refugees. At the same time 2000 waggons were on the rails of the Petrograd station, their contents lying unutilized.[128] It is only by the lack of order and organization that one can explain the facts that in Petrograd the inhabitants have no b.u.t.ter, while in the places where b.u.t.ter is made it is being sold cheaper than before, at 12 in lieu of 16 to 18 roubles a pood. In the province of Ekaterinograd, mines which own 800,000 poods of coal cannot get more than a few waggon loads of it every month.

[127] A pood is equal to 36.11 lbs.

[128] Cf. _Novoye Vremya_, October 9, 1915.

Russia has incomparably more than enough fuel, without importing any, to satisfy all the needs of her 180,000,000 inhabitants. But owing to the insufficiency of communications, and still more to the lack of forethought and enterprise, the population of many cities and towns underwent serious hards.h.i.+ps in consequence of the impossibility of acquiring coal or wood. In September 1915 the Petrograd region could obtain no more than 65 per cent. of the necessary quant.i.ty, and a month later only 49 per cent. In Moscow the plight of the inhabitants was worse. In September they could get but 26 per cent. of their needs and in October 40 per cent. According to the Minister of Commerce, who volunteered these data, the condition of the towns of Rostoff, Novotcherka.s.sk, Nakhitchevan, Taganrog, Ekaterinodar and others was not a whit better. The city of Vyatka was, according to the _Novoye Vremya_,[129] in January 1916 without fuel, while the mercury registered 30 degrees Reaumur below freezing-point. The unfortunate citizens heated their homes with fragments of h.o.a.rdings, tables, desks and stools. And yet there is abundant fuel in the superb forests with which Vyatka is surrounded, and, what is more to the point, the city authorities had received during the preceding spring 60,000 roubles for the purpose of purchasing a supply of wood for the winter. But they did nothing, organization not being one of their strong points.

[129] The German press welcomes items of information like this. Cf. _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January 13, 1916.

Live stock in Russia has diminished during the war to a much larger extent than was antic.i.p.ated. The peasantry, owing to the prohibition of alcohol, now consume from 150 to 200 per cent. more meat than before, and what with the refugees from Poland, the prisoners of war and the increased needs of the army, no less than 20 per cent. of the cattle of the entire Empire was used during the first eighteen months[130] and 30 per cent. of the stock of all European Russia. In consequence of the shortage and of the irregularity of the transport, three days of abstinence from meat were ordained. Yet in January 1916 a discovery was casually made in the Kieff forests between Byelitch and Pushtsha Voditzka, which caused considerable lifting of the eyebrows. About 8000 head of cattle and several thousand sheep were found with no cowherds, shepherds or owners, wandering about from place to place. Scores of them were succ.u.mbing to hunger and cold every day. The paths in the woods were covered with the dead bodies of kine, calves and sheep. The journal which records this fact affirms that these herds belong to the Union of Zemstvos, which had purchased them from the peasants who had to flee from the occupied provinces.

The President of the Union of Zemstvos is said to have confirmed this odd story with the qualification that the forlorn horned cattle and sheep are the property not of the Union of Zemstvos, but of the Ministry of Agriculture, which is alone answerable.[131]

[130] Over a hundred million head.

[131] Cf. the Russian journal, _Kieff_, also the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January 29, 1916.

The card system of distributing provisions that are scarce found its way first into Germany and then into Austria and Russia. But in the last-named empire it was much less successful than in the two first mentioned. According to the Petrograd journals in Pskoff, where it was tried, many individuals got no cards, and therefore no provisions.

Many who possessed the cards found nothing to buy. And some of those who obtained the articles they wanted paid dearer for them than if they had bought them without cards. And as with cards one has to lay in a stock to last a fortnight, the poorer families were unable to utilize them.[132]

[132] _Novoye Vremya_, January 1916. _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January 21, 1916.

In France, as well as in Russia, the professional organizers, especially the civilians, were very much adrift. In the army all the sterling qualities of the French nation at its best, and many that were deemed extinct, but are now seen to have been only dormant, shone forth resplendent. Valour, fort.i.tude, staying power, self-abnegation for the common good, became household virtues. Friends and foes were equally surprised. But the civil administration remained well-meaning, patriotic and unregenerate to the last. The old Adam lived and acted up to his reputation.

Before the war the French railway administration had been criticized severely. It is not for a foreigner to express an opinion on the internal ordering of a country not his own, but unbia.s.sed French experts found that the strictures were called for and the verdict, in which the public acquiesced, was well grounded. Subsequently, when the struggle began and the railway system was tested, people had reason to remember the previous complaints, for they saw how little had been done in the meanwhile to remove the causes of dissatisfaction. The first drawback was the want of rolling stock. "Give us waggons and we will execute all orders and supply the War Ministry," cried the munitions firms. "There are no waggons in the ports, and we cannot get the coal delivered," exclaimed the importers. "The country is threatened with general paralysis," wrote the _Journal_;[133] "we can neither forward nor sell anything." The railway administration asked for a fortnight's notice, then for three weeks and finally an indefinite period, before it could provide a single truck. "I have fertilizing stuff to forward before the season is past," pleads the representative of one firm. "We have no waggons," is the reply. "I must have my produce delivered at once to the Government," argues another, "for it is wanted for the fabrication of powder." But the answer came promptly: "There are no waggons." "But you have waggons. I see them over there" (the station was Cognac). "Yes, but we may not touch them. They belong to the military engineering department."

"Well, but what are they doing there?" "Ah, that is none of our business."[134]

[133] _Le Journal_, November 26, 1915.

[134] _Le Journal_, November 26, 1915.

And in the ports, at the termini, at intermediate stations, the merchandise lay heaped up, immobilized, while the merchants, the middlemen, the manufacturers, the Government, the army were waiting, time was lapsing, and the fate of the Republic and the nation hanging in the balance. At Havre great machines, destined for a Paris firm which was to have delivered them to factories making sh.e.l.ls, lay untouched for two months. The number of sh.e.l.ls lost in this way has never been calculated. Yet it was well known that during all that time there were numbers of waggons available. What had become of them? The answer was: They are to be found everywhere, immobilized. It is a case of general immobilization of the rolling stock. People slept in them, turned them into cottages, used them as warehouses, each individual reasoning that one waggon more or less would not be missed. And as this argument was used by large numbers of easy-going, well-meaning people the result was appalling.

The most terrific war known to history was raging in three Continents, and one group of belligerents, unaware or heedless of the magnitude of the issues, kept wasting its enormous resources and throwing away its advantages. At the little station of Cognac waggons laden with all kinds of war materials, barbed wire, galvanized wire, etc., were detained from September 1914 until November 1915, 400 days in all, doing nothing. Forty-two waggons ready to move were found on two gra.s.s-covered rails. Fourteen waggons were there since September 1914.

Eight since December of the same year, twenty since June. Altogether at the modest little station of Cognac the total recorded by Senator Humbert's _Journal_ was 228,500 tons-days. "All this during the most tremendous war the world has ever witnessed, in which hundreds of thousands of men have been slain, where we have continually been short of war material, while industry and commerce are agonizing for lack of means of transport. It may well seem a dream."[135]

[135] _Le Journal_, November 26, 1915.

Seven hundred French railway stations were devoid of rolling stock. On the other hand, from the beginning of the war down to November 1915, 729 waggons were lying immobilized at the station of Blanc-Mesnil.

Seven hundred and twenty-nine![136] Merchants, manufacturers, importers, all were being literally beggared for lack of transports while hundreds of waggons lay rotting at obscure little stations for over a year. "The whole region of the West is enc.u.mbered," we read, "with 30,000,000 hectolitres of apples, valued at 300,000,000 francs, which cannot be conveyed anywhither, and which people are beginning to bury in the earth as manure. Sugar is scarce and is rising in price, whereas ever since last August[137] a single firm has unloaded 10,000 tons of sugar at Havre which it cannot have transported to Paris.

Innumerable army purveyors are unable to send the machines for the sh.e.l.ls...." An official order to the army prescribed a subst.i.tute for barbed wire, which was not to be had at any price, yet at a single station at least 135 tons of barbed wire were lying for a twelvemonth unused, untouched.[138] On November 27, 1915, the military hospital N16 at Poitiers needed coal. A request was made by telephone. The reply received was: "We have coal at La Roch.e.l.le, but there are no waggons to carry it." Yet there were forty-two waggons immobilized at Cognac, 729 at Blanc-Mesnil and 121 standing laden with barbed wire and other materials for over a year!

[136] _Le Journal_, December 2, 1915. They were photographed and the photograph reproduced in that paper.

[137] That was published in December 1915.

[138] _Le Journal_, December 2, 1915.

Organization and intelligence!

With engines the experience was the same. The French Government, anxious to make up for the deficiency, purchased 140 engines of British make to be delivered some time in 1916. Yet at that time there were at the station of Mezidon (Calvados) over 500 engines immobilized, n.o.body knew why or by whom. This cemetery of locomotives was photographed by the _Journal_. Such was the harvest reaped by the enterprising Senator Humbert's commission at that one station. There were others. At Marles six Belgian engines, at Serquigny twenty, etc.

The attention of the French authorities having been called to this unqualifiable neglect, a senatorial railway commission was appointed to inquire into the matter, and it reported that: "The engines in question, numbering about 2000, of which 1000 on the State railway system are now going to be repaired." "There are therefore 2000 engines scandalously abandoned," comments the _Journal_, ...

"forgotten during sixteen months, and having pa.s.sed from the state of being inutilized to that of being inutilizable. For if these machines, which were in service before the war and came from Belgium, are to-day, like the waggons of Blanc-Mesnil, incapable of being utilized in their present state, as the official note puts it, the reason is that they were left to decay in the rain and the wind without cover or case for five hundred days."[139]

[139] _Le Journal_, December 4, 1915.

Interesting in a smaller way is the reply given by the French War Minister to a question by a deputy, the Marquis de Ludre, who asked for information about a consignment of knives which had been provided for the army, but were found to be quite useless. The Minister explained that the Generalissimus having requested the immediate dispatch of 165,000 knives, the department charged with the execution of the order had no time to examine the goods, and the circ.u.mstance was overlooked that all kinds of knives were supplied, without any reference to the purpose for which they were destined.[140] The Minister added that no one should be blamed for this, inasmuch as it was "the result of exaggerated but praiseworthy zeal." This construction is charitable and may be true in fact. But the soldiers who, in lieu of a serviceable blade, found themselves in possession of a dessert knife may have taken a different view of the transaction.

[140] Journal Official, answer to question No. 5730.

This is hardly what is understood by organization.

Beside those scenes from chaos set this picture of order: "In a small French town in which the supreme _etape commando_ of Kluck's army was situated, we inspected a field postal station. On the ground floor the letters were being received and delivered. The stream of soldiers was endless. They were sending field postcards, which are forwarded gratuitously. The difficult work of sorting the correspondence was being transacted on the first storey. Every day from 1800 to 2000 post sacks arrive, mostly with small packets and postcards, and day after day the same difficult problem presents itself--how to find the addressee. Many regiments, it is true, have permanent quarters, but there are mobile columns as well. Quick transfers are possible, and individuals may be s.h.i.+fted to another place or incorporated in a different regiment. The arranging of the correspondence went forward in a s.p.a.cious room; the letters which it was difficult to deliver were handed over to a number of specialists, who sat in an adjoining apartment and studied all the changes caused by the transfer of troops. They found help in an address-book containing a list of all the field formations. About once every four days, or even oftener, a new edition of this work was issued. By the middle of December 1914 the eighty-fourth edition was in print."[141]

[141] Karl Hildebrand, _Ein starkes Volk_, p. 108.

This talent for organization, this capacity of thought concentration in circ.u.mstances which tend to strengthen emotion at the cost of reason, have been constantly displayed by our enemies throughout the entire struggle of the past thirty years, and never more conspicuously than during the present war. Every emergency found them ready. The most unlikely eventualities had been foreseen and provided for.

Private initiative, which "grandmotherly legislation" was supposed to have killed, was more alert and resourceful than among any of the Entente nations. Every German is in some respects an agent of his Government. Each one thinks he foresees some eventuality with the genesis of which he is especially conversant, and he forthwith communicates his forecast and at the same time his plan for coping with the danger to some official. And all suggestions are thankfully received and dealt with on their intrinsic merits. For such matters the rulers of the Empire, however engrossed by urgent problems, have always time and money.

It is instructive and may possibly be helpful to compare this spirit of detachment from the personal and party elements of the situation, this accessibility to every call of patriotic duty, this self-possession under conditions calculated to hinder calm deliberation, with the hesitations, the bewilderment, the conflicting decisions of the Entente leaders and their impatience of unauthorized initiative and offers of private a.s.sistance. Outsiders are not wanted.

Their money is not rejected, but nothing else that they tender is readily received.

In other more momentous matters the Allies also lagged behind their adversaries. Despite their vast resources and the generous offers of private help, the care taken of the wounded left a good deal to be desired. The articles on this subject which were published in the London Press provided ample food for bitter reflection. In France, at the beginning of the war, wounded soldiers, after receiving first aid, were conveyed for days in carts over uneven roads to the hospitals in which they were to be treated. An American gentleman, witnessing the sufferings of these victims of circ.u.mstance, collected a number of motors in which to have them transported rapidly and with relative comfort. But his offer of these conveyances was rejected by all the departments to which he applied. And it was only after he had spent weeks in visiting influential friends in London that he finally obtained an introduction to the Secretary for War, who, overriding the decisions of his subordinates, closed with the proposal and sent the benefactor with his motors to the front.

It has been affirmed by unbia.s.sed neutral witnesses who evinced special interest in the subject that tens of thousands of the allied wounded who died of their injuries might have been saved had they had proper care. But defective organization and other avoidable causes deprived them of efficient medical help.

By Great Britain more comprehensive measures were fitfully taken, of which our wounded have reaped the benefit. A French journal[142]

enumerated, with a high tribute of praise, the results of the observations made by a commission of British physicians in the Grand Palais Hospital in Paris: "More than half, to be exact 54 per cent., of the wounded entrusted to the care of the doctors of the Grand Palais since last May have been sent back to the front, completely cured. What an achievement!" Undoubtedly it is a feat to be proud of, if we compare it with the percentage of cured in certain other countries and in the Dardanelles. But if we set it side by side with what is claimed for and by the Germans, it may appear less remarkable.

It cannot be gainsaid that the British authorities have spared neither money nor pains to alleviate the sufferings and heal the injuries of the wounded. And if the measure of their success is still capable of being extended, the reason certainly does not lie in any lack of good will.

[142] _The Figaro_, February 22, 1916.

On the incapacitated German soldier every possible care is bestowed.

His every need is foreseen and when possible provided for with an eye to thoroughness and economy. Waste and n.i.g.g.ardliness are sedulously eschewed. Every man is provided with a square of canvas with eyelets, which serves as a carpet on which he lies at night, as a stretcher on which, when wounded, he is carried to the place where he can have his injuries attended to, and which, when he is killed, is used as a winding-sheet. The medical organization of the army is as thorough as the military. And the results attained justify the solicitude displayed. From month to month the percentage of wounded who are able to return to the front has been augmenting steadily, and the death-rate has decreased correspondingly. During the first month of the war, out of every hundred wounded there were 848 capable of further service, 30 dead, and 122 incapacitated or sent home. In September of the same year the number of those able to return to the front rose to 881, or about 4 per cent. more. And at the same time the death-rate sank from 3 to 27 per cent. In the third month the proportion of soldiers able to resume their places in the ranks of fighters was 889, while the deaths had been reduced to 24. During the period beginning with November and ending in March the number of the wounded who went back to the front oscillated between 873 and 889. In November the percentage of deaths was only 21 per cent., and in December only 17 per cent. January 1916 showed a further improvement, the death-rate having fallen to 14 and in February 13 per cent. During the two following months the percentage rose again to 14, but declined slowly until in June and July it had descended to 12 per cent. The number of wounded men who were sent back to their places at the front had meanwhile increased by April to 912, and by June 1915 to 917, and in May and July to 918. Seven per cent. were wholly incapacitated or dismissed to their homes. Among the latter a considerable percentage returned subsequently to the ranks.

Altogether, then, about 918 per cent. of the wounded German soldiers who fall in battle are so well taken care of that they are able to fight again, and no more than 12 per cent. of the total number succ.u.mb to their wounds.[143]

[143] _Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift._

This strict conformity to the material and psychological conditions of success marks the method by which the Germans proceed to realize a grandiose plan which is understood and furthered by one and all. Their talent for organization, their insight, their inventiveness, and their highly developed social sense are all pressed into the service of this patriotic cause. And it is to these permanent qualities, more even than to their thirty years' military and economic preparation, that they owe their many successes. The cynicism and ruthlessness of our arch-enemy should not be allowed to blind us to his enterprise, his stoicism, his meticulous applications of the law of cause and effect.

These are among his most valuable a.s.sets, and unless we have solid advantages of our own to set against and outweigh them, our appeals to the justice of our cause and our denunciations of his wicked designs will avail us nothing. It is to our interest to seek out and note whatever strength is inherent in himself or his methods and to appropriate that. The struggle will ultimately be decided by the superiority of equipment, material and moral, which one side possesses over the other. As for the conceptions of public law and international right which the antagonists severally stand for, they must be gauged by quite other standards than heavy guns and asphyxiating gases. It is not impossible that in the course of time, and by dint of reciprocal action and reaction, the German views may be sufficiently modified and moralized to render possible the usual process of a.s.similation with which the history of speculative ideas and social movements has rendered us familiar. Meanwhile, truth compels us to admit that part at least of the western system is being overtaken by decay, and stands in need of speedy and thorough renovation.

CHAPTER XXI

THE FINAL ISSUE