The Pentecost of Calamity

Something happened at Louvain – a little thing, but let it give us hope. In the house of a professor at the University some German soldiers were quartered, friendly, considerate, doing no harm. Suddenly one day, in obedience to new orders, they fell on this home, burned books, wrecked rooms, destroyed the house and all its possessions. Its master is dead. His wife, looking on with her helpless children, saw a soldier give an apple to a child.

"Thank you," she said; "you, at least, have a heart."

"No, madam," said the German; "it is broken."

Goethe said: "He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing… We are become too humane to enjoy the triumphs of Cæsar." Ninety years after he said this Germany took the Belgian women from their ruined villages – some of these women being so infirm that for months they had not been out-of-doors – and loaded them on trains like cattle, and during several weeks exposed them publicly to the jeers and scoffs and insults of German crowds through city after city.

Perhaps the German soldier whose heart was broken by Louvain will be one of a legion, and thus, perhaps, through thousands of broken German hearts, Germany may become herself again. She has hurled calamity on a continent. She has struck to pieces a Europe whose very unpreparedness answers her ridiculous falsehood that she was attacked first. Never shall Europe be again as it was. Our brains, could they take in the whole of this war, would burst.

But Calamity has its Pentecost. When its mighty wind rushed over Belgium and France, and its tongues of fire sat on each of them, they, too, like the apostles in the New Testament, began to speak as the Spirit gave them utterance. Their words and deeds have filled the world with a splendor the world had lost. The flesh, that has dominated our day and generation, fell away in the presence of the Spirit. I have heard Belgians bless the martyrdom and awakening of their nation. They have said:

"Do not talk of our suffering; talk of our glory. We have found ourselves."

Frenchmen have said to me: "For forty-four years we have been unhappy, in darkness, without health, without faith, believing the true France dead. Resurrection has come to us." I heard the French Ambassador, Jules Jusserand, say in a noble speech: "George Eliot profoundly observes that to every man comes a crisis when in a moment, without chance for reflection, he must decide and act instantly. What determines his decision? His whole past, the daily choices between good and evil that he has made throughout his previous years – these determine his decision. Such a crisis fell in a moment on France; she acted instantly, true to her historic honor and courage."

Every day deeds of faith, love and renunciation are done by the score and the hundred which will never be recorded, and every one of which is noble enough to make an immortal song. All over the broken map of Europe, through stricken thousands of square miles, such deeds are being done by Servians, Russians, Poles, Belgians, French and English, – yes, and Germans too, – the souls of men and women rising above their bodies, flinging them away for the sake of a cause. Think of one incident only, only one of the white-hot gleams of the Spirit that have reached us from the raging furnace. Out from the burning cathedral of Rheims they were dragging the wounded German prisoners lying helpless inside on straw that had begun to burn. In front of the church the French mob was about to shoot or tear to pieces those crippled, defenseless enemies. You and I might well want to kill an enemy who had set fire to Mount Vernon, the house of the Father of our Country.

For more than seven hundred years that great church of Rheims had been the sacred shrine of France. One minute more and those Germans lying or crawling outside the church door would have been destroyed by the furious people. But above the crash of rafters and glass, the fall of statues, the thunder of bombarding cannon, and the cries of French execration, rose one man's voice. There on the steps of the ruined church stood a priest. He lifted his arms and said:

"Stop; remember the ancient ways and chivalry of France. It is not Frenchmen who trample on a maimed and fallen foe. Let us not descend to the level of our enemies."

It was enough. The French remembered France. Those Germans were conveyed in safety to their appointed shelter – and far away, across the lands and oceans, hearts throbbed and eyes grew wet that had never looked on Rheims.

These are the tongues of fire; this is the Pentecost of Calamity. Often it must have made brothers again of those who found themselves prone on the battlefield, neighbors awaiting the grave. In Flanders a French officer of cavalry, shot through the chest, lay dying, but with life enough still to write his story to the lady of his heart. He wrote thus:

"There are two other men lying near me, and I do not think there is much hope for them either. One is an officer of a Scottish regiment and the other a private in the uhlans. They were struck down after me, and when I came to myself I found them bending over me, rendering first aid. The Britisher was pouring water down my throat from his flask, while the German was endeavoring to stanch my wound with an antiseptic preparation served out to their troops by the medical corps. The Highlander had one of his legs shattered, and the German had several pieces of shrapnel buried in his side.

"In spite of their own sufferings, they were trying to help me; and when I was fully conscious again the German gave us a morphia injection and took one himself. His medical corps had also provided him with the injection and the needle, together with printed instructions for their use. After the injection, feeling wonderfully at ease, we spoke of the lives we had lived before the war. We all spoke English, and we talked of the women we had left at home. Both the German and the Britisher had been married only a year…

"I wondered – and I suppose the others did – why we had fought each other at all. I looked at the Highlander, who was falling to sleep, exhausted, and, in spite of his drawn face and mud-stained uniform, he looked the embodiment of freedom. Then I thought of the Tricolor of France and all that France had done for liberty. Then I watched the German, who had ceased to speak. He had taken a prayer book from his knapsack, and was trying to read a service for soldiers wounded in battle. And … while I watched him I realized what we were fighting for… He was dying in vain, while the Britisher and myself, by our deaths, would probably contribute something toward the cause of civilization and peace."

Thus wrote this young French officer of cavalry to the lady of his heart, the American lady to whom he was engaged. The Red Cross found the letter at his side. Through it she learned the manner of his death. This, too, is the Pentecost of Calamity.

XIII

And what do the women say – the women who lose such men? Thus do they decline to attend at The Hague the Peace Congress of foolish women who have lost nobody:

"How would it be possible, in an hour like this, for us to meet women of the enemy's countries?.. Have they disavowed the … crimes of their government? Have they protested against the violation of Belgium's neutrality? Against offenses to the law of nations? Against the crimes of their army and navy? If their voices had been raised it was too feebly for the echo of their protest to reach us across our violated and devastated territories…"

And one celebrated lady writes to a delegate at The Hague:

"Madam, are you really English?.. I confess I understand better Englishwomen who wish to fight… To ask Frenchwomen in such an hour to come and talk of arbitration and mediation and discourse of an armistice is to ask them to deny their nation… All that Frenchwomen could desire is to awake and acclaim in their children, their husbands and brothers, and in their very fathers, the conviction that defensive war is a thing so holy that all must be abandoned, forgotten, sacrificed, and death must be faced heroically to defend and save that which is most sacred … our country… It would be to deny my dead to look for anything beside that which is and ought to be! – if the God of right and justice, the enemy of the devil and of force and crazy pride, is the true God."

Thus awakened and transfigured by Calamity do men and women rise in their full spiritual nature, efface themselves, and utter sacred words. Calamity, when the Lusitania went down, wrung from the lips of an awakened German, Kuno Francke, this noble burst of patriotism:

Ends Europe so? Then, in Thy mercy, God,Out of the foundering planet's gruesome nightPluck Thou my people's soul. From rage and crazeOf the staled Earth, O lift Thou it aloft,Re-youthed, and through transfiguration cleansed;So beaming shall it light the newer time,And heavenly, on a world refreshed, unfold.Soul of my race, thou sinkest not to dust.

If Germany's tragedy be, as I think, the deepest of all, the hope is that she, too, will be touched by the Pentecost of Calamity, and pluck her soul from Prussia, to whom she gave it in 1870. Thus shall the curse be lifted.

XIV

And what of ourselves in this well-nigh world-wide cloud-burst?

Every man has walked at night through gloom where objects were dim and hard to see, when suddenly a flash of lightning has struck the landscape livid. Trees close by, fences far off, houses, fields, animals and the faces of people – all things stand transfixed by a piercing distinctness. So now, in this thunderstorm of war, each nation and every man and woman is searchingly revealed by the perpetual lightnings. Whatever this American nation is, whatever aspect, noble or ignoble, our Democracy shows in the glare of this cataclysm, is even already engraved on the page of History, will be the portrait of the United States in 1914-15 for all time.

I want no better photograph of any individual than his opinion of this war. If he has none, that is a photograph of him. Last autumn there were Americans who wished the papers would stop printing war news and give their readers a change. So we have their photographs, as well as those of other Americans who merely calculated the extra dollars they could squeeze out of Europe's need and agony. But that – thank God! – is not what we look like as a whole. Our sympathy has poured out for Belgium a springtide of help and relief; it has flowed to the wounded and afflicted of Poland, Servia, France and England. A continuous publishing of books, magazine articles and editorials, full of justice and of anger at Prussia's long-prepared and malignant assault, should prove to Europe that American hearts and heads by the thousand and hundred thousand are in the right place. Merely the stand taken by the New York Sun, New York Times, Outlook and Philadelphia Public Ledger– to name no more – saves us from the reproach of moral neutrality: saves us as individuals.

Yet, somehow, in Europe's eyes we fall short. The Allies, in spite of their recognition of our material generosity, find us spiritually wanting. In the London Punch, on the sinking of the Lusitania, Britannia stands perplexed and indignant behind the bowed figure of America, and, with a hand on her shoulder, addresses her thus:

In silence you have looked on felon blows,On butcher's work of which the waste lands reek;Now, in God's name, from Whom your greatness flows,Sister, will you not speak?

This is asked of us not as individuals but as a nation; and as a nation our only spokesman is our Government: "Sister, will you not speak?" Well – we did speak; but after nine months of silence. This silence, in the opinion of French and Belgian emissaries who have talked to me with courteous frankness, constitutes our moral failure.

"When this war began" – they say – "we all looked to you. You were the great Democracy; you were not involved; you would speak the justifying word we longed for. We knew you must keep out politically; this was your true part and your great strength. We altogether agreed with your President there. But why did your universities remain dumb? The University of Chicago stopped the mouth of a Belgian professor who was going to present Belgium's case in public. Your press has been divided. The word we expected from you has never come. You sent us your charity; but what we wanted was justice, ratification of our cause."

To this I have answered:

"First – Our universities do not and cannot sit like yours in high seats, inspiring public opinion. I wish they did. Second – We are not yet melted into one nationality; we are a mosaic of languages and bloods; yet, even so, never in my life have I seen the American press and people so united on any question. Third – Our charity is our very way – the only way we have – of telling you we are with you. I am glad you recognize the necessity of our political neutrality. Anything else would have been, both historically and as an act of folly, unprecedented. Fourth – Do not forget that George Washington advised us to mind our own business."

But they reply: "Isn't this your own business?" And there they touch the core of the matter.

Across the sea the deadliest assault ever made on Democracy has been going on, month after month. We send bread and bandages to the wounded; individually we denounce the assault. Columbia and Uncle Sam stand looking on. Is this quite enough? War being out of the question, was there nothing else? No protest to register? Did the wide ocean wholly let Columbia out? Europe, weltering in her own failure, had turned towards us a wistful look.

I cannot tell what George Washington would have thought; I only know that my answer to my European friends leaves them unconvinced – and therefore how can it quite satisfy me? Minds are exalted now, and white-hot. When they cool, what will our historic likeness be as revealed in the lightnings of this cosmic emergency? Will it be the portrait of a people who sold its birthright for a mess of pottage? Viewing how we have given, and the tone of our press, perhaps this would hardly be just. Yet I can not but regret that we did not protest. What we lost in not doing so I see clearly; I can not see clearly what we gained. We may argue thus in our defense: If it is deemed that we missed a great opportunity in not protesting as signatories of the violated Hague conventions, are not our proofs of the violations more authentic now than at the time? What we heard was incredible to American minds. We had never made or known such war. By the time the truth was established a protest might have seemed somewhat belated. Well, this is all the explanation we can offer. Is it enough?

It is too early to answer; certain it is that not as we see ourselves but as others see us, so shall we forever be. Certain it is also, and eternally, that through suffering alone men and nations find their greater selves. It is fifty years since we Americans knew the Pentecost of Calamity. These years have been too easy. We have not had to live dangerously enough. We have prospered, we have been immune, and our prosperity has proved somewhat a curse in disguise.

In these times that uncover men's souls and the souls of nations, has our soul come to light, or only our huge, lavish body? In 1865 we had found our soul indeed. Where is it gone? We have been witnessing many "scholarly retreats," and every day we have had to hear the "maxims of a low prudence." Have they sunk to the core and killed it? God forbid! But since August, 1914, we have stood listening to the cry of our European brothers-in-Liberty. They did not ask our feeble arm to strike in their cause, but they yearned for our voice and did not get it. Will History acquit us of this silence?

Meanwhile, the maxims of a low prudence, masquerading as Christianity, daily counsel us to keep our arm feeble. It was not so that Washington survived Valley Forge, or Lincoln won through to Appomattox. If the Fourth of July and the Declaration it celebrates still mean anything to us, let our arm be strong.

This for our own sake. For the sake of mankind, if this war brings home to us that we now sit in the council of nations and share directly in the general responsibility for the world's well-being, we shall have taken a great stride in national and spiritual maturity, and our talk about the brotherhood of man may progress from rhetoric towards realization.

XV

We have yet to find our greater selves. We have also yet to realize that Europe, since the Spanish War, has counted us in the concert of great nations far more than we have counted ourselves.

Somebody wrote in the New York Sun:

We are not English, German, Swede,Or Austrian, Russian, French or Pole;But we have made a separate breedAnd gained a separate soul.

It sounds well; it means nothing; its sum total is zero. America asserts the brotherhood of man and then talks about a separate soul!

To speak of the Old World and the New World is to speak in a dead language. The world is one. All humanity is in the same boat. The passengers multiply, but the boat remains the same size. And people who rock the boat must be stopped by force. America can no more separate itself from the destiny of Europe than it can escape the natural laws of the universe.

Because we declared political independence, does any one still harbor the delusion that we are independent of the acts and fortunes of monarchs? If so, let him consider only these four events: In 1492 a Spanish Queen financed a sailor named Columbus – and Europe reached out and laid a hand on this hemisphere. In 1685 a French King revoked an edict – and thousands of Huguenots enriched our stock. In 1803 a French consul, to spite Britain, sold us some land – it was pretty much everything west of the Mississippi. One might well have supposed we were independent of the heir of Austria. In 1914 they killed him, and Europe fell to pieces – and that fall is shaking our ship of state from stem to stern. There may be some citizens down in the hold who do not know it – among a hundred million people you cannot expect to have no imbeciles.

Thus, from Palos, in 1492, to Sarajevo, in 1914, the hand of Europe has drawn us ever and ever closer.

Yes, indeed; we are all in the same boat. Europe has never forgotten some words spoken here once: "That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." She waited to hear us repeat that in some form when The Hague conventions we signed were torn to scraps of paper. Perhaps nothing save calamity will teach us what Europe is thankful to have learned again – that some things are worse than war, and that you can pay too high a price for peace; but that you cannot pay too high for the finding and keeping of your own soul.

[Finis]