New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 1, No. 1

Barrie at Bay: Which Was Brown?

An Interview on the War

From The New York Times, Oct. 1, 1914

As our reporter entered Sir James Barrie's hotel room by one door, the next door softly closed. "I was alone," writes our reporter. "I sprang into the corridor and had just time to see him fling himself down the elevator. Then I understood what he had meant when he said on the telephone that he would be ready for me at 10:30.

I returned thoughtfully to the room, where I found myself no longer alone. Sir James Barrie's "man" was there; a stolid Londoner, name of Brown, who told me he was visiting America for the first time.

"Sir James is very sorry, but has been called away," he assured me without moving a muscle. Then he added: "But this is the pipe," and he placed a pipe of the largest size on the table.

"The pipe he smokes?" I asked.

Brown is evidently a very truthful man, for he hesitated. "That is the interview pipe," he explained. "When we decided to come to America, Sir James said he would have to be interviewed, and that it would be wise to bring something with us for the interviewers to take notice of. So he told me to buy the biggest pipe I could find, and he practiced holding it in his mouth in his cabin on the way across. He is very pleased with the way the gentlemen of the press have taken notice of it."

"So that is not the pipe he really smokes?" I said, perceiving I was on the verge of a grand discovery. "I suppose he actually smokes an ordinary small pipe."

Again Brown hesitated, but again truth prevailed.

"He does not smoke any pipe," he said, "nor cigars, nor cigarettes; he never smokes at all; he just puts that one in his mouth to help the interviewers."

"It has the appearance of having been smoked," I pointed out.

"I blackened it for him," the faithful fellow replied.

"But he has written a book in praise of My Lady Nicotine."

"So I have heard," Brown said guardedly. "I think that was when he was hard up and had to write what people wanted; but he never could abide smoking himself. Years after he wrote the book he read it; he had quite forgotten it, and he was so attracted by what it said about the delights of tobacco that he tried a cigarette. But it was no good; the mere smell disgusted him."

Strange Forgetfulness.

"Odd that he should forget his own book," I said.

"He forgets them all," said Brown. "There is this Peter Pan foolishness, for instance. I have heard people talking to him about that play and mentioning parts in it they liked, and he tried to edge them off the subject; they think it is his shyness, but I know it is because he has forgotten the bits they are speaking about. Before strangers call on him I have seen him reading one of his own books hurriedly, so as to be able to talk about it if that is their wish. But he gets mixed up, and thinks that the little minister was married to Wendy."

"Almost looks as if he hadn't written his own works," I said.

"Almost," Brown admitted uncomfortably.

I asked a leading question. "You don't suppose," I said, "that any one writes them for him? Such things have been. You don't write them for him by any chance, just as you blackened the pipe, you know?"

Brown assured me stolidly that he did not. Suddenly, whether to get away from a troublesome subject I cannot say, he vouchsafed me a startling piece of information. "The German Kaiser was on our boat coming across," he said.

"Sure?" I asked, wetting my pencil.

He told me he had Sir James's word for it. There was on board, it seems, a very small, shrunken gentleman with a pronounced waist and tiny, turned-up mustache, who strutted along the deck trying to look fierce and got in the other passengers' way to their annoyance until Sir James discovered that he was the Kaiser Reduced to Life Size. After that Sir James liked to sit with him and talk to him.

Sir James is a great admirer of the Kaiser, though he has not, like Mr. Carnegie, had the pleasure of meeting him in society. When he read in the papers on arriving here that the Kaiser had wept over the destruction of Louvain, he told Brown a story. It was of a friend who had gone to an oculist to be cured of some disease in one eye. Years afterward he heard that the oculist's son had been killed in some Indian war, and he called on the oculist to commiserate with him.

"You cured my eye," he said to him, "and when I read of your loss I wept for you, Sir; I wept for you with that eye."

"Sir James," Brown explained, "is of a very sympathetic nature, and he wondered which eye it was that the Kaiser wept with."

I asked Brown what his own views were about the war, and before replying he pulled a paper from his pocket and scanned it. "We are strictly neutral," he then replied.

"Is that what is written on the paper?" I asked. He admitted that Sir James had written out for him the correct replies to possible questions. "Why was he neutral?" I asked, and he again found the reply on the piece of paper: "Because it is the President's wish."

Brown Must Be Neutral.

So anxious, I discovered, is Sir James to follow the President's bidding that he has enjoined Brown to be neutral on all other subjects besides the war; to express no preference on matters of food, for instance, and always to eat oysters and clams alternately, so that there can be no ill-feeling. Also to walk in the middle of the streets lest he should seem to be favoring either sidewalk, and to be very cautious about admitting that one building in New York is higher than another. I assured him that the Woolworth Building was the highest, but he replied politely, "that he was sure the President would prefer him to remain neutral." I naturally asked if Sir James had given him any further instructions as to proper behavior in America, and it seems that he had done so. They amount, I gather, to this, that Americans have a sense of humor which they employ, when they can, to the visitor's undoing.

"When we reach New York," Sir James seems to have told Brown in effect, "we shall be met by reporters who will pretend that America is eager to be instructed by us as to the causes and progress of the war; then, if we are fools enough to think that America cannot make up its mind for itself, we shall fall into the trap and preach to them, and all the time they are taking down our observations they will be saying to themselves, 'Pompous asses.'

"It is a sort of game between us and the reporters. Our aim is to make them think we are bigger than we are, and theirs is to make us smaller than we are; and any chance we have of succeeding is to hold our tongues, while they will probably succeed if they make us jabber. Above all, oh, Brown, if you write to the papers giving your views of why we are at war—and if you don't you will be the only person who hasn't—don't be lured into slinging vulgar abuse at our opponents, lest America takes you for another university professor."

There is, I learned, only one person in America about whom it is impossible, even in Sir James's opinion, to preserve a neutral attitude. This is the German Ambassador, whose splendid work for England day by day and in every paper and to all reporters cannot, Sir James thinks, be too cordially recognized. Brown has been told to look upon the German Ambasador as England's greatest asset in America just now, and to hope heartily that he will be long spared to carry on his admirable work.

Lastly, it was pleasant to find that Brown has not a spark of sympathy with those who say that, because Germany has destroyed art treasures in Belgium and France, the Allies should retaliate with similar rudeness if they reach Berlin. He holds that if for any reason best known to themselves (such as the wish for a sunnier location) the Hohenzollerns should by and by vacate their present residence, a nice villa should be provided for them, and that all the ancestral statues in the Sieges-Allee should be conveyed to it intact, and perhaps put up in the back garden. There the Junkers could drop in of an evening, on their way home from their offices, and chat pleasantly of old times. Brown thinks they should be allowed to retain all their iron crosses, and even given some more, with which, after smart use of their pocket combs, they would cut no end of a dash among the nursemaids.

As for the pipe, I was informed that it had now done its work, and I could take it away as a keepsake. I took it, but wondered afterward at Brown's thinking he had the right to give it me.

A disquieting feeling has since come over me that perhaps it was Sir James I had been interviewing all the time, and Brown who had escaped down the elevator.

A "Credo" for Keeping Faith

By John Galsworthy

I believe in peace with all my heart. I believe that war is outrage—a black stain on the humanity and the fame of man. I hate militarism and the god of force. I would go any length to avoid war for material interests, war that involved no principles, distrusting profoundly the common meaning of the phrase "national honor."

But I believe there is a national honor charged with the future happiness of man, that loyalty is due from those living to those that will come after; that civilization can only wax and flourish in a world where faith is kept; that for nations, as for individuals, there are laws of duty, whose violation harms the whole human race; in sum, that stars of conduct shine for peoples, as for private men.

And so I hold that without tarnishing true honor, endangering civilization present and to come, and ruining all hope of future tranquillity, my country could not have refused to take up arms for the defense of Belgium's outraged neutrality, solemnly guaranteed by herself and France.

I believe, and claim in proof, the trend of events and of national character during the last century, that in democracy alone lies any coherent hope of progressive civilization or any chance of lasting peace in Europe, or the world.

I believe that this democratic principle, however imperfectly developed, has so worked in France, in England, in the United States, that these countries are already nearly safe from inclination to aggress, or to subdue other nationalities.

And I believe that while there remain autocratic Governments basing themselves on militarism, bitterly hostile to the democratic principle, Europe will never be free of the surcharge of swollen armaments, the nightmare menace of wars like this—the paralysis that creeps on civilizations which adore the god of force.

And so I hold that, without betrayal of trusteeship, without shirking the elementary defense of beliefs coiled within its fibre, or beliefs vital to the future welfare of all men, my country could not stand by and see the triumph of autocratic militarism over France, that very cradle of democracy.

I believe that democratic culture spreads from west to east, that only by maintenance of consolidate democracy in Western Europe can democracy ever hope to push on and prevail till the Eastern powers have also that ideal under which alone humanity can flourish.

And so I hold that my country is justified at this juncture in its alliance with the autocratic power of Russia, whose people will never know freedom till her borders are joined to the borders of democracy.

I do not believe that jealous, frightened jingoism has ever been more than the dirty fringe of England's peace-loving temper, and I profess my sacred faith that my country has gone to war at last, not from fear, not from hope of aggrandizement, but because she must—for honor, for democracy, and for the future of mankind.

Hard Blows, Not Hard Words

By Jerome K. Jerome

From The London Daily News

In one of Shaw's plays—I think it is "Superman"—one of the characters hints, toward the end of the last act, that the hero is a gentleman somewhat prone to talking. The hero admits it, but excuses himself on the ground that it is the only way he knows of explaining his opinions.

Times of stress and struggle, whether individual or national, afford men and women other methods of expressing their views, and a large number of our citizens are, very creditably, taking the present opportunity to act instead of shout. There are the young fellows who in their thousands are pressing around the door of the recruiting offices. They are throwing up, many of them, good jobs for the privilege of drilling for the next six months for eight hours a day. Their reward will be certain hardship, their share of sickness and wounds, the probability of lying ten deep in a forgotten grave, their chance of glory a name printed in small type among a thousand others on a War Office report.

There are the mothers and wives and children who are encouraging them to go; to whom their going means semi-starvation. The old, bent crones whose feeble hands will have to grasp again the hoe and the scrubbing brush. The young women who know only too well what is before them—the selling of the home just got together; first the easy chair and the mirror, and then the bed and the mattress; the weary tramping of the streets, looking for work. The children awestruck and wondering.

There are the men who are quietly going on with their work, doing their best with straitened means to keep their business going; giving employment; getting ready to meet the income tax collector, who next year one is inclined to expect will be demanding anything from half a crown to five shillings in the pound. There are others. But there is a certain noisy and, to me, particularly offensive man (and with him, I am sorry to say, one or two women) very much to the fore just now with whose services the country could very well dispense. He is the man who does his fighting with his mouth. Unable for reasons of his own to get at the foe in the field, he thirsts for the blood of the unfortunate unarmed and helpless Germans that the fortunes of war have left stranded in England. He writes to the paper thoughtfully suggesting plans that have occurred to him for making their existence more miserable than it must be. He generally concludes his letter with a short homily directed against the Prussian Military Staff for their lack of the higher Christian principles.

He has spies on the brain. Two quite harmless English citizens have already been shot in consequence of the funk this spy mania has created among us. The vast majority of Germans in England have come to live in England because they dislike Germany. That a certain number of spies are among us I take to be highly probable. I take it that if the Allies know their business a certain number of English spies are doing what they can for us at great personal risk to themselves in Germany. Until the German Army has landed on our shores German spies can do little or no harm to us. The police can be trusted to know something about them, and if any are caught red-handed the rules of war are not likely to be strained for their benefit.

A Story from the South.

From a small town in the South of England comes a story I can vouch for. A couple of Boy Scouts had been set to guard the local reservoir. About noon one sunny day they remarked the approach, somewhat ostentatious, of a desperate-looking character. Undoubtedly a German spy! What can he be up to! The boys approached him and he fled, leaving behind him the damning evidence—a tin suggestive of sardines and labeled "Poison!" That the gentleman should have chosen broad daylight for his nefarious design, should have been careful to label his tin, seemed to the good townsfolk under present scare conditions proof that they had at last discovered the real German spy, full of his devilish cunning. The tin was taken possession of by the police. And then the Sergeant's little daughter, who happened to have had a few lessons in French, suggested that the word on the tin was "Poisson," and the town now breathes again.

So long as the war continues the spy will be among us. I suggest that we face the problem of his activities without blue funk and hysteria. The men and women who are shrieking for vicarious vengeance upon all the Germans remaining in our midst must remember that there are thousands of English families at the present moment residing in Germany and Austria. The majority of them, comparatively poor people, with all their belongings around them, were unable to get away. I shall, until I receive convincing proof to the contrary, continue to believe that they are living among their German neighbors unmolested. Even were it not so, I would suggest our setting the example of humanity rather than our slavishly following an example of barbarity.

We are fighting for an idea—an idea of some importance to the generations that will come after us. We are fighting to teach the Prussian Military Staff that other laws have come to stay—laws superseding those of Attila the Hun. We are fighting to teach the German people that, free men with brains to think with, they have no right to hand themselves over body and soul to their rulers to be used as mere devil's instruments; that if they do so they shall pay the penalty, and the punishment shall go hard. We are fighting to teach the German Nation respect for God! Our weapons have got to be hard blows, not hard words. We are tearing at each other's throats; it has got to be done. It is not a time for yelping.

Jack Johnson as a boxer I respect. The thing I do not like about him is his habit of gibing and jeering at his opponent while he is fighting him. It isn't gentlemanly, and it isn't sporting. The soldiers are fighting in grim silence. When one of them does talk, it is generally to express admiration of German bravery. It is our valiant stay-at-homes, our valiant clamorers for everybody else to enlist but themselves, who would have us fight like some drunken fish hag, shrieking and spitting while she claws.

Incredible Reports of Atrocities.

Half of these stories of atrocities I do not believe. I remember when I was living in Germany at the time of the Boer war the German papers were full of accounts of Tommy Atkins's brutality. He spent his leisure time in tossing babies on bayonets. There were photographs of him doing it. Detailed accounts certified by most creditable witnesses. Such lies are the stock in trade of every tenth-rate journalist, who, careful not to expose himself to danger, slinks about the byways collecting hearsay. In every war each side, according to the other, is supposed to take a fiendish pleasure in firing upon hospitals—containing always a proportion of their own wounded. An account comes to us from a correspondent with the Belgian Army. He tells us that toward the end of the day a regrettable incident occurred. The Germans were taking off their wounded in motor cars. The Belgian sharpshooters, not noticing the red flag in the dusk, kept up a running fire, and a large number of the wounded were killed. Had the incident been the other way about it would have been cited as a deliberate piece of villainy on the part of the Germans. According to other accounts, the Germans always go into action with screens of women and children before them. The explanation, of course, is that a few poor terrified creatures are rushing along the road. They get between the approaching forces, and I expect the bullets that put them out of their misery come pretty even from both sides.

The men are mad. Mad with fear, mad with hate, blinded by excitement. Take a mere dog fight. If you interfere you have got to be prepared for your own dog turning upon you. In war half the time the men do not know what they are doing. They are little else than wild beasts. There was great indignation at the dropping of bombs into Antwerp. One now hears that a French dirigible has been dropping bombs into Luxembourg—a much more dignified retort. War is a grim game. Able editors and club-chair politicians have been clamoring for it for years past. They thought it was all goose-step and bands.

The truth is bad enough, God knows. There is no sense in making things out worse than they are. When this war is over we have got to forget it. To build up barriers of hatred that shall stand between our children and our foemen's children is a crime against the future.

These stories of German naval officers firing on their wounded sailors in the water! They are an insult to our intelligence. At Louvain fifty of the inhabitants were taken out and shot. On Monday the fifty had grown to five hundred; both numbers vouched for by eye-witnesses, "Dutchmen who would have had no interest," &c. That the beautiful old town has been laid in ashes is undoubted. Some criminal lunatic strutting in pipeclay and mustachios was given his hour of authority and took the chance of his life. If I know anything of the German people it will go hard with him when the war is over, if he has not had the sense to get killed. But that won't rear again the grand old stones or wipe from Germany's honor the stain of that long line of murdered men and women—whatever its actual length may have been. War puts a premium on brutality and senselessness. Men with the intelligence and instincts of an ape suddenly find themselves possessed of the powers of a god. And we are astonished that they do not display the wisdom of a god!

There are other stories that have filtered through to us. There was a dying Uhlan who caught a child to his arms and kissed him. One would like to be able to kiss one's own child before one dies, but failing that—well, after all, there is a sort of family likeness between them. The same deep wondering eyes, the same—and then the mist grows deeper. Perhaps after all it was Baby Fritz that he kissed.

And of a Belgian woman. She had seen her two sons killed before her eyes. She tells of that and of other horrors. Among such, of the German lads she had stepped over, their blue eyes quiet in death. The passion and the fear and the hate cleansed out of them. Just boys with their clothes torn—so like boys.

"They, too, have got mothers, poor lads!" is all she says, thinking of them lying side by side with her own.

When the madness and the folly are over, when the tender green is creeping in and out among the blackened ruins, it will be well for us to think of that dying Uhlan who had to put up with a French baby instead of his own; of that Belgian mother to whom the German youngsters were just "poor lads"—with their clothes torn.

And the savagery and the cruelty and the guiltiness that go to the making of war we will seek to forget.