A BITTER CRY

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 68, 18 September 1917, Page 8

A BITTER CRY

THE GERMAN IN FRANCE

LIKE A HUGE ANIMAL AT BAY.

(By Lord Dunsany, in the New York

Tribune.)

Erect, alert, like a huge animal at bay, with glittering teeth, the German stands in France, creeping backward now and then, but so slowly that not from this can one foresee the end. Even were that backward prowl of his continued 'every week at its recent rate, it would still be nearly a year before he was back again in his native forests, out of which he fell upon Flanders. And yet there is a sign. A cry has gone vp —a cry of frantic words, like wild cries under the moon in desolate lauds. The beast is not unhurt. A deadly hurt is there, as deep as reason.

That is the meaning of the words of the Frankfurter Zeitung, of the resolution of the Mainz branch of the PanGerman League, and of the Kaiser's speech. "The British Fleet must be brought to Kiel," says the Frankfurter Zeitung, and "we snail occupy Portsmouth, Liverpool, and Glasgow." The Mainz branch of the Pan-German, League says "the whole of the British Empire must be annexed by ( the Kaiser." The German Kaiser says, speaking "near Arras" : "On which side the^ right is there is no doubt; therefore,!,'this has become a holy fight." All this is like the frantic, meaningless anger in the cries of some stricken beast that, knowing silence will overtake him for ever at' dawn, makes the night horrible with his, claicour. That frantic anger ; 'is a sign. It is, thus that the pitiless die. For it is not the anger of one who kills women and children and sinks hospital ships out of spite, the anger of a bad man doing his worst, 'planning things that can be done and, unhappily, are done. It is frantic anger; it is crying out, for all the world to hear, plans that none can accomplish. For who will bring the British, Fleet to Kiel before 'our Admiralty sends it? Who will teach Canada to wear Iron Crosses or Australia to bow to the Hohenzollern? Who will believe that right is on the side of the raiders of Belgium, or that the glory of Eeims was laid in ashes by a holy war? THE STOLEN FIELDS OF ! ■• FLANDERS. .

Think of a monarch passing comfortably through the ravaged, pillaged, devastated, stolen fields of Flanders, as the Kaiser must have done to come "near Arras," seeing desecrated cathedrals out of the window as he went, arid ' houses , whose children were lost and houses that were dust. Think of him making notes in the train, as comfortable gentlemen will who have a little speech to make at the end of the journey. Think of him jotting down near the ruins of that wronged land, and afterwards speaking in some wasted village of France, those wilff, calamitous words : "On which side the right is there is no doubt, and therefore this fight has become a holy fight. . •. . How long this may be is in God's hands." I think of it, and seem to hear again the cry of some fierce beast in Africa, stricken at night. It is so defiant of reason; so pitilessly fierce, so impotently angry. It is good to turn away from the thought of this bitter cry to thoughts of our own men. They do not need desperate speeches to conceal from them any doom. They know that hard months of great work stretch in front of them. If it be years they will go through with it. They do not boast themselves or listen to boasters. Out there they take what comes. At home' you see them cheery, ready to goagain, yet nearly always with a certain look in their faces that shows them to be no common men, but the heroes of the terrible time of earthquake, which will be recorded in history as the days when the pedestal of Liberty rocked, but was not overthrown.

These are dark days indeed, and the darkness more horrible for the ferocity of the furious German threats; but that ferocity is a most clear sign. The light will come, and France will smile again, and bestial deeds be done in Belgium no more, and the exiled children of France shall come straggling home, for east of Arras the light is breaking even now, and the beast in the cold of the dawn has uttered a bitter cry.