"CANNON FODDER."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 558, 23 November 1915, Page 6

"CANNON FODDER."

ALCOHOL AND BAYONET CHARGES. DO THE GERMANS USE ETHER? JANE ADDAMS QUALIFIES HER STATEMENTS. [Miss Jane Addams, a_ celebrated American philanthropist, who is a leader in the Women's Peace Movement, recently made some statements in New York that the soldiers, both of the Allies and the enemy, had to be made drunk before delivering a bayonet charge. The report of her utterances called forth a storm of denial from all quarters, and the following article,' which appeared in the New York "Evening Post," gives Miss' Addams's qualification of her statements.]. Miss Jane Addams confessed, when she was in New York a few days ago, that she had been startled and disconcerted by the uproar which had followed her quite incidental allusion to the alleged use of stimulants among soldiers in preparation for a bayonet charge. She had had, she said, no idea of saying anything sensational, or of opening any controversy, j

"It was a thing discussed at various places where we went in Europe," she said, "quite as a. matter of course. No one disputed it, or seemed to think it anything extraordinary.

"Mr C. Brewer Smith, a Boston advertising agent, just returned from an extended tour in France, was quoted in the Boston "Transscript" of September 21 as saying: "'From a source that I consider /perfectly trustworthy I learned that distilled liquors are by no means* banished from the army. I was told, that rum is served to the men in liberal- quantities just before a bayonet charge or other arduous and dangerous tasks, but I do not believe the reports brought back by Miss Jane Addams that the men are made-drunk on such occasions. If anybody thinks, however, that the great war is being fought on a cold-water basis he is entirely misinformed.' "I do not know Mr Smith, and make no great point of what he says. It has its value, however, as a 'straw.'

Ether on German Soldiers.

I "I have just received this translation of a letter from the war front in France, attributed to P. Fosse, who is said to have been oboe player in the ! Boston Symphony Orchestra, but now in the 23Gth French Infantry, Compagnie de Mitrailleuses, in which, writing from the front last April, he said: " 'This last 15 days has been- terrible here. ... The Bodies have tried to mine my trench, and have attacked us furiously. They made a funnel-shaped hole three or - four metres from the trench, 40 metres in diametre and 18 deep. Think of the commotion that makes a hole capable of holding a structure of six storeys 1 Tliey sent men to r attack us right after this drunk, with, ether. ~ The prisoners still had a bottle on Ihem partly consumed.'" No Sign of Deficient Courage.

Miss Addams explains her attitude in this whole matter in an article in the current issue of ' the "Independent," in the course of which she says:—

In an address in New York City given the week of my return from Europe, I was presenting data which to my mind indicated a revolt against war, taking place in the midst ofwar itself. I cited the loathing against the use of the bayonet felt by a certain type, of youHg man, to overcome which "we were told in several countries 2 ' that stimulants were-ad-ministered before a bayonet charge was ordered.

It never occurred to us. who heard this statement, nor to those who made H, that this was done because the men lacked courage. It was taken for granted that the stimulants inhibited the sensibilities of a certain type of modern man to whom primitive warfare was especially abhorrent, although he was a brave soldier and serving his country wfth all his heart. The giving of stimulants was a quicker process than that incitement to reprisals and revenge which in actual warfare often serves as an immediate incentive. We were, in fact, told of this substitution, once by a Frenchman, who said that "since the use of poisonous gases by the Germans, no further stimulants could possibly be needed for a thoroughly indignant and aroused soldiery," and again by an Englishman who spoke of the difficulties in the early months! of the war in overcoming the camaraderie unhappily evinced by certain British troops for the Saxons long established in an opposite trench, and the relief when the Bavarians took their places, against whom no incitement to hostility was needed.

I used no illustration for the statement in my New York address, and, speaking broadly, without notes, I unfortunately gave a mistaken impression as to the extent to which I myself believed stimulants had been used in connection with bayonet charges. The statement, much exaggerated in the reporting and without any qualifying clauses, was made the subject of much unfriendly comment, especially in those journals which had been unalterably opposed to the woman's meeting at The Hague from its inception. What a German Soldier Said. Several weeks later, therefore, I

took advantage of an interview bri the subject with an Associated, Press man to make clear two points: First, the authority.for my statement that "we have been told in several countries." I instanced three occasions upon which my friend, Dr Alice Hamilton, and myself heard the statement when we were together, so that we have since been able to confirm each other's impression. We distinctly recall a French Government official, an English professor, and a convalescing German soldier. The latter, who was on sick leave in Switzerland after three months in the trenches, was an exceptionally intelligent young man. He said to us:—

| "A bayonet charge does not: show courage, but madness. Men must be brought to the point by stimulants, and once the charge is begun they are like insane men. I have been in it,' and after it was over I was utterly dazed. I did not know what had happened to me more than if I had been picked up from the water after an explosion on shipboard." He said that the stimulant given to the German soldiers contained sulphuric ether. "I remember at the time Dr Hamilton remarked to me that she knew from the medical journals that it had been found necessary in both the German and the English armies to, abandon the idea of total abstinence, and serve rations of alcohol to the soldiers.

A French Soldier's Impressions. "I should also like to quote from the journal, "Stamps," the impressions of. a French soldier who wrote:—

'You act and fight as in a dream; you have lost the sense of time and place, and feel yourself to,be merely a paTt of the irfonstrous whole that twists itself convulsively. It is as if the life of sensation had been cut off. And later on, when you.are yourself again, you think, you have been shut up in a cage, out of which you have been desperately trying to escape, but in vain. It is not true that you never are afraid, but proximity robs death of its terrors: Many soldiers experience an irresistible loathing of the use of their bayonets, of rushing on a living human being with such a weapon. They simply cannot do it

"The second point I made in my interview with the Associated Pjess ~ man was that the soldier for whom stimulants might be necessary represented a type of sensitive man doubtless found in each army. Such assertions as I made in regard to the use of stimulants were confined to this type of man, and it never occurred to me to make any generalisations in,regard to the 'average' soldier, as I was reported to have done. One of the hideous results of war is the inveterate tendency of the 'average' man to fall into the spirit of hot retaliation. We were told in two countries that the soldiers were being supplied as fast as possible with short knives, because they could not advantageously use their bayonets in the occasional hand-to-hand Encounters within the trenches themselves, and. we, of course, know of the men who said of the bayonet charge, 'Ah, that is fighting, when the primitive man lets himself .go, and does the sort of, fighting which is obvious and definite.*

I It is furthest from my wish and - intention to add one word to the campaign of calumny, to disparage either the motives or the courage of the long line of fighting men, to repeat one tale of horror which might increase that poverty of heart induced by hatred. One returns from Europe this year in a much too Iserious frame of mind to wish to utter one word which might increase the ;confusion and misunderstanding, or undermine the respect for our common human nature in these trying times. ~ '