The Better Germany in War Time: Being Some Facts Towards FellowshipPicton, Harold W. (Harold Williams)
History
The Better Germany in War Time: Being Some Facts Towards Fellowship
Picton, Harold W. (Harold Williams)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals, charities, etc.; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
[Footnote 72: “Whatever Mr. Ernest Lissauer and his fellows may
have set before themselves in their Tyrtæan poems of hate, in
any case it can be said of them that they knew not what they
did.... They did not know, though they should have known ...
that the solidarity of the nations ... has to-day already become
such that no great nation can aim at the very conditions of
existence of another without damaging itself at the same
time.”—Ed. Bernstein in _Das Forum_ Jan., 1915.]
[Footnote 73: This is one view. Others who have seen German life
during the war report a real solidarity of the people, a
solidarity which later developments and revelations of Entente
proposals has certainly not diminished.]
[Footnote 74: From “Is It To Be Hate?” by Harold Picton (Allen
and Unwin). See footnote p. 203.]
APPENDIX
Mme. F. L. Cyon had some rather important experiences at Lille at the
time of the German attack and during the German occupation. She is a
woman of singularly cool mentality, and her evidence may be compared
with that of Dr. Ella Scarlett-Synge in a widely distant war area.
Mme. Cyon has very kindly placed her notes of her experiences at my
disposal. As the notes record also a point of view as to war in general,
it has seemed more fitting to print them as an appendix. No statement of
this kind is unbiased, for the pacifist has his own bias. Yet I am quite
certain that everything set down by Mme. Cyon has been set down in
complete sincerity and with unusual absence of mental distortion. The
record is that made by a quiet worker amidst circumstances where few
people remained sane.
THE MENTAL HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE WAR.
BY FRANÇOISE LAFITTE CYON.
During the months of September, October, November, and December, 1914, I
undertook a journey in Northern France; going first to Lille, thence to
Maubeuge, and returning to England via Brussels, Malines, Antwerp, and
Holland.
I was at Lille on October 13, 1914, when the Germans took the town.
During the first three months of my stay in France I was engaged in
nursing work at the military hospital 105 at Lille. In the early part of
December I travelled as well as I could, sometimes tramping and
sometimes making use of peasants’ carts and local tramways, until I
eventually reached Holland.
It is not, however, my intention to speak much of my adventures or of
the war itself, but rather to depict, to the best of my ability, the
effect which the dreadful events of our doings have had on the minds of
the men and women I have met with over there; be they French, Belgian,
or German. This article will be an attempt to give a series of short
studies in psychology, rather than a dramatic account of a perilous
journey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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