The Epic Standpoint in the War
After more than three years of the War, we are only now beginning to see it, as it is, in its epic immensity. On the eastern front it has been too far from us; on the western front it has been too near us, and we have been too much a part of it, to get any sight at all of that series of monotonous and monstrous battles, a series punctuated only by names: Liege, Antwerp, Mons, Ypres, Verdun and Arras. And if nothing had happened besides the Titanic conflict of material armaments I believe that we should not yet be anywhere near realizing its vastness and its significance.
If we are aware of it now it is because, in the last few months, three events have happened which are of another order: the abdication of Constantine, King of Greece, the Russian Revolution, and the coming of America into the War.
These three events have adjusted and cleared our vision by giving us the true perspective and the scale.
From the standpoint of individuals, even of those few who have lost nothing personally, who are alive and safe, who have never been near the trenches, never watched an air-raid, or so much as seen the inside of a hospital, the War is a monstrous and irreparable tragedy.
But from the epic standpoint, it would not have mattered if all the civilians in Great Britain had been starved to death by submarines, or burned alive in our beds, so long as the freedom of one country, even a small country like Greece, was secured forever, let alone the freedom of a great country like Russia—and let alone the saving of America’s soul.
For that is what it comes to.
Somewhere about the sad middle of the War, an American woman, who is one of the finest American poets, discussed the War with me. She deplored America’s attitude in not coming in with us.
I said, politely and arrogantly, “Why should she? It isn’t HER War. She’ll do us more good by keeping out of it.”
The poet—who would not have called herself a patriot—answered, “I am not thinking of YOUR good. I am thinking of the good of America’s soul.”
Since August 4th, 1914, England has been energetically engaged in saving her own soul. Heaven knows we needed salvation! But, commendable as our action was and is, the fact remains that it was our own soul that we were saving. We thought, and we cared, nothing about America’s soul.
In the beginning of the War, when it seemed certain that America would not come in, we were glad to think that America’s body was untouched, that, while all Europe rolled in blood, so vast a territory was still at peace, and that the gulf of the Atlantic kept American men, American women and children, safe from the horror and agony of war. This was a comparatively righteous attitude.
Then we found that it was precisely the Atlantic that gave Americans a taste of our agony and horror. The Atlantic was no safe place for the American men and women and children who traveled so ingenuously over it.
And when for a long time we wondered whether America would or would not come in, we were still glad; but it was another gladness. We said to ourselves that we did not want America to come in. We wanted to win the War without her, even if it took us a little longer. For by that time we had begun to look on the War as our and our Allies’ unique possession. to fight in it was a privilege and a glory that we were not inclined to share.
“America,” we said, “is very much better employed in making munitions for US. Let her go on making them. Let her help our wounded; let her feed Belgium for us; but let her not come in now and bag the glory when it is we who have borne the burden and heat of the battle.”
And this attitude of ours was not righteous. It was egoistic; it was selfish; it was arrogant. We handed over to America the material role and hung on tight to the spiritual glory. It was as if we had asked ourselves, in our arrogance, whether America was able to drink of the cup that we drank of, and to be baptized with the baptism of blood which we were baptized withal?
We had left off thinking even of America’s body, and we were not thinking at all about her soul.
Then, only a few months ago, she came in, and we were glad. Most of us were glad because we knew that her coming in would hasten the coming of peace. But I think that some of us were glad because America had saved, before everything, her immortal soul.
And by our gladness we knew more about ourselves then than we had suspected. We know that, under all our arrogance and selfishness, there was a certain soreness caused by America’s neutrality.
We did not care much about Spain’s or Scandinavia’s or Holland’s neutrality, though the Dutch and Scandinavian navies might have helped enormously to tighten the blockade; but we felt America’s neutrality as a wrong done to our own soul. We were vulnerable where her honor was concerned. And this, though we knew that she was justified in holding back; for her course was not a straight and simple one like ours. No Government on earth has any right to throw prudence to the winds, and force war on a country that is both divided and unprepared.
Yet we were vulnerable, as if our own honor were concerned.
That is why, however much we honor the men that America sends out now, and will yet sent out, to fight with us, we honor still more her first volunteers who came in of their own accord, who threw prudence to every wind that blows, and sent themselves out, to fight and to be wounded and to die in the ranks of the Allies. It may be that some of them loved France more than England. No matter; they had good cause to love her, since France stands for Freedom; and it was Freedom that they fought for, soldiers in the greatest War of Independence that has ever been.
The coming in of America has not placed upon England a greater or more sacred obligation than was hers before:—to see to it that this War accomplishes the freedom, not only of Belgium and Russia and Poland and Serbia and Roumania, but of Ireland also, and of Hungary, and, if Germany so wills it, of Germany herself. It is inconceivable that we should fail; but, if we did fail, we should now have to answer to the soul and conscience of America as to our own conscience and our own soul.
[signed]May Sinclair