102
THE YPRES TIMES
By Captain R. Henderson-Bland, Author of Moods and Memories,"
The Mirrored Heart," From Manger to Cross," etc.
LAST January, in New York, the English Speaking Union of the United States
gave a reception to Mr. Ernest Rays, editor of the Everyman's Library, and
to myself. Many distinguished Americans attended the reception, and I was
immensely surprised when some of them asked me in all seriousness if I thought
that war between Great Britain and America was possible. I was too surprised
to do anything more than assure them that such a contingency had not occurred
to me.
The same question was asked me by responsible Americans after certain
lectures that I gave in New York and other cities. Those eager questioners set me
thinking, and during the rest of my stay in America (I was in America for more
than eighteen months) I tried to examine the grounds for such questions.
After some months I came to the conclusion that if things were allowed to
drift, war between Great Britain and America was something that might happen.
My mind went back to a time when I was attending a Corps Course outside
Bailleul, in France. It was run by the IX Corps and was attended by officers and
non-commissioned officers mostly from the Ypres Salient. The Guards were
handling the show, and the idea behind it was to see that men who had had little
time to drill and keep smart should be brightened up a little. It was splendidly
run. We were brightened up.
The Colonel sent for me one morning and told me that G.H.Q. of the
American Expeditionary Force had chosen the course for their first batch of officers
to attend. I was deputed to look after them socially. Why he chose me I never
could understand. Perhaps in some intuitive, strange manner he surmised that I
would get on well with Americans. Anyhow, I got on very well with the lot that
turned up. If I am any judge of men at all I should say that the group of
American officers that I had the privilege to look after were some of the finest
types of men that I have ever met in my peregrinations over the old world's face.
One of those officers was the great nephew of Edgar Allan Poe. He was
killed later, but will long be remembered at Princeton University, where he
distinguished himself as an athlete. I like to think that I had something to do with
the new gravestone over Poe's grave, because when I told him of the disgraceful
state of his great great-uncle's grave in Baltimore he said he had never seen it and I
jokingly told him he ought to be ashamed of himself.
Those American officers set me thinking. Again I was set thinking on this
subject in Boston last year. I was staying with Dr. and Mrs. Dulany Addison,
and the night before Armistice Day two fine-looking graduates at a Fraternity
House called to ask Dr. Addison if he would address a few words to them on
Armistice Day. He gladly consented, and I was roped in too. Dr. Addison told
these young men with passionate sincerity that the war had welded America into
a nation.
I think Dr. Addison was right. Participation in the Great War has welded
America into a nation. I remember so well the faces of those interesting youths
now. They were faces lit up by enthusiasm, and I recalled the words of old
Isaac Disraeli, the father of Lord Beaconsfield, Solitude is the nurse of
enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the nurse of genius."
If I was asked to define the genius of America I should say it was the genius
of enthusiasm. Well, enthusiasm can forge anything.
