January 1918

Punch magazine has come up with a good cartoon by Bernard Partridge. It shows St. Joan of Arc, holding a banner which reads “Women’s Franchise” and the caption says, At Last.

The Ministry of Food has decided to introduce rationing. Sugar is the first to be rationed and this they say will later followed by butchers’ meat. They tell us that the idea of rationing food is to guarantee supplies, not to reduce consumption. Potatoes are often in short-supply now and sugar is difficult to get. There is a certain amount of panic buying, and I must admit that I have been buying more than we need and storing goods in case of emergency. Those of us who had not been raising their own vegetables, have now started doing so. We were all out in the back yard digging up the lawn and planting potatoes. I don’t know if they will do well, we shall have to wait and see. Beth thinks it is all a rather fun new game.

The American President, Woodrow Wilson, spoke in congress of his vision for the post war world. He has devised a 14 point program that, if implemented, would help Europe to recover from the war and ensure that peace was lasting. I have made notes of it as it will be interesting to see how many of the points come true in the end.

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.
 
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

It is interesting in that this was a massive break from US Foreign policy in previous years, as they have been isolationist.

I was particularly pleased to make note of the fact that there will be an independent Polish state. I wonder if Peter is thinking of returning there.

I have been reading some of the war poetry that comes in newspapers and magazines. Rupert Brooke wrote a very touching poem about dying. Recently I found a similar poem, meant as a reply to Mr. Brooke, who apparently had been rather scathing of his poetry in the past. I will write them both out here.

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

If I should die, be not concerned to know
The manner of my ending, if I fell
Leading a forlorn charge against the foe,
Strangled by gas, or shattered by a shell.
Nor seek to see me in this death-in-life
Mid shirks and curse, oaths and blood and sweat,
Cold in the darkness, on the edge of strife,
Bored and afraid, irresolute, and wet.
But if you think of me, remember one
Who loved good dinners, curious parody,
Swimming, and lying naked in the sun,
Latin hexameters, and heraldry,
Athenian subtleties of this and that,
Beethoven, Botticelli, beer, and boys.

Philip Bainbrigge (I put in this and that for the foreign words I couldn’t read and didn’t want to get wrong.)

Peter has sent a poem from an Eastern European, so I will put it in here for contrast.

Song of War (excerpt)

Mother,
I weep all the time as if it were the end,
because the road is hard
and keeps calling.
Our knees are sore
and all the rest.
The wind scratches our eyes like nails,
exploding like grenades in our ears.

Here the troop halted at midday
as a river floods and spreads out over the fields.
The earth is burnt and there is a great sadness
burning like sin on the breast of a young girl.
The bread does nothing for our thirst.

Tristan Tzara