Out To Win

Out To Win

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Title: Out To Win The Story of America in France
Author: Coningsby Dawson
Release Date: February 27, 2005 [EBook #15194]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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OUT TO WIN
THE STORY OF AMERICA IN FRANCE
BY
CONINGSBY DAWSON
AUTHOR OF "THE GLORY OF THE TRENCHES," "CARRY ON:
LETTERS IN WARTIME," ETC.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE,
THE BODLEY HEAD MCMXVIII
Copyright, 1918, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
Press of J.J. Little & Ives Company New York, U.S.A.

TO
MY AMERICAN FRIENDS AND BROTHERS-IN-ARMS THIS
FRANK APPRECIATION OF THEIR EFFORT IN FRANCE IS
DEDICATED

CONTENTS
PAGE
A PREFACE FOR FOOLS ONLY 9
"WE'VE GOT FOUR YEARS" 29
WAR AS A JOB 61
THE WAR OF COMPASSION 109
THE LAST WAR 196

A PREFACE FOR FOOLS ONLY
I am not writing this preface for the conscious fool, but for his
self-deceived brother who considers himself a very wise person. My
hope is that some persons may recognise themselves and be provided
with food for thought. They will usually be people who have
contributed little to this war, except mean views and endless talk. Had
they shared the sacrifice of it, they would have developed within
themselves the faculty for a wider generosity. The extraordinary thing
about generosity is its eagerness to recognise itself in others.
You find these untravelled critics and mischief-makers on both sides of
the Atlantic. In most cases they have no definite desire to work harm,
but they have inherited cantankerous prejudices which date back to the
American Revolution, and they lack the vision to perceive that this war,
despite its horror and tragedy, is the God-given chance of centuries to
re-unite the great Anglo-Saxon races of the world in a truer bond of
kindness and kinship. If we miss this chance we are flinging in God's
face His splendid recompense for our common heroism.
It is an unfortunate fact that the merely foolish person constitutes as
grave a danger as the deliberate plotter. His words, if they are acid
enough, are quoted and re-quoted. They pass from mouth to mouth,
gaining in authority. By the time they reach the friendly country at
which they are directed, they have taken on the appearance of an

opinion representative of a nation. The Hun is well aware of the value
of gossip for the encouraging of divided counsels among his enemies.
He invents a slander, pins it to some racial grievance, confides it to the
fools among the Allies and leaves them to do the rest. Some of them
wander about in a merely private capacity, nagging without knowledge,
depositing poison, breeding doubts as to integrity, and all the while
pretending to maintain a mildly impartial and judicial mental attitude.
Their souls never rise from the ground. Their brains are gangrenous
with memories of cancelled malice. They suspect hero-worship; it
smacks to them of sentiment. They examine, but never praise. Being
incapable of sacrifice, they find something meretriciously
melodramatic about men and nations who are capable. Had they lived
nineteen hundred years ago, they would have haunted Calvary to
discover fraud.
Then, there are others, by far more dangerous. These make their
appearance daily in the morning press, thrusting their pessimisms
across our breakfast tables, beleaguering our faith with ill-natured
judgements and querulous warnings. One of our London Dailies, for
instance, specializes in annoying America; it works as effectively to
breed distrust as if its policy were dictated from Berlin.
I have just returned from a prolonged tour of America's activities in
France. Wherever I went I heard nothing but unstinted appreciation of
Great Britain's surpassing gallantry: "We never knew that you
Britishers were what you are; you never told us. We had to come over
here to find out." When that had been said I always waited, for I
guessed the qualifying statement that would follow: "There's only one
thing that makes us mad. Why the devil does your censor allow the
P---- to sneer at us every morning? Your army doesn't feel that way
towards us; at least, if it ever did, it doesn't now. Are there really
people in England who--?"
At this point I would cut my questioner short: "There are men so
short-sighted in every country that, to warm their hands, they would
burn the crown of thorns. You