--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Cummings, D. W. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 22 number: 2 published: 1918-12 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Cummings, D. W., "Defeat," *Improvement Era* 22, no. 2 (December 1918): 156–165.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2202unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2202unse start_page: 156 end_page: 165 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1918-12) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2202unse publication_year: 1918 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1918, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Defeat Defeat By D. W. Cummings The figures of two men, in dejected posture, were outlined against the glow from the moonlit lake. Across the hard, shim- — mering expanse were massed the Alps, blotches whose edges here and there broke into peaks that cut sharply into the pale light of the sky. It was midnight, cool and silent. Presently, one of the men straightened up and drew out a watch. Holding it slantingly to the moon, he studied it for a moment and then said, with a sigh: "We have talked half the night." His words were English with a strong American accent. — "And reached nowhere." The reply also was in English, but the accent was Teutonic. Moody silence followed. The two sat on a kind of mossy ledge and absently studied the water. The lake before them was Lake Leman, and less than a mile to the left twinkled the lights in the suburbs of Geneva. Both men were young and athletic and of about the same height — easily six feet. They were dressed alike in tennis clothes, without coats or hats. Suddenly, the second speaker planted both hands on the ledge behind him, raised his feet slightly, and then sprang up- ward and outward, turning nimbly on the rebound so that he faced his companion. There was marked decision in the move- ment, and in the words that followed: "Yes, we have talked half the night. But half a year would not make me change my mind. The ambassador has released me from the secretaryship and I have my commission. I leave Switzerland tomorrow!" "To fight—Belgium!" The scorn in the words stung the German. His face flushed and hardened, and his tone was curt as he answered: "I shall go where I am sent. Since I fight for the father- land, the place does not matter. Deutschland uber alles!" At the words, Grayson, the young American, thrilled, in spite of himself. He knew Carl Heilig to the heart and soul knew him to be a man of keen conscience and passionate loyalty to his country. There was no arrogance in those words, Deutsch- land uber alles! They were spoken in the spirit of a devotee, repeating an incantation at a shrine. And in them was the rare, unselfish dedication of an ardent, high-minded man. " : " : : DEFEAT 157 But the thrill gone, the words rankled and brought forth a deeply bitter retort "Uber alles! Over friendship—humanity—everything!" The German regarded him with a cold surprise: "It is patriotism that I express, my friend. If it comes to a choice, how long should I consider friendship?" The American gave no reply. "You also mention humanity," persisted Heilig. "You ha\ e mentioned humanity several times tonight, in words that I do not like. And I tell you again, as I have told you before: That war is not personal. What my country has done in Belgium had to be done. And the men who did it had no personal aim and are not individually responsible. No more shall I be!" The American shrugged his shoulders, as if to abandon the argument. Heilig regarded him wistfully, the hard look melting away and letting all that was fine and loveable in his character show in his face. "Why do you bring friendship into this at all, Grayson?" he asked sadly. — — "Because God help me! I can't keep it out!" answered the American, miserably. "Not even the years that bind us to- gether — "They are many," said Carl, softly. — "Many and precious. Ten, is it not? Ten years of study and travel and play! For those years, your life has been mine and mine has been yours. And yet — He paused, for the thing was hard to say. But he went on: "Here it is straight, Carl. What your country has done in Belgium is damnable I can't think of your taking active part in ! — the hideous business and still think of you as my friend!" Heilig drew a long breath, but kept himself well in hand. — "Admit that it was damnable, as you say. That fact can't change me. No matter how long this war shall last, or how much fighting I must do, I shall still be Carl Heilig!" — "Not even you, Carl, can murder and not be a murderer!" The German quivered. For some minutes he did not speak. When at last he began, his voice was grave, but very quiet "Your words make this the end, of course. I am sorry. — You have been a wonderful friend and ah, what a pity! Good- by!" Grayson looked up, startled. The end had come quickly, after all. He leaped to his feet and seized Heilig's hand: "Don't go, Carl! Don't go!" The German's eyes shone in the moonlight, but his voice was still steady, though infinitely sad, as he answered "I must! Deutchland uber alles, you know. Good-by!" — — 158 IMPROVEMENT ERA For an instant he paused, holding tight to Grayson's hand. Then, without further speech, he turned and was gone. At noon the next day, a train and motor car flashed across the Swiss border up the Rhine valley, almost at the same instant. Tn the train rode Carl Heilig, in the motor car Van Grayson and the goal of both was Belgium. Germany was demanding men as killers —Belgium was pleading for them as healers. Heilig and Grayson, Prussian and American, each answered the call that he interpreted as duty. Grayson was unaware of his friend's proximity. He was un- aware, even, of the train's nearness, though he rode at an even pace with it. Driving by the trained motorist's instinct, he let his mind dwell gloomily on the parting that had taken place between him and his friend. Not until the train stopped at a fair-sized station to take on a detachment of soldiers did Grayson give it notice. Then, "his attention caught by this first sign of war, he drew up to the platform and watched the departure. His first glance on the scene was hard and bitter, because in his heart surged a loathing for these gray-coated figures. For were they not Germans, kin to the beasts who had ravished Belgium? Carl, of course, had thus far been an exception, but how he hated these others! Beasts! Beasts! Be — — And yet something in the scene a something that soft- — — ened him what oh, yes! How human they were! They laughed, they wept, they showed love and tenderness! And in the quavering moan of aged mothers, the full-throated sobs of maiden sweethearts, the vague, shrill cries of frightened children, Grayeon, with all his bitterness, was forced to recognize a part of the great chorus of despair that was, at that moment, ris- ing to Heaven from Europe's common humanity! Germans they — were, yes, but human oh, so pitifully weak and human in their grief and fear! Grayson scanned the faces of the men. Some were stern, some were almost gay, some were twitching with emotion. But ferocious? None of them! Simple, kindly German farmers, that was all. Impulsively, Grayson clasped his hand to his right side. A crumple of paper followed the movement. There was a let- ter there, a letter which, in the light of what he now beheld, seemed strangely difficult to understand. It was written by Pierre Nevin, with whom he had studied at Paris, and who had later gone for special research work to Louvain. Pierre was a man who could not lie, and from the shelter of a Dutch internment camp he had written with flam- ! — DEFEAT 159 ing vividness of German's bloody deeds. And yet, to believe Nevin was to doubt his own eyes, for it seemed absurd that these honest, benevolent Deutchers could be of a kidney with the Huns Pierre described. Suddenly, there came the sharp commands of the trainmen and officers, the gray-coated figures swarmed to the train, wheels began to turn and soon the tracks by the station glared once more in the sun, and the platform was slowly cleared of all save a few stragglers. Musingly, Grayson swung back into the road and onward, his mind baffled by the bewildering paradox. As he drove on, at a quickening pace, the charm of the Rhine valley gripped him as it had done scores of times before. He forgot about the war in the rush of memories that flooded his mind — memories of wonderful student days. Grayson had left an American preparatory school and had gone straight to Heidelberg where he met Carl. The American studied medicine, while his friend took the broad cultural course expected of a German aristocrat. Four years at Heidelberg, two at Vienna and four at Paris, the two friends remained in- separable. They both had independent incomes and both spent their vacations where they pleased. The Rhine valley claimed them oftenest. They had motored and tramped and cycled through it dozens of times. They knew every village beer hall, every market place statue, every inn; and they knew, too, the cool re- treats in the forest, the Rhine castles, and the lacy waterfalls. And now, with every passing mile, came recollections of those days. They brought back to him the Germany he knew — and loved so different from that ghastly monster, now seen by the world through a mist of Belgian blood Again that amazing paradox! Grayson crossed the Belgian border two days later, and stop- ped for dinner at a small inn. His table-mate was a German sol- dier, who was loquacious, and to whom the American listened with a kind of loathing interest. Jabbering aimlessly, the sol- dier led into the following narrative: "War! Humph, how it changes one! You do things that, back there, in peace times, would have made your flesh creep and they only seem to make you smile. "Now, there was something happened to me last week to show you what 1 mean. I was on duty near a small farm, and, about noon, went over to the house to get something to eat. There was no one home, except an old woman, who was just sitting down to sip a bowl of soup. "I speak a little French. I told her what I wanted, and she — 160 IMPROVEMENT ERA cursed me for a German pig, and would give me nothing. I argued with her for a moment and then I lost my temper. "We were standing near the cellar, and the door was open. With one push of my arm I tumbled the old woman backwards, down the steps. She must have fallen fifteen feet. Then I picked up a chair and hurled it after her. That cooled me down, and I ate the soup and everything else I could find." — "And the old woman did you kill her?" Grayson could hardly frame the question. The soldier wiped his lips with the back of his hand, coolly shoved his chair away and arose. "I did not stop to find out," he said, and swaggered out to the street. Cold horror settled at Grayson's heart. There had been some- thing in the athletic swing of the brute's body that had remind- ed him of Carl. Could Carl His mind refused the thought. Sick with disgust, he rose — from the table and came face to face with Fritz Witwe, a farm retainer on the Heilig estate, and just such a kindly old peasant as those he had seen depart on the train. Something in Witwe's face showed Van that he had heard the soldier's narration, but there was no look of repulsion on the German's face; only a haggard melancholy. Anger seized the young American: "Tell me!" he exclaimed roughly. "Are you all getting to be like that?" "Almost," answered Witwe, miserably. "Those Prussians are the worst, but we other Germans learn fast." "Well, what does it?" "Do I know? First of all, of course it is the war. We kill so much that we grow hardened. But that does not explain the cruelty, does it?" He paused, then continued musingly, "I — think it is our officers and then, there is the hate, the black, deadly hate of these Belgians and French. We have wronged them. They loathe us. We feel it. It makes us despise our- selves —and then it makes us angry. We pile wrong upon wrong, and all the time it is our foolish, useless effort to drown our conscience in more and more blood!" He lifted his haggard, sheep's eyes to Grayson: — — "I have not done these things myself yet. But God have mercy — may! I I may!" And so might Carl! From that moment the dread of dis- covering such a change in Heilig never left him. In all his work as a member of the American Relief Commission during the months that followed, he was haunted by the fear that he would DEFEAT 161 be compelled to fasten some of the responsibility for the brutal- ity he encountered upon the head of his beloved friend. One day, word came to the Commission headquarters that the people of a certain town in northern France were in particu- larly desperate straits. Their conquerors had requisitioned most of the food, and disease was adding to their privations. Gray- son and several other workers were sent to the place with medi- cal supplies and food. For two days Grayson worked in the improvised hospital treating the sick and injured. He saw nothing of the town until the press of cases calling for attention slowed up, and he could free himself for a much-needed stroll. Aimlessly wandering, he passed down a rather narrow street whose houses, in true French fashion, were built flush to the sidewalk. He had gone but a short distance when, as he passed before an open window, he heard the cry of a woman: "Non, non, non! It is for my child!" "Give it to me, I tell you!" "Non! It is all I have! Please, please, do not take it!" Grayson thrust his head into the window. On the other side of the room, his back turned, stood a huge German officer, and be- fore him, facing the window, cowered a French woman, one arm clutching a baby to her breast, the other extended behind her, putting a bottle of milk as far out of the reach of the German as possible. There were no more words between the two. With a curse, the German suddenly seized the baby, jerked it from its mother's — — arms and held it high menacingly high in the air. The move- ment brought his face toward the window. "Carl!" The anger on the German's face turned to stupified surprise. Slowly his arm dropped till the child was within easy reach of the mother. In an agony of relief, she snatched it and fled the room. Heilig staggered back against a table and stared at Gray- son, who slowly worked his way through the window into the room. Once fairly on his feet, he stopped, and the two men, who had not been together for more than a year, silently studied each other. Heilig had a brutalized appearance. The athletic litheness His of his powerful form had given way to a burly slump. cheeks sagged, his mouth curled cruelly, and his eyes were heavy and bloodshot. What Heilig saw was an erect, clean built figure, a thin, just such a refined face, and eyes that were clear as sunlight— man as he had been only a few months before. Grayson spoke first: : : — 162 IMPROVEMENT ERA "You would have killed that baby!" — "I I might have." Heilig dropped his eyes, before Gray- son's accusing look. — "You have killed other babies?" Heilig stirred protestingly — "No, no! I'm pretty bad and getting worse. But this is — the nearest to to that, I have come." "Oh, Carl! How could you!" The German clenched his hands, as though in pain. And then he repeated, sombrely, almost mechanically: — "Even you, Carl, can't murder and not be a murderer!" Caution followed swiftly upon the words. He walked first to the street door, then to the open window. Satisfied, he turned to Grayson with a harsh laugh "Men of my command might find treason in those words and others that I want to say to you." He strode to the table, which was flanked by two chairs. "Sit down," he invited court- eously, with a strange return of his old polish. The American obeyed, and the two sat facing each other. Heilig gazed at the American with intent longing: "I am thinking the first decent thoughts that have come into my mind for weeks," he began, slowly. "And doubts, that l*d crushed out months ago, are coming back — doubts about my country in this war. Was she really driven into it? And is she fighting it as she ought? "The second day I landed in Belguim, I had to command a shooting squad. I had to line up ten hostages in a village we bad taken and see that they were shot. It was duty but it— seemed to me altogether too much like murder. "I spent a month in that village. And in that month I learned what a vast, overwhelming, hell-black hate there is now in this world for all things German. I would meet the natives on the street, and not one of them but appeared to know that it was I who had commanded that shooting squad. And though they dared not speak, and cowered before me, in their eyes T could see nothing but pure hate. — "Then I met men of other nations the members of your Commission, for instance. And their silent scorn cut like a knife. "Now, you can't be the object of hate for days and days without hating back. I felt that those Belgians had cause for despising us, but yet I despised them in turn. And when I was — — ordered to deal with them to requisition supplies to superin- — tend deportations I let more and more brutality creep into my acts, until now, all idea of fair play, of justice and pity seems utterly dead. As you see, I was about to murder a baby!" The effect of his words was awful. Something in his manner, ! DEFEAT 163 the result of their meeting, undoubtedly, kept bringing vividly to Grayson's mind the Carl of his student days. And yet his words were fiendish. What a ghastly transformation "I don't understand!" breathed Grayson, shrinking back. "I do!" sharply returned the other. "They've carefully prepared us for this. They kept telling us that we were a su- perior people and that we could and should force our kultur on the rest of the world. In peace times it was only a theory, and therefore made no great mark on us. We were a pretty decent sort— — some of us weren't we, Van?" The pathetic manner of the question made Grayson drop his eyes to shut off the tears. Heilig went on: "But now that the war is on, our training begins to show. Blood, and hate, and our desperate situation make us devils!" — He checked himself aghast. — "What an admission for a German to make!" he exclaimed involuntarily. And then, with a trace of defiance, he continued: "And yet — it is true! "There is another side, of course, the view point which alone keeps a spark of nobility in us. The Fatherland is surrounded by enemies. All that we hold dear is in danger. And so, as loyal Prussians, we fight on, and will continue to fight on. For — there is only one sustaining thought we are going to win the war ?" He struck the table with his fist. Like an echo a thousand times magnified, there came a thunderous crash. Heilig leaped to his feet and gave the table a shove that sent Grayson spin- ning. The movement, well-calculated, threw the American beyond the reach of the falling wall, but the German was not so fortunate. He sank to the floor, crushed beneath a shower of plaster and stone. Grayson had been hurled almost against the opposite wall. Bewildered he pulled himself up by the window sill and looked out. The little street was filled with people gazing upward, and Grayson, his mind clarified by the fresh air, understood at once from whence the bomb had come. Heilig groaned. Grayson made his way through the dusty haze that filled the place and began hurriedly to remove the stones and plaster from the prostrate man. A moment later the woman of the house, still clutching her child, darted across theroom and vanished through the street door. Almost on her heels came Heilig's orderly, who, at Gray- son's command, began helping to liberate his superior, obeying instructions with a bewildered servility. Together the two quickly freed Heilig and gently carried him into the adjoining bedroom, which had remained undam- — 164 IMPROVEMENT ERA aged. Grayson dispatched the orderly to the improvised hos- pital for dressings and an instrument case, while he himself ex- amined his friend's injuries. They were many and serious. A terrible blow on the head which, it afterwards proved, left a blood clot there for several days, and a fractured spine, were the worst. The latter injury, Grayson instantly perceived, was fatal. To dress the cuts and bruises was all that lay in the physician's power. For three days and nights, Grayson gave every hour that he could spare to the man who, by the years of their happy student- hood, and by one final act of unselfish heroism, was eternally bound to him under friendship's law. And during his long vigils, he grieved in a deep silent way, not so much that Death was approaching, but that it had not come sooner, to catch his friend's soul while it was still white and clean. On the fourth night, Heilig lay staring at the ceiling, his eyes glittering strangely in the dull light of a small oil lamp. He had been unconscious but now he seemed to have recovered his mental powers. The few things he had f-aid during the past three or four hours, showed that his mind was clear, though evidently under a terrible strain. On an impulse, Grayson, who was alone with him in the room, arose and went to his bedside. "Is there anything you want?" he asked in German. "Nein." "Are you in pain?" "Nem." "Is there anything you want to say?" Heilig turned his head with some difficulty and looked at his friend unflinchingly: "I am going to die nicht?" Lies at that moment seemed so utterly futile, and Grayson told him the truth. "When?" "Hours or days — don't know," answered the American, I reluctantly. This time the injured man winced. "God send it quickly!" he muttered, in a low tone of an- guish. Grayson knew that paralvsis had set in strongly, and that the torment was not physical. He waited for an explanation. After several minutes of silence, Heilig spoke again: "I have been delirous, haven't I?" "Yes," "Have I much fever now?" "No." : DEFEAT 165 "Am I at all delirious?" "You are quite clear-headed." — "Then then why can't I throw off this hellish nightmare!" he burst out violently. "Tell me what you mean," said Grayson, soothingly. Heilig frowned in an effort to collect his thoughts and the words to express them. Then he began slowly "You remember, the explosion that wrecked the room fol- lowed instantly on my words: 'We are going to win the war!' Well, all through my delirium I have been fighting battles, lead- ing my men through infernal struggles. Each time we seemed winning, when suddenly there would come a tremendous ex- plosion, that would crush me down and leave me writhing help- lessly, while there echoed in my mind with ghastly clearness, just one word: "'Defeat! Defeat! Defeat!' — "I fight off the stupor that follows rush back to the battle- — field — through the air it seems, sometimes and once more lead my men in the charge. And again and again, in the moment of victory, there comes that terrible burst of sound, that overpower- ing weight, and that piercingly clear warning: "'Defeat!'" — Perspiration stood out on his brow in his eyes lurked a terror he could not hide. — "I have no pain, and as for death it has hacked around and over me too many times for me to fear it now! And yet, how I puffer! Clear-headed as I am — I know I am clear-headed the — horror of those nightmares still grips me / am afraid we will not ! win the war! — "What an end what a pitiful end to life! To have given — everything mind, heart, honor, yes, even my soul's salvation, for my country, and then to lie here, helpless, paralysed, with my — mind twisted and racked by that tormenting doubt and death just creeping, dragging itself to my relief!" Tremors of emotion shook him, and he had no strength to check them. Only a new turn of his anguish could do that; for suddenly another thought struck his mind and that shocked him back to a terrified composure: "Tell me! Tell me quick!" he gasped. "That word— defeat- it always seemed spoken in your tongue. It has ?— — ' Grayson drew back, amazed at the startling coincidence. In a tone of wonderment, he answered slowly: — — — "Yes yes. Even my land America is now against you!" It was then Death struck. With one look of bitter hopeless- ness, Heilig slowly crumpled back upon the bed.