A Journalist's Diplomatic Mission: Ray Stannard Baker's World War I Diary

7. I Meet a Saint

40 7 I Meet a Saint and Attend a Great Prayer of the People for Victory. MARCH 26 The ominous battle on the French front is still going on, and the Germans are still surging forward with their great war machine, making from four to six miles a day. There seems no way of stopping them. A sober tone here in the press. Joined Karl Walter about 6 o’clock and met Thomas Burke, that excellent writer of Limehouse Nights. A small, quiet, dark-eyed, black-haired young man who says little. He is helping Walter with his publicity work; says that he cannot write fiction while the war is going on. Walter took me to visit Mr. C. H. Grinling, who lives in Woolwich in the midst of a vast forgotten population of more or less depressed working men. He inherited a considerable fortune (his father, I believe, was a brewer), went to Oxford and took orders later, was associated at the very earliest in the Toynbee Hall movement, was indeed the first man to sleep in the Toynbee Hall buildings. He has been in Woolwich for thirty years, serving every kind of democratic cause without salary of any kind. He lives with the severity and simplicity of a monk. There is a quaint little garden behind the house with rock-fringed beds, an old cedar tree, and vines along the wall. He has all sorts of scholarly and scientific interests; keeps a barometric diagram and notes the ranges of temperature; is a keen botanist and zoologist; has portraits of the great democrats of the world around him: Mazzini, Whitman, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Edward Carpenter, William Morris, and Prince Kropotkin. A striking portrait of Dante. Was most interesting on Mazzini. Kropotkin he knew well. Keir Hardie60 he loved. He has toiled all 60. James Keir Hardie (1856–1915) was a prominent and charismatic Labour Party member I Meet a Saint | 41 the years to inspire the “first principles,” the “faith” of democracy, in the great crowded districts around him. He has the manner of a priest, and the eyes and lips of a saint. He told me at length of the labor situation in England and of the democratic revolt from the old, hard, red-tape trade unionism. It was a fine human experience for me. I would rather any day meet such a man than to meet the King—for I believe him to be more useful. MARCH 27 The war news is a little more hopeful. The German advance has apparently been checked, but great anxiety still prevails. The British people are suffering, as I have learned in my visits to some of the most depressed of the working-class neighborhoods, but they are keeping quiet about it. Thousands of wounded are pouring into London. It will be a bitter business when the losses are known, bitterer still, probably, for the Germans. If only more of our Americans were here! We need them now. I never thought I should rejoice tales of slaughter; but I am glad, these days, when I hear that the losses of the Germans are great, that they are being bloodily met. It is not the only way. The papers this morning bring the accounts of the enormous activities of America, especially the shipbuilding activities that will place America more firmly than ever in the lead of the world. What we need is a comprehension of these vast potentialities, not for our own ease and security, but for the good of humanity. Platitudes, yes! But never so necessary as now. I am impressed in traveling about London, how everything must have stopped instantly when the war began. Great half-finished buildings are to be seen in many places, their scaffolding standing bare and smoke-blackened above the ragged walls. In some cases in the heart of the city, partly finished buildings have been roofed over and are now in use. In the parks and around Whitehall many temporary war structures are everywhere. MARCH 28 The battle news is bad again. Yesterday there was a feeling that the worst was over, and that French, British, and American reserves would turn the of Parliament from Scotland known for his work on behalf of the poor and for his opposition to the war. 42 | Reporting on Public Opinion in Great Britain, France, and Italy tide. Where are they? The Germans have bitten deeper into...