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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12454-0.txt b/12454-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cae845e --- /dev/null +++ b/12454-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1878 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12454 *** + +FRANCE AT WAR +On the Frontier of Civilization + +BY +RUDYARD KIPLING + + +1915 + + + + +CONTENTS + +Poem: France +I. On the Frontier of Civilization +II. The Nation's Spirit and a New Inheritance +III. Battle Spectacle and a Review +IV. The Spirit of the People +V. Life in Trenches on the Mountain Side +VI. The Common Task of a Great People + + + +FRANCE AT WAR +On the Frontier of Civilization + + +FRANCE* +BY RUDYARD KIPLING + +_Broke to every known mischance, lifted over + all +By the light sane joy of life, the buckler of + the Gaul, +Furious in luxury, merciless in toil, +Terrible with strength that draws from her + tireless soil, +Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of + men's mind, +First to follow truth and last to leave old + truths behind-- +France beloved of every soul that loves its + fellow-kind._ + +Ere our birth (rememberest thou?) side + by side we lay +Fretting in the womb of Rome to begin + the fray. +Ere men knew our tongues apart, our one + taste was known-- +Each must mould the other's fate as he + wrought his own. +To this end we stirred mankind till all + earth was ours, +Till our world-end strifes began wayside + thrones and powers, +Puppets that we made or broke to bar + the other's path-- +Necessary, outpost folk, hirelings of our + wrath. +To this end we stormed the seas, tack for + tack, and burst +Through the doorways of new worlds, + doubtful which was first. +Hand on hilt (rememberest thou?), ready + for the blow. +Sure whatever else we met we should + meet our foe. +Spurred or baulked at ev'ry stride by the + other's strength, +So we rode the ages down and every ocean's + length; +Where did you refrain from us or we + refrain from you? +Ask the wave that has not watched war + between us two. +Others held us for a while, but with + weaker charms, +These we quitted at the call for each + other's arms. +Eager toward the known delight, equally + we strove, +Each the other's mystery, terror, need, + and love. +To each other's open court with our + proofs we came, +Where could we find honour else or men + to test the claim? +From each other's throat we wrenched + valour's last reward, +That extorted word of praise gasped + 'twixt lunge and guard. +In each other's cup we poured mingled + blood and tears, +Brutal joys, unmeasured hopes, + intolerable fears, +All that soiled or salted life for a thousand + years. +Proved beyond the need of proof, matched + in every clime, +O companion, we have lived greatly + through all time: +Yoked in knowledge and remorse now we + come to rest, +Laughing at old villainies that time has + turned to jest, +Pardoning old necessity no pardon can + efface-- +That undying sin we shared in Rouen + market-place. +Now we watch the new years shape, + wondering if they hold +Fiercer lighting in their hearts than we + launched of old. +Now we hear new voices rise, question, + boast or gird, +As we raged (rememberest thou?) when + our crowds were stirred. +Now we count new keels afloat, and new + hosts on land, +Massed liked ours (rememberest thou?) + when our strokes were planned. +We were schooled for dear life sake, to + know each other's blade: +What can blood and iron make more than + we have made? +We have learned by keenest use to know + each other's mind: +What shall blood and iron loose that we + cannot bind? +We who swept each other's coast, sacked + each other's home, +Since the sword of Brennus clashed on + the scales at Rome, +Listen, court and close again, wheeling + girth to girth, +In the strained and bloodless guard set + for peace on earth. + +_Broke to every known mischance, lifted over + all +By the light sane joy of life, the buckler of + the Gaul, +Furious in luxury, merciless in toil, +Terrible with strength renewed from a + tireless soil, +Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of + men's mind, +First to follow truth and last to leave old + truths behind, +France beloved of every soul that loves or + serves its kind._ + +*First published June 24, 1913. + + + +I + +ON THE FRONTIER OF CIVILIZATION + + +"It's a pretty park," said the French artillery officer. +"We've done a lot for it since the owner left. I hope he'll +appreciate it when he comes back." + +The car traversed a winding drive through woods, between banks +embellished with little chalets of a rustic nature. At first, +the chalets stood their full height above ground, suggesting +tea-gardens in England. Further on they sank into the earth +till, at the top of the ascent, only their solid brown roofs +showed. Torn branches drooping across the driveway, with here +and there a scorched patch of undergrowth, explained the +reason of their modesty. + +The chateau that commanded these glories of forest and park +sat boldly on a terrace. There was nothing wrong with it +except, if one looked closely, a few scratches or dints on its +white stone walls, or a neatly drilled hole under a flight of +steps. One such hole ended in an unexploded shell. "Yes," +said the officer. "They arrive here occasionally." + +Something bellowed across the folds of the wooded hills; +something grunted in reply. Something passed overhead, +querulously but not without dignity. Two clear fresh barks +joined the chorus, and a man moved lazily in the direction of +the guns. + +"Well. Suppose we come and look at things a little," said the +commanding officer. + +AN OBSERVATION POST + +There was a specimen tree--a tree worthy of such a park--the +sort of tree visitors are always taken to admire. A ladder +ran up it to a platform. What little wind there was swayed +the tall top, and the ladder creaked like a ship's gangway. A +telephone bell tinkled 50 foot overhead. Two invisible guns +spoke fervently for half a minute, and broke off like terriers +choked on a leash. We climbed till the topmost platform +swayed sicklily beneath us. Here one found a rustic shelter, +always of the tea-garden pattern, a table, a map, and a little +window wreathed with living branches that gave one the first +view of the Devil and all his works. It was a stretch of open +country, with a few sticks like old tooth-brushes which had +once been trees round a farm. The rest was yellow grass, +barren to all appearance as the veldt. + +"The grass is yellow because they have used gas here," said an +officer. "Their trenches are------. You can see for +yourself." + +The guns in the woods began again. They seemed to have no +relation to the regularly spaced bursts of smoke along a +little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away--no +connection at all with the strong voices overhead coming and +going. It was as impersonal as the drive of the sea along a +breakwater. + +Thus it went: a pause--a gathering of sound like the race of +an incoming wave; then the high-flung heads of breakers +spouting white up the face of a groyne. Suddenly, a seventh +wave broke and spread the shape of its foam like a plume +overtopping all the others. + +"That's one of our torpilleurs--what you call +trench-sweepers," said the observer among the whispering leaves. + +Some one crossed the platform to consult the map with its +ranges. A blistering outbreak of white smokes rose a little +beyond the large plume. It was as though the tide had struck +a reef out yonder. + +Then a new voice of tremendous volume lifted itself out of a +lull that followed. Somebody laughed. Evidently the voice +was known. + +"That is not for us," a gunner said. "They are being waked up +from------" he named a distant French position. "So and so is +attending to them there. We go on with our usual work. Look! +Another torpilleur." + +"THE BARBARIAN" + +Again a big plume rose; and again the lighter shells broke at +their appointed distance beyond it. The smoke died away on +that stretch of trench, as the foam of a swell dies in the +angle of a harbour wall, and broke out afresh half a mile +lower down. In its apparent laziness, in its awful +deliberation, and its quick spasms of wrath, it was more like +the work of waves than of men; and our high platform's gentle +sway and glide was exactly the motion of a ship drifting with +us toward that shore. + +"The usual work. Only the usual work," the officer explained. +"Sometimes it is here. Sometimes above or below us. I have +been here since May." + +A little sunshine flooded the stricken landscape and made its +chemical yellow look more foul. A detachment of men moved out +on a road which ran toward the French trenches, and then +vanished at the foot of a little rise. Other men appeared +moving toward us with that concentration of purpose and +bearing shown in both Armies when--dinner is at hand. They +looked like people who had been digging hard. + +"The same work. Always the same work!" the officer said. +"And you could walk from here to the sea or to Switzerland in +that ditch--and you'll find the same work going on everywhere. +It isn't war." + +"It's better than that," said another. "It's the eating-up of +a people. They come and they fill the trenches and they die, +and they die; and they send more and _those_ die. We do the +same, of course, but--look!" + +He pointed to the large deliberate smoke-heads renewing +themselves along that yellowed beach. "That is the frontier +of civilization. They have all civilization against them +--those brutes yonder. It's not the local victories of the old +wars that we're after. It's the barbarian--all the barbarian. +Now, you've seen the whole thing in little. Come and look at +our children." + +SOLDIERS IN CAVES + +We left that tall tree whose fruits are death ripened and +distributed at the tingle of small bells. The observer +returned to his maps and calculations; the telephone-boy +stiffened up beside his exchange as the amateurs went out of +his life. Some one called down through the branches to ask +who was attending to--Belial, let us say, for I could not +catch the gun's name. It seemed to belong to that terrific +new voice which had lifted itself for the second or third +time. It appeared from the reply that if Belial talked too +long he would be dealt with from another point miles away. + +The troops we came down to see were at rest in a chain of +caves which had begun life as quarries and had been fitted up +by the army for its own uses. There were underground +corridors, ante-chambers, rotundas, and ventilating shafts +with a bewildering play of cross lights, so that wherever you +looked you saw Goya's pictures of men-at-arms. + +Every soldier has some of the old maid in him, and rejoices in +all the gadgets and devices of his own invention. Death and +wounding come by nature, but to lie dry, sleep soft, and keep +yourself clean by forethought and contrivance is art, and in +all things the Frenchman is gloriously an artist. + +Moreover, the French officers seem as mother-keen on their men +as their men are brother-fond of them. Maybe the possessive +form of address: "Mon general," "mon capitaine," helps the +idea, which our men cloke in other and curter phrases. And +those soldiers, like ours, had been welded for months in one +furnace. As an officer said: "Half our orders now need not +be given. Experience makes us think together." I believe, +too, that if a French private has an idea--and they are full +of ideas--it reaches his C. 0. quicker than it does with us. + +THE SENTINEL HOUNDS + +The overwhelming impression was the brilliant health and +vitality of these men and the quality of their breeding. They +bore themselves with swing and rampant delight in life, while +their voices as they talked in the side-caverns among the +stands of arms were the controlled voices of civilization. +Yet, as the lights pierced the gloom they looked like bandits +dividing the spoil. One picture, though far from war, stays +with me. A perfectly built, dark-skinned young giant had +peeled himself out of his blue coat and had brought it down +with a swish upon the shoulder of a half-stripped comrade who +was kneeling at his feet with some footgear. They stood +against a background of semi-luminous blue haze, through which +glimmered a pile of coppery straw half covered by a red +blanket. By divine accident of light and pose it St. Martin +giving his cloak to the beggar. There were scores of pictures +in these galleries--notably a rock-hewn chapel where the red +of the cross on the rough canvas altar-cloth glowed like a +ruby. Further inside the caves we found a row of little +rock-cut kennels, each inhabited by one wise, silent dog. +Their duties begin in at night with the sentinels and +listening-posts. "And believe me," a proud instructor, "my +fellow here knows the difference between the noise of our shells +and the Boche shells." + +When we came out into the open again there were good +opportunities for this study. Voices and wings met and passed +in the air, and, perhaps, one strong young tree had not been +bending quite so far across the picturesque park-drive when we +first went that way. + +"Oh, yes," said an officer, "shells have to fall somewhere, +and," he added with fine toleration, "it is, after all, +against us that the Boche directs them. But come you and look +at my dug-out. It's the most superior of all possible +dug-outs." + +"No. Come and look at our mess. It's the Ritz of these +parts." And they joyously told how they had got, or procured, +the various fittings and elegancies, while hands stretched out +of the gloom to shake, and men nodded welcome and greeting all +through that cheery brotherhood in the woods. + +WORK IN THE FIELDS + +The voices and the wings were still busy after lunch, when the +car slipped past the tea-houses in the drive, and came into a +country where women and children worked among the crops. +There were large raw shell holes by the wayside or in the +midst of fields, and often a cottage or a villa had been +smashed as a bonnet-box is smashed by an umbrella. That must +be part of Belial's work when he bellows so truculently among +the hills to the north. + +We were looking for a town that lives under shell-fire. The +regular road to it was reported unhealthy--not that the women +and children seemed to care. We took byways of which certain +exposed heights and corners were lightly blinded by +wind-brakes of dried tree-tops. Here the shell holes were rather +thick on the ground. But the women and the children and the +old men went on with their work with the cattle and the crops; +and where a house had been broken by shells the rubbish was +collected in a neat pile, and where a room or two still +remained usable, it was inhabited, and the tattered +window-curtains fluttered as proudly as any flag. And time was +when I used to denounce young France because it tried to kill +itself beneath my car wheels; and the fat old women who +crossed roads without warning; and the specially deaf old men +who slept in carts on the wrong side of the road! Now, I +could take off my hat to every single soul of them, but that +one cannot traverse a whole land bareheaded. The nearer we +came to our town the fewer were the people, till at last we +halted in a well-built suburb of paved streets where there was +no life at all. . . . + +A WRECKED TOWN + +The stillness was as terrible as the spread of the quick busy +weeds between the paving-stones; the air smelt of pounded +mortar and crushed stone; the sound of a footfall echoed like +the drop of a pebble in a well. At first the horror of +wrecked apartment-houses and big shops laid open makes one +waste energy in anger. It is not seemly that rooms should be +torn out of the sides of buildings as one tears the soft heart +out of English bread; that villa roofs should lie across iron +gates of private garages, or that drawing-room doors should +flap alone and disconnected between two emptinesses of twisted +girders. The eye wearies of the repeated pattern that burst +shells make on stone walls, as the mouth sickens of the taste +of mortar and charred timber. One quarter of the place had +been shelled nearly level; the facades of the houses stood +doorless, roofless, and windowless like stage scenery. This +was near the cathedral, which is always a favourite mark for +the heathen. They had gashed and ripped the sides of the +cathedral itself, so that the birds flew in and out at will; +they had smashed holes in the roof; knocked huge cantles out +of the buttresses, and pitted and starred the paved square +outside. They were at work, too, that very afternoon, though +I do not think the cathedral was their objective for the +moment. We walked to and fro in the silence of the streets +and beneath the whirring wings overhead. Presently, a young +woman, keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. An old woman +opened a shutter (how it jarred!), and spoke to her. The +silence closed again, but it seemed to me that I heard a sound +of singing--the sort of chant one hears in nightmare-cities of +voices crying from underground. + +IN THE CATHEDRAL + +"Nonsense," said an officer. "Who should be singing here?" +We circled the cathedral again, and saw what pavement-stones +can do against their own city, when the shell jerks them +upward. But there _was_ singing after all--on the other side +of a little door in the flank of the cathedral. We looked in, +doubting, and saw at least a hundred folk, mostly women, who +knelt before the altar of an unwrecked chapel. We withdrew +quietly from that holy ground, and it was not only the eyes of +the French officers that filled with tears. Then there came +an old, old thing with a prayer-book in her hand, pattering +across the square, evidently late for service. + +"And who are those women?" I asked. + +"Some are caretakers; people who have still little shops here. +(There is one quarter where you can buy things.) There are +many old people, too, who will not go away. They are of the +place, you see." + +"And this bombardment happens often?" I said. + +"It happens always. Would you like to look at the railway +station? Of course, it has not been so bombarded as the +cathedral." + +We went through the gross nakedness of streets without people, +till we reached the railway station, which was very fairly +knocked about, but, as my friends said, nothing like as much +as the cathedral. Then we had to cross the end of a long +street down which the Boche could see clearly. As one glanced +up it, one perceived how the weeds, to whom men's war is the +truce of God, had come back and were well established the +whole length of it, watched by the long perspective of open, +empty windows. + + + +II + +THE NATION'S SPIRIT AND A NEW INHERITANCE + + +We left that stricken but undefeated town, dodged a few miles +down the roads beside which the women tended their cows, and +dropped into a place on a hill where a Moroccan regiment of +many experiences was in billets. + +They were Mohammedans bafflingly like half a dozen of our +Indian frontier types, though they spoke no accessible tongue. +They had, of course, turned the farm buildings where they lay +into a little bit of Africa in colour and smell. They had +been gassed in the north; shot over and shot down, and set up +to be shelled again; and their officers talked of North +African wars that we had never heard of--sultry days against +long odds in the desert years ago. "Afterward--is it not so +with you also?--we get our best recruits from the tribes we +have fought. These men are children. They make no trouble. +They only want to go where cartridges are burnt. They are of +the few races to whom fighting is a pleasure." + +"And how long have you dealt with them?" + +"A long time--a long time. I helped to organize the corps. I +am one of those whose heart is in Africa." He spoke slowly, +almost feeling for his French words, and gave some order. I +shall not forget his eyes as he turned to a huge, brown, +Afreedee-like Mussulman hunkering down beside his +accoutrements. He had two sides to his head, that bearded, +burned, slow-spoken officer, met and parted with in an hour. + +The day closed--(after an amazing interlude in the chateau of +a dream, which was all glassy ponds, stately trees, and vistas +of white and gold saloons. The proprietor was somebody's +chauffeur at the front, and we drank to his excellent health) +--at a little village in a twilight full of the petrol of many +cars and the wholesome flavour of healthy troops. There is no +better guide to camp than one's own thoughtful nose; and +though I poked mine everywhere, in no place then or later did +it strike that vile betraying taint of underfed, unclean men. +And the same with the horses. + +THE LINE THAT NEVER SLEEPS + +It is difficult to keep an edge after hours of fresh air and +experiences; so one does not get the most from the most +interesting part of the day--the dinner with the local +headquarters. Here the professionals meet--the Line, the +Gunners, the Intelligence with stupefying photo-plans of the +enemy's trenches; the Supply; the Staff, who collect and note +all things, and are very properly chaffed; and, be sure, the +Interpreter, who, by force of questioning prisoners, naturally +develops into a Sadducee. It is their little asides to each +other, the slang, and the half-words which, if one understood, +instead of blinking drowsily at one's plate, would give the +day's history in little. But tire and the difficulties of a +sister (not a foreign) tongue cloud everything, and one goes +to billets amid a murmur of voices, the rush of single cars +through the night, the passage of battalions, and behind it +all, the echo of the deep voices calling one to the other, +along the line that never sleeps. + +. . . . . . . + +The ridge with the scattered pines might have hidden children +at play. Certainly a horse would have been quite visible, but +there was no hint of guns, except a semaphore which announced +it was forbidden to pass that way, as the battery was firing. +The Boches must have looked for that battery, too. The ground +was pitted with shell holes of all calibres--some of them as +fresh as mole-casts in the misty damp morning; others where +the poppies had grown from seed to flower all through the +summer. + +"And where are the guns?" I demanded at last. + +They were almost under one's hand, their ammunition in cellars +and dug-outs beside them. As far as one can make out, the 75 +gun has no pet name. The bayonet is Rosalie the virgin of +Bayonne, but the 75, the watchful nurse of the trenches and +little sister of the Line, seems to be always "soixante- +quinze." Even those who love her best do not insist that she +is beautiful. Her merits are French--logic, directness, +simplicity, and the supreme gift of "occasionality." She is +equal to everything on the spur of the moment. One sees and +studies the few appliances which make her do what she does, +and one feels that any one could have invented her. + +FAMOUS FRENCH 75's + +"As a matter of fact," says a commandant, "anybody--or, +rather, everybody did. The general idea is after such-and-such +system, the patent of which had expired, and we improved +it; the breech action, with slight modification, is somebody +else's; the sighting is perhaps a little special; and so is +the traversing, but, at bottom, it is only an assembly of +variations and arrangements." + +That, of course, is all that Shakespeare ever got out of the +alphabet. The French Artillery make their own guns as he made +his plays. It is just as simple as that. + +"There is nothing going on for the moment; it's too misty," +said the Commandant. (I fancy that the Boche, being, as a +rule methodical, amateurs are introduced to batteries in the +Boche's intervals. At least, there are hours healthy and +unhealthy which vary with each position.) "But," the +Commandant reflected a moment, "there is a place--and a +distance. Let us say . . . " He gave a range. + +The gun-servers stood back with the bored contempt of the +professional for the layman who intrudes on his mysteries. +Other civilians had come that way before--had seen, and +grinned, and complimented and gone their way, leaving the +gunners high up on the bleak hillside to grill or mildew or +freeze for weeks and months. Then she spoke. Her voice was +higher pitched, it seemed, than ours--with a more shrewish +tang to the speeding shell. Her recoil was as swift and as +graceful as the shrug of a French-woman's shoulders; the empty +case leaped forth and clanged against the trail; the tops of +two or three pines fifty yards away nodded knowingly to each +other, though there was no wind. + +"They'll be bothered down below to know the meaning of our +single shot. We don't give them one dose at a time as a +rule," somebody laughed. + +We waited in the fragrant silence. Nothing came back from the +mist that clogged the lower grounds, though no shell of this +war was ever launched with more earnest prayers that it might +do hurt. + +Then they talked about the lives of guns; what number of +rounds some will stand and others will not; how soon one can +make two good guns out of three spoilt ones, and what crazy +luck sometimes goes with a single shot or a blind salvo. + +LESSON FROM THE "BOCHE" + +A shell must fall somewhere, and by the law of averages +occasionally lights straight as a homing pigeon on the one +spot where it can wreck most. Then earth opens for yards +around, and men must be dug out,--some merely breathless, who +shake their ears, swear, and carry on, and others whose souls +have gone loose among terrors. These have to be dealt with as +their psychology demands, and the French officer is a good +psychologist. One of them said: "Our national psychology has +changed. I do not recognize it myself." + +"What made the change?" + +"The Boche. If he had been quiet for another twenty years the +world must have been his--rotten, but all his. Now he is +saving the world." + +"How?" + +"Because he has shown us what Evil is. We--you and I, England +and the rest--had begun to doubt the existence of Evil. The +Boche is saving us." + +Then we had another look at the animal in its trench--a little +nearer this time than before, and quieter on account of the +mist. Pick up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find +the same observation-post, table, map, observer, and +telephonist; the same always-hidden, always-ready guns; and +same vexed foreshore of trenches, smoking and shaking from +Switzerland to the sea. The handling of the war varies with +the nature of the country, but the tools are unaltered. One +looks upon them at last with the same weariness of wonder as +the eye receives from endless repetitions of Egyptian +hieroglyphics. A long, low profile, with a lump to one side, +means the field-gun and its attendant ammunition-case; a +circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a +bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the +great guns of position, coming and going on their motors, +repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue +smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or +watching and running among all these terrific symbols. + +TRAGEDY OF RHEIMS + +But there is no hieroglyphic for Rheims, no blunting of the +mind at the abominations committed on the cathedral there. +The thing peers upward, maimed and blinded, from out of the +utter wreckage of the Archbishop's palace on the one side and +dust-heaps of crumbled houses on the other. They shelled, as +they still shell it, with high explosives and with incendiary +shells, so that the statues and the stonework in places are +burned the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed; +statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; +windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one +looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement, +and yet it had never more of a soul than it has to-day. + +Inside--("Cover yourselves, gentlemen," said the sacristan, +"this place is no longer consecrated")--everything is swept +clear or burned out from end to end, except two candlesticks +in front of the niche where Joan of Arc's image used to stand. +There is a French flag there now. [And the last time I saw +Rheims Cathedral was in a spring twilight, when the great west +window glowed, and the only lights within were those of +candles which some penitent English had lit in Joan's honour +on those same candlesticks.] The high altar was covered with +floor-carpets; the pavement tiles were cracked and jarred out +by the rubbish that had fallen from above, the floor was +gritty with dust of glass and powdered stone, little twists of +leading from the windows, and iron fragments. Two great doors +had been blown inwards by the blast of a shell in the +Archbishop's garden, till they had bent grotesquely to the +curve of a cask. There they had jammed. The windows--but the +record has been made, and will be kept by better hands than +mine. It will last through the generation in which the Teuton +is cut off from the fellowship of mankind--all the long, still +years when this war of the body is at an end, and the real war +begins. Rheims is but one of the altars which the heathen +have put up to commemorate their own death throughout all the +world. It will serve. There is a mark, well known by now, +which they have left for a visible seal of their doom. When +they first set the place alight some hundreds of their wounded +were being tended in the Cathedral. The French saved as many +as they could, but some had to be left. Among them was a +major, who lay with his back against a pillar. It has been +ordained that the signs of his torments should remain--an +outline of both legs and half a body, printed in greasy black +upon the stones. There are very many people who hope and pray +that the sign will be respected at least by our children's +children. + +IRON NERVE AND FAITH + +And, in the meantime, Rheims goes about what business it may +have with that iron nerve and endurance and faith which is the +new inheritance of France. There is agony enough when the big +shells come in; there is pain and terror among the people; and +always fresh desecration to watch and suffer. The old men and +the women and the children drink of that cup daily, and yet +the bitterness does not enter into their souls. Mere words of +admiration are impertinent, but the exquisite quality of the +French soul has been the marvel to me throughout. They say +themselves, when they talk: "We did not know what our nation +was. Frankly, we did not expect it ourselves. But the thing +came, and--you see, we go on." + +Or as a woman put it more logically, "What else can we do? +Remember, _we_ knew the Boche in '70 when _you_ did not. We +know what he has done in the last year. This is not war. It +is against wild beasts that we fight. There is no arrangement +possible with wild beasts." This is the one vital point which +we in England _must_ realize. We are dealing with animals who +have scientifically and philosophically removed themselves +inconceivably outside civilization. When you have heard a +few--only a few--tales of their doings, you begin to +understand a little. When you have seen Rheims, you +understand a little more. When you have looked long enough at +the faces of the women, you are inclined to think that the +women will have a large say in the final judgment. They have +earned it a thousand times. + + + + +III + +BATTLE SPECTACLE AND A REVIEW + +Travelling with two chauffeurs is not the luxury it looks; +since there is only one of you and there is always another of +those iron men to relieve the wheel. Nor can I decide whether +an ex-professor of the German tongue, or an ex-roadracer who +has lived six years abroad, or a Marechal des Logis, or a +Brigadier makes the most thrusting driver through three-mile +stretches of military traffic repeated at half-hour intervals. +Sometimes it was motor-ambulances strung all along a level; or +supply; or those eternal big guns coming round corners with +trees chained on their long backs to puzzle aeroplanes, and +their leafy, big-shell limbers snorting behind them. In the +rare breathing-spaces men with rollers and road metal attacked +the road. In peace the roads of France, thanks to the motor, +were none too good. In war they stand the incessant traffic +far better than they did with the tourist. My impression +--after some seven hundred miles printed off on me at between 60 +and 70 kilometres--was of uniform excellence. Nor did I come +upon any smashes or breakdowns in that distance, and they were +certainly trying them hard. Nor, which is the greater marvel, +did _we_ kill anybody; though we did miracles down the streets +to avoid babes, kittens, and chickens. The land is used to +every detail of war, and to its grime and horror and +make-shifts, but also to war's unbounded courtesy, kindness, +and long-suffering, and the gaiety that comes, thank God, to +balance overwhelming material loss. + +FARM LIFE AMIDST WAR + +There was a village that had been stamped flat, till it looked +older than Pompeii. There were not three roofs left, nor one +whole house. In most places you saw straight into the +cellars. The hops were ripe in the grave-dotted fields round +about. They had been brought in and piled in the nearest +outline of a dwelling. Women sat on chairs on the pavement, +picking the good-smelling bundles. When they had finished +one, they reached back and pulled out another through the +window-hole behind them, talking and laughing the while. A +cart had to be maneuvered out of what had been a farmyard, to +take the hops to market. A thick, broad, fair-haired wench, +of the sort that Millet drew, flung all her weight on a spoke +and brought the cart forward into the street. Then she shook +herself, and, hands on hips, danced a little defiant jig in +her sabots as she went back to get the horse. Another girl +came across a bridge. She was precisely of the opposite type, +slender, creamy-skinned, and delicate-featured. She carried a +brand-new broom over her shoulder through that desolation, and +bore herself with the pride and grace of Queen Iseult. + +The farm-girl came out leading the horse, and as the two young +things passed they nodded and smiled at each other, with the +delicate tangle of the hop-vines at their feet. + +The guns spoke earnestly in the north. That was the Argonne, +where the Crown Prince was busily getting rid of a few +thousands of his father's faithful subjects in order to secure +himself the reversion of his father's throne. No man likes +losing his job, and when at long last the inner history of +this war comes to be written, we may find that the people we +mistook for principals and prime agents were only average +incompetents moving all Hell to avoid dismissal. (For it is +absolutely true that when a man sells his soul to the devil he +does it for the price of half nothing.) + +WATCHING THE GUN-FIRE + +It must have been a hot fight. A village, wrecked as is usual +along this line, opened on it from a hillside that overlooked +an Italian landscape of carefully drawn hills studded with +small villages--a plain with a road and a river in the +foreground, and an all-revealing afternoon light upon +everything. The hills smoked and shook and bellowed. An +observation-balloon climbed up to see; while an aeroplane +which had nothing to do with the strife, but was merely +training a beginner, ducked and swooped on the edge of the +plain. Two rose-pink pillars of crumbled masonry, guarding +some carefully trimmed evergreens on a lawn half buried in +rubbish, represented an hotel where the Crown Prince had once +stayed. All up the hillside to our right the foundations of +houses lay out, like a bit of tripe, with the sunshine in +their square hollows. Suddenly a band began to play up the +hill among some trees; and an officer of local Guards in the +new steel anti-shrapnel helmet, which is like the seventeenth +century sallet, suggested that we should climb and get a +better view. He was a kindly man, and in speaking English had +discovered (as I do when speaking French) that it is simpler +to stick to one gender. His choice was the feminine, and the +Boche described as "she" throughout made me think better of +myself, which is the essence of friendship. We climbed a +flight of old stone steps, for generations the playground of +little children, and found a ruined church, and a battalion in +billets, recreating themselves with excellent music and a +little horseplay on the outer edge of the crowd. The trouble +in the hills was none of their business for that day. + +Still higher up, on a narrow path among the trees, stood a +priest and three or four officers. They watched the battle +and claimed the great bursts of smoke for one side or the +other, at the same time as they kept an eye on the flickering +aeroplane. "Ours," they said, half under their breath. +"Theirs." "No, not ours that one--theirs! . . . That fool +is banking too steep . . . That's Boche shrapnel. They +always burst it high. That's our big gun behind that outer +hill . . . He'll drop his machine in the street if he +doesn't take care . . . There goes a trench-sweeper. +Those last two were theirs, but _that_"--it was a full roar +--"was ours." + +BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES + +The valley held and increased the sounds till they seemed to +hit our hillside like a sea. + +A change of light showed a village, exquisitely pencilled atop +of a hill, with reddish haze at its feet. + +"What is that place?" I asked. + +The priest replied in a voice as deep as an organ: "That is +Saint------ It is in the Boche lines. Its condition is +pitiable." + +The thunders and the smokes rolled up and diminished and +renewed themselves, but the small children romped up and down +the old stone steps; the beginner's aeroplane unsteadily +chased its own shadow over the fields; and the soldiers in +billet asked the band for their favourite tunes. + +Said the lieutenant of local Guards as the cars went on: +"She--play--Tipperary." + +And she did--to an accompaniment of heavy pieces in the hills, +which followed us into a town all ringed with enormous +searchlights, French and Boche together, scowling at each +other beneath the stars. + +. . . . + +It happened about that time that Lord Kitchener with General +Joffre reviewed a French Army Corps. + +We came on it in a vast dip of ground under grey clouds, as +one comes suddenly on water; for it lay out in misty blue +lakes of men mixed with darker patches, like osiers and +undergrowth, of guns, horses, and wagons. A straight road cut +the landscape in two along its murmuring front. + +VETERANS OF THE WAR + +It was as though Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth, not in +orderly furrows but broadcast, till, horrified by what arose, +he had emptied out the whole bag and fled. But these were no +new warriors. The record of their mere pitched battles would +have satiated a Napoleon. Their regiments and batteries had +learnt to achieve the impossible as a matter of routine, and +in twelve months they had scarcely for a week lost direct +contact with death. We went down the line and looked into the +eyes of those men with the used bayonets and rifles; the packs +that could almost stow themselves on the shoulders that would +be strange without them; at the splashed guns on their +repaired wheels, and the easy-working limbers. One could feel +the strength and power of the mass as one feels the flush of +heat from off a sunbaked wall. When the Generals' cars +arrived there, there was no loud word or galloping about. The +lakes of men gathered into straight-edged battalions; the +batteries aligned a little; a squadron reined back or spurred +up; but it was all as swiftly smooth as the certainty with +which a man used to the pistol draws and levels it at the +required moment. A few peasant women saw the Generals alight. +The aeroplanes, which had been skimming low as swallows along +the front of the line (theirs must have been a superb view) +ascended leisurely, and "waited on" like hawks. Then followed +the inspection, and one saw the two figures, tall and short, +growing smaller side by side along the white road, till far +off among the cavalry they entered their cars again, and moved +along the horizon to another rise of grey-green plain. + +"The army will move across where you are standing. Get to a +flank," some one said. + +AN ARMY IN MOTION + +We were no more than well clear of that immobile host when it +all surged forward, headed by massed bands playing a tune that +sounded like the very pulse of France. + +The two Generals, with their Staff, and the French Minister +for War, were on foot near a patch of very green lucerne. +They made about twenty figures in all. The cars were little +grey blocks against the grey skyline. There was nothing else +in all that great plain except the army; no sound but the +changing notes of the aeroplanes and the blunted impression, +rather than noise, of feet of men on soft ground. They came +over a slight ridge, so that one saw the curve of it first +furred, then grassed, with the tips of bayonets, which +immediately grew to full height, and then, beneath them, +poured the wonderful infantry. The speed, the thrust, the +drive of that broad blue mass was like a tide-race up an arm +of the sea; and how such speed could go with such weight, and +how such weight could be in itself so absolutely under +control, filled one with terror. All the while, the band, on +a far headland, was telling them and telling them (as if they +did not know!) of the passion and gaiety and high heart of +their own land in the speech that only they could fully +understand. (To hear the music of a country is like hearing a +woman think aloud.) + +"What _is_ the tune?" I asked of an officer beside me. + +"My faith, I can't recall for the moment. I've marched to it +often enough, though. 'Sambre-et-Meuse,' perhaps. Look! +There goes my battalion! Those Chasseurs yonder." + +_He_ knew, of course; but what could a stranger identify in +that earth-shaking passage of thirty thousand? + +ARTILLERY AND CAVALRY + +The note behind the ridge changed to something deeper. + +"Ah! Our guns," said an artillery officer, and smiled +tolerantly on the last blue waves of the Line already beating +toward the horizon. + +They came twelve abreast--one hundred and fifty guns free for +the moment to take the air in company, behind their teams. +And next week would see them, hidden singly or in lurking +confederacies, by mountain and marsh and forest, or the +wrecked habitations of men--where? + +The big guns followed them, with that long-nosed air of +detachment peculiar to the breed. The Gunner at my side made +no comment. He was content to let his Arm speak for itself, +but when one big gun in a sticky place fell out of alignment +for an instant I saw his eyebrows contract. The artillery +passed on with the same inhuman speed and silence as the Line; +and the Cavalry's shattering trumpets closed it all. + +They are like our Cavalry in that their horses are in high +condition, and they talk hopefully of getting past the barbed +wire one of these days and coming into their own. Meantime, +they are employed on "various work as requisite," and they all +sympathize with our rough-rider of Dragoons who flatly refused +to take off his spurs in the trenches. If he had to die as a +damned infantryman, he wasn't going to be buried as such. A +troop-horse of a flanking squadron decided that he had had +enough of war, and jibbed like Lot's wife. His rider (we all +watched him) ranged about till he found a stick, which he +used, but without effect. Then he got off and led the horse, +which was evidently what the brute wanted, for when the man +remounted the jibbing began again. The last we saw of him was +one immensely lonely figure leading one bad but happy horse +across an absolutely empty world. Think of his reception--the +sole man of 40,000 who had fallen out! + +THE BOCHE AS MR. SMITH + +The Commander of that Army Corps came up to salute. The cars +went away with the Generals and the Minister for War; the Army +passed out of sight over the ridges to the north; the peasant +women stooped again to their work in the fields, and wet mist +shut down on all the plain; but one tingled with the +electricity that had passed. Now one knows what the +solidarity of civilization means. Later on the civilized +nations will know more, and will wonder and laugh together at +their old blindness. When Lord Kitchener went down the line, +before the march past, they say that he stopped to speak to a +General who had been Marchand's Chief of Staff at the time of +Fashoda. And Fashoda was one of several cases when +civilization was very nearly maneuvered into fighting with +itself "for the King of Prussia," as the saying goes. The +all-embracing vileness of the Boche is best realized from +French soil, where they have had large experience of it. "And +yet," as some one observed, "we ought to have known that a +race who have brought anonymous letter-writing to its highest +pitch in their own dirty Court affairs would certainly use the +same methods in their foreign politics. _Why_ didn't we +realize?" + +"For the same reason," another responded, "that society did +not realize that the late Mr. Smith, of your England, who +married three wives, bought baths in advance for each of them, +and, when they had left him all their money, drowned them one +by one." + +"And were the baths by any chance called Denmark, Austria, and +France in 1870?" a third asked. + +"No, they were respectable British tubs. But until Mr. Smith +had drowned his third wife people didn't get suspicious. They +argued that 'men don't do such things.' That sentiment is the +criminal's best protection." + + + + +IV + +THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE + + +We passed into the zone of another army and a hillier country, +where the border villages lay more sheltered. Here and there +a town and the fields round it gave us a glimpse of the +furious industry with which France makes and handles material +and troops. With her, as with us, the wounded officer of +experience goes back to the drill-ground to train the new +levies. But it was always the little crowded, defiant +villages, and the civil population waiting unweariedly and +cheerfully on the unwearied, cheerful army, that went closest +to the heart. Take these pictures, caught almost anywhere +during a journey: A knot of little children in difficulties +with the village water-tap or high-handled pump. A soldier, +bearded and fatherly, or young and slim and therefore rather +shy of the big girls' chaff, comes forward and lifts the pail +or swings the handle. His reward, from the smallest babe +swung high in air, or, if he is an older man, pressed against +his knees, is a kiss. Then nobody laughs. + +Or a fat old lady making oration against some wicked young +soldiers who, she says, know what has happened to a certain +bottle of wine. "And I meant it for all--yes, for all of you +--this evening, instead of the thieves who stole it. Yes, I +tell you--stole it!" The whole street hears her; so does the +officer, who pretends not to, and the amused half-battalion up +the road. The young men express penitence; she growls like a +thunderstorm, but, softening at last, cuffs and drives them +affectionately before her. They are all one family. + +Or a girl at work with horses in a ploughed field that is +dotted with graves. The machine must avoid each sacred plot. +So, hands on the plough-stilts, her hair flying forward, she +shouts and wrenches till her little brother runs up and swings +the team out of the furrow. Every aspect and detail of life +in France seems overlaid with a smooth patina of +long-continued war--everything except the spirit of the people, +and that is as fresh and glorious as the sight of their own land +in sunshine. + +A CITY AND WOMAN + +We found a city among hills which knew itself to be a prize +greatly coveted by the Kaiser. For, truly, it was a pleasant, +a desirable, and an insolent city. Its streets were full of +life; it boasted an establishment almost as big as Harrod's +and full of buyers, and its women dressed and shod themselves +with care and grace, as befits ladies who, at any time, may be +ripped into rags by bombs from aeroplanes. And there was +another city whose population seemed to be all soldiers in +training; and yet another given up to big guns and ammunition +--an extraordinary sight. + +After that, we came to a little town of pale stone which an +Army had made its headquarters. It looked like a plain woman +who had fainted in public. It had rejoiced in many public +institutions that were turned into hospitals and offices; the +wounded limped its wide, dusty streets, detachments of +Infantry went through it swiftly; and utterly bored +motor-lorries cruised up and down roaring, I suppose, for +something to look at or to talk to. In the centre of it I found +one Janny, or rather his marble bust, brooding over a minute +iron-railed garden of half-dried asters opposite a shut-up +school, which it appeared from the inscription Janny had founded +somewhere in the arid Thirties. It was precisely the sort of +school that Janny, by the look of him, would have invented. Not +even French adaptability could make anything of it. So Janny +had his school, with a faint perfume of varnish, all to himself +in a hot stillness of used-up air and little whirls of dust. +And because that town seemed so barren, I met there a French +General whom I would have gone very far to have encountered. +He, like the others, had created and tempered an army for +certain work in a certain place, and its hand had been heavy on +the Boche. We talked of what the French woman was, and had +done, and was doing, and extolled her for her goodness and her +faith and her splendid courage. When we parted, I went back and +made my profoundest apologies to Janny, who must have had a +mother. The pale, overwhelmed town did not now any longer +resemble a woman who had fainted, but one who must endure in +public all manner of private woe and still, with hands that +never cease working, keeps her soul and is cleanly strong for +herself and for her men. + +FRENCH OFFICERS + +The guns began to speak again among the hills that we dived +into; the air grew chillier as we climbed; forest and wet +rocks closed round us in the mist, to the sound of waters +trickling alongside; there was a tang of wet fern, cut pine, +and the first breath of autumn when the road entered a tunnel +and a new world--Alsace. + +Said the Governor of those parts thoughtfully: "The main +thing was to get those factory chimneys smoking again." (They +were doing so in little flats and villages all along.) "You +won't see any girls, because they're at work in the textile +factories. Yes, it isn't a bad country for summer hotels, but +I'm afraid it won't do for winter sports. We've only a metre +of snow, and it doesn't lie, except when you are hauling guns +up mountains. Then, of course, it drifts and freezes like +Davos. That's our new railway below there. Pity it's too +misty to see the view." + +But for his medals, there was nothing in the Governor to show +that he was not English. He might have come straight from an +Indian frontier command. + +One notices this approximation of type in the higher ranks, +and many of the juniors are cut out of the very same cloth as +ours. They get whatever fun may be going: their performances +are as incredible and outrageous as the language in which they +describe them afterward is bald, but convincing, and--I +overheard the tail-end of a yarn told by a child of twenty to +some other babes. It was veiled in the obscurity of the +French tongue, and the points were lost in shouts of laughter +--but I imagine the subaltern among his equals displays just as +much reverence for his elders and betters as our own boys do. +The epilogue, at least, was as old as both Armies: + +"And what did he say then?" + +"Oh, the usual thing. He held his breath till I thought he'd +burst. Then he damned me in heaps, and I took good care to +keep out of his sight till next day." + +But officially and in the high social atmosphere of +Headquarters their manners and their meekness are of the most +admirable. There they attend devoutly on the wisdom of their +seniors, who treat them, so it seemed, with affectionate +confidence. + +FRONT THAT NEVER SLEEPS + +When the day's reports are in, all along the front, there is a +man, expert in the meaning of things, who boils them down for +that cold official digest which tells us that "There was the +usual grenade fighting at------. We made appreciable advance +at------," &c. The original material comes in sheaves and +sheaves, where individual character and temperament have full +and amusing play. It is reduced for domestic consumption like +an overwhelming electric current. Otherwise we could not take +it in. But at closer range one realizes that the Front never +sleeps; never ceases from trying new ideas and weapons which, +so soon as the Boche thinks he has mastered them, are +discarded for newer annoyances and bewilderments. + +"The Boche is above all things observant and imitative," said +one who counted quite a few Boches dead on the front of his +sector. "When you present him with a new idea, he thinks it +over for a day or two. Then he presents his riposte." + +"Yes, my General. That was exactly what he did to me when I +--did so and so. He was quite silent for a day. Then--he stole +my patent." + +"And you?" + +"I had a notion that he'd do that, so I had changed the +specification." + +Thus spoke the Staff, and so it is among the junior commands, +down to the semi-isolated posts where boy-Napoleons live on +their own, through unbelievable adventures. They are +inventive young devils, these veterans of 21, possessed of the +single ideal--to kill--which they follow with men as +single-minded as themselves. Battlefield tactics do not exist; +when a whole nation goes to ground there can be none of the +"victories" of the old bookish days. But there is always the +killing--the well-schemed smashing of a full trench, the rushing +out and the mowing down of its occupants; the unsuspicious +battalion far in the rear, located after two nights' extreme +risk alone among rubbish of masonry, and wiped out as it eats or +washes itself; and, more rarely, the body to body encounter with +animals removed from the protection of their machinery, when the +bayonets get their chance. The Boche does not at all like +meeting men whose womenfolk he has dishonoured or mutilated, or +used as a protection against bullets. It is not that these men +are angry or violent. They do not waste time in that way. They +kill him. + +THE BUSINESS OF WAR + +The French are less reticent than we about atrocities +committed by the Boche, because those atrocities form part of +their lives. They are not tucked away in reports of +Commissions, and vaguely referred to as "too awful." Later +on, perhaps, we shall be unreserved in our turn. But they do +not talk of them with any babbling heat or bleat or make funny +little appeals to a "public opinion" that, like the Boche, has +gone underground. It occurs to me that this must be because +every Frenchman has his place and his chance, direct or +indirect, to diminish the number of Boches still alive. +Whether he lies out in a sandwich of damp earth, or sweats the +big guns up the crests behind the trees, or brings the fat, +loaded barges into the very heart of the city, where the +shell-wagons wait, or spends his last crippled years at the +harvest, he is doing his work to that end. + +If he is a civilian he may--as he does--say things about his +Government, which, after all, is very like other popular +governments. (A lifetime spent in watching how the cat jumps +does not make lion-tamers.) But there is very little human +rubbish knocking about France to hinder work or darken +counsel. Above all, there is a thing called the Honour of +Civilization, to which France is attached. The meanest man +feels that he, in his place, is permitted to help uphold it, +and, I think, bears himself, therefore, with new dignity. + +A CONTRAST IN TYPES + +This is written in a garden of smooth turf, under a copper +beech, beside a glassy mill-stream, where soldiers of Alpine +regiments are writing letters home, while the guns shout up +and down the narrow valleys. + +A great wolf-hound, who considers himself in charge of the +old-fashioned farmhouse, cannot understand why his master, +aged six, should be sitting on the knees of the Marechal des +Logis, the iron man who drives the big car. + +"But you _are_ French, little one?" says the giant, with a +yearning arm round the child. + +"Yes," very slowly mouthing the French words; "I--can't +--speak--French--but--I--am--French." + +The small face disappears in the big beard. + +Somehow, I can't imagine the Marechal des Logis killing +babies--even if his superior officer, now sketching the scene, +were to order him! + +. . . . . . . + +The great building must once have been a monastery. Twilight +softened its gaunt wings, in an angle of which were collected +fifty prisoners, picked up among the hills behind the mists. + +They stood in some sort of military formation preparatory to +being marched off. They were dressed in khaki, the colour of +gassed grass, that might have belonged to any army. Two wore +spectacles, and I counted eight faces of the fifty which were +asymmetrical--out of drawing on one side. + +"Some of their later drafts give us that type," said the +Interpreter. One of them had been wounded in the head and +roughly bandaged. The others seemed all sound. Most of them +looked at nothing, but several were vividly alive with terror +that cannot keep the eyelids still, and a few wavered on the +grey edge of collapse. + +They were the breed which, at the word of command, had stolen +out to drown women and children; had raped women in the +streets at the word of command; and, always at the word of +command, had sprayed petrol, or squirted flame; or defiled the +property and persons of their captives. They stood there +outside all humanity. Yet they were made in the likeness of +humanity. One realized it with a shock when the bandaged +creature began to shiver, and they shuffled off in response to +the orders of civilized men. + + + + +V + +LIFE IN TRENCHES ON THE MOUNTAIN SIDE + + +Very early in the morning I met Alan Breck, with a half-healed +bullet-scrape across the bridge of his nose, and an Alpine cap +over one ear. His people a few hundred years ago had been +Scotch. He bore a Scotch name, and still recognized the head +of his clan, but his French occasionally ran into German +words, for he was an Alsatian on one side. + +"This," he explained, "is the very best country in the world +to fight in. It's picturesque and full of cover. I'm a +gunner. I've been here for months. It's lovely." + +It might have been the hills under Mussoorie, and what our +cars expected to do in it I could not understand. But the +demon-driver who had been a road-racer took the 70 h.p. +Mercedes and threaded the narrow valleys, as well as +occasional half-Swiss villages full of Alpine troops, at a +restrained thirty miles an hour. He shot up a new-made road, +more like Mussoorie than ever, and did not fall down the +hillside even once. An ammunition-mule of a mountain-battery +met him at a tight corner, and began to climb a tree. + +"See! There isn't another place in France where that could +happen," said Alan. "I tell you, this is a magnificent +country." + +The mule was hauled down by his tail before he had reached the +lower branches, and went on through the woods, his +ammunition-boxes jinking on his back, for all the world as +though he were rejoining his battery at Jutogh. One expected to +meet the little Hill people bent under their loads under the +forest gloom. The light, the colour, the smell of wood smoke, +pine-needles, wet earth, and warm mule were all Himalayan. Only +the Mercedes was violently and loudly a stranger. + +"Halt!" said Alan at last, when she had done everything except +imitate the mule. + +"The road continues," said the demon-driver seductively. + +"Yes, but they will hear you if you go on. Stop and wait. +We've a mountain battery to look at." + +They were not at work for the moment, and the Commandant, a +grim and forceful man, showed me some details of their +construction. When we left them in their bower--it looked +like a Hill priest's wayside shrine--we heard them singing +through the steep-descending pines. They, too, like the 75's, +seem to have no pet name in the service. + +It was a poisonously blind country. The woods blocked all +sense of direction above and around. The ground was at any +angle you please, and all sounds were split up and muddled by +the tree-trunks, which acted as silencers. High above us the +respectable, all-concealing forest had turned into sparse, +ghastly blue sticks of timber--an assembly of leper-trees +round a bald mountain top. "That's where we're going," said +Alan. "Isn't it an adorable country?" + +TRENCHES + +A machine-gun loosed a few shots in the fumbling style of her +kind when they feel for an opening. A couple of rifle shots +answered. They might have been half a mile away or a hundred +yards below. An adorable country! We climbed up till we +found once again a complete tea-garden of little sunk houses, +almost invisible in the brown-pink recesses of the thick +forest. Here the trenches began, and with them for the next +few hours life in two dimensions--length and breadth. You +could have eaten your dinner almost anywhere off the swept dry +ground, for the steep slopes favoured draining, there was no +lack of timber, and there was unlimited labour. It had made +neat double-length dug-outs where the wounded could be laid in +during their passage down the mountain side; well-tended +occasional latrines properly limed; dug-outs for sleeping and +eating; overhead protections and tool-sheds where needed, and, +as one came nearer the working face, very clever cellars +against trench-sweepers. Men passed on their business; a +squad with a captured machine-gun which they tested in a +sheltered dip; armourers at their benches busy with sick +rifles; fatigue-parties for straw, rations, and ammunition; +long processions of single blue figures turned sideways +between the brown sunless walls. One understood after a while +the nightmare that lays hold of trench-stale men, when the +dreamer wanders for ever in those blind mazes till, after +centuries of agonizing flight, he finds himself stumbling out +again into the white blaze and horror of the mined front--he +who thought he had almost reached home! + +IN THE FRONT LINE + +There were no trees above us now. Their trunks lay along the +edge of the trench, built in with stones, where necessary, or +sometimes overhanging it in ragged splinters or bushy tops. +Bits of cloth, not French, showed, too, in the uneven lines of +debris at the trench lip, and some thoughtful soul had marked +an unexploded Boche trench-sweeper as "not to be touched." It +was a young lawyer from Paris who pointed that out to me. + +We met the Colonel at the head of an indescribable pit of +ruin, full of sunshine, whose steps ran down a very steep +hillside under the lee of an almost vertically plunging +parapet. To the left of that parapet the whole hillside was +one gruel of smashed trees, split stones, and powdered soil. +It might have been a rag-picker's dump-heap on a colossal +scale. + +Alan looked at it critically. I think he had helped to make +it not long before. + +"We're on the top of the hill now, and the Boches are below +us," said he. "We gave them a very fair sickener lately." + +"This," said the Colonel, "is the front line." + +There were overhead guards against hand-bombs which disposed +me to believe him, but what convinced me most was a corporal +urging us in whispers not to talk so loud. The men were at +dinner, and a good smell of food filled the trench. This was +the first smell I had encountered in my long travels uphill--a +mixed, entirely wholesome flavour of stew, leather, earth, and +rifle-oil. + +FRONT LINE PROFESSIONALS + +A proportion of men were standing to arms while others ate; +but dinner-time is slack time, even among animals, and it was +close on noon. + +"The Boches got _their_ soup a few days ago," some one +whispered. I thought of the pulverized hillside, and hoped it +had been hot enough. + +We edged along the still trench, where the soldiers stared, +with justified contempt, I thought, upon the civilian who +scuttled through their life for a few emotional minutes in +order to make words out of their blood. Somehow it reminded +me of coming in late to a play and incommoding a long line of +packed stalls. The whispered dialogue was much the same: +"Pardon!" "I beg your pardon, monsieur." "To the right, +monsieur." "If monsieur will lower his head." "One sees best +from here, monsieur," and so on. It was their day and +night-long business, carried through without display or heat, or +doubt or indecision. Those who worked, worked; those off duty, +not five feet behind them in the dug-outs, were deep in their +papers, or their meals or their letters; while death stood ready +at every minute to drop down into the narrow cut from out of the +narrow strip of unconcerned sky. And for the better part of a +week one had skirted hundreds of miles of such a frieze! + +The loopholes not in use were plugged rather like +old-fashioned hives. Said the Colonel, removing a plug: +"Here are the Boches. Look, and you'll see their sandbags." +Through the jumble of riven trees and stones one saw what +might have been a bit of green sacking. "They're about seven +metres distant just here," the Colonel went on. That was +true, too. We entered a little fortalice with a cannon in it, +in an embrasure which at that moment struck me as +unnecessarily vast, even though it was partly closed by a +frail packing-case lid. The Colonel sat him down in front of +it, and explained the theory of this sort of redoubt. "By the +way," he said to the gunner at last, "can't you find something +better than _that?"_ He twitched the lid aside. "I think +it's too light. Get a log of wood or something." + +HANDY TRENCH-SWEEPERS + +I loved that Colonel! He knew his men and he knew the Boches +--had them marked down like birds. When he said they were +beside dead trees or behind boulders, sure enough there they +were! But, as I have said, the dinner-hour is always slack, +and even when we came to a place where a section of trench had +been bashed open by trench-sweepers, and it was recommended to +duck and hurry, nothing much happened. The uncanny thing was +the absence of movement in the Boche trenches. Sometimes one +imagined that one smelt strange tobacco, or heard a rifle-bolt +working after a shot. Otherwise they were as still as pig at +noonday. + +We held on through the maze, past trench-sweepers of a handy +light pattern, with their screw-tailed charge all ready; and a +grave or so; and when I came on men who merely stood within +easy reach of their rifles, I knew I was in the second line. +When they lay frankly at ease in their dug-outs, I knew it was +the third. A shot-gun would have sprinkled all three. + +"No flat plains," said Alan. "No hunting for gun positions +--the hills are full of them--and the trenches close together +and commanding each other. You see what a beautiful country +it is." + +The Colonel confirmed this, but from another point of view. +War was his business, as the still woods could testify--but +his hobby was his trenches. He had tapped the mountain +streams and dug out a laundry where a man could wash his shirt +and go up and be killed in it, all in a morning; had drained +the trenches till a muddy stretch in them was an offence; and +at the bottom of the hill (it looked like a hydropathic +establishment on the stage) he had created baths where half a +battalion at a time could wash. He never told me how all that +country had been fought over as fiercely as Ypres in the West; +nor what blood had gone down the valleys before his trenches +pushed over the scalped mountain top. No. He sketched out +new endeavours in earth and stones and trees for the comfort +of his men on that populous mountain. + +And there came a priest, who was a sub-lieutenant, out of a +wood of snuff-brown shadows and half-veiled trunks. Would it +please me to look at a chapel? It was all open to the +hillside, most tenderly and devoutly done in rustic work with +reedings of peeled branches and panels of moss and thatch--St. +Hubert's own shrine. I saw the hunters who passed before it, +going to the chase on the far side of the mountain where their +game lay. + +. . . . . . . + +A BOMBARDED TOWN + +Alan carried me off to tea the same evening in a town where he +seemed to know everybody. He had spent the afternoon on +another mountain top, inspecting gun positions; whereby he had +been shelled a little--_marmite_ is the slang for it. There +had been no serious _marmitage,_ and he had spotted a Boche +position which was _marmitable._ + +"And we may get shelled now," he added, hopefully. "They +shell this town whenever they think of it. Perhaps they'll +shell us at tea." + +It was a quaintly beautiful little place, with its mixture of +French and German ideas; its old bridge and gentle-minded +river, between the cultivated hills. The sand-bagged cellar +doors, the ruined houses, and the holes in the pavement looked +as unreal as the violences of a cinema against that soft and +simple setting. The people were abroad in the streets, and +the little children were playing. A big shell gives notice +enough for one to get to shelter, if the shelter is near +enough. That appears to be as much as any one expects in the +world where one is shelled, and that world has settled down to +it. People's lips are a little firmer, the modelling of the +brows is a little more pronounced, and, maybe, there is a +change in the expression of the eyes; but nothing that a +casual afternoon caller need particularly notice. + +CASES FOR HOSPITAL + +The house where we took tea was the "big house" of the place, +old and massive, a treasure house of ancient furniture. It +had everything that the moderate heart of man could desire +--gardens, garages, outbuildings, and the air of peace that goes +with beauty in age. It stood over a high cellarage, and +opposite the cellar door was a brand-new blindage of earth +packed between timbers. The cellar was a hospital, with its +beds and stores, and under the electric light the orderly +waited ready for the cases to be carried down out of the +streets. + +"Yes, they are all civil cases," said he. + +They come without much warning--a woman gashed by falling +timber; a child with its temple crushed by a flying stone; an +urgent amputation case, and so on. One never knows. +Bombardment, the Boche text-books say, "is designed to terrify +the civil population so that they may put pressure on their +politicians to conclude peace." In real life, men are very +rarely soothed by the sight of their women being tortured. + +We took tea in the hall upstairs, with a propriety and an +interchange of compliments that suited the little occasion. +There was no attempt to disguise the existence of a +bombardment, but it was not allowed to overweigh talk of +lighter matters. I know one guest who sat through it as near +as might be inarticulate with wonder. But he was English, and +when Alan asked him whether he had enjoyed himself, he said: +"Oh, yes. Thank you very much." + +"Nice people, aren't they?" Alan went on. + +"Oh, very nice. And--and such good tea." + +He managed to convey a few of his sentiments to Alan after +dinner. + +"But what else could the people have done?" said he. "They +are French." + + + + +VI + +THE COMMON TASK OF A GREAT PEOPLE + + +"This is the end of the line," said the Staff Officer, kindest +and most patient of chaperons. It buttressed itself on a +fortress among hills. Beyond that, the silence was more awful +than the mixed noise of business to the westward. In mileage +on the map the line must be between four and five hundred +miles; in actual trench-work many times that distance. It is +too much to see at full length; the mind does not readily +break away from the obsession of its entirety or the grip of +its detail. One visualizes the thing afterwards as a +white-hot gash, worming all across France between intolerable +sounds and lights, under ceaseless blasts of whirled dirt. Nor +is it any relief to lose oneself among wildernesses of piling, +stoning, timbering, concreting, and wire-work, or incalculable +quantities of soil thrown up raw to the light and cloaked by the +changing seasons--as the unburied dead are cloaked. + +Yet there are no words to give the essential simplicity of it. +It is the rampart put up by Man against the Beast, precisely +as in the Stone Age. If it goes, all that keeps us from the +Beast goes with it. One sees this at the front as clearly as +one sees the French villages behind the German lines. +Sometimes people steal away from them and bring word of what +they endure. + +Where the rifle and the bayonet serve, men use those tools +along the front. Where the knife gives better results, they +go in behind the hand-grenades with the naked twelve-inch +knife. Each race is supposed to fight in its own way, but +this war has passed beyond all the known ways. They say that +the Belgians in the north settle accounts with a certain dry +passion which has varied very little since their agony began. +Some sections of the English line have produced a soft-voiced, +rather reserved type, which does its work with its mouth shut. +The French carry an edge to their fighting, a precision, and a +dreadful knowledge coupled with an insensibility to shock, +unlike anything one has imagined of mankind. To be sure, +there has never been like provocation, for never since the +Aesir went about to bind the Fenris Wolf has all the world +united to bind the Beast. + +The last I saw of the front was Alan Breck speeding back to +his gun-positions among the mountains; and I wondered what +delight of what household the lad must have been in the old +days. + +SUPPORTS AND RESERVES + +Then we had to work our way, department by department, against +the tides of men behind the line--supports and their supports, +reserves and reserves of reserves, as well as the masses in +training. They flooded towns and villages, and when we tried +short-cuts we found them in every by-lane. Have you seen +mounted men reading their home letters with the reins thrown +on the horses' necks, moving in absorbed silence through a +street which almost said "Hush!" to its dogs; or met, in a +forest, a procession of perfectly new big guns, apparently +taking themselves from the foundry to the front? + +In spite of their love of drama, there is not much +"window-dressing" in the French character. The Boche, who is +the priest of the Higher Counter-jumpery, would have had half +the neutral Press out in cars to advertise these vast spectacles +of men and material. But the same instinct as makes their rich +farmers keep to their smocks makes the French keep quiet. + +"This is our affair," they argue. "Everybody concerned is +taking part in it. Like the review you saw the other day, +there are no spectators." + +"But it might be of advantage if the world knew." + +Mine was a foolish remark. There is only one world to-day, +the world of the Allies. Each of them knows what the others +are doing and--the rest doesn't matter. This is a curious but +delightful fact to realize at first hand. And think what it +will be later, when we shall all circulate among each other +and open our hearts and talk it over in a brotherhood more +intimate than the ties of blood! + +I lay that night at a little French town, and was kept awake +by a man, somewhere in the hot, still darkness, howling aloud +from the pain of his wounds. I was glad that he was alone, +for when one man gives way the others sometimes follow. Yet +the single note of misery was worse than the baying and +gulping of a whole ward. I wished that a delegation of +strikers could have heard it. + +. . . . . . . + +That a civilian should be in the war zone at all is a fair +guarantee of his good faith. It is when he is outside the +zone unchaperoned that questions begin, and the permits are +looked into. If these are irregular--but one doesn't care to +contemplate it. If regular, there are still a few +counter-checks. As the sergeant at the railway station said +when he helped us out of an impasse: "You will realize that it +is the most undesirable persons whose papers are of the most +regular. It is their business you see. The Commissary of Police +is at the Hotel de Ville, if you will come along for the little +formality. Myself, I used to keep a shop in Paris. My God, +these provincial towns are desolating!" + +PARIS--AND NO FOREIGNERS + +He would have loved his Paris as we found it. Life was +renewing itself in the streets, whose drawing and proportion +one could never notice before. People's eyes, and the women's +especially, seemed to be set to a longer range, a more +comprehensive gaze. One would have said they came from the +sea or the mountains, where things are few and simple, rather +than from houses. Best of all, there were no foreigners--the +beloved city for the first time was French throughout from end +to end. It felt like coming back to an old friend's house for +a quiet talk after he had got rid of a houseful of visitors. +The functionaries and police had dropped their masks of +official politeness, and were just friendly. At the hotels, +so like school two days before the term begins, the impersonal +valet, the chambermaid of the set two-franc smile, and the +unbending head-waiter had given place to one's own brothers +and sisters, full of one's own anxieties. "My son is an +aviator, monsieur. I could have claimed Italian nationality +for him at the beginning, but he would not have it." . . . +"Both my brothers, monsieur, are at the war. One is dead +already. And my fiance, I have not heard from him since +March. He is cook in a battalion." . . . "Here is the +wine-list, monsieur. Yes, both my sons and a nephew, and--I +have no news of them, not a word of news. My God, we all +suffer these days." And so, too, among the shops--the mere +statement of the loss or the grief at the heart, but never a +word of doubt, never a whimper of despair. + +"Now why," asked a shopkeeper, "does not our Government, or +your Government, or both our Governments, send some of the +British Army to Paris? I assure you we should make them +welcome." + +"Perhaps," I began, "you might make them too welcome." + +He laughed. "We should make them as welcome as our own army. +They would enjoy themselves." I had a vision of British +officers, each with ninety days' pay to his credit, and a +damsel or two at home, shopping consumedly. + +"And also," said the shopkeeper, "the moral effect on Paris to +see more of your troops would be very good." + +But I saw a quite English Provost-Marshal losing himself in +chase of defaulters of the New Army who knew their Paris! +Still, there is something to be said for the idea--to the +extent of a virtuous brigade or so. At present, the English +officer in Paris is a scarce bird, and he explains at once why +he is and what he is doing there. He must have good reasons. +I suggested teeth to an acquaintance. "No good," he grumbled. +"They've thought of that, too. Behind our lines is simply +crawling with dentists now!" + +A PEOPLE TRANSFIGURED + +If one asked after the people that gave dinners and dances +last year, where every one talked so brilliantly of such vital +things, one got in return the addresses of hospitals. Those +pleasant hostesses and maidens seemed to be in charge of +departments or on duty in wards, or kitchens, or sculleries. +Some of the hospitals were in Paris. (Their staffs might have +one hour a day in which to see visitors.) Others were up the +line, and liable to be shelled or bombed. + +I recalled one Frenchwoman in particular, because she had once +explained to me the necessities of civilized life. These +included a masseuse, a manicurist, and a maid to look after +the lapdogs. She is employed now, and has been for months +past, on the disinfection and repair of soldiers' clothes. +There was no need to ask after the men one had known. Still, +there was no sense of desolation. They had gone on; the +others were getting ready. + +All France works outward to the Front--precisely as an endless +chain of fire-buckets works toward the conflagration. Leave +the fire behind you and go back till you reach the source of +supplies. You will find no break, no pause, no apparent +haste, but never any slackening. Everybody has his or her +bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be +used. It is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition +of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard +labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training, +and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance. + +You know, when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom +till then we conceived we knew, how the man's nature sometimes +changes past knowledge or belief. He who was altogether such +an one as ourselves goes forward simply, even lightly, to +heights we thought unattainable. Though he is the very same +comrade that lived our small life with us, yet in all things +he has become great. So it is with France to-day. She has +discovered the measure of her soul. + +THE NEW WAR + +One sees this not alone in the--it is more than contempt of +death--in the godlike preoccupation of her people under arms +which makes them put death out of the account, but in the +equal passion and fervour with which her people throughout +give themselves to the smallest as well as the greatest tasks +that may in any way serve their sword. I might tell you +something that I saw of the cleaning out of certain latrines; +of the education and antecedents of the cleaners; what they +said in the matter and how perfectly the work was done. There +was a little Rabelais in it, naturally, but the rest was pure +devotion, rejoicing to be of use. + +Similarly with stables, barricades, and barbed-wire work, the +clearing and piling away of wrecked house-rubbish, the serving +of meals till the service rocks on its poor tired feet, but +keeps its temper; and all the unlovely, monotonous details +that go with war. + +The women, as I have tried to show, work stride for stride +with the men, with hearts as resolute and a spirit that has +little mercy for short-comings. A woman takes her place +wherever she can relieve a man--in the shop, at the posts, on +the tramways, the hotels, and a thousand other businesses. +She is inured to field-work, and half the harvest of France +this year lies in her lap. One feels at every turn how her +men trust her. She knows, for she shares everything with her +world, what has befallen her sisters who are now in German +hands, and her soul is the undying flame behind the men's +steel. Neither men nor women have any illusion as to miracles +presently to be performed which shall "sweep out" or "drive +back" the Boche. Since the Army is the Nation, they know +much, though they are officially told little. They all +recognize that the old-fashioned "victory" of the past is +almost as obsolete as a rifle in a front-line trench. They +all accept the new war, which means grinding down and wearing +out the enemy by every means and plan and device that can be +compassed. It is slow and expensive, but as deadly sure as +the logic that leads them to make it their one work, their +sole thought, their single preoccupation. + +A NATION'S CONFIDENCE + +The same logic saves them a vast amount of energy. They knew +Germany in '70, when the world would not believe in their +knowledge; they knew the German mind before the war; they know +what she has done (they have photographs) during this war. +They do not fall into spasms of horror and indignation over +atrocities "that cannot be mentioned," as the English papers +say. They mention them in full and book them to the account. +They do not discuss, nor consider, nor waste an emotion over +anything that Germany says or boasts or argues or implies or +intrigues after. They have the heart's ease that comes from +all being at work for their country; the knowledge that the +burden of work is equally distributed among all; the certainty +that the women are working side by side with the men; the +assurance that when one man's task is at the moment ended, +another takes his place. + +Out of these things is born their power of recuperation in +their leisure; their reasoned calm while at work; and their +superb confidence in their arms. Even if France of to-day +stood alone against the world's enemy, it would be almost +inconceivable to imagine her defeat now; wholly so to imagine +any surrender. The war will go on till the enemy is finished. +The French do not know when that hour will come; they seldom +speak of it; they do not amuse themselves with dreams of +triumphs or terms. Their business is war, and they do their +business. + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of France At War, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12454 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: France At War + On the Frontier of Civilization + +Author: Rudyard Kipling + +Release Date: May 27, 2004 [EBook #12454] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AT WAR *** + + + + +Produced by David S. Miller + + + + +FRANCE AT WAR +On the Frontier of Civilization + +BY +RUDYARD KIPLING + + +1915 + + + + +CONTENTS + +Poem: France +I. On the Frontier of Civilization +II. The Nation's Spirit and a New Inheritance +III. Battle Spectacle and a Review +IV. The Spirit of the People +V. Life in Trenches on the Mountain Side +VI. The Common Task of a Great People + + + +FRANCE AT WAR +On the Frontier of Civilization + + +FRANCE* +BY RUDYARD KIPLING + +_Broke to every known mischance, lifted over + all +By the light sane joy of life, the buckler of + the Gaul, +Furious in luxury, merciless in toil, +Terrible with strength that draws from her + tireless soil, +Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of + men's mind, +First to follow truth and last to leave old + truths behind-- +France beloved of every soul that loves its + fellow-kind._ + +Ere our birth (rememberest thou?) side + by side we lay +Fretting in the womb of Rome to begin + the fray. +Ere men knew our tongues apart, our one + taste was known-- +Each must mould the other's fate as he + wrought his own. +To this end we stirred mankind till all + earth was ours, +Till our world-end strifes began wayside + thrones and powers, +Puppets that we made or broke to bar + the other's path-- +Necessary, outpost folk, hirelings of our + wrath. +To this end we stormed the seas, tack for + tack, and burst +Through the doorways of new worlds, + doubtful which was first. +Hand on hilt (rememberest thou?), ready + for the blow. +Sure whatever else we met we should + meet our foe. +Spurred or baulked at ev'ry stride by the + other's strength, +So we rode the ages down and every ocean's + length; +Where did you refrain from us or we + refrain from you? +Ask the wave that has not watched war + between us two. +Others held us for a while, but with + weaker charms, +These we quitted at the call for each + other's arms. +Eager toward the known delight, equally + we strove, +Each the other's mystery, terror, need, + and love. +To each other's open court with our + proofs we came, +Where could we find honour else or men + to test the claim? +From each other's throat we wrenched + valour's last reward, +That extorted word of praise gasped + 'twixt lunge and guard. +In each other's cup we poured mingled + blood and tears, +Brutal joys, unmeasured hopes, + intolerable fears, +All that soiled or salted life for a thousand + years. +Proved beyond the need of proof, matched + in every clime, +O companion, we have lived greatly + through all time: +Yoked in knowledge and remorse now we + come to rest, +Laughing at old villainies that time has + turned to jest, +Pardoning old necessity no pardon can + efface-- +That undying sin we shared in Rouen + market-place. +Now we watch the new years shape, + wondering if they hold +Fiercer lighting in their hearts than we + launched of old. +Now we hear new voices rise, question, + boast or gird, +As we raged (rememberest thou?) when + our crowds were stirred. +Now we count new keels afloat, and new + hosts on land, +Massed liked ours (rememberest thou?) + when our strokes were planned. +We were schooled for dear life sake, to + know each other's blade: +What can blood and iron make more than + we have made? +We have learned by keenest use to know + each other's mind: +What shall blood and iron loose that we + cannot bind? +We who swept each other's coast, sacked + each other's home, +Since the sword of Brennus clashed on + the scales at Rome, +Listen, court and close again, wheeling + girth to girth, +In the strained and bloodless guard set + for peace on earth. + +_Broke to every known mischance, lifted over + all +By the light sane joy of life, the buckler of + the Gaul, +Furious in luxury, merciless in toil, +Terrible with strength renewed from a + tireless soil, +Strictest judge of her own worth, gentlest of + men's mind, +First to follow truth and last to leave old + truths behind, +France beloved of every soul that loves or + serves its kind._ + +*First published June 24, 1913. + + + +I + +ON THE FRONTIER OF CIVILIZATION + + +"It's a pretty park," said the French artillery officer. +"We've done a lot for it since the owner left. I hope he'll +appreciate it when he comes back." + +The car traversed a winding drive through woods, between banks +embellished with little chalets of a rustic nature. At first, +the chalets stood their full height above ground, suggesting +tea-gardens in England. Further on they sank into the earth +till, at the top of the ascent, only their solid brown roofs +showed. Torn branches drooping across the driveway, with here +and there a scorched patch of undergrowth, explained the +reason of their modesty. + +The chateau that commanded these glories of forest and park +sat boldly on a terrace. There was nothing wrong with it +except, if one looked closely, a few scratches or dints on its +white stone walls, or a neatly drilled hole under a flight of +steps. One such hole ended in an unexploded shell. "Yes," +said the officer. "They arrive here occasionally." + +Something bellowed across the folds of the wooded hills; +something grunted in reply. Something passed overhead, +querulously but not without dignity. Two clear fresh barks +joined the chorus, and a man moved lazily in the direction of +the guns. + +"Well. Suppose we come and look at things a little," said the +commanding officer. + +AN OBSERVATION POST + +There was a specimen tree--a tree worthy of such a park--the +sort of tree visitors are always taken to admire. A ladder +ran up it to a platform. What little wind there was swayed +the tall top, and the ladder creaked like a ship's gangway. A +telephone bell tinkled 50 foot overhead. Two invisible guns +spoke fervently for half a minute, and broke off like terriers +choked on a leash. We climbed till the topmost platform +swayed sicklily beneath us. Here one found a rustic shelter, +always of the tea-garden pattern, a table, a map, and a little +window wreathed with living branches that gave one the first +view of the Devil and all his works. It was a stretch of open +country, with a few sticks like old tooth-brushes which had +once been trees round a farm. The rest was yellow grass, +barren to all appearance as the veldt. + +"The grass is yellow because they have used gas here," said an +officer. "Their trenches are------. You can see for +yourself." + +The guns in the woods began again. They seemed to have no +relation to the regularly spaced bursts of smoke along a +little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away--no +connection at all with the strong voices overhead coming and +going. It was as impersonal as the drive of the sea along a +breakwater. + +Thus it went: a pause--a gathering of sound like the race of +an incoming wave; then the high-flung heads of breakers +spouting white up the face of a groyne. Suddenly, a seventh +wave broke and spread the shape of its foam like a plume +overtopping all the others. + +"That's one of our torpilleurs--what you call +trench-sweepers," said the observer among the whispering leaves. + +Some one crossed the platform to consult the map with its +ranges. A blistering outbreak of white smokes rose a little +beyond the large plume. It was as though the tide had struck +a reef out yonder. + +Then a new voice of tremendous volume lifted itself out of a +lull that followed. Somebody laughed. Evidently the voice +was known. + +"That is not for us," a gunner said. "They are being waked up +from------" he named a distant French position. "So and so is +attending to them there. We go on with our usual work. Look! +Another torpilleur." + +"THE BARBARIAN" + +Again a big plume rose; and again the lighter shells broke at +their appointed distance beyond it. The smoke died away on +that stretch of trench, as the foam of a swell dies in the +angle of a harbour wall, and broke out afresh half a mile +lower down. In its apparent laziness, in its awful +deliberation, and its quick spasms of wrath, it was more like +the work of waves than of men; and our high platform's gentle +sway and glide was exactly the motion of a ship drifting with +us toward that shore. + +"The usual work. Only the usual work," the officer explained. +"Sometimes it is here. Sometimes above or below us. I have +been here since May." + +A little sunshine flooded the stricken landscape and made its +chemical yellow look more foul. A detachment of men moved out +on a road which ran toward the French trenches, and then +vanished at the foot of a little rise. Other men appeared +moving toward us with that concentration of purpose and +bearing shown in both Armies when--dinner is at hand. They +looked like people who had been digging hard. + +"The same work. Always the same work!" the officer said. +"And you could walk from here to the sea or to Switzerland in +that ditch--and you'll find the same work going on everywhere. +It isn't war." + +"It's better than that," said another. "It's the eating-up of +a people. They come and they fill the trenches and they die, +and they die; and they send more and _those_ die. We do the +same, of course, but--look!" + +He pointed to the large deliberate smoke-heads renewing +themselves along that yellowed beach. "That is the frontier +of civilization. They have all civilization against them +--those brutes yonder. It's not the local victories of the old +wars that we're after. It's the barbarian--all the barbarian. +Now, you've seen the whole thing in little. Come and look at +our children." + +SOLDIERS IN CAVES + +We left that tall tree whose fruits are death ripened and +distributed at the tingle of small bells. The observer +returned to his maps and calculations; the telephone-boy +stiffened up beside his exchange as the amateurs went out of +his life. Some one called down through the branches to ask +who was attending to--Belial, let us say, for I could not +catch the gun's name. It seemed to belong to that terrific +new voice which had lifted itself for the second or third +time. It appeared from the reply that if Belial talked too +long he would be dealt with from another point miles away. + +The troops we came down to see were at rest in a chain of +caves which had begun life as quarries and had been fitted up +by the army for its own uses. There were underground +corridors, ante-chambers, rotundas, and ventilating shafts +with a bewildering play of cross lights, so that wherever you +looked you saw Goya's pictures of men-at-arms. + +Every soldier has some of the old maid in him, and rejoices in +all the gadgets and devices of his own invention. Death and +wounding come by nature, but to lie dry, sleep soft, and keep +yourself clean by forethought and contrivance is art, and in +all things the Frenchman is gloriously an artist. + +Moreover, the French officers seem as mother-keen on their men +as their men are brother-fond of them. Maybe the possessive +form of address: "Mon general," "mon capitaine," helps the +idea, which our men cloke in other and curter phrases. And +those soldiers, like ours, had been welded for months in one +furnace. As an officer said: "Half our orders now need not +be given. Experience makes us think together." I believe, +too, that if a French private has an idea--and they are full +of ideas--it reaches his C. 0. quicker than it does with us. + +THE SENTINEL HOUNDS + +The overwhelming impression was the brilliant health and +vitality of these men and the quality of their breeding. They +bore themselves with swing and rampant delight in life, while +their voices as they talked in the side-caverns among the +stands of arms were the controlled voices of civilization. +Yet, as the lights pierced the gloom they looked like bandits +dividing the spoil. One picture, though far from war, stays +with me. A perfectly built, dark-skinned young giant had +peeled himself out of his blue coat and had brought it down +with a swish upon the shoulder of a half-stripped comrade who +was kneeling at his feet with some footgear. They stood +against a background of semi-luminous blue haze, through which +glimmered a pile of coppery straw half covered by a red +blanket. By divine accident of light and pose it St. Martin +giving his cloak to the beggar. There were scores of pictures +in these galleries--notably a rock-hewn chapel where the red +of the cross on the rough canvas altar-cloth glowed like a +ruby. Further inside the caves we found a row of little +rock-cut kennels, each inhabited by one wise, silent dog. +Their duties begin in at night with the sentinels and +listening-posts. "And believe me," a proud instructor, "my +fellow here knows the difference between the noise of our shells +and the Boche shells." + +When we came out into the open again there were good +opportunities for this study. Voices and wings met and passed +in the air, and, perhaps, one strong young tree had not been +bending quite so far across the picturesque park-drive when we +first went that way. + +"Oh, yes," said an officer, "shells have to fall somewhere, +and," he added with fine toleration, "it is, after all, +against us that the Boche directs them. But come you and look +at my dug-out. It's the most superior of all possible +dug-outs." + +"No. Come and look at our mess. It's the Ritz of these +parts." And they joyously told how they had got, or procured, +the various fittings and elegancies, while hands stretched out +of the gloom to shake, and men nodded welcome and greeting all +through that cheery brotherhood in the woods. + +WORK IN THE FIELDS + +The voices and the wings were still busy after lunch, when the +car slipped past the tea-houses in the drive, and came into a +country where women and children worked among the crops. +There were large raw shell holes by the wayside or in the +midst of fields, and often a cottage or a villa had been +smashed as a bonnet-box is smashed by an umbrella. That must +be part of Belial's work when he bellows so truculently among +the hills to the north. + +We were looking for a town that lives under shell-fire. The +regular road to it was reported unhealthy--not that the women +and children seemed to care. We took byways of which certain +exposed heights and corners were lightly blinded by +wind-brakes of dried tree-tops. Here the shell holes were rather +thick on the ground. But the women and the children and the +old men went on with their work with the cattle and the crops; +and where a house had been broken by shells the rubbish was +collected in a neat pile, and where a room or two still +remained usable, it was inhabited, and the tattered +window-curtains fluttered as proudly as any flag. And time was +when I used to denounce young France because it tried to kill +itself beneath my car wheels; and the fat old women who +crossed roads without warning; and the specially deaf old men +who slept in carts on the wrong side of the road! Now, I +could take off my hat to every single soul of them, but that +one cannot traverse a whole land bareheaded. The nearer we +came to our town the fewer were the people, till at last we +halted in a well-built suburb of paved streets where there was +no life at all. . . . + +A WRECKED TOWN + +The stillness was as terrible as the spread of the quick busy +weeds between the paving-stones; the air smelt of pounded +mortar and crushed stone; the sound of a footfall echoed like +the drop of a pebble in a well. At first the horror of +wrecked apartment-houses and big shops laid open makes one +waste energy in anger. It is not seemly that rooms should be +torn out of the sides of buildings as one tears the soft heart +out of English bread; that villa roofs should lie across iron +gates of private garages, or that drawing-room doors should +flap alone and disconnected between two emptinesses of twisted +girders. The eye wearies of the repeated pattern that burst +shells make on stone walls, as the mouth sickens of the taste +of mortar and charred timber. One quarter of the place had +been shelled nearly level; the facades of the houses stood +doorless, roofless, and windowless like stage scenery. This +was near the cathedral, which is always a favourite mark for +the heathen. They had gashed and ripped the sides of the +cathedral itself, so that the birds flew in and out at will; +they had smashed holes in the roof; knocked huge cantles out +of the buttresses, and pitted and starred the paved square +outside. They were at work, too, that very afternoon, though +I do not think the cathedral was their objective for the +moment. We walked to and fro in the silence of the streets +and beneath the whirring wings overhead. Presently, a young +woman, keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. An old woman +opened a shutter (how it jarred!), and spoke to her. The +silence closed again, but it seemed to me that I heard a sound +of singing--the sort of chant one hears in nightmare-cities of +voices crying from underground. + +IN THE CATHEDRAL + +"Nonsense," said an officer. "Who should be singing here?" +We circled the cathedral again, and saw what pavement-stones +can do against their own city, when the shell jerks them +upward. But there _was_ singing after all--on the other side +of a little door in the flank of the cathedral. We looked in, +doubting, and saw at least a hundred folk, mostly women, who +knelt before the altar of an unwrecked chapel. We withdrew +quietly from that holy ground, and it was not only the eyes of +the French officers that filled with tears. Then there came +an old, old thing with a prayer-book in her hand, pattering +across the square, evidently late for service. + +"And who are those women?" I asked. + +"Some are caretakers; people who have still little shops here. +(There is one quarter where you can buy things.) There are +many old people, too, who will not go away. They are of the +place, you see." + +"And this bombardment happens often?" I said. + +"It happens always. Would you like to look at the railway +station? Of course, it has not been so bombarded as the +cathedral." + +We went through the gross nakedness of streets without people, +till we reached the railway station, which was very fairly +knocked about, but, as my friends said, nothing like as much +as the cathedral. Then we had to cross the end of a long +street down which the Boche could see clearly. As one glanced +up it, one perceived how the weeds, to whom men's war is the +truce of God, had come back and were well established the +whole length of it, watched by the long perspective of open, +empty windows. + + + +II + +THE NATION'S SPIRIT AND A NEW INHERITANCE + + +We left that stricken but undefeated town, dodged a few miles +down the roads beside which the women tended their cows, and +dropped into a place on a hill where a Moroccan regiment of +many experiences was in billets. + +They were Mohammedans bafflingly like half a dozen of our +Indian frontier types, though they spoke no accessible tongue. +They had, of course, turned the farm buildings where they lay +into a little bit of Africa in colour and smell. They had +been gassed in the north; shot over and shot down, and set up +to be shelled again; and their officers talked of North +African wars that we had never heard of--sultry days against +long odds in the desert years ago. "Afterward--is it not so +with you also?--we get our best recruits from the tribes we +have fought. These men are children. They make no trouble. +They only want to go where cartridges are burnt. They are of +the few races to whom fighting is a pleasure." + +"And how long have you dealt with them?" + +"A long time--a long time. I helped to organize the corps. I +am one of those whose heart is in Africa." He spoke slowly, +almost feeling for his French words, and gave some order. I +shall not forget his eyes as he turned to a huge, brown, +Afreedee-like Mussulman hunkering down beside his +accoutrements. He had two sides to his head, that bearded, +burned, slow-spoken officer, met and parted with in an hour. + +The day closed--(after an amazing interlude in the chateau of +a dream, which was all glassy ponds, stately trees, and vistas +of white and gold saloons. The proprietor was somebody's +chauffeur at the front, and we drank to his excellent health) +--at a little village in a twilight full of the petrol of many +cars and the wholesome flavour of healthy troops. There is no +better guide to camp than one's own thoughtful nose; and +though I poked mine everywhere, in no place then or later did +it strike that vile betraying taint of underfed, unclean men. +And the same with the horses. + +THE LINE THAT NEVER SLEEPS + +It is difficult to keep an edge after hours of fresh air and +experiences; so one does not get the most from the most +interesting part of the day--the dinner with the local +headquarters. Here the professionals meet--the Line, the +Gunners, the Intelligence with stupefying photo-plans of the +enemy's trenches; the Supply; the Staff, who collect and note +all things, and are very properly chaffed; and, be sure, the +Interpreter, who, by force of questioning prisoners, naturally +develops into a Sadducee. It is their little asides to each +other, the slang, and the half-words which, if one understood, +instead of blinking drowsily at one's plate, would give the +day's history in little. But tire and the difficulties of a +sister (not a foreign) tongue cloud everything, and one goes +to billets amid a murmur of voices, the rush of single cars +through the night, the passage of battalions, and behind it +all, the echo of the deep voices calling one to the other, +along the line that never sleeps. + +. . . . . . . + +The ridge with the scattered pines might have hidden children +at play. Certainly a horse would have been quite visible, but +there was no hint of guns, except a semaphore which announced +it was forbidden to pass that way, as the battery was firing. +The Boches must have looked for that battery, too. The ground +was pitted with shell holes of all calibres--some of them as +fresh as mole-casts in the misty damp morning; others where +the poppies had grown from seed to flower all through the +summer. + +"And where are the guns?" I demanded at last. + +They were almost under one's hand, their ammunition in cellars +and dug-outs beside them. As far as one can make out, the 75 +gun has no pet name. The bayonet is Rosalie the virgin of +Bayonne, but the 75, the watchful nurse of the trenches and +little sister of the Line, seems to be always "soixante- +quinze." Even those who love her best do not insist that she +is beautiful. Her merits are French--logic, directness, +simplicity, and the supreme gift of "occasionality." She is +equal to everything on the spur of the moment. One sees and +studies the few appliances which make her do what she does, +and one feels that any one could have invented her. + +FAMOUS FRENCH 75's + +"As a matter of fact," says a commandant, "anybody--or, +rather, everybody did. The general idea is after such-and-such +system, the patent of which had expired, and we improved +it; the breech action, with slight modification, is somebody +else's; the sighting is perhaps a little special; and so is +the traversing, but, at bottom, it is only an assembly of +variations and arrangements." + +That, of course, is all that Shakespeare ever got out of the +alphabet. The French Artillery make their own guns as he made +his plays. It is just as simple as that. + +"There is nothing going on for the moment; it's too misty," +said the Commandant. (I fancy that the Boche, being, as a +rule methodical, amateurs are introduced to batteries in the +Boche's intervals. At least, there are hours healthy and +unhealthy which vary with each position.) "But," the +Commandant reflected a moment, "there is a place--and a +distance. Let us say . . . " He gave a range. + +The gun-servers stood back with the bored contempt of the +professional for the layman who intrudes on his mysteries. +Other civilians had come that way before--had seen, and +grinned, and complimented and gone their way, leaving the +gunners high up on the bleak hillside to grill or mildew or +freeze for weeks and months. Then she spoke. Her voice was +higher pitched, it seemed, than ours--with a more shrewish +tang to the speeding shell. Her recoil was as swift and as +graceful as the shrug of a French-woman's shoulders; the empty +case leaped forth and clanged against the trail; the tops of +two or three pines fifty yards away nodded knowingly to each +other, though there was no wind. + +"They'll be bothered down below to know the meaning of our +single shot. We don't give them one dose at a time as a +rule," somebody laughed. + +We waited in the fragrant silence. Nothing came back from the +mist that clogged the lower grounds, though no shell of this +war was ever launched with more earnest prayers that it might +do hurt. + +Then they talked about the lives of guns; what number of +rounds some will stand and others will not; how soon one can +make two good guns out of three spoilt ones, and what crazy +luck sometimes goes with a single shot or a blind salvo. + +LESSON FROM THE "BOCHE" + +A shell must fall somewhere, and by the law of averages +occasionally lights straight as a homing pigeon on the one +spot where it can wreck most. Then earth opens for yards +around, and men must be dug out,--some merely breathless, who +shake their ears, swear, and carry on, and others whose souls +have gone loose among terrors. These have to be dealt with as +their psychology demands, and the French officer is a good +psychologist. One of them said: "Our national psychology has +changed. I do not recognize it myself." + +"What made the change?" + +"The Boche. If he had been quiet for another twenty years the +world must have been his--rotten, but all his. Now he is +saving the world." + +"How?" + +"Because he has shown us what Evil is. We--you and I, England +and the rest--had begun to doubt the existence of Evil. The +Boche is saving us." + +Then we had another look at the animal in its trench--a little +nearer this time than before, and quieter on account of the +mist. Pick up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find +the same observation-post, table, map, observer, and +telephonist; the same always-hidden, always-ready guns; and +same vexed foreshore of trenches, smoking and shaking from +Switzerland to the sea. The handling of the war varies with +the nature of the country, but the tools are unaltered. One +looks upon them at last with the same weariness of wonder as +the eye receives from endless repetitions of Egyptian +hieroglyphics. A long, low profile, with a lump to one side, +means the field-gun and its attendant ammunition-case; a +circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a +bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the +great guns of position, coming and going on their motors, +repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue +smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or +watching and running among all these terrific symbols. + +TRAGEDY OF RHEIMS + +But there is no hieroglyphic for Rheims, no blunting of the +mind at the abominations committed on the cathedral there. +The thing peers upward, maimed and blinded, from out of the +utter wreckage of the Archbishop's palace on the one side and +dust-heaps of crumbled houses on the other. They shelled, as +they still shell it, with high explosives and with incendiary +shells, so that the statues and the stonework in places are +burned the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed; +statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn; +windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one +looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement, +and yet it had never more of a soul than it has to-day. + +Inside--("Cover yourselves, gentlemen," said the sacristan, +"this place is no longer consecrated")--everything is swept +clear or burned out from end to end, except two candlesticks +in front of the niche where Joan of Arc's image used to stand. +There is a French flag there now. [And the last time I saw +Rheims Cathedral was in a spring twilight, when the great west +window glowed, and the only lights within were those of +candles which some penitent English had lit in Joan's honour +on those same candlesticks.] The high altar was covered with +floor-carpets; the pavement tiles were cracked and jarred out +by the rubbish that had fallen from above, the floor was +gritty with dust of glass and powdered stone, little twists of +leading from the windows, and iron fragments. Two great doors +had been blown inwards by the blast of a shell in the +Archbishop's garden, till they had bent grotesquely to the +curve of a cask. There they had jammed. The windows--but the +record has been made, and will be kept by better hands than +mine. It will last through the generation in which the Teuton +is cut off from the fellowship of mankind--all the long, still +years when this war of the body is at an end, and the real war +begins. Rheims is but one of the altars which the heathen +have put up to commemorate their own death throughout all the +world. It will serve. There is a mark, well known by now, +which they have left for a visible seal of their doom. When +they first set the place alight some hundreds of their wounded +were being tended in the Cathedral. The French saved as many +as they could, but some had to be left. Among them was a +major, who lay with his back against a pillar. It has been +ordained that the signs of his torments should remain--an +outline of both legs and half a body, printed in greasy black +upon the stones. There are very many people who hope and pray +that the sign will be respected at least by our children's +children. + +IRON NERVE AND FAITH + +And, in the meantime, Rheims goes about what business it may +have with that iron nerve and endurance and faith which is the +new inheritance of France. There is agony enough when the big +shells come in; there is pain and terror among the people; and +always fresh desecration to watch and suffer. The old men and +the women and the children drink of that cup daily, and yet +the bitterness does not enter into their souls. Mere words of +admiration are impertinent, but the exquisite quality of the +French soul has been the marvel to me throughout. They say +themselves, when they talk: "We did not know what our nation +was. Frankly, we did not expect it ourselves. But the thing +came, and--you see, we go on." + +Or as a woman put it more logically, "What else can we do? +Remember, _we_ knew the Boche in '70 when _you_ did not. We +know what he has done in the last year. This is not war. It +is against wild beasts that we fight. There is no arrangement +possible with wild beasts." This is the one vital point which +we in England _must_ realize. We are dealing with animals who +have scientifically and philosophically removed themselves +inconceivably outside civilization. When you have heard a +few--only a few--tales of their doings, you begin to +understand a little. When you have seen Rheims, you +understand a little more. When you have looked long enough at +the faces of the women, you are inclined to think that the +women will have a large say in the final judgment. They have +earned it a thousand times. + + + + +III + +BATTLE SPECTACLE AND A REVIEW + +Travelling with two chauffeurs is not the luxury it looks; +since there is only one of you and there is always another of +those iron men to relieve the wheel. Nor can I decide whether +an ex-professor of the German tongue, or an ex-roadracer who +has lived six years abroad, or a Marechal des Logis, or a +Brigadier makes the most thrusting driver through three-mile +stretches of military traffic repeated at half-hour intervals. +Sometimes it was motor-ambulances strung all along a level; or +supply; or those eternal big guns coming round corners with +trees chained on their long backs to puzzle aeroplanes, and +their leafy, big-shell limbers snorting behind them. In the +rare breathing-spaces men with rollers and road metal attacked +the road. In peace the roads of France, thanks to the motor, +were none too good. In war they stand the incessant traffic +far better than they did with the tourist. My impression +--after some seven hundred miles printed off on me at between 60 +and 70 kilometres--was of uniform excellence. Nor did I come +upon any smashes or breakdowns in that distance, and they were +certainly trying them hard. Nor, which is the greater marvel, +did _we_ kill anybody; though we did miracles down the streets +to avoid babes, kittens, and chickens. The land is used to +every detail of war, and to its grime and horror and +make-shifts, but also to war's unbounded courtesy, kindness, +and long-suffering, and the gaiety that comes, thank God, to +balance overwhelming material loss. + +FARM LIFE AMIDST WAR + +There was a village that had been stamped flat, till it looked +older than Pompeii. There were not three roofs left, nor one +whole house. In most places you saw straight into the +cellars. The hops were ripe in the grave-dotted fields round +about. They had been brought in and piled in the nearest +outline of a dwelling. Women sat on chairs on the pavement, +picking the good-smelling bundles. When they had finished +one, they reached back and pulled out another through the +window-hole behind them, talking and laughing the while. A +cart had to be maneuvered out of what had been a farmyard, to +take the hops to market. A thick, broad, fair-haired wench, +of the sort that Millet drew, flung all her weight on a spoke +and brought the cart forward into the street. Then she shook +herself, and, hands on hips, danced a little defiant jig in +her sabots as she went back to get the horse. Another girl +came across a bridge. She was precisely of the opposite type, +slender, creamy-skinned, and delicate-featured. She carried a +brand-new broom over her shoulder through that desolation, and +bore herself with the pride and grace of Queen Iseult. + +The farm-girl came out leading the horse, and as the two young +things passed they nodded and smiled at each other, with the +delicate tangle of the hop-vines at their feet. + +The guns spoke earnestly in the north. That was the Argonne, +where the Crown Prince was busily getting rid of a few +thousands of his father's faithful subjects in order to secure +himself the reversion of his father's throne. No man likes +losing his job, and when at long last the inner history of +this war comes to be written, we may find that the people we +mistook for principals and prime agents were only average +incompetents moving all Hell to avoid dismissal. (For it is +absolutely true that when a man sells his soul to the devil he +does it for the price of half nothing.) + +WATCHING THE GUN-FIRE + +It must have been a hot fight. A village, wrecked as is usual +along this line, opened on it from a hillside that overlooked +an Italian landscape of carefully drawn hills studded with +small villages--a plain with a road and a river in the +foreground, and an all-revealing afternoon light upon +everything. The hills smoked and shook and bellowed. An +observation-balloon climbed up to see; while an aeroplane +which had nothing to do with the strife, but was merely +training a beginner, ducked and swooped on the edge of the +plain. Two rose-pink pillars of crumbled masonry, guarding +some carefully trimmed evergreens on a lawn half buried in +rubbish, represented an hotel where the Crown Prince had once +stayed. All up the hillside to our right the foundations of +houses lay out, like a bit of tripe, with the sunshine in +their square hollows. Suddenly a band began to play up the +hill among some trees; and an officer of local Guards in the +new steel anti-shrapnel helmet, which is like the seventeenth +century sallet, suggested that we should climb and get a +better view. He was a kindly man, and in speaking English had +discovered (as I do when speaking French) that it is simpler +to stick to one gender. His choice was the feminine, and the +Boche described as "she" throughout made me think better of +myself, which is the essence of friendship. We climbed a +flight of old stone steps, for generations the playground of +little children, and found a ruined church, and a battalion in +billets, recreating themselves with excellent music and a +little horseplay on the outer edge of the crowd. The trouble +in the hills was none of their business for that day. + +Still higher up, on a narrow path among the trees, stood a +priest and three or four officers. They watched the battle +and claimed the great bursts of smoke for one side or the +other, at the same time as they kept an eye on the flickering +aeroplane. "Ours," they said, half under their breath. +"Theirs." "No, not ours that one--theirs! . . . That fool +is banking too steep . . . That's Boche shrapnel. They +always burst it high. That's our big gun behind that outer +hill . . . He'll drop his machine in the street if he +doesn't take care . . . There goes a trench-sweeper. +Those last two were theirs, but _that_"--it was a full roar +--"was ours." + +BEHIND THE GERMAN LINES + +The valley held and increased the sounds till they seemed to +hit our hillside like a sea. + +A change of light showed a village, exquisitely pencilled atop +of a hill, with reddish haze at its feet. + +"What is that place?" I asked. + +The priest replied in a voice as deep as an organ: "That is +Saint------ It is in the Boche lines. Its condition is +pitiable." + +The thunders and the smokes rolled up and diminished and +renewed themselves, but the small children romped up and down +the old stone steps; the beginner's aeroplane unsteadily +chased its own shadow over the fields; and the soldiers in +billet asked the band for their favourite tunes. + +Said the lieutenant of local Guards as the cars went on: +"She--play--Tipperary." + +And she did--to an accompaniment of heavy pieces in the hills, +which followed us into a town all ringed with enormous +searchlights, French and Boche together, scowling at each +other beneath the stars. + +. . . . + +It happened about that time that Lord Kitchener with General +Joffre reviewed a French Army Corps. + +We came on it in a vast dip of ground under grey clouds, as +one comes suddenly on water; for it lay out in misty blue +lakes of men mixed with darker patches, like osiers and +undergrowth, of guns, horses, and wagons. A straight road cut +the landscape in two along its murmuring front. + +VETERANS OF THE WAR + +It was as though Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth, not in +orderly furrows but broadcast, till, horrified by what arose, +he had emptied out the whole bag and fled. But these were no +new warriors. The record of their mere pitched battles would +have satiated a Napoleon. Their regiments and batteries had +learnt to achieve the impossible as a matter of routine, and +in twelve months they had scarcely for a week lost direct +contact with death. We went down the line and looked into the +eyes of those men with the used bayonets and rifles; the packs +that could almost stow themselves on the shoulders that would +be strange without them; at the splashed guns on their +repaired wheels, and the easy-working limbers. One could feel +the strength and power of the mass as one feels the flush of +heat from off a sunbaked wall. When the Generals' cars +arrived there, there was no loud word or galloping about. The +lakes of men gathered into straight-edged battalions; the +batteries aligned a little; a squadron reined back or spurred +up; but it was all as swiftly smooth as the certainty with +which a man used to the pistol draws and levels it at the +required moment. A few peasant women saw the Generals alight. +The aeroplanes, which had been skimming low as swallows along +the front of the line (theirs must have been a superb view) +ascended leisurely, and "waited on" like hawks. Then followed +the inspection, and one saw the two figures, tall and short, +growing smaller side by side along the white road, till far +off among the cavalry they entered their cars again, and moved +along the horizon to another rise of grey-green plain. + +"The army will move across where you are standing. Get to a +flank," some one said. + +AN ARMY IN MOTION + +We were no more than well clear of that immobile host when it +all surged forward, headed by massed bands playing a tune that +sounded like the very pulse of France. + +The two Generals, with their Staff, and the French Minister +for War, were on foot near a patch of very green lucerne. +They made about twenty figures in all. The cars were little +grey blocks against the grey skyline. There was nothing else +in all that great plain except the army; no sound but the +changing notes of the aeroplanes and the blunted impression, +rather than noise, of feet of men on soft ground. They came +over a slight ridge, so that one saw the curve of it first +furred, then grassed, with the tips of bayonets, which +immediately grew to full height, and then, beneath them, +poured the wonderful infantry. The speed, the thrust, the +drive of that broad blue mass was like a tide-race up an arm +of the sea; and how such speed could go with such weight, and +how such weight could be in itself so absolutely under +control, filled one with terror. All the while, the band, on +a far headland, was telling them and telling them (as if they +did not know!) of the passion and gaiety and high heart of +their own land in the speech that only they could fully +understand. (To hear the music of a country is like hearing a +woman think aloud.) + +"What _is_ the tune?" I asked of an officer beside me. + +"My faith, I can't recall for the moment. I've marched to it +often enough, though. 'Sambre-et-Meuse,' perhaps. Look! +There goes my battalion! Those Chasseurs yonder." + +_He_ knew, of course; but what could a stranger identify in +that earth-shaking passage of thirty thousand? + +ARTILLERY AND CAVALRY + +The note behind the ridge changed to something deeper. + +"Ah! Our guns," said an artillery officer, and smiled +tolerantly on the last blue waves of the Line already beating +toward the horizon. + +They came twelve abreast--one hundred and fifty guns free for +the moment to take the air in company, behind their teams. +And next week would see them, hidden singly or in lurking +confederacies, by mountain and marsh and forest, or the +wrecked habitations of men--where? + +The big guns followed them, with that long-nosed air of +detachment peculiar to the breed. The Gunner at my side made +no comment. He was content to let his Arm speak for itself, +but when one big gun in a sticky place fell out of alignment +for an instant I saw his eyebrows contract. The artillery +passed on with the same inhuman speed and silence as the Line; +and the Cavalry's shattering trumpets closed it all. + +They are like our Cavalry in that their horses are in high +condition, and they talk hopefully of getting past the barbed +wire one of these days and coming into their own. Meantime, +they are employed on "various work as requisite," and they all +sympathize with our rough-rider of Dragoons who flatly refused +to take off his spurs in the trenches. If he had to die as a +damned infantryman, he wasn't going to be buried as such. A +troop-horse of a flanking squadron decided that he had had +enough of war, and jibbed like Lot's wife. His rider (we all +watched him) ranged about till he found a stick, which he +used, but without effect. Then he got off and led the horse, +which was evidently what the brute wanted, for when the man +remounted the jibbing began again. The last we saw of him was +one immensely lonely figure leading one bad but happy horse +across an absolutely empty world. Think of his reception--the +sole man of 40,000 who had fallen out! + +THE BOCHE AS MR. SMITH + +The Commander of that Army Corps came up to salute. The cars +went away with the Generals and the Minister for War; the Army +passed out of sight over the ridges to the north; the peasant +women stooped again to their work in the fields, and wet mist +shut down on all the plain; but one tingled with the +electricity that had passed. Now one knows what the +solidarity of civilization means. Later on the civilized +nations will know more, and will wonder and laugh together at +their old blindness. When Lord Kitchener went down the line, +before the march past, they say that he stopped to speak to a +General who had been Marchand's Chief of Staff at the time of +Fashoda. And Fashoda was one of several cases when +civilization was very nearly maneuvered into fighting with +itself "for the King of Prussia," as the saying goes. The +all-embracing vileness of the Boche is best realized from +French soil, where they have had large experience of it. "And +yet," as some one observed, "we ought to have known that a +race who have brought anonymous letter-writing to its highest +pitch in their own dirty Court affairs would certainly use the +same methods in their foreign politics. _Why_ didn't we +realize?" + +"For the same reason," another responded, "that society did +not realize that the late Mr. Smith, of your England, who +married three wives, bought baths in advance for each of them, +and, when they had left him all their money, drowned them one +by one." + +"And were the baths by any chance called Denmark, Austria, and +France in 1870?" a third asked. + +"No, they were respectable British tubs. But until Mr. Smith +had drowned his third wife people didn't get suspicious. They +argued that 'men don't do such things.' That sentiment is the +criminal's best protection." + + + + +IV + +THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE + + +We passed into the zone of another army and a hillier country, +where the border villages lay more sheltered. Here and there +a town and the fields round it gave us a glimpse of the +furious industry with which France makes and handles material +and troops. With her, as with us, the wounded officer of +experience goes back to the drill-ground to train the new +levies. But it was always the little crowded, defiant +villages, and the civil population waiting unweariedly and +cheerfully on the unwearied, cheerful army, that went closest +to the heart. Take these pictures, caught almost anywhere +during a journey: A knot of little children in difficulties +with the village water-tap or high-handled pump. A soldier, +bearded and fatherly, or young and slim and therefore rather +shy of the big girls' chaff, comes forward and lifts the pail +or swings the handle. His reward, from the smallest babe +swung high in air, or, if he is an older man, pressed against +his knees, is a kiss. Then nobody laughs. + +Or a fat old lady making oration against some wicked young +soldiers who, she says, know what has happened to a certain +bottle of wine. "And I meant it for all--yes, for all of you +--this evening, instead of the thieves who stole it. Yes, I +tell you--stole it!" The whole street hears her; so does the +officer, who pretends not to, and the amused half-battalion up +the road. The young men express penitence; she growls like a +thunderstorm, but, softening at last, cuffs and drives them +affectionately before her. They are all one family. + +Or a girl at work with horses in a ploughed field that is +dotted with graves. The machine must avoid each sacred plot. +So, hands on the plough-stilts, her hair flying forward, she +shouts and wrenches till her little brother runs up and swings +the team out of the furrow. Every aspect and detail of life +in France seems overlaid with a smooth patina of +long-continued war--everything except the spirit of the people, +and that is as fresh and glorious as the sight of their own land +in sunshine. + +A CITY AND WOMAN + +We found a city among hills which knew itself to be a prize +greatly coveted by the Kaiser. For, truly, it was a pleasant, +a desirable, and an insolent city. Its streets were full of +life; it boasted an establishment almost as big as Harrod's +and full of buyers, and its women dressed and shod themselves +with care and grace, as befits ladies who, at any time, may be +ripped into rags by bombs from aeroplanes. And there was +another city whose population seemed to be all soldiers in +training; and yet another given up to big guns and ammunition +--an extraordinary sight. + +After that, we came to a little town of pale stone which an +Army had made its headquarters. It looked like a plain woman +who had fainted in public. It had rejoiced in many public +institutions that were turned into hospitals and offices; the +wounded limped its wide, dusty streets, detachments of +Infantry went through it swiftly; and utterly bored +motor-lorries cruised up and down roaring, I suppose, for +something to look at or to talk to. In the centre of it I found +one Janny, or rather his marble bust, brooding over a minute +iron-railed garden of half-dried asters opposite a shut-up +school, which it appeared from the inscription Janny had founded +somewhere in the arid Thirties. It was precisely the sort of +school that Janny, by the look of him, would have invented. Not +even French adaptability could make anything of it. So Janny +had his school, with a faint perfume of varnish, all to himself +in a hot stillness of used-up air and little whirls of dust. +And because that town seemed so barren, I met there a French +General whom I would have gone very far to have encountered. +He, like the others, had created and tempered an army for +certain work in a certain place, and its hand had been heavy on +the Boche. We talked of what the French woman was, and had +done, and was doing, and extolled her for her goodness and her +faith and her splendid courage. When we parted, I went back and +made my profoundest apologies to Janny, who must have had a +mother. The pale, overwhelmed town did not now any longer +resemble a woman who had fainted, but one who must endure in +public all manner of private woe and still, with hands that +never cease working, keeps her soul and is cleanly strong for +herself and for her men. + +FRENCH OFFICERS + +The guns began to speak again among the hills that we dived +into; the air grew chillier as we climbed; forest and wet +rocks closed round us in the mist, to the sound of waters +trickling alongside; there was a tang of wet fern, cut pine, +and the first breath of autumn when the road entered a tunnel +and a new world--Alsace. + +Said the Governor of those parts thoughtfully: "The main +thing was to get those factory chimneys smoking again." (They +were doing so in little flats and villages all along.) "You +won't see any girls, because they're at work in the textile +factories. Yes, it isn't a bad country for summer hotels, but +I'm afraid it won't do for winter sports. We've only a metre +of snow, and it doesn't lie, except when you are hauling guns +up mountains. Then, of course, it drifts and freezes like +Davos. That's our new railway below there. Pity it's too +misty to see the view." + +But for his medals, there was nothing in the Governor to show +that he was not English. He might have come straight from an +Indian frontier command. + +One notices this approximation of type in the higher ranks, +and many of the juniors are cut out of the very same cloth as +ours. They get whatever fun may be going: their performances +are as incredible and outrageous as the language in which they +describe them afterward is bald, but convincing, and--I +overheard the tail-end of a yarn told by a child of twenty to +some other babes. It was veiled in the obscurity of the +French tongue, and the points were lost in shouts of laughter +--but I imagine the subaltern among his equals displays just as +much reverence for his elders and betters as our own boys do. +The epilogue, at least, was as old as both Armies: + +"And what did he say then?" + +"Oh, the usual thing. He held his breath till I thought he'd +burst. Then he damned me in heaps, and I took good care to +keep out of his sight till next day." + +But officially and in the high social atmosphere of +Headquarters their manners and their meekness are of the most +admirable. There they attend devoutly on the wisdom of their +seniors, who treat them, so it seemed, with affectionate +confidence. + +FRONT THAT NEVER SLEEPS + +When the day's reports are in, all along the front, there is a +man, expert in the meaning of things, who boils them down for +that cold official digest which tells us that "There was the +usual grenade fighting at------. We made appreciable advance +at------," &c. The original material comes in sheaves and +sheaves, where individual character and temperament have full +and amusing play. It is reduced for domestic consumption like +an overwhelming electric current. Otherwise we could not take +it in. But at closer range one realizes that the Front never +sleeps; never ceases from trying new ideas and weapons which, +so soon as the Boche thinks he has mastered them, are +discarded for newer annoyances and bewilderments. + +"The Boche is above all things observant and imitative," said +one who counted quite a few Boches dead on the front of his +sector. "When you present him with a new idea, he thinks it +over for a day or two. Then he presents his riposte." + +"Yes, my General. That was exactly what he did to me when I +--did so and so. He was quite silent for a day. Then--he stole +my patent." + +"And you?" + +"I had a notion that he'd do that, so I had changed the +specification." + +Thus spoke the Staff, and so it is among the junior commands, +down to the semi-isolated posts where boy-Napoleons live on +their own, through unbelievable adventures. They are +inventive young devils, these veterans of 21, possessed of the +single ideal--to kill--which they follow with men as +single-minded as themselves. Battlefield tactics do not exist; +when a whole nation goes to ground there can be none of the +"victories" of the old bookish days. But there is always the +killing--the well-schemed smashing of a full trench, the rushing +out and the mowing down of its occupants; the unsuspicious +battalion far in the rear, located after two nights' extreme +risk alone among rubbish of masonry, and wiped out as it eats or +washes itself; and, more rarely, the body to body encounter with +animals removed from the protection of their machinery, when the +bayonets get their chance. The Boche does not at all like +meeting men whose womenfolk he has dishonoured or mutilated, or +used as a protection against bullets. It is not that these men +are angry or violent. They do not waste time in that way. They +kill him. + +THE BUSINESS OF WAR + +The French are less reticent than we about atrocities +committed by the Boche, because those atrocities form part of +their lives. They are not tucked away in reports of +Commissions, and vaguely referred to as "too awful." Later +on, perhaps, we shall be unreserved in our turn. But they do +not talk of them with any babbling heat or bleat or make funny +little appeals to a "public opinion" that, like the Boche, has +gone underground. It occurs to me that this must be because +every Frenchman has his place and his chance, direct or +indirect, to diminish the number of Boches still alive. +Whether he lies out in a sandwich of damp earth, or sweats the +big guns up the crests behind the trees, or brings the fat, +loaded barges into the very heart of the city, where the +shell-wagons wait, or spends his last crippled years at the +harvest, he is doing his work to that end. + +If he is a civilian he may--as he does--say things about his +Government, which, after all, is very like other popular +governments. (A lifetime spent in watching how the cat jumps +does not make lion-tamers.) But there is very little human +rubbish knocking about France to hinder work or darken +counsel. Above all, there is a thing called the Honour of +Civilization, to which France is attached. The meanest man +feels that he, in his place, is permitted to help uphold it, +and, I think, bears himself, therefore, with new dignity. + +A CONTRAST IN TYPES + +This is written in a garden of smooth turf, under a copper +beech, beside a glassy mill-stream, where soldiers of Alpine +regiments are writing letters home, while the guns shout up +and down the narrow valleys. + +A great wolf-hound, who considers himself in charge of the +old-fashioned farmhouse, cannot understand why his master, +aged six, should be sitting on the knees of the Marechal des +Logis, the iron man who drives the big car. + +"But you _are_ French, little one?" says the giant, with a +yearning arm round the child. + +"Yes," very slowly mouthing the French words; "I--can't +--speak--French--but--I--am--French." + +The small face disappears in the big beard. + +Somehow, I can't imagine the Marechal des Logis killing +babies--even if his superior officer, now sketching the scene, +were to order him! + +. . . . . . . + +The great building must once have been a monastery. Twilight +softened its gaunt wings, in an angle of which were collected +fifty prisoners, picked up among the hills behind the mists. + +They stood in some sort of military formation preparatory to +being marched off. They were dressed in khaki, the colour of +gassed grass, that might have belonged to any army. Two wore +spectacles, and I counted eight faces of the fifty which were +asymmetrical--out of drawing on one side. + +"Some of their later drafts give us that type," said the +Interpreter. One of them had been wounded in the head and +roughly bandaged. The others seemed all sound. Most of them +looked at nothing, but several were vividly alive with terror +that cannot keep the eyelids still, and a few wavered on the +grey edge of collapse. + +They were the breed which, at the word of command, had stolen +out to drown women and children; had raped women in the +streets at the word of command; and, always at the word of +command, had sprayed petrol, or squirted flame; or defiled the +property and persons of their captives. They stood there +outside all humanity. Yet they were made in the likeness of +humanity. One realized it with a shock when the bandaged +creature began to shiver, and they shuffled off in response to +the orders of civilized men. + + + + +V + +LIFE IN TRENCHES ON THE MOUNTAIN SIDE + + +Very early in the morning I met Alan Breck, with a half-healed +bullet-scrape across the bridge of his nose, and an Alpine cap +over one ear. His people a few hundred years ago had been +Scotch. He bore a Scotch name, and still recognized the head +of his clan, but his French occasionally ran into German +words, for he was an Alsatian on one side. + +"This," he explained, "is the very best country in the world +to fight in. It's picturesque and full of cover. I'm a +gunner. I've been here for months. It's lovely." + +It might have been the hills under Mussoorie, and what our +cars expected to do in it I could not understand. But the +demon-driver who had been a road-racer took the 70 h.p. +Mercedes and threaded the narrow valleys, as well as +occasional half-Swiss villages full of Alpine troops, at a +restrained thirty miles an hour. He shot up a new-made road, +more like Mussoorie than ever, and did not fall down the +hillside even once. An ammunition-mule of a mountain-battery +met him at a tight corner, and began to climb a tree. + +"See! There isn't another place in France where that could +happen," said Alan. "I tell you, this is a magnificent +country." + +The mule was hauled down by his tail before he had reached the +lower branches, and went on through the woods, his +ammunition-boxes jinking on his back, for all the world as +though he were rejoining his battery at Jutogh. One expected to +meet the little Hill people bent under their loads under the +forest gloom. The light, the colour, the smell of wood smoke, +pine-needles, wet earth, and warm mule were all Himalayan. Only +the Mercedes was violently and loudly a stranger. + +"Halt!" said Alan at last, when she had done everything except +imitate the mule. + +"The road continues," said the demon-driver seductively. + +"Yes, but they will hear you if you go on. Stop and wait. +We've a mountain battery to look at." + +They were not at work for the moment, and the Commandant, a +grim and forceful man, showed me some details of their +construction. When we left them in their bower--it looked +like a Hill priest's wayside shrine--we heard them singing +through the steep-descending pines. They, too, like the 75's, +seem to have no pet name in the service. + +It was a poisonously blind country. The woods blocked all +sense of direction above and around. The ground was at any +angle you please, and all sounds were split up and muddled by +the tree-trunks, which acted as silencers. High above us the +respectable, all-concealing forest had turned into sparse, +ghastly blue sticks of timber--an assembly of leper-trees +round a bald mountain top. "That's where we're going," said +Alan. "Isn't it an adorable country?" + +TRENCHES + +A machine-gun loosed a few shots in the fumbling style of her +kind when they feel for an opening. A couple of rifle shots +answered. They might have been half a mile away or a hundred +yards below. An adorable country! We climbed up till we +found once again a complete tea-garden of little sunk houses, +almost invisible in the brown-pink recesses of the thick +forest. Here the trenches began, and with them for the next +few hours life in two dimensions--length and breadth. You +could have eaten your dinner almost anywhere off the swept dry +ground, for the steep slopes favoured draining, there was no +lack of timber, and there was unlimited labour. It had made +neat double-length dug-outs where the wounded could be laid in +during their passage down the mountain side; well-tended +occasional latrines properly limed; dug-outs for sleeping and +eating; overhead protections and tool-sheds where needed, and, +as one came nearer the working face, very clever cellars +against trench-sweepers. Men passed on their business; a +squad with a captured machine-gun which they tested in a +sheltered dip; armourers at their benches busy with sick +rifles; fatigue-parties for straw, rations, and ammunition; +long processions of single blue figures turned sideways +between the brown sunless walls. One understood after a while +the nightmare that lays hold of trench-stale men, when the +dreamer wanders for ever in those blind mazes till, after +centuries of agonizing flight, he finds himself stumbling out +again into the white blaze and horror of the mined front--he +who thought he had almost reached home! + +IN THE FRONT LINE + +There were no trees above us now. Their trunks lay along the +edge of the trench, built in with stones, where necessary, or +sometimes overhanging it in ragged splinters or bushy tops. +Bits of cloth, not French, showed, too, in the uneven lines of +debris at the trench lip, and some thoughtful soul had marked +an unexploded Boche trench-sweeper as "not to be touched." It +was a young lawyer from Paris who pointed that out to me. + +We met the Colonel at the head of an indescribable pit of +ruin, full of sunshine, whose steps ran down a very steep +hillside under the lee of an almost vertically plunging +parapet. To the left of that parapet the whole hillside was +one gruel of smashed trees, split stones, and powdered soil. +It might have been a rag-picker's dump-heap on a colossal +scale. + +Alan looked at it critically. I think he had helped to make +it not long before. + +"We're on the top of the hill now, and the Boches are below +us," said he. "We gave them a very fair sickener lately." + +"This," said the Colonel, "is the front line." + +There were overhead guards against hand-bombs which disposed +me to believe him, but what convinced me most was a corporal +urging us in whispers not to talk so loud. The men were at +dinner, and a good smell of food filled the trench. This was +the first smell I had encountered in my long travels uphill--a +mixed, entirely wholesome flavour of stew, leather, earth, and +rifle-oil. + +FRONT LINE PROFESSIONALS + +A proportion of men were standing to arms while others ate; +but dinner-time is slack time, even among animals, and it was +close on noon. + +"The Boches got _their_ soup a few days ago," some one +whispered. I thought of the pulverized hillside, and hoped it +had been hot enough. + +We edged along the still trench, where the soldiers stared, +with justified contempt, I thought, upon the civilian who +scuttled through their life for a few emotional minutes in +order to make words out of their blood. Somehow it reminded +me of coming in late to a play and incommoding a long line of +packed stalls. The whispered dialogue was much the same: +"Pardon!" "I beg your pardon, monsieur." "To the right, +monsieur." "If monsieur will lower his head." "One sees best +from here, monsieur," and so on. It was their day and +night-long business, carried through without display or heat, or +doubt or indecision. Those who worked, worked; those off duty, +not five feet behind them in the dug-outs, were deep in their +papers, or their meals or their letters; while death stood ready +at every minute to drop down into the narrow cut from out of the +narrow strip of unconcerned sky. And for the better part of a +week one had skirted hundreds of miles of such a frieze! + +The loopholes not in use were plugged rather like +old-fashioned hives. Said the Colonel, removing a plug: +"Here are the Boches. Look, and you'll see their sandbags." +Through the jumble of riven trees and stones one saw what +might have been a bit of green sacking. "They're about seven +metres distant just here," the Colonel went on. That was +true, too. We entered a little fortalice with a cannon in it, +in an embrasure which at that moment struck me as +unnecessarily vast, even though it was partly closed by a +frail packing-case lid. The Colonel sat him down in front of +it, and explained the theory of this sort of redoubt. "By the +way," he said to the gunner at last, "can't you find something +better than _that?"_ He twitched the lid aside. "I think +it's too light. Get a log of wood or something." + +HANDY TRENCH-SWEEPERS + +I loved that Colonel! He knew his men and he knew the Boches +--had them marked down like birds. When he said they were +beside dead trees or behind boulders, sure enough there they +were! But, as I have said, the dinner-hour is always slack, +and even when we came to a place where a section of trench had +been bashed open by trench-sweepers, and it was recommended to +duck and hurry, nothing much happened. The uncanny thing was +the absence of movement in the Boche trenches. Sometimes one +imagined that one smelt strange tobacco, or heard a rifle-bolt +working after a shot. Otherwise they were as still as pig at +noonday. + +We held on through the maze, past trench-sweepers of a handy +light pattern, with their screw-tailed charge all ready; and a +grave or so; and when I came on men who merely stood within +easy reach of their rifles, I knew I was in the second line. +When they lay frankly at ease in their dug-outs, I knew it was +the third. A shot-gun would have sprinkled all three. + +"No flat plains," said Alan. "No hunting for gun positions +--the hills are full of them--and the trenches close together +and commanding each other. You see what a beautiful country +it is." + +The Colonel confirmed this, but from another point of view. +War was his business, as the still woods could testify--but +his hobby was his trenches. He had tapped the mountain +streams and dug out a laundry where a man could wash his shirt +and go up and be killed in it, all in a morning; had drained +the trenches till a muddy stretch in them was an offence; and +at the bottom of the hill (it looked like a hydropathic +establishment on the stage) he had created baths where half a +battalion at a time could wash. He never told me how all that +country had been fought over as fiercely as Ypres in the West; +nor what blood had gone down the valleys before his trenches +pushed over the scalped mountain top. No. He sketched out +new endeavours in earth and stones and trees for the comfort +of his men on that populous mountain. + +And there came a priest, who was a sub-lieutenant, out of a +wood of snuff-brown shadows and half-veiled trunks. Would it +please me to look at a chapel? It was all open to the +hillside, most tenderly and devoutly done in rustic work with +reedings of peeled branches and panels of moss and thatch--St. +Hubert's own shrine. I saw the hunters who passed before it, +going to the chase on the far side of the mountain where their +game lay. + +. . . . . . . + +A BOMBARDED TOWN + +Alan carried me off to tea the same evening in a town where he +seemed to know everybody. He had spent the afternoon on +another mountain top, inspecting gun positions; whereby he had +been shelled a little--_marmite_ is the slang for it. There +had been no serious _marmitage,_ and he had spotted a Boche +position which was _marmitable._ + +"And we may get shelled now," he added, hopefully. "They +shell this town whenever they think of it. Perhaps they'll +shell us at tea." + +It was a quaintly beautiful little place, with its mixture of +French and German ideas; its old bridge and gentle-minded +river, between the cultivated hills. The sand-bagged cellar +doors, the ruined houses, and the holes in the pavement looked +as unreal as the violences of a cinema against that soft and +simple setting. The people were abroad in the streets, and +the little children were playing. A big shell gives notice +enough for one to get to shelter, if the shelter is near +enough. That appears to be as much as any one expects in the +world where one is shelled, and that world has settled down to +it. People's lips are a little firmer, the modelling of the +brows is a little more pronounced, and, maybe, there is a +change in the expression of the eyes; but nothing that a +casual afternoon caller need particularly notice. + +CASES FOR HOSPITAL + +The house where we took tea was the "big house" of the place, +old and massive, a treasure house of ancient furniture. It +had everything that the moderate heart of man could desire +--gardens, garages, outbuildings, and the air of peace that goes +with beauty in age. It stood over a high cellarage, and +opposite the cellar door was a brand-new blindage of earth +packed between timbers. The cellar was a hospital, with its +beds and stores, and under the electric light the orderly +waited ready for the cases to be carried down out of the +streets. + +"Yes, they are all civil cases," said he. + +They come without much warning--a woman gashed by falling +timber; a child with its temple crushed by a flying stone; an +urgent amputation case, and so on. One never knows. +Bombardment, the Boche text-books say, "is designed to terrify +the civil population so that they may put pressure on their +politicians to conclude peace." In real life, men are very +rarely soothed by the sight of their women being tortured. + +We took tea in the hall upstairs, with a propriety and an +interchange of compliments that suited the little occasion. +There was no attempt to disguise the existence of a +bombardment, but it was not allowed to overweigh talk of +lighter matters. I know one guest who sat through it as near +as might be inarticulate with wonder. But he was English, and +when Alan asked him whether he had enjoyed himself, he said: +"Oh, yes. Thank you very much." + +"Nice people, aren't they?" Alan went on. + +"Oh, very nice. And--and such good tea." + +He managed to convey a few of his sentiments to Alan after +dinner. + +"But what else could the people have done?" said he. "They +are French." + + + + +VI + +THE COMMON TASK OF A GREAT PEOPLE + + +"This is the end of the line," said the Staff Officer, kindest +and most patient of chaperons. It buttressed itself on a +fortress among hills. Beyond that, the silence was more awful +than the mixed noise of business to the westward. In mileage +on the map the line must be between four and five hundred +miles; in actual trench-work many times that distance. It is +too much to see at full length; the mind does not readily +break away from the obsession of its entirety or the grip of +its detail. One visualizes the thing afterwards as a +white-hot gash, worming all across France between intolerable +sounds and lights, under ceaseless blasts of whirled dirt. Nor +is it any relief to lose oneself among wildernesses of piling, +stoning, timbering, concreting, and wire-work, or incalculable +quantities of soil thrown up raw to the light and cloaked by the +changing seasons--as the unburied dead are cloaked. + +Yet there are no words to give the essential simplicity of it. +It is the rampart put up by Man against the Beast, precisely +as in the Stone Age. If it goes, all that keeps us from the +Beast goes with it. One sees this at the front as clearly as +one sees the French villages behind the German lines. +Sometimes people steal away from them and bring word of what +they endure. + +Where the rifle and the bayonet serve, men use those tools +along the front. Where the knife gives better results, they +go in behind the hand-grenades with the naked twelve-inch +knife. Each race is supposed to fight in its own way, but +this war has passed beyond all the known ways. They say that +the Belgians in the north settle accounts with a certain dry +passion which has varied very little since their agony began. +Some sections of the English line have produced a soft-voiced, +rather reserved type, which does its work with its mouth shut. +The French carry an edge to their fighting, a precision, and a +dreadful knowledge coupled with an insensibility to shock, +unlike anything one has imagined of mankind. To be sure, +there has never been like provocation, for never since the +Aesir went about to bind the Fenris Wolf has all the world +united to bind the Beast. + +The last I saw of the front was Alan Breck speeding back to +his gun-positions among the mountains; and I wondered what +delight of what household the lad must have been in the old +days. + +SUPPORTS AND RESERVES + +Then we had to work our way, department by department, against +the tides of men behind the line--supports and their supports, +reserves and reserves of reserves, as well as the masses in +training. They flooded towns and villages, and when we tried +short-cuts we found them in every by-lane. Have you seen +mounted men reading their home letters with the reins thrown +on the horses' necks, moving in absorbed silence through a +street which almost said "Hush!" to its dogs; or met, in a +forest, a procession of perfectly new big guns, apparently +taking themselves from the foundry to the front? + +In spite of their love of drama, there is not much +"window-dressing" in the French character. The Boche, who is +the priest of the Higher Counter-jumpery, would have had half +the neutral Press out in cars to advertise these vast spectacles +of men and material. But the same instinct as makes their rich +farmers keep to their smocks makes the French keep quiet. + +"This is our affair," they argue. "Everybody concerned is +taking part in it. Like the review you saw the other day, +there are no spectators." + +"But it might be of advantage if the world knew." + +Mine was a foolish remark. There is only one world to-day, +the world of the Allies. Each of them knows what the others +are doing and--the rest doesn't matter. This is a curious but +delightful fact to realize at first hand. And think what it +will be later, when we shall all circulate among each other +and open our hearts and talk it over in a brotherhood more +intimate than the ties of blood! + +I lay that night at a little French town, and was kept awake +by a man, somewhere in the hot, still darkness, howling aloud +from the pain of his wounds. I was glad that he was alone, +for when one man gives way the others sometimes follow. Yet +the single note of misery was worse than the baying and +gulping of a whole ward. I wished that a delegation of +strikers could have heard it. + +. . . . . . . + +That a civilian should be in the war zone at all is a fair +guarantee of his good faith. It is when he is outside the +zone unchaperoned that questions begin, and the permits are +looked into. If these are irregular--but one doesn't care to +contemplate it. If regular, there are still a few +counter-checks. As the sergeant at the railway station said +when he helped us out of an impasse: "You will realize that it +is the most undesirable persons whose papers are of the most +regular. It is their business you see. The Commissary of Police +is at the Hotel de Ville, if you will come along for the little +formality. Myself, I used to keep a shop in Paris. My God, +these provincial towns are desolating!" + +PARIS--AND NO FOREIGNERS + +He would have loved his Paris as we found it. Life was +renewing itself in the streets, whose drawing and proportion +one could never notice before. People's eyes, and the women's +especially, seemed to be set to a longer range, a more +comprehensive gaze. One would have said they came from the +sea or the mountains, where things are few and simple, rather +than from houses. Best of all, there were no foreigners--the +beloved city for the first time was French throughout from end +to end. It felt like coming back to an old friend's house for +a quiet talk after he had got rid of a houseful of visitors. +The functionaries and police had dropped their masks of +official politeness, and were just friendly. At the hotels, +so like school two days before the term begins, the impersonal +valet, the chambermaid of the set two-franc smile, and the +unbending head-waiter had given place to one's own brothers +and sisters, full of one's own anxieties. "My son is an +aviator, monsieur. I could have claimed Italian nationality +for him at the beginning, but he would not have it." . . . +"Both my brothers, monsieur, are at the war. One is dead +already. And my fiance, I have not heard from him since +March. He is cook in a battalion." . . . "Here is the +wine-list, monsieur. Yes, both my sons and a nephew, and--I +have no news of them, not a word of news. My God, we all +suffer these days." And so, too, among the shops--the mere +statement of the loss or the grief at the heart, but never a +word of doubt, never a whimper of despair. + +"Now why," asked a shopkeeper, "does not our Government, or +your Government, or both our Governments, send some of the +British Army to Paris? I assure you we should make them +welcome." + +"Perhaps," I began, "you might make them too welcome." + +He laughed. "We should make them as welcome as our own army. +They would enjoy themselves." I had a vision of British +officers, each with ninety days' pay to his credit, and a +damsel or two at home, shopping consumedly. + +"And also," said the shopkeeper, "the moral effect on Paris to +see more of your troops would be very good." + +But I saw a quite English Provost-Marshal losing himself in +chase of defaulters of the New Army who knew their Paris! +Still, there is something to be said for the idea--to the +extent of a virtuous brigade or so. At present, the English +officer in Paris is a scarce bird, and he explains at once why +he is and what he is doing there. He must have good reasons. +I suggested teeth to an acquaintance. "No good," he grumbled. +"They've thought of that, too. Behind our lines is simply +crawling with dentists now!" + +A PEOPLE TRANSFIGURED + +If one asked after the people that gave dinners and dances +last year, where every one talked so brilliantly of such vital +things, one got in return the addresses of hospitals. Those +pleasant hostesses and maidens seemed to be in charge of +departments or on duty in wards, or kitchens, or sculleries. +Some of the hospitals were in Paris. (Their staffs might have +one hour a day in which to see visitors.) Others were up the +line, and liable to be shelled or bombed. + +I recalled one Frenchwoman in particular, because she had once +explained to me the necessities of civilized life. These +included a masseuse, a manicurist, and a maid to look after +the lapdogs. She is employed now, and has been for months +past, on the disinfection and repair of soldiers' clothes. +There was no need to ask after the men one had known. Still, +there was no sense of desolation. They had gone on; the +others were getting ready. + +All France works outward to the Front--precisely as an endless +chain of fire-buckets works toward the conflagration. Leave +the fire behind you and go back till you reach the source of +supplies. You will find no break, no pause, no apparent +haste, but never any slackening. Everybody has his or her +bucket, little or big, and nobody disputes how they should be +used. It is a people possessed of the precedent and tradition +of war for existence, accustomed to hard living and hard +labour, sanely economical by temperament, logical by training, +and illumined and transfigured by their resolve and endurance. + +You know, when supreme trial overtakes an acquaintance whom +till then we conceived we knew, how the man's nature sometimes +changes past knowledge or belief. He who was altogether such +an one as ourselves goes forward simply, even lightly, to +heights we thought unattainable. Though he is the very same +comrade that lived our small life with us, yet in all things +he has become great. So it is with France to-day. She has +discovered the measure of her soul. + +THE NEW WAR + +One sees this not alone in the--it is more than contempt of +death--in the godlike preoccupation of her people under arms +which makes them put death out of the account, but in the +equal passion and fervour with which her people throughout +give themselves to the smallest as well as the greatest tasks +that may in any way serve their sword. I might tell you +something that I saw of the cleaning out of certain latrines; +of the education and antecedents of the cleaners; what they +said in the matter and how perfectly the work was done. There +was a little Rabelais in it, naturally, but the rest was pure +devotion, rejoicing to be of use. + +Similarly with stables, barricades, and barbed-wire work, the +clearing and piling away of wrecked house-rubbish, the serving +of meals till the service rocks on its poor tired feet, but +keeps its temper; and all the unlovely, monotonous details +that go with war. + +The women, as I have tried to show, work stride for stride +with the men, with hearts as resolute and a spirit that has +little mercy for short-comings. A woman takes her place +wherever she can relieve a man--in the shop, at the posts, on +the tramways, the hotels, and a thousand other businesses. +She is inured to field-work, and half the harvest of France +this year lies in her lap. One feels at every turn how her +men trust her. She knows, for she shares everything with her +world, what has befallen her sisters who are now in German +hands, and her soul is the undying flame behind the men's +steel. Neither men nor women have any illusion as to miracles +presently to be performed which shall "sweep out" or "drive +back" the Boche. Since the Army is the Nation, they know +much, though they are officially told little. They all +recognize that the old-fashioned "victory" of the past is +almost as obsolete as a rifle in a front-line trench. They +all accept the new war, which means grinding down and wearing +out the enemy by every means and plan and device that can be +compassed. It is slow and expensive, but as deadly sure as +the logic that leads them to make it their one work, their +sole thought, their single preoccupation. + +A NATION'S CONFIDENCE + +The same logic saves them a vast amount of energy. They knew +Germany in '70, when the world would not believe in their +knowledge; they knew the German mind before the war; they know +what she has done (they have photographs) during this war. +They do not fall into spasms of horror and indignation over +atrocities "that cannot be mentioned," as the English papers +say. They mention them in full and book them to the account. +They do not discuss, nor consider, nor waste an emotion over +anything that Germany says or boasts or argues or implies or +intrigues after. They have the heart's ease that comes from +all being at work for their country; the knowledge that the +burden of work is equally distributed among all; the certainty +that the women are working side by side with the men; the +assurance that when one man's task is at the moment ended, +another takes his place. + +Out of these things is born their power of recuperation in +their leisure; their reasoned calm while at work; and their +superb confidence in their arms. Even if France of to-day +stood alone against the world's enemy, it would be almost +inconceivable to imagine her defeat now; wholly so to imagine +any surrender. The war will go on till the enemy is finished. +The French do not know when that hour will come; they seldom +speak of it; they do not amuse themselves with dreams of +triumphs or terms. Their business is war, and they do their +business. + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of France At War, by Rudyard Kipling + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCE AT WAR *** + +***** This file should be named 12454.txt or 12454.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/4/5/12454/ + +Produced by David S. 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