At dawn next morning four officers approached her where she sat upon the doorstep. One of them informed her that, inasmuch as she was concealing French soldiers with arms inside the house, they intended to make a search.
"You are telling a lie," she informed them calmly, and did not budge. Two of the officers drew revolvers. Sister Julie sniffed contemptuously. The first officer again spoke. But his tone altered. It was less bumptious. He said that, inasmuch as the house had been spared the flames, at least an investigation was necessary.
Sister Julie arose and started inside. The officers stopped her. Two of them would lead the way. The other two would follow. The pair, with drawn revolvers, entered first and tiptoed cautiously down the hall. Then came the little nun. The second pair drew poniards and brought up the rear. She directed them to the rooms on the first floor, the sitting room, dining room and the kitchen, where Sister Hildegarde was busy over the fire. Then they went upstairs to the beds of the wounded. The first officer insisted that the covers be drawn back from each bed to make sure that the occupants were really wounded. Sister Julie remained silent at the door. As they turned to leave, she said with sarcasm, but with dignity: "You have seen. You know that I have spoken the truth. We are six Sisters of Mercy. Our work is to care for the sick. We will care for your German wounded, as well as our French. You may bring them here."
That morning the invaders began battle with the French, who had finished their entrenchments some kilometers on the other side of the town. At night the Germans accepted Sister Julie's invitation, and brought two hundred and fifty-eight wounded to her house. They completely filled the place. They were placed in rows in thesitting room, the dining room, and the hall. They were even in the kitchen and in the attic. The weather was fine and they were stretched in rows in the garden. The few other houses undestroyed by fire were also turned into hospitals, and for fourteen days Sister Julie and her five assistants scarcely slept. They just passed the time giving medicine and food and nursing wounds. By the fourteenth day, the French had made a considerable advance and were dropping shells into the town, so the Germans decided to take away their own wounded.
During all this time daily rations were served to the civilian survivors, on orders secured by Sister Julie at the German headquarters. The civilians were ill-treated, but they were fed. Sister Julie gave me concrete instances of outrage. Many were killed for no reason whatever; some were sent as hostages to Germany. During fourteen days they were herded in the field. Afterward ten were found dead, with their hands manacled. Sister Julie told me one instance of an old woman, a paralytic, seventy-eight years old, who was taken out in an automobile to show the various wine cellars among the neighboring farms. The old woman had not been out of her house for years and did not know the wine cellars.So the Germans killed her. Sister Julie went out at night and found her body. She and Sister Hildegarde buried it.
On the morning of the fifteenth day, the battle was fiercer than ever. The French had taken a hill near the outskirts, and mitrailleuse bullets frequently whistled through the streets. Several times they entered the windows of Sister Julie's house and buried themselves in the walls. But none of the Sisters was hurt.
There was a lull in the fighting for the next few days. The French were very busy at something—the Germans knew not what. They became more insolent than ever, and drank of the wine they had stored at thegare. In the ruins of the church they found the grilled iron strong box, where the priest, who had been sent to Germany as a hostage, had locked up the golden communion vessels, afterward giving the key to Sister Julie. The lock was of steel, and very old and strong. They tried to break it, but failed. They came to Sister Julie for the key, and she sent them packing. "I lied to them," she said softly. "I told them I didn't have the key."
Through the grilled iron of the box the soldiers could see the vessels. They were of fine gold, and very ancient. They were given to thechurch in the fifteenth century by René, Duc de Lorraine and King of Jerusalem. The strong box was riveted to the foundations of the church with bands of steel and could not be carried away. They shot at the lock, to break it. But it did not break. Instead the bullets penetrated the box, a half dozen tearing ragged holes in the vessels. The wine finally became of greater interest than the gold, and the soldiers went away. That night Sister Julie went alone into the ruins of the church, opened the box, and took the vessels out.
She paused in her story, got up from her chair, and unlocked a cabinet in the wall. From it she brought the vessels wrapped in a white cloth. I took the great golden goblet in my hands and saw the holes of the German bullets. Sister Julie sat silent, looking out through the chintz curtains into the street. Then she smiled.
She was thinking of the eighth morning after the wounded had been taken away. That was the happiest morning of her life, she told me. At 5 o'clock that morning, just after daybreak, Sister Hildegarde had come to her bed to tell her that the Germans stationed near thegarein that part of the town all seemed to be going to theruined part, near the river, in the opposite direction from the French. A few minutes later Sister Julie got up and looked from the window. Then she almost fell down the stairs in her rush to get out of doors. About fifty yards up the street was a watering trough. Seated on horseback before that trough, watering their animals, laughing and smoking cigarettes, were six French dragoons.
"I cried at the blessed sight of them," she said. "They sat there, so gay, so debonair, as only Frenchmen know how to sit on horses." Sister Julie hurried to them. They smiled at her and saluted as she approached.
"But do you know the Germans are here?" she anxiously inquired. "You may be taken prisoners."
"Oh, no, we won't," they answered in chorus. "There are thirty thousand more of us just behind—due here in about two minutes. The whole French army is on the advance."
Then came thirty thousand. After the thirty thousand came more thousands. All that day the street echoed to the feet of marching Frenchmen. Their faces were dark and terrible when they saw what the Germans had done. Most of the daySister Julie sat on her doorstep and wept for joy. Since that morning not a German has been seen in Gerbéviller.
Sister Julie ceased her story and wiped the tears that had been running in streams down her cheeks. We heard the rattle of a drum outside the window. It was the signal of the town crier with news for the population. Sister Julie opened the window and looked out. It was the announcement of the meeting to be held that afternoon, a meeting that she had arranged for discussion of plans for rebuilding the town. Five hundred of the population had returned. There was so much work to do. The streets must be cleared of the débris. The sagging walls must be torn down and new buildings erected. It would be done quickly, immediately almost; aid was forthcoming from many quarters. The new houses would be better than the old. The streets were to be wide and straight, not narrow and crooked. Gerbéviller was to arise from her ashes modern and improved. And only a few miles away the cannon still roared and thundered.
I asked her about the Cross of the Legion of Honor given her by President Poincaré. I asked why she did not wear it. A pleased flush deepened the color in her rosy cheeks. I shallalways remember the grace and dignity of her answer.
"I do not wear it because it was not meant for me alone," she said. "It was given to the women of France who have done their duty."
"Not the little red ribbon of the order," I persisted. "You should pin that on your dress."
But Sister Julie shook her head. She is a "religieuse," she explained. Nuns do not wear decorations. They are doing the work of the Lord.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SILENT CANNON
Ona hill commanding a valley stretching away toward the Rhine is a dense pine forest. From its edge I looked far across the frontier of Germany.
In a little clearing a French artillery Major came to meet me and my guide. Then we walked for miles, it seemed, through dense shade over paths thick with needles, until we came upon an artillery encampment. From the conversation between my guide—a Captain of the General Staff—and the artillery Major I learned that we were about to see something new in cannon.
I am always eager to see something new in cannon. Since my visit to the great factories at Le Creusot, when I was permitted to cable carefully censored descriptions of the new giant guns France was preparing against Germany, I have always been looking for these guns in operation. So, when I saw that here was no ordinary battery, I began the molding of phrases to use in cablingmy impressions. I did not realize then that I was to have the most poignant illustration since the war began of the mighty fundamental differences between the Teutonic and Latin civilizations.
On a gentle slope, where the tops of pine trees below came up level with the brow of the hill, there was a great excavation, such as might have been dug for the foundations of a château. The front part, facing the valley, was all screened with barricades and covered with evergreens.
We entered the excavation from the rear, down winding steps lined on either side with towering trees. These steps were all concrete, as was also the entire bottom of the excavation. The air was very fresh and cool as we descended. Up above the breeze gently swayed the trees, which closed over us so densely, dimming the daylight. I was reminded of a dairy I knew on an up-State farm in New York. I almost looked for jars of butter in the dim recess of the cool concrete cellar. I could almost catch the odor of fresh milk.
But in the center of our cavern was a huge piece of mechanism that I recognized as the "something new in cannon." Above the great steel base the long, ugly barrel stretched many yards through an aperture in front, and was covered over with evergreens. The Major described the gun in detail—its size, range and weight of its projectiles.
I walked to the front of the aperture to look at the barrel lying horizontally on the tops of the pine trees growing on the slope below. The branches had been carefully cut from the higher trees to give a view over the valley. I got out my field glasses and fixed them on the horizon many miles away—just how many miles away I am also not allowed to say. For a long time I studied that horizon just where it melted into mist. Then the sun's rays brightened it, and I could see more clearly.
"Looks like a city out there," I said aloud.
"It is," said the artillery Major behind me.
I looked again and could dimly make out what appeared to be the spires of churches.
"Look a little to the right; you can see a much larger building over there," the Major said.
I looked, and a huge gray mass loomed out of the mist.
"That's a cathedral," he said.
I put the glasses down and walked around to the open breech of the giant cannon, the mechanism of which another officer was explaining. He gave a lever a twist, and the huge barrel slowly moved from right to left over the tops of the pine trees.
The officer was saying in answer to a question:
"No, we are quiet now. We are just waiting."
"Waiting for what?" I asked.
"Oh, just waiting until everything is ready."
"Then what will you do?"
"Oh, destroy the forts, I hope. This fellow ought to account for several," and he patted the side of the barrel.
"Will you destroy the city?" I asked.
"What for?" he asked. "What good would that do? If we expect to occupy a city we do not want it destroyed. Besides,"—he shrugged his shoulders expressively—"we are not Germans."
I walked up to the gun and stared into the breech. I adjusted my glasses again and through them looked down the barrel. Out on the horizon I could see the huge gray mass that the Major said was a cathedral. The gun was trained directly upon it—this silent gun.
"It could hit that cathedral now," I thought to myself. Then I thought of the Cathedral of Rheims. Again I stared through the glasses into the barrel of the gun. The light was better now, and the tops of the spires were visible above the bulky gray mass.
It was the Cathedral of Metz.
CHAPTER XIX
D'ARTAGNAN AND THE SOUL OF FRANCE
I metd'Artagnan in a forest of Lorraine. Perhaps Athos, Porthos and Aramis were there too, somewhere in the shadows. I saw only d'Artagnan and talked with him as long as it takes to tell the story. I had forgotten how he looked to Dumas père, but I knew him at once by his bearing and his spirit. His swashbuckling manners are just as arrogantly gay now in the forest of Lorraine and in the trenches of the Vosges as they were long ago in old Paris and on the highroad. He swaggers just as buoyantly with the "poilus" of the Republic as with the musketeers of the Cardinal.
D'Artagnan is a captain now; when I met him he was attached to the staff of a General of Brigade. He is always your beau ideal of a man. He looks just what he is—a fine French soldier.
My first glimpse of him was from the automobile in which I was riding with an officer from the Great General Staff whose business it was to conduct press correspondents to the front. D'Artagnan was walking towards us on the lonely forest road, and signaled with a long alpenstock for our driver to stop. He wore the regulation blue uniform, with the three gold stripes of a captain on his sleeve. He had no sword. I find that swords are no longer the fashion with the "working officers" at the front. They are in the way.
Our car slid to a stop. D'Artagnan's free hand came to salute. It was an imposing salute—one that only d'Artagnan could have made. His heels snapped together with a gallant click of spurs; his arm swept up in a semi-circle from his body; his rigid fingers touched the visor of his steel helmet—one of the new battle helmets, very light, strong and painted horizon blue to match the uniform. The chin strap was of heavy black leather instead of the brass chain of ante-bellum parade helmets.
D'Artagnan, from the center of the road, roared out his name and mission. His name, in his present reincarnation, is known throughout the French army, in fact throughout France. It is known to the Germans too, but correspondents are not permitted to give the names of their officers until the war is over. Anyway I immediately recognized him as d'Artagnan.
His mission, announced with gusto, was to guide us along the lines held by his brigade. He leaped to our running-board and ordered our chauffeur to advance.
He was an impressive figure, even clinging to the side of the jolting car. His body lithe and powerful; his hands lean and strong; his face, under the visor of the helmet, was d'Artagnan's own. A forehead high and bronzed. Eyes blue and both merry and ferocious. Cheeks high but rounded. His hair, only a little of it showing under the helmet, was black, but just enough grizzled to proclaim him in middle age. His mustache—it was a mustache of dreams and imagination—his mustache stuck out inches beyond the cheeks, and was wondrously twisted and curled.
His medals proved him the survivor of many hard campaigns. Most officers when at the front wear only the ribbons of their decorations, if they have any, and leave the medals at home. But not d'Artagnan. He wore all of his medals, in a blazing row across his chest. And he had all that were possible for any man in his position to win. First came the African Colonial medal, then the medal for service in Indo-China. Next was the Médaille de Maroc. In the center wasthe Legion of Honor and then the Croix de Guerre, with four stars affixed, indicating the number of times during the present war, d'Artagnan has been mentioned in despatches for courage under fire. Finally came the only foreign medal—the Russian Cross of St. George—given by the Czar during the present war to a very few Frenchmen, and only "for great bravery."
As d'Artagnan again stopped the car and we climbed out into the road, which had narrowed to a forest path, my companion pointed to the medals.
"Our captain is a professional soldier, you see," he said. "He has fought all his life—didn't just come back when his class was called for this war."
But I already knew that. How could d'Artagnan be anything but a soldier—a professional, if you please—but fighting for the love of it, and the glory?
He tramped along in front of us, the spurs of his high boots jingling, and twirling the ends of his fierce mustaches. I glimpsed soldiers through the trees. Some came out to the path and saluted. To all d'Artagnan returned a salute with the same wonderful joy in it, as though it were the first salute of the day, or as if he werepassing a general. There was the same swing outward of the arm, the same rigid formality of bringing his hand to the helmet. The pomposity of the salute he may have learned from Porthos, but the dignity, the impressiveness of it, belonged to d'Artagnan.
His soldiers adored him; we could see that as we followed. Their eyes smiled and approved. And the stamp of great admiration was in their faces.
"They would go through hell with him," said my companion. "A good many of them have. He is the favorite of his brigade."
"He ought to be," I replied. "He is d'Artagnan."
"D'Artagnan!" my companion cried. "Why, so he is. I never thought of it. But heisd'Artagnan—alive and fighting."
He was a little distance ahead of us, among the trees. A sergeant approached him to make a report. D'Artagnan leaned back grandly on one leg, his chest forward, his chin tilted up, his hand, as usual, twisting the mustachios.
"He loves it," I said. "He loves everything about it—this war. When peace comes his life will lose its savor."
My officer of the Great General Staff nodded;d'Artagnan returned jauntily, swinging his stick, and in ringing tones told us all that he had arranged for us to see.
We followed him through a program that has been described many times by correspondents since the war began—the encampments, the batteries and the trenches. But never before did a correspondent have such a guide. It was not my first trip to the front; but d'Artagnan led me into advanced trenches, closer to the Germans than I had ever been before. We crawled on hands and knees and spoke in whispers. But I was fascinated because d'Artagnan, just as Dumas might have shown him, crawled ahead, waved his hand in quick, impatient gestures for us to hurry, looked back to laugh and point through a loophole to great rents in the wire entanglements showing where a recent German attack had failed.
Only once, at a point where a road separated two trench sections, and always dangerous because of German snipers, did he order us to pass around behind in the safety of a boyau or communication trench.Heleaped across the barrier with a derisive yell of triumph and a catlike quickness too astonishing to draw the German fire.
Otherwise he let us take far bigger chances than usually permitted visitors—and he made us like them. We squinted carelessly through risky loopholes because d'Artagnan did it first. We talked aloud because he did, and at times when ordinary guides would have made us keep silent. He stood up on a trench ledge and looked through a periscope, then jumped down laughing, holding out the periscope to show where a bullet had drilled a hole on the side only a few inches above his head. It was a game of follow the leader, and we followed because the leader was d'Artagnan.
"They will get him some day—he takes such chances," an officer remarked.
"They haven't got him yet and he has had more war than any of us," another replied.
On our way back, behind the line encampments, we met several soldiers carrying tureens of soup. D'Artagnan halted them, solemnly lifted the covers and tasted the contents. Then he passed the spoon to us.
"It is good," he pronounced, and patted the soldiers on the back, as we hurried on.
He now took us to his own quarters, in a dense grove of pines. His house was of pine boughs, half above and half underground, with a bomb-proof cavern at the rear. Its furniture was adeal table and a bed of straw. We sat around on camp stools and an orderly brought in tea.
D'Artagnan then changed the subject for a few minutes from war. He had visited nearly all the world, including America. He turned to me, and to my surprise spoke in English. It was a very peculiar English, but it was not funny coming from the lips of d'Artagnan. He told me about his trip to America—how he did not have much money at the time, so he went as a lecturer to the French Societies in the big cities of the United States. It was hard to picture this big, weather-beaten soldier in such a rôle, until he told me the subject of his lecture. It was "The Soul of France"—always the Soul of France, a soul chivalrous, grand and unconquerable, that would forever make the world remember and expect.
In Boston he had tried to speak in English, at the Boston City Club. He pronounced the letter "i" in city, as in the word "site." He told me the lecture in English was very funny. Perhaps it was; but the Boston City Club had not seen their lecturer in the forest of Lorraine. They did not know that he was d'Artagnan.
After tea he showed us the park made by his soldiers in front of his "villa," as the semi-underground hut was called. A sign painted ona tree announced the "Parc des Braves." Little well-groomed paths wound among the pine needles; rustic seats were built about the trees. A dozen little beds of mountain flowers made gay stars and crescents that would not have disgraced the Tuileries. The "Parc des Braves" had even an aviary, made of wire netting (left over from the barricades) built about a tree. D'Artagnan proudly pointed out a great owl and a cowering cuckoo in different compartments of this unique cage.
But the chef d'œuvre of the Parc was the reconstructed tableau of one of the brigade's heroic episodes. A tiny rustic bridge spanned a miniature brook; beside the brook was built a mill and beyond was an old farm-house and orchard. Seven tiny French chasseurs, of wood and painted blue, were holding the bridge against a horde of wooden Germans painted gray.
On a great tree shading this story of a glorious hour in the history of his "little braves," d'Artagnan had fixed a wooden slab, telling its details in verse.
"Il y avait sept petits chasseursQui ne connaissaient pas la peur."(There were seven little chasseursWho knew no fear.)
That is the way the story began; and each verse began and ended with the same words. I wish I could have copied it all; but d'Artagnan, the author, was impatient to move on.
So we left the Parc and followed into the gloom of the forest and up the steep slope of the mountain. It faced the enemy's trenches. From the top one could look across the frontier of Germany.
D'Artagnan was silent now, plunging along through the deepening twilight. Suddenly we emerged on the edge of a clearing still bright with sunshine: a clearing perhaps several hundred feet square, lying on the steep hillside almost at an angle of about forty-five degrees.
D'Artagnan stopped, took off his helmet, then walked slowly into the open. We took off our hats and followed him.
The clearing was a military cemetery—it held the graves of d'Artagnan's dead. A tall white wooden cross at the top rose almost to the tops of the pines growing above it. On the cross-piece was written:
"To our comrades of the —th Brigade, killed by the enemy."
At the foot of the great cross, stretched in military alignment over the clearing were hundreds of graves headed by little crosses. Soabrupt was the slope the dead soldiers stood almost erect—facing Germany. Narrow graveled walks separated them, and on each cross hung festoons of flowers kept always fresh by the comrades who remained.
We followed d'Artagnan across the silent place and stood behind him as he faced, with bared head, the great cross. He made the sign of the cross upon his breast. There was not a bowed head: we all lifted them high to read the words written there.
No one spoke; the wind rustled softly in the tops of the pines that pressed so densely about us. It was dark among the trees, but the clearing was still mellow with the fading sunlight.
"The sun always comes here first in the morning," d'Artagnan said softly, "and this is the last place from which it goes."
He swung around with his back to the great cross and flung out his alpenstock in a gesture that swept the valley before us. His voice rose harshly:
"Over there is the enemy," he thundered. "Those who rest here look at them face to face!"
His arm dropped; his voice sank.
"They didn't get over there. But their soulsremain here always to urge us and to point the way which we must go."
He stopped and seemed to listen. The wind had died; even the tree tops were still. The sun had gone; the dark began to sweep up over the graves. D'Artagnan leaned upon his alpenstock; his eyes were closed.
We did not stir, nor hardly breathe. D'Artagnan was in communion with the soul of his beloved France.
PART FIVE
THREE CHAPTERS IN CONCLUSION
CHAPTER XX
A REARPOST OF WAR
Aftera year or more of war, even a latter-day war correspondent who gets a personally restricted war office Cook's tour to the front semi-occasionally, may yearn for peace. This is especially true in the case of a regular correspondent with the French army, because to France there come so many senators, statesmen and "molders of neutral opinion," bearing letters from President, King or Prelate, that the regular correspondent has hard work to edge in even his legitimate number of tours.
One morning I awoke early, far from the firing line, safe in my Paris flat. Before breakfast I read the hotel arrivals listed in the newspaper. The names of several molders were there. I knew that all their letters stated definitely what whales they were. I knew that the tour directors would not be able to resist them and that my seat in the next front-going limousine would probably be held in another name. So in the words of theancient British music-hall classic I decided that "I didn't like war and all that sort of thing."
Twelve hours later I was standing on an old stone jetty that runs out to meet the forty-foot tides on the north coast of Brittany. It was as far away as I could get and still retain an official connection as correspondent with the French army. The tiny hamlet at the end of the jetty has an official name. The name does not matter. There is no railroad, no post office, no telegraph. But the place is known because it was there that Pierre Loti wrote his great story of the Iceland Fisherman. There was nothing to disturb the thoughts, nothing to jar the nerves. All was quiet and peace; of war there was not the slightest suspicion.
The water at the end of the jetty was thirty feet deep, but so clean that one could see through it as through air. I watched a crab waddle along the bottom and disappear under a rock. Then I got out my army glasses and swept the coast. For miles tremendous headlands stuck out in the sea, rolling over treacherous rocks. Before me was the Ile de Bréhat, the ancient home of the pirates, which thrusts an arm far out into the Atlantic—an arm that holds a lighthouse to tellmariners returning from Iceland that they are almost home.
Between the island and the mainland the outgoing tide swirled along at a rate of twelve sea miles per hour. I turned the glasses to the coast where the tiny Breton stone cottages were tucked behind rocks and hills that shelter them from storms and the long and terrible winter. Now they were bowers of color; clusters of roses and geraniums bloomed on garden walls, tall hollyhocks stood sentinel before the doors.
I dropped the glasses and sighed contentedly. Here I had found peace.
Near the old stone jetty a man was swimming. Suddenly he sat bolt upright on the water. His legs spread straight before him and his hands flapped idly at little waves. Occasionally he tugged at a long drooping walrus mustache, then rubbed the salt spray from his lips. He was a long angular individual and from my position on the jetty he appeared to be entirely unclad.
"He is sitting on the top of a rock that is flooded at high tide," some one near me remarked. As the words were spoken, the bather flopped from his place and swam toward us. He was puffing heavily when he grasped the stone sideof the jetty and pulled himself up. I then saw that I was mistaken as to his nudity, for he wore the strangest bathing costume that I had ever beheld. It consisted of white cotton trunks about eight inches wide. On one side, embroidered in yellow silk was a vision of the rising sun; skin tight against the other side was a blue pansy.
I was fascinated, and watched the man trudge up the winding road that led from the jetty. A ray of the lowering sun flashed on the embroidered pansy rapidly drying against his flanks as he disappeared in the doorway of a cottage. I turned to an old fisherman who was puttering about a sail boat:
"It looks Japanezy, that bathing suit," I said. The old man puffed at his pipe: "No; his wife made it," he replied. "He wrote to her that he had learned to swim so she made it and sent it up to him. He had never seen the ocean before he came here. He is from the Midi."
"Ah," I replied, "and what did he wear before she sent it?"
The old man shrugged his shoulders. "About here, you know, it doesn't much matter about bathing suits. There aren't many folks about."
"Who is he?" I asked. "Is he a summer visitor?"
"Summer visitor!" the old man gasped. "Summer visitor—why he hates this place and everything in it. He only learned to swim because he had nothing else to do and because he hates it so."
"Hates it!" I ejaculated. "Well, why on earth is he here then?"
"He's here because he's got to be here," the old chap replied. "He's mobilized here. He's a soldier!"
A cigarette that I had just taken from its case, fell from my nerveless fingers into the water and swirled out with the tide.
A soldier—a soldier in my retreat. How unspeakably annoying. And in that bathing suit I never would have suspected him at all.
The old fisherman explained, while I lugubriously leaned over the jetty and watched that crab puddling about his rock. There were eleven more of them—soldiers, I mean—they all lived in the little cottage near the jetty. They were there to guard the cable between the mainland and the Ile de Bréhat, two miles away. They guarded it the twenty-four hours of the day—those twelve. Every two hours one of them mounted guard where the cable comes up from the sea and solemnly guarded it from German attack.
The old fisherman pointed behind me. I turned and there, even as he had explained, I saw a man in the blue coat and red pants of the French territorial army. From the trenches the red pants have gone into the historic past. Nowadays the red pants are only for the territorials.
This particular cable sentry was also from the Midi, my fisherman explained. He too disliked the sea. He sat there and stared moodily into the sun that was just in the act of gloriously descending into the water. A last ray caught the steel bayonet of the Lebel rifle lying across his knees.
I left the jetty and walked up the winding road to the village. I went to the single store to buy tobacco and to hear the talk of the people. There were no newspapers, I thought, so their talk could not be about the war. Also there I would avoid the sight of the soldiers, because the store had liquor on its list of commodities. It is forbidden to soldiers to enter such places except at certain hours.
A fresh-faced Breton girl served out the tobacco. Cigars at two cents each were the most expensive tobacco purchase in the shop. I purchased a dozen and immediately became a celebrity and a millionaire. We talked. I asked her aboutthe countryside, about the people and about the wonderful lace coiffures of the peasant women. She told me how the women of one hamlet wear an entirely different "coif" from those even of the neighboring farms and that throughout Brittany there are hundreds of different styles.
Then I asked her about the men folks, the few who work in the fields and the great majority who go off in the boats to Iceland in the spring and come back ten months later—those who ever do come back at all. Then quite naturally we talked about the war. For she explained that to her people the war was not so terrible as the times of peace. Then it was impossible to get letters from a fishing schooner off the Iceland banks—now it was quite easy to get letters from the trenches every few days. The men suffered far greater losses from the perils of the northern ocean than since they were all mobilized to fight the Germans. Some were killed—that was natural enough—but not half so many as the number who just sailed out and disappeared.
I was beginning to feel that perhaps the war was a benefit to this part of the world.
An old woman entered the store to buy tobacco. She was bent and withered and her hand trembled as she drew the few coppers from her purse. Hervoice was high and quavery when she spoke to the girl. She said that her son had just been wounded near Verdun. His condition was desperate, but they were bringing him home—to her—to die on the old Brittany farm, on the hillside overlooking the sea.
"Ah, la guerre," she murmured, "c'est terrible."
She explained that her other boys had been lost on a fishing schooner five years ago. She had tried to keep this one—had wanted him so much and tried so hard. But if she could see him again it would be better. She sighed and tucked purse and tobacco under her apron and clattered out on her heavy wooden sabots—her head bowed under her years and her woe. "C'est pour la patrie," she murmured as she passed through the door.
The next day was a Sunday. On Sunday all Brittany goes to church, and when one is in Brittany—well, one goes to church too. After the service I walked through the churchyard, which is also the graveyard of the village. It was so quiet, so restful and far removed from the world and the war, that I was content to remain there, for the eleven soldiers not guarding the cable were disporting themselves on the beach.
I found a wonderful old wall at one end of thegraveyard. It was very old and overgrown with moss and ivy. It was a dozen feet high and crumbling in places. I did not know then that the wall was one of the sights of that countryside, but I did know when I saw it that I was looking upon the record of mighty tragedies. For it was covered over with little slabs, sometimes almost lost to view under the climbing vines. On the slabs were written the names of the men of the village who had gone to sea and never been heard of again. The dates were all there and the names of the ships. On several were the names of two or more brothers—on another slab were listed the males of three generations of one house. There were hundreds of names, the dates going back nearly a hundred years. Over many slabs with more recent dates were hung wreaths of flowers.
It is called the wall of the disappeared.
I read all the slabs with keenest interest; this record of toll taken by an element more resistless even than war. Indeed the battles of the nations seemed puny against the evidences of inexorable might written on the wall of the disappeared.
Near the end of the wall a woman was praying. She was all in black, with the huge Breton widow's cowl drawn over her head, so that she looked likea witch in Macbeth. Above her head I noticed a freshly painted slab newly fixed in the wall. I read the inscription over her shoulder. The date was September, 1915. Instead of the name of a fishing boat that went to pieces in a gale off Iceland, was recorded the man's regiment, followed by his name and the words, "disappeared in the battle of the Marne."
The morning following I awoke early, with the sun and the sea sparkling at my window. I got into a regulation bathing suit and rushed down the old stone jetty for a plunge before breakfast. The water was so fresh—so full of life—the day was so wonderful—that I forgot all about the twelve soldiers, the old woman whose wounded son was coming home to die, the soldier of the battle of the Marne whose name was on the wall of the disappeared.
There was no such thing as war as I dived off the jetty's end, deep into the cold, clean water. I opened my eyes under the water and could see the rocks on the bottom, still many feet below.
Suddenly a roar struck my ears and I struck up to the surface. I knew how sound travels under water; and I knew this sound. It was a dull, terrifying boom. I rubbed the salt from my eyes and looked across the straits to the Ile deBréhat. Crouched under the towering rocks of the island, and lying low in the water, was an ugly black torpedo destroyer flying the tricolor. A cruiser flying the Union Jack, her masts just visible across a far reach of the island, was picking her way slowly through the channel. The sound was a signal gun.
I floated on the water and looked up at the sky. Up there, perhaps, is peace, I thought; and then I glanced hastily about for aeroplanes.
As for this village, my thoughts continued, this insignificant village of L'Arcouëst, par Ploubazlanec, Côtes du Nord, Brittany—that is the sonorous official address of my tiny hamlet by the sea—why even if it is not in the "zone of military activity," it has all the elements that war brings, from the faded uniforms of blue and red to the black mouths of cannon. It has all the anxiety, all the sorrow, all the hopes and all the prayers. It has all the zeal and all the despair. All the horror and all the pomp and empty glory. It may only be a rearpost—way out where Europe kneels to the Atlantic—and where one can pray for peace. But war is there, after all.
CHAPTER XXI
MYTHS
TheEuropean war zone at the beginning of hostilities was as busy a fable factory as were San Juan and Santiago during the Spanish-American conflict when "yellow journalism" was supposed to have reached its zenith. It was a great pity, for the truth of the European war is stupendous enough. Newspaper myths and yellow faking have never had less excuse. In many cases it may take years to properly classify the facts.
Not all of the myths have been deliberate ones. At the outbreak of the war rumor followed rumor so swiftly, and was so often attested by the statements of "eye-witnesses," that inevitably it was transformeden routefrom fancy into fact. Sometimes a tense public itself raised definitely labeled rumors to the rank of official communications. In a few instances war correspondents have deliberately faked.
The censorship, generally unintelligent, sometimes incredibly stupid, is responsible for a great many myths. "Beating the censor" was a gleefulgame for some correspondents until it became clear that the censor always held the winning hand, and that he could even suppress their activities altogether. The "half truths" of the official communications have also been responsible for much flavoring of the real news with fiction.
The similarity in names of the river Sambre and Somme, the one being in Belgium and the other in France, undoubtedly had much to do with the wording of the French communiqués when France was first invaded. Day after day the despatches laconically referred to "the fighting on the Sambre." Then one Sunday morning, when it was considered impossible to keep back the truth much longer, a casual communiqué mentioned the fighting line "on the Somme." The press of the world, which had been deliberately kept in the dark for days, can scarcely be blamed for losing its head a trifle and printing scare headlines unprecedented since news became a commodity.
The greatest of all war fakes, and one that had not the slightest foundation of truth, is the story of the Russian army rushed from Archangel to Scotland, thence through England to France to aid at the battle of the Marne. This story is entirely discredited to-day, but it died hard, and no wonder, for there never was a story with somany "eye witnesses," so much "absolute proof" of its authenticity. From the highlands of Scotland to the hamlets of Brittany peasants were awakened at night by the tramp of marching feet. Upon investigation the Cossacks of the Czar were revealed hurrying on their way to the western battle line. I have never heard where the story originated, but every correspondent with the Allied forces believed it. A friend living near a French seaport whose honesty I can not question, wrote to me telling in detail of the landing of an entire Russian army corps. I talked with officers of both the English and French armies who swore to a definite knowledge that Russians were then in France and would soon be fighting in the front line. To my recollection the story was never denied, and only the fact that the Russians never did reach that front line where they were so eagerly awaited, brought the story into the classification where it belonged.
Another great fake, but different from this one in that it had a slight foundation of truth, is the story of the French taxicab army under General Galliéni, that swept out of Paris forty to eighty thousand strong (accounts differed) and which fell on the flank of the Germans and saved the city. This story became the most popular of theentire war, and it is still implicitly believed by thousands of persons. I saw that taxicab army and am therefore able to state that about ninety per cent. of the story written about it is fiction. The ten per cent. fact is that the army of General Manoury was in process of formation for days before the battle of the Marne. The troops were sent around and through Paris to occupy a position west of Compiégne. I watched thousands of them, the Senegalese division, march through Paris on foot during the latter days of August, 1914. It was the methodical, though hasty, creation by the General Staff of a new army. At the same time the General Staff was conducting, under General Joffre, the great retreat from Charleroi.
At the beginning of the battle of the Marne a few regiments were still in Paris. The Military Governor, General Galliéni, was instructed to rush them north by any means available. The northern railways were in German hands, and the only way was to send them in taxicabs. So many chauffeurs had been mobilized that Paris had then probably not more than two thousand taxis. At the tightest squeeze not more than four soldiers with heavy marching equipment, could have been carried in one of the small Paris taxicabs. Thetaxicab army, therefore, may have numbered four regiments, or eight thousand men, while the real figures may possibly be less. It was not the army of Paris gallantly rushing out to save the city. The army of Paris had instructions to remain in the city and to defend it. The taxicab army was a fine and dramatic piece of news, expanded to fit the imagination of an excited world.
The fable factory actually began operations before the declaration of war, when with the sudden shortage of money, tales of starving and otherwise suffering American tourists were cabled to New York by the yellow press. But the Paris papers, and the general press, awaited mobilization orders before becoming graphic without the support of facts.
On the first day of hostilities several papers printed thrilling details of the airman Garros having brought down a Zeppelin. Garros was then waiting for military orders at his Paris apartment and laughed heartily at the story when I telephoned to him.
Four times during the first month of the war I read of the death of the airman Vedrines. Six months later I met him on one of my trips to the front. The death of Max Linder, the comedian, was also dramatically related by the Paris press,but a few nights later I found Linder on theterrasseof a boulevard café relating his very live adventure in getting there.
Leaving out of consideration the feelings of the men's families these were after all comparatively harmless and unimportant fakes. A more sinister story, hinted at for weeks and finally openly printed, was that a certain French general had been shot for treachery while stationed near the Belgian frontier. So persistent was this report that it was finally necessary for General Joffre himself to issue a statement that the general in question was alive and well and had merely been removed to another field of active service.
Of all the fakes and all the fakirs, I believe the French authorities will admit that the greatest offenders have been their own papers. The English correspondents were always fairly reliable, while the accounts furnished the American papers have received the least criticism of all—and the greatest praise. The most outstanding example of incorrect information appearing in the British press was a story early in the war that the British expeditionary force had been entirely destroyed. It is only just to state that the writer of the story was ignorant of his facts and not a wilful fakir. Nevertheless he has since beenpersona non gratain France and has confined his activities to the Russian front.
Not all of the American accounts have been free from faking. One American correspondent printed an "exclusive interview" with President Poincaré which he declared was arranged and took place on the battlefield. This story was entirely false, the correspondent merely seeing the President reviewing the troops, a dozen other correspondents having the same privilege.
The most glaring example of inaccuracy upon the part of an American writer was an account of the battle of Ypres which appeared in both English and American publications. This account, giving the entire credit for the victory to the English, with faint praise for the French, was resented by both the English and French officers, the former as sportsmen not wishing undue praise, and the latter naturally piqued that a story having such wide circulation should not have been based more materially upon facts. This correspondent was later denied the privilege of visiting the French front and has retired from the zone of military activity.
Most of the fakes, as I have shown, occurred at the beginning of the war, or during the first six months, when all the world was in a state of greatexcitement, and when correspondents, the majority of whom had never seen a war before, should have been forgiven for sometimes letting their imaginations run riot. During the past twelve months, since organization has taken the place of chaos in so many activities related to the war, and when correspondents have acquired experience and perspective, I know of scarcely any cases of wilful misrepresentation of the truth. During the battle of Champagne in September, 1915, one correspondent did attempt to project his astral body to the battlefield for the purpose of writing an "eye witness" account of the fighting; but he paid dearly for the indiscretion. He was at once crossed off the official list of correspondents at the French war office and all his credentials were withdrawn for the duration of the war.
CHAPTER XXII
WHEN CHENAL SINGS THE "MARSEILLAISE"
I wentto the Opéra Comique one day to hear Marthe Chenal sing the "Marseillaise." For several weeks previous I had heard a story going the rounds of what is left of Paris life to the effect that if one wanted a regular old-fashioned thrill he really should go to the Opéra Comique on a day when Mlle. Chenal closed the performance by singing the French national hymn. I was told there would be difficulty in securing a seat.
I was rather skeptical. I also considered that I had had sufficient thrills since the beginning of the war, both old-fashioned and new. I believed also that I had already heard the "Marseillaise" sung under the best possible circumstances to produce thrills. One of the first nights after mobilization 10,000 Frenchmen filled the street beneath the windows of theNew York Timesoffice where I was at work. They sang the "Marseillaise" for two hours, with a solemn hatred of their national enemy sounding in every note. The solemnity changed to a wild passion as the night wore on. Finally, cuirassiers of the guard rode through the street to disperse the mob. It was a terrific scene.
So I was willing to admit that the "Marseillaise" is probably the most thrilling and most martial national song ever written, but I was just not keen on the subject of thrills.
Then one day a sedate friend went to the Opéra Comique and it was a week before his ardor subsided. He declared that this rendition of a song was something that will be referred to in future years. "Why," he said, "when the war is over the French will talk about it in the way Americans still talk about Jenny Lind at Castle Garden, or De Wolf Hopper reciting 'Casey at the Bat.'"
This induced me to go. I was convinced that whether I got a thrill or not the singing of the "Marseillaise" by Chenal had become a distinct feature of Paris life during the war.
I never want to go again. To go again might deepen my impression—might better register the thrill. But then it might not be just the same. I would be keyed to such expectancy that I might be disappointed. Persons in the seats behind me might whisper. And just as Chenal got to the "Amour sacré de la patrie" some one mightcough. I am confident that something of the sort would surely happen. I want always to remember that ten minutes while Chenal was on the stage just as I remember it now. So I will not go again.
The first part of the performance was Donizetti's "Daughter of the Regiment," beautifully sung by members of the regular company. But somehow the spectacle of a fat soprano nearing forty in the rôle of the twelve-year-old vivandière, although impressive, was not sublime. A third of the audience were soldiers. In the front row of the top balcony were a number of wounded. Their bandaged heads rested against the rail. Several of them yawned.
After the operetta came a "Ballet of the Nations." The "nations," of course, represented the Allies. We had the delectable vision of the Russian ballerina dancing with arms entwined about several maids of Japan. The Scotch lassies wore violent blue jackets. The Belgian girls carried large pitchers and rather wept and watered their way about the stage. There were no thrills.
MDLLE. CHENAL SINGING THE MARSEILLAISE
After the intermission there was not even available space. The majority of the women were in black—the prevailing color in these days. Theonly touches of brightness and light were in the uniforms of the officers liberally sprinkled through the orchestra and boxes.
Then came "Le Chant du Depart," the famous song of the Revolution. The scene was a little country village. The principals were the officer, the soldier, the wife, the mother, the daughter and the drummer boy. There was a magnificent soldier chorus and the fanfare of drums and trumpets. The audience then became honestly enthusiastic. I concluded that the best Chenal could do with the "Marseillaise," which was next on the program, would be an anti-climax.
The orchestra played the opening bars of the martial music. With the first notes the vast audience rose. I looked up at the row of wounded leaning heavily against the rail, their eyes fixed and staring on the curtain. I noticed the officers in the boxes, their eyes glistening. I heard a convulsive catch in the throats of persons about me. Then the curtain lifted.
I do not remember what was the stage setting. I do not believe I saw it. All I remember was Chenal standing at the top of a short flight of steps, in the center near the back drop. I indistinctly remember that the rest of the stage was filled with the soldier chorus and that near thefootlights on either side were clusters of little children.
"Up, sons of France, the call of glory—"
Chenal swept down to the footlights. The words of the song swept over the audience like a bugle call. The singer wore a white silk gown draped in perfect Grecian folds. She wore the large black Alsatian head dress, in one corner of which was pinned a small tricolored cockade. She has often been called the most beautiful woman in Paris. The description was too limited. With the next lines she threw her arms apart, drawing out the folds of the gown into the tricolor of France—heavy folds of red silk draped over one arm and blue over the other. Her head was thrown back. Her tall, slender figure simply vibrated with the feeling of the words that poured forth from her lips. She was noble. She was glorious. She was sublime. With the "March on, march on," of the chorus, her voice arose high and fine over the full orchestra, and even above her voice could be sensed the surging emotions of the audience that seemed to sweep over the house in waves.
I looked up at the row of wounded. One man held his bandaged head between his hands andwas crying. An officer in a box, wearing the gorgeous uniform of the headquarters staff, held a handkerchief over his eyes.
Through the second verse the audience alternately cheered and stamped their feet and wept. Then came the wonderful "Amour sacré de la patrie"—sacred love of home and country—verse. The crashing of the orchestra ceased, dying away almost to a whisper. Chenal drew the folds of the tricolor cloak about her. Then she bent her head and, drawing the flag to her lips, kissed it reverently. The first words came like a sob from her soul. From then until the end of the verse, when her voice again rang out over the renewed efforts of the orchestra, one seemed to live through all the glorious history of France. At the very end, when Chenal drew a short jeweled sword from the folds of her gown and stood, silent and superb, with the folds of the flag draped around her, while the curtain rang slowly down, she seemed to typify both Empire and Republic throughout all time. All the best of the past seemed concentrated there as that glorious woman, with head raised high, looked into the future.
And as I came out of the theater with the silentaudience I said to myself that a nation with a song and a patriotism such as I had witnessed could not vanish from the earth—nor again be vanquished.
THE END
FRONT D'ARTOIS
The attached map of the "Front d'Artois" is the first of the kind ever presented to the public. The author of this book has been specially authorized to reproduce it by the French Ministry of War, under whose direction it was first executed from photographs by French airmen taken on their trips over the German lines.
It bears the date September 25, 1915, that being the day when the great offensive was launched against the Germans both in Artois and Champagne. On that occasion the map was given only to French officers.
The heavy blue zigzag line shows the front line of the German trenches. The thin blue lines running to the rear show the communication trenches extending back to the second and even the third lines of defense. The French trenches are naturally not shown, but were to the west of the Germans, in some places not over fifteen yards of barbed wire entanglements separating them. At the time of the September attack all these trenches were captured by the French.
The Artois front, which is often called "the sector north of Arras," is one of the most important on the entire line, inasmuch as the army holding the plateau holds also the key to the channel ports. The bloodiest and most desperate battles of the war have occurred there.