A faint paleness lingers in the East, and spreads over the sky to our right. Straight ahead appear low plains, dotted with fires. The dawn comes, a moment full of difficulty and danger. My midshipman and I steer the course among the shoals.
At the moment when the last tack opens before us the roadstead of Saloniki, my successor comes to relieve me. The sunrise has taken possession of our world; the marvel of an Eastern morning emerges from the shadows of the night. I go quickly and drink a steaming cup of coffee, and come on deck again, to admire as simple spectator the panorama which I approached as pilot.
A stretch of frozen water, girdled with sands and marshes, reflects an uncertain light. Our prow breaks a way through the film of ice and broken splinters fall back on either side, like the crackling of frying cakes. Towards the mouth of the Vardar, legions of birds are skating and tumbling on this crust in which their claws can get no hold—the tumult of their voices disturbs the peaceful morning: fluttering moorhens,raucous herons, ducks in triangular flocks, wake and swarm about; rose-colored flamingoes poise themselves, motionless and pensive, on their needle-like legs, only a few meters from our course.
As our cruiser, sparkling with dew and glistening in the cold, penetrates farther into the white fog, a town emerges from the vagueness. It is still swathed in its morning gauze, its base is plunged in the fog, but its minarets offer their heads to the tints of the sunrise. One by one they show their slender outlines; soon they can no longer be counted for they form a forest of columns over the city. Surrounded by massive towers, the walls of the fortified castle on the summit of the hill are bathed in light; and beyond, stretching to the horizon, a desolate plain without trees or houses carries the eye towards Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, or the steppes of Turkey.
Our anchor falls, and tears the parchment of ice. At length, after so many miles and journeys, the cruiser halts. All Saloniki is smiling under the kiss of the sun. Close to the water, as along all the Mediterranean shores, the buildings on the quay show their black commercial signs, gold façades of moving-picture palaces, and the white stucco and marble of hotels and banks. The streets, like dark tunnels through the mass of houses, rise from the harbor and plunge into thetiers of Christian and Jewish walls, up to the heights of the great amphitheater, where are massed the light blue Turkish cottages, surrounded by cypresses and clusters of plane-trees.
An Orthodox basilica flaunts its humped dome; the synagogue, geometrical and ugly, seems to hide in a confusion of terraces; a Catholic church raises its cross on a stone abutment; and the fifty minarets, with their slender swelling and tapering tops, point upward toward Allah’s heaven. To the left, above the harbor, are tall smoking chimneys of brick; these are the minarets of the new god, industry, who has come at last to take his place among the sleepy Orientals.
Since we carry the flag of war in neutral waters, our cruiser must act with great scrupulousness. Greece consents to observe toward our mission a courteous hospitality, and we are careful not to abuse it. Since the beginning of the war theWaldeck-Rousseauis the first belligerent vessel to anchor in this cosmopolitan roadstead. All the East shudders. From the Serbian and Turkish storm clouds come bursts of thunder. Envies, hatreds and hopes wait only the hour to explode; Saloniki is a crossway where all currents collide. The presence of French sailors on shore might excite unpleasant demonstrations; the officers of the cruiser and the authorities of the city agree in refusing permission to sailors and officers to land until new orders arrive. This restrictiondoes not include couriers, or negotiators, who are protected by the diplomatic immunities.
And here we are, imprisoned only a few fathoms from shore. Weary with walking the steel deck of the ship, we were rejoicing at the thought of getting acquainted with softer ground. After the glittering sea our eyes longed for the peaceful sights of the streets or the fields. We abandon hope of these meager pleasures, and, like Tantaluses of the sea, try to satisfy ourselves with the attractions in the roadstead.
From morning until evening, and up to nightfall, the harbor caiques come out to the French ship, besieging her and trying to fasten to her. But the same orders which forbid our visiting Saloniki in turn forbid access to the ship. No cajolery softens the officials; they repulse the most impudent attempts; and the rush of the barques is broken against our armor-plate. These resemble the narrow caiques of Constantinople. The people are curious as only the Easterners know how to be; they come in little groups, not haphazard, but according to race, beliefs, or opinions. The different groups correspond to the diversity of the city, where under the same heaven the mosques, the temples, the basilicas and the churches, adore so many different gods.
Large numbers of Greek soldiers with tanned faces come to observe us. To free themselvesfrom the menace of war, they have hired boats together and come out to see what sailors look like who for four months have followed this profession of fighting. Later in some village of Bœotia or Locrida, they will relate to a rural audience the talk they had with sailors from Cornouailles or Provence. But between these two tribes of simple souls there is no common language to make intelligible conversation. An animated pantomime—sounds, grimaces, smiles, which everyone understands—has to serve. A finger is pointed towards the Dardanelles or Constantinople; another indicates the Adriatic; some comedian from Marseilles cries “Pan! Pan!” and a Theban gunner answers “Boum! Boum!” Great shouts of laughter burst from them. Hearts, if not lips, speak the same language.
Hearing this wild laughter, a crowd of Turks in black jacket and spotless fez, come round us silently. Their caiques are polished and painted green. Formerly these men were masters in Saloniki, but German duplicity launched their country into an adventure which lost them their fortunes. To them our flag is accursed. If some Turkish mine, wandering from the Dardanelles, should rip open our hull before their eyes, I swear they would raise to Allah strident cries of gratitude. But they are helpless and morose.
Their spite is only increased by the attentions we get from the friends of France. Some Englishmen,for instance, with their short pipes between their teeth and their chests open under a soft shirt, row about in pirogues; their bright eyes admire the cruiser as an instrument of sport, and the sailors as men who play the game of death. Passing, they rest their oars in front of the officers, and shout a “Hip! Hip! Hurrah!” at once emotional and precise, just as they might hail some cricket or football team.
Pretty Greek girls, with pure profiles and sly glances, add smiles, showers of flowers, and the brilliance of their new gowns to the enthusiasm of the men; as they leave, their gloved hands throw towards the cruiser kisses which they think are unperceived; but our glasses miss nothing.
Serbs with tragic faces, with sunken and burning eyes, come to get new courage from contact with the French Navy. At this very moment their country is prostrate before the Austrian. Our flag comes to tell them: “Do not despair!” and they respond to our friendly salutations with pale smiles.
Quite at their ease, some Russians push their way among the crowd of barques. Whether their territory be invaded or not, whether their troops advance or retreat in the varying fortunes of this war, the Russians suffer neither extreme anguish nor extreme joy. They are quite serene. A cloud effaces the sun, but does not extinguish it. A reverse may annoy Russia, but she can wait; hervictories will be the work of time. With a grand viva on their white teeth they salute their comrades of the great war, and then stay still, smiling.
These vivas excite ferocious glares in many an eye. Crouched on the benches in the boats are old Ottomans of Bagdad, or Mecca, or Erzeroum, who are telling over a shining chaplet of coral or nuts. These men are incorrigible. From their half shut lids, between their full lips, they dart towards theRoumislooks of hatred and imprecations. They glide at a distance of several meters from us, and do not stop their boat. The glances we are exchanging with our friends are profound, and charged with significance; the Mussulmans turn their eyes away to pretend indifference, but their rage is betrayed in the movement of their fingers which miss several beads at a time on their rosaries.
And what of these swarms of Germans, merchants, spies or fomenters of trouble, who crowd into the boats and instal themselves under our guns, to study the cruiser and the sailors? Here are these smiling but shameless faces, their eyes hidden beneath round spectacles, with which Germany blinds the world. Some of them, accustomed to this work, photograph us, enumerate our guns, observe our system of surveillance and protection. Before evening, telegrams in cipher will carry to Berlin all this information. Theydo it without shame; their disdain insults us with its impunity. Is not our territory invaded? Are not our Russian Allies harassed in Poland? Did not the British fleet, only a month ago, lose ships like ours off the coast of Chile? Have not our Serbian friends been driven back by the Austrians. “Germany over all!” We hear the arrogance they do not express. One of them dares to throw on deck a newspaper written in French. Attracted by the language, a sailor brings us the paper. But it comes from the press of the Wolff Agency; quibbles, monstrous lies, written in a French that would make negroes laugh, are dished up to the Levantines by the Teutons. We do not even want to shrug our shoulders; that would make these Germans who are watching us too happy. One among us rolls the sheet into a ball and throws it into the water; our impassive glances pass over these Germans encrusted along our hull. But under our uniforms our hearts beat a little faster.
A new arrival distracts us from these unpleasant neighbors. The children of the French school, conducted by French monks, bring us their rosy faces. Instead of games in the schoolyard, they have been rewarded with a view of the great ship, the ship which brings into the harbor the majesty of the great unknown nation. The ancestry of these children is diverse; their parents were born in Armenia, in Syria, in Thrace or Macedonia, but the gentle hand of France has alreadymoulded their minds. They laugh with pleasure, their eyes show animation and clearness, traits of French thought. They rise and sit down again, curious to see everything, disappointed in not coming aboard, boisterous and friendly. When they go back regretfully in the twilight, they crane their young necks after us for a long time, and suddenly their young voices chant a thin but touching “Marseillaise.” Their voices are inharmonious, their feeling breaks the verses, but the distance and the hour give to the sacred hymn an unbearable beauty. Like a perfume from our native land it floats over the water, fades away in the setting sun, and over there near the jetties becomes so faint that we seem to be hearing across space the song of our soldiers crouched in the trenches.
At that moment the sun disappears, and the cruiser makes its customary evening salute. Two gun shots resound in the pure air; our brass band plays the “Marseillaise;” the entire crew, hats off, turn towards the flag, which slowly descends from the top of the mast, brushes the bridge and guns in passing, and the soul of its native land comes to rest softly on the steel deck. During the night hours this standard, rolled up, preserves the love of France in its folds, and to-morrow, unfurling them to the sun, it will make them float anew on the seas we sail. Every evening and every morning in the wandering life of the sailor, thesereligious moments bring together Nature and Country, the two eternities; more religious even to-day in the presence of a thousand witnesses who are deeply moved. Standing, uncovered, all our comrades turn their gaze towards the tri-colored symbol, tinted with the blood, the purity, the hope, of our native land. In fury our enemies turn their heads away. The colored flag descends gracefully, smiles at us, but sets the others at defiance.
The water, purple for an instant, darkens and freezes. Our steam cutters disperse the boats, for theWaldeck-Rousseaumust be solitary through the night. In this country where so many thieves prowl about, vigilance must not be relaxed. The German boats do not want to go. We jostle them, chase them, and soon the spies’ faces have been cleared away from the approaches of the ship.
The night lights are lit in Saloniki; its quays are blazing, its slopes are flaked with light; the highest mingle with the stars. Dark and silent, the cruiser takes up her sentry duty; the roadstead is fast asleep, and the cold gradually covers it with a new shroud. On board it seems as if everything slept too, but the eyes of the lookouts never close, and the flag of France can repose in peace.
Pointe Kassandra, 10 December;On the Fight in the Falklands.
What a fine revenge! The German squadron was sailing down the American coast. In this vast ocean she thought she had realized the ambition of the Kaiser: “The future of Germany is on the sea!” Admiral von Spee, the herald of Teutonic glory, was unfurling in the harbors of Chile the standard he said was invincible when a telegram from Berlin recalled him, probably to the North Sea, in order to add the strength of his cruisers to that of the fleet at Kiel.
TheScharnhorst, theGneisenau, and two small cruisers began to double Cape Horn. They cleared the spur of the American world. I myself long ago went through the tempests and frosts which must have enveloped the German squadron in these windy seas. She reached the Atlantic, and turned towards the north. On the map of the world the Admiral’s pencil had traced the routes leading to the Antilles, to the Azores, to the United States, to Ireland, and the northern latitudes of Norway, en route for the tunnel of the Germanchenaux. Protected by the luck which had followed him from China and Tsing-Tao, he expected no disaster.
In the South Atlantic the British leopard had placed his paws on the Falkland Islands; he had been foresighted enough to store there immense reserves of coal. TheScharnhorst, theGneisenau,and their companions, made for this valuable booty, which they counted on seizing and stripping; for the place is as lost on the ocean as a helpless vessel. The German sailors, as they approached, had all the pleasure of playing a legitimate bad turn on their enemies.
But the wrath of Britain had launched on the sea great cruisers armed withfouet. Their orders were to discover these malevolent beasts, to chase and to scourge them to death. From the Mediterranean and from the English coasts, their greyhounds started on the merciless hunt, and swept the ocean as with a rake. Every time they put into port, they filled their magazines, they listened eagerly to the news of the world, and sailed ever farther south. When they learned that their game had turned along the American coast, they prepared for the grand hunt, assembled, and anchored in the Falkland Islands, in order to coal by night and lose no instant.
How strange the fate of ships at sea! Twenty-four hours later, and the coaling would have been done!
In the dawn of the next day, the lookouts on the Falklands saw the columns of smoke from the enemy ships in the distance. They came on like a cyclone. Admiral von Spee on his bridge was already imagining the telegram which should announce to Berlin next night his extraordinaryprowess. But from the islands which they thought were deserted, they suddenly saw emerge in the morning light the prows of the great cruisers with their powerful guns. He counted them. He recognized their strength. His signals ordered flight. But the English pack had sniffed blood, and until evening it ran and killed.
I have just read the respectful words which, like an epitaph, the London admiralty dedicates to their fallen enemies. Admiral von Spee has nobly ended a stainless career. Far away in the midst of the beauty of the Levantine, the officers of my cruiser at first rejoiced at the victory. Then they saluted him, for one does not need to know all the final details to respect an end so glorious as his.
TheScharnhorstand theGneisenauwere cruisers of our own class, enemies of our own design. Why did they not choose us, three ships with our six smokestacks apiece? The fight would have been glorious, and the glory to the French. Shall we never confront anything but a desert sea, or invisible submarines?
Mediterranean, 13 December.
Our mission is ended; we are going not to France but to Malta. The Cassandras were right, and this twelfth Christmas holiday I shall pass where.... Courage and patience! Our comrades in the trenches are suffering in the slime and mud.We are commencing to freeze on a sullen sea. Winter will be hard for all the sons of France.
For several days theWaldeck-Rousseauhas displayed the flag along the Levantine coasts. It has proved the vigilance of our country and her attention to the great cataclysms which are preparing in the East. It has encouraged the neutrals and informed the Turk that his turn will soon come. The cruiser has anchored nowhere. Her elegant outline passed far from islands or coasts, and the people who observed the smoke from her six stacks, could prophesy the future from the sight.
One morning we crossed the bay which is bordered by three nations, Turkey at Gallipoli; Bulgaria at Dedeagatch; Greece at Kavalla—respectively hostile, doubtful, friendly.
Gallipoli: a rugged mountainous peninsula, looking like Corsica. Behind its heights winds the passage of the Dardanelles, the path to Constantinople. For the moment this approach is forbidden us, and our guns quiver in vain. France and England wait their hour; the punishment of the Osmanlis will come later.
Dedeagatch: a seaport which Bulgaria conquered in the recent war. It is a badly situated harbor on an unfavorable coast; it seems to be surrounded by a desert; we can see immense freshly plastered barracks. A prize of war, it is filled with armament; as a maritime station itreceives naval contraband for the Balkans. How many ships have we not halted who gave this port among their stopping-places? Our suspicions were rife; we saw that through this port the Turks were kept supplied. But Bulgaria remained neutral, the ships’ papers had all the proper endorsements, and we had to let them pass.
Kavalla, Thesos and Samothrace: Greek harbor and islands. At the first the dissatisfied Bulgarians cast envious looks; they are inconsolable at having lost it at the same time as Saloniki. It is one of the bones of contention in an East which will never end its disputes. The name of this city will be famous before the war is ended. It was in the bosom of Samothrace that connoisseurs of sculpture found the statue which is the pride of the Louvre. In Paris at the head of a staircase, the perfection of her draped figure, with its graceful stride, delights the crowds who come to see her. She symbolizes Victory. For having placed her in the temple of her masterpieces, France deserves to add a jewel to the crown of this same Victory. She will not fail to do so. Our wistful thoughts pass to the violet rocks where the Victory slept under the earth, waiting so many centuries until she should awake in a French museum.
All these visions fade. Others succeed them, and each one brings a new dream. On a heavenly evening, one of the last fine evenings of the closingyear, the cruiser passed Mount Athos, that jewel of the Christian faith. Her slopes are like a splendid robe sown with gems. The huts of hermits and solitaires cling to the sharp edges that the vultures and the eagles love. The pious men, who pass their lives preparing for eternal bliss, spend here their austere days, made fragrant with prayer.
Lower down, the convents form a ragged girdle; soft colors, blue, rose and faded green, give a religious tint to the walls; men, clothed in black—to represent the mourning for earthly passions—pray there for the sins of the world; they live on another planet, and the clamors of the world die at the foot of their sanctuary.
Before these priests and seminarists our smoking cruiser passes like a comet which comes from the unknown and goes into the infinite. The priests of Mount Athos salute us; they send up rockets, pale in the twilight; they set off firecrackers and Bengal lights, and perhaps their united voices send us an affectionate welcome. But the maritime comet passes; the noises reach it faintly, as the voices of men must reach the celestial altitudes.
Around a little cape appear huge convents, with sparkling gold domes. They are beautiful and desolate. The faith of the Eastern peoples has raised these kremlins in the name of Christ, and the setting sun wraps them in a fire more radiantthan the kremlin of Moscow. Splendid color bathes the mountain and its cluster of religious buildings. As if to view the picture better, theWaldeck-Rousseaudraws away; it moves between the sun, hung in a glory of rose-color, and Mount Athos, shimmering under the caress of the light. With its cliffs shining and its ravines filled with colors, it seems alive, and changes like a poignant harmony of violins. Into the summit, the frosts of December have driven a nail of snow, which catches the changing smiles of the sun and reflects them, soft and tender, into space. In a few moments the violet color takes possession of the sky; then it fades imperceptibly, and theWaldeck-Rousseau, for this night of the voyage, sails on in a religious atmosphere.
That man is to be pitied who is not moved by the enchantment of Nature, or who does not know the great lessons of history. He is ignorant of those pleasures that never fade. For fifteen days the Ionian Sea has been surrendering to me its secret of our inheritance from the Greeks. Mount Athos and this fair evening reveal to me another heritage, that bequeathed by Jesus Christ.
Long ago from the deserts of Palestine a voice was lifted among the Roman multitude. It brought back to earth those transcendant archangels whom the children of Cain had banished. The archangels are named Goodness and Justice. I will not pursue the story of their martyrdomhere on earth. Like harmless little animals at bay before ferocious beasts, they have suffered; their hearts and bodies have bled; and the wicked boast that they have driven them from the world.
But a nation was found to receive these two trembling angels in her maternal hands. She revived them in her bosom; from their lovely touch she got the courage to suffer, and as the first Christians threw themselves to the torture rather than deny the Divine Master, so France for more than a century, has been willing to die in behalf of her love for Liberty and Justice.
In the month of August, 1914, with sword on high and bosom bare, she defied anew the perpetrators of cruelty. Her people and her ministers were not mistaken. Whether unbelievers or religious men, their gospel and their justification are those of the Galilean. It is indeed from His divine parables, and not from the decrees of the old Germanic god, that France has gathered the flower which is planted in her crest. White and incorruptible, this flower has closed its petals during the weeks through which we are living; but the German foulness shall not soil it, the shells shall not cut its stem, and the dawn is not distant when its opened petals will shed over the world a sweet fragrance.
How beautiful France seems to me, and how much in love with her I feel to-night! Frenchmen, realize your good fortune to have beennourished by so charming a mother! In the womb of antiquity were formed two priceless treasures: Greek beauty and Christian virtue. It is our France who has saved them from death. No people, no territory, has been willing to receive these heritages. Will all our blood suffice to pay for this unhoped for splendor? Take care lest we weaken. Under my eyes in the moonlight there glide past ancient lands and islands, my memories cross the centuries, rest like arches upon the supports of these legends, and form a bridge which leads far away to Jerusalem and to Athens.
Jerusalem and Athens! The barbarous Turks and the ignorant Romans have stripped the gilt from their glory. The sons of these two cities did not know how to defend their patrimony, and two thousand years of servitude, ruin and death, have delivered their helpless peoples over to the pity of history. Let us take good care not to imitate them. Ignorant and barbarian, the Germanic hordes menace us with their claws. The gracious mind and exquisite body of France are receiving the same affront as did her ancient sisters. But in this case the same catastrophe will not follow the same weakness.
Let us forget the frivolous thought and discourse of our former days. Beauty must be strong, and one can only smile when the fist is heavy. Let us suffer; let us know how to wait. From her dying sons France demands the rightto shine resplendent. How much shall we not love her at the moment when, holding her spear, she undoes her iron tunic, and offering to the world a countenance flushed with feeling and eyes profound with the agony of battle, says in a voice broken with emotion and a smile brimming with pride: “I have consented to shed blood! Let me henceforth sow flowers!”
15 December, after the bombardment ofBritish harbors by German cruisers.
We too could acquire this glory of slaughtering women and children. Who prevents us in the Adriatic? To-morrow, if the French sailors were bandits, the world would learn that their guns had bombarded unfortified towns and the Dalmatian Islands, and, protected by our cruisers’ strength, had eluded the vigilance of Austria.
Where on earth did the Germans learn warfare! Does naval honor no longer exist among them? I cannot believe it. There are tasks which a sailor only accomplishes with rage in his heart, and those who fired at Yarmouth, Grimsby and Scarborough would ask pardon of God for the crime which their Emperor commanded. Only this man could have persuaded sailors to destroy peaceful towns. The sound of those shells he sent against a defenseless coast will whistle through history round his accursed name.
You, commandant of theEmden, Admiral ofthe cruisers sunk in the Falklands, captain of the armed liners, I can imagine you shuddering in disgust. Far away from the orders of your master, you caused a spotless standard to be feared on remote seas. Your conscience followed nobly the rules of war. You conquered. You have been conquered. In the great naval fraternity, no one thinks of uttering your names without taking off his hat to you. Before your defeat I would have pressed your brave hands, happy to touch fingers which no crime had sullied. But these cruisers of the North Sea, reptiles which smell of putrefaction—let them be tracked like stinking beasts—let them be executed like apaches of the sea, let them even be assassinated, and all sailors of the world, neutrals as well as belligerents, will think their punishment too good for their crime.