The Project Gutenberg eBook ofWarThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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 atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: WarAuthor: Pierre LotiTranslator: Marjorie LaurieRelease date: February 8, 2011 [eBook #35211]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Kosker and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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 atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: WarAuthor: Pierre LotiTranslator: Marjorie LaurieRelease date: February 8, 2011 [eBook #35211]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Barbara Kosker and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive/American Libraries.)
Title: War
Author: Pierre LotiTranslator: Marjorie Laurie
Author: Pierre Loti
Translator: Marjorie Laurie
Release date: February 8, 2011 [eBook #35211]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Barbara Kosker and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR ***
Publisher's Mark
PAGEI.A Letter to the Minister of Marine9II.Two Poor Little Nestlings of Belgium12III.A Gay Little Scene at the Battle Front18IV.Letter to Enver Pasha28V.Another Scene at the Battle Front34VI.The Phantom Basilica53VII.The Flag Which Our Naval Brigade do not Yet Possess68VIII.Tahiti and the Savages with Pink Skins Like Boiled Pig80IX.A Little Hussar85X.An Evening at Ypres95XI.At the General Headquarters of the Belgian Army111XII.Some Words Uttered by Her Majesty, the Queen of the Belgians127XIII.An Appeal on Behalf of the Seriously Wounded in the East139XIV.Serbia in the Balkan War148XV.Above All Let Us Never Forget!151XVI.The Inn of the Good Samaritan157XVII.For the Rescue of Our Wounded174XVIII.At Rheims177XIX.The Death-Bearing Gas192XX.All-Souls' Day with the Armies at the Front205XXI.The Cross of Honour for the Flag of the Naval Brigade212XXII.The Absent-Minded Pilgrim219XXIII.The First Sunshine of March242XXIV.At Soissons265XXV.The Two Gorgon Heads299
Captain J. Viaud of the Naval Reserve, to the Minister of Marine.
Rochefort, August 18th, 1914.
Sir,
When I was recalled to active service on the outbreak of war I had hopes of performing some duty less insignificant than that which was assigned to me in our dock-yards.
Believe me, I have no reproaches to make, for I am very well aware that the Navy will not fill the principal rôle in this war, and that all my comrades of the same rank are likewise destined to almost complete inaction for mere lack ofopportunity, like myself doomed, alas! to see their energies sapped, their spirits in torment.
But let me invoke the other name I bear. The average man is not as a rule well versed in Naval Regulations. Will it not, then, be a bad example in our dear country, where everyone is doing his duty so splendidly, if Pierre Loti is to serve no useful end? The exercise of two professions places me as an officer in a somewhat exceptional position, does it not? Forgive me then for soliciting a degree of exceptional and indulgent treatment. I should accept with joy, with pride, any position whatsoever that would bring me nearer to the fighting-line, even if it were a very subordinate post, one much below the dignity of my five rows of gold braid.
Or, on the other hand, in the last resort, could I not be appointed a supernumerary on special duty on some ship which mighthave a chance of seeing real fighting? I assure you that I should find some means of making myself useful there. Or, finally, if there are too many rules and regulations in the way, would you grant me, sir, while waiting until my services may be required by the Fleet, liberty to come and go, so that I may try to find some kind of employment, even if it be only ambulance work? My lot is hard, and no one will understand that the mere fact that I am a captain in the Naval Reserve dooms me to almost complete inaction, while all France is in arms.
(Signed)Julien Viaud.(Pierre Loti.)
August, 1914.
One evening a train full of Belgian refugees had just entered the railway station of one of our southern towns. Worn out and dazed, the poor martyrs stepped down slowly, one by one, on to the unfamiliar platform where Frenchmen were waiting to welcome them. Carrying with them a few articles of clothing, caught up at haphazard, they had climbed up into the coaches without so much as asking themselves what was their destination. They had taken refuge there in hurried flight, desperate flight from horror and death, from fire, mutilations unspeakable and Sadic outrages—such things, deemed no longer possible on earth, had been broodingstill, it seemed, in the depths of pietistic German brains, and, like an ultimate spewing forth of primeval barbarities, had burst suddenly upon their country and upon our own. Village, hearth, family—nothing remained to them; without purpose, like waifs and strays, they had drifted there, and in the eyes of all lay horror and anguish. Among them were many children, little girls, whose parents were lost in the midst of conflagrations or battles; aged grandmothers, too, now alone in the world, who had fled, scarce knowing why, clinging no longer to life, yet urged on by some obscure instinct of self-preservation. The faces of these aged women expressed no emotion, not even despair; it seemed as if their souls had actually abandoned their bodies and reason their brains.
Lost in that mournful throng were two quite young children, holding each othertightly by the hand, two little boys, evidently two little brothers. The elder, five years of age perhaps, was protecting the younger, whose age may have been three. No one claimed them; no one knew them. When they found themselves alone, how was it that they understood that if they would escape death they, too, must climb into that train? Their clothes were neat, and they wore warm little woollen stockings. Evidently they belonged to humble but careful parents. Doubtless they were the sons of one of those glorious soldiers of Belgium who fell like heroes upon the field of honour—sons of a father who, in the moment of death, must needs have bestowed upon them one last and tender thought. So overwhelmed were they with weariness and want of sleep that they did not even cry. Scarcely could they stand upright. They could not answer the questions that were put to them, but above allthey refused to let go of each other; that they would not do. At last the big, elder brother, still gripping the other's hand for fear of losing him, realised the responsibilities of his character of protector; he summoned up strength to speak to the lady with the brassard, who was bending down to him.
"Madame," he said, in a very small, beseeching voice, already half-asleep, "Madame, is anyone going to put us to bed?"
For the moment this was the only wish they were capable of forming; all that they looked for from the mercy of mankind was that someone would be so good as to put them to bed. They were soon put to bed, together, you may be sure, and they went to sleep at once, still holding hands and nestling close to each other, both sinking in the same instant into the peaceful oblivion of children's slumbers.
One day long ago, in the China Seas during the war, two bewildered little birds, two tiny little birds, smaller even than our wren, had made their way, I know not how, on board our iron-clad and into our admiral's quarters. No one, to be sure, had sought to frighten them, and all day long they had fluttered about from side to side, perching on cornices or on green plants. By nightfall I had forgotten them, when the admiral sent for me. It was to show me, with emotion, his two little visitors; they had gone to sleep in his room, perched on one leg upon a silken cord fastened above his bed. Like two little balls of feathers, touching and almost mingling in one, they slept close, very close together, without the slightest fear, as if very sure of our pity.
And these poor little Belgian children, sleeping side by side, made me think of those two nestlings, astray in the midst ofthe China Seas. Theirs, too, was the same trust; theirs the same innocent slumber. But these children were to be protected with a far more tender solicitude.
October, 1914.
At about eleven o'clock in the morning of that day I arrived at a village—its name I have, let us say, forgotten. My companion was an English commandant, whom the fortunes of war had given me for comrade since the previous evening. Our path was lighted by that great and genial magician, the sun—a radiant sun, a holiday sun, transfiguring and beautifying all things. This occurred in a department in the extreme north of France, which one it was I have never known, but the weather was so fine that we might have imagined ourselves in Provence.
For nearly two hours our way layhemmed in between two columns of soldiers, marching in opposite directions. On our right were the English going into action, very clean, very fresh, with an air of satisfaction and in high spirits. They were admirably equipped and their horses in the pink of condition. On our left were French Artillerymen coming back from the Titanic battle to enjoy a little rest. The latter were coated with dust, and some wore bandages round arm and forehead, but they still preserved their gaiety of countenance and the aspect of healthy men, and they marched in sections in good order. They were actually bringing back quantities of empty cartridge cases, which they had found time to collect, a sure proof that they had withdrawn from the scene of action at their leisure, unhurried and unafraid—victorious soldiers to whom their chiefs had prescribed a few days' respite. In the distance we heard a noiselike a thunderstorm, muffled at first, to which we were drawing nearer and yet nearer. Peasants were working in the adjoining fields as if nothing unusual were happening, and yet they were not sure that the savages, who were responsible for such tumult yonder, would not come back one of these days and pillage everything. Here and there in the meadows, on the grass, sat groups of fugitives, clustered around little wood fires. The scene would have been dismal enough on a gloomy day, but the sun managed to shed a cheerful light upon it. They cooked their meals in gipsy fashion, surrounded by bundles in which they had hurriedly packed together their scanty clothing in the terrible rush for safety.
Our motor car was filled with packets of cigarettes and with newspapers, which kind souls had commissioned us to carry to the men in the firing-line, and so slowwas our progress, so closely were we hemmed in by the two columns of soldiers, that we were able to distribute our gifts through the doors of the car, to the English on our right, to the French on our left. They stretched out their hands to catch them in mid-air, and thanked us with a smile and a quick salute.
There were also villagers who travelled along that overcrowded road mingling in confusion with the soldiers. I remember a very pretty young peasant woman, who was dragging along by a string, in the midst of the English transport wagons, a little go-cart with two sleeping babies. She was toiling along, for the gradient just there was steep. A handsome Scotch sergeant, with a golden moustache, who sat on the back of the nearest wagon smoking a cigarette and dangling his legs, beckoned to her.
"Give me the end of your string."
She understood and accepted his offer with a smile of pretty confusion. The Scotchman wound the fragile tow-rope round his left arm, keeping his right arm free so that he might go on smoking. So it was really he who brought along these two babies of France, while the heavy transport lorry drew their little cart like a feather.
When we entered the village, the sun shone with increasing splendour. Such chaos, such confusion prevailed there as had never been seen before, and after this war, unparalleled in history, will never again be witnessed. Uniforms of every description, weapons of every sort, Scots, French cuirassiers, Turcos, Zouaves, Bedouins, whose burnouses swung upwards with a noble gesture as they saluted. The church square was blocked with huge English motor-omnibuses that had once been a means of communication in thestreets of London, and still displayed in large letters the names of certain districts of that city. I shall be accused of exaggeration, but it is a fact that these omnibuses wore a look of astonishment at finding themselves rolling along, packed with soldiers, over the soil of France.
All these people, mingled together in confusion, were making preparations for luncheon. Those savages yonder (who might perhaps arrive here on the morrow—who could say?) still conducted their great symphony, their incessant cannonade, but no one paid any attention to it. Who, moreover, could be uneasy in such beautiful surroundings, such surprising autumn sunshine, while roses still grew on the walls, and many-coloured dahlias in gardens that the white frost had scarcely touched? Everyone settled down to the meal and made the best of things. You would have thought you were looking ata festival, a somewhat incongruous and unusual festival, to be sure, improvised in the vicinity of some tower of Babel. Girls wandered about among the groups; little fair-haired children gave away fruit they had gathered in their own orchards. Scotsmen in shirt-sleeves were persuaded that the country they were in was warm by comparison with their own. Priests and Red Cross sisters were finding seats for the wounded on packing-cases. One good old sister, with a face like parchment, and frank, pretty eyes under her mob-cap, took infinite pains to make a Zouave comfortable, whose arms were both wrapped in bandages. Doubtless she would presently feed him as if he were a little child.
We ourselves, the Englishman and I, were very hungry, so we made our way to the pleasant-looking inn, where officers were already seated at table with soldiers of lower rank. (In these times of tormentin which we live hierarchal barriers no longer exist.)
"I could certainly give you roast beef and rabbitsauté," said the innkeeper, "but as for bread, no indeed! it is not to be had; you cannot buy bread anywhere at any price."
"Ah!" said my comrade, the English commandant, "and what about those excellent loaves over there standing up against the door?"
"Oh, those loaves belong to a general who sent them here, because he is coming to luncheon with his aides-de-camp."
Hardly had he turned his back when my companion hastily drew a knife from his pocket, sliced off the end of one of those golden loaves, and hid it under his coat.
"We have found some bread," he said calmly to the innkeeper, "so you can bring luncheon."
So, seated beside an Arab officer oflaGrande Tente, dressed in a red burnous, we luncheon gaily with our guests, the soldier-chauffeurs of our motor car.
When we left the inn to continue our journey the festival of the sun was at its height; it cast a glad light upon that ill-assorted throng and the strange motor-omnibuses. A convoy of German prisoners was crossing the square; bestial and sly of countenance they marched between our own soldiers, who kept time infinitely better than they; scarcely a glance was thrown at them.
The old nun I spoke of, so old and so pure-eyed, was helping her Zouave to smoke a cigarette, holding it to his lips rather awkwardly with trembling, grandmotherly solicitude. At the same time she seemed to be telling him some quite amusing stories—with the innocent, ingenuous merriment of which good nuns have the secret—for they were both laughing. Whocan say what little childish tale it may have been? An old parish priest, who was smoking his pipe near them—without any particular refinement, I am bound to admit—laughed, too, to see them laugh. And just as we were going into our car to continue our journey to those regions of horror where the cannon were thundering, a little girl of twelve ran and plucked a sheaf of autumn asters from her garden to deck us with flowers.
What good people there are still in the world! And how greatly has the aggression of German savages reinforced those tender bonds of brotherhood that unite all who are truly of the human species.
Rochefort, September 4th, 1914.
My Dear and Great Friend,
Forgive my letter for the sake of my affection and admiration for yourself and of my regard for your country, which to some extent I have made my own. In the country round Tripoli you played the part of splendid hero, without fear and without reproach, holding your own, ten men against a thousand. In Thrace it was you who recovered Adrianople for Turkey, and this feat, the recapture of that town of heroes, you effected almost without bloodshed. Everywhere, with the violence necessitated by the circumstances, you suppressed cruelty and brigandage. I witnessed your indignation against the atrocitiesof the Bulgarians, and you yourself desired me to visit, in your service motor car, the ruins of those villages through which the assassins had passed.
Well, I will tell you a fact of which you are doubtless yet ignorant: In Belgium, in France, and moreoverby order, the Germans are committing these same abominations which the Bulgarians committed in your country, and they are a thousand times more detestable still, for the Bulgarians were primitive mountaineers under the influence of fanaticism, whereas these others are civilised. Civilised? So fundamental is their brutality that culture has no grasp of their souls and nothing can be expected of them.
Turkey to-day desires to win back her islands; this point no one who is not blinded with prejudice can fail to understand. But I tremble lest she should go too far in this war. Alas! well do I divinethe pressure that is brought to bear upon your dear country and yourself by that execrable being, the incarnation of all the vices of the Prussian race, ferocity, arrogance, and trickery. Doubtless he has seen good to take advantage of your fine and ardent patriotism, luring you on with illusive promises of revenge. Beware of his lies! Assuredly he has contrived to keep truth from reaching you, else would he have alienated your loyal soldier's heart. Even as he has convinced a section of his own people, so he has known how to persuade you that these butcheries were forced upon him. It is not so; they were planned long ago with devilish cynicism. He has succeeded in inspiring you with faith in his victories, though he knows, as to-day the whole world knows, that in the end the triumph will rest with us. And even if by some impossible chance we were to succumb for a time, neverthelesswould Prussia and her dynasty of tigerish brutes remain nailed fast forever to the most shameful pillory in all the history of mankind.
How deeply should I suffer were I to see our dear Turkey, by this wretch, hurl herself in his train into a terrible venture. More painful still were it to witness her dishonour, should she associate herself with these ultimate barbarians in their attack upon civilisation. Oh, could you but know with what infinite loathing the whole world looks upon the Prussian race!
Alas! you owe no debt to France, that I know only too well. We lent our authority to Italy's attempt upon Tripoli. Later, in the beginning of the Balkan War, we forgot the age-long hospitality so generously offered to us Frenchmen, to our seminaries, to our culture, to our language, which you have almost made your own. In thoughtlessness and ignorance we sidedwith your neighbours, from whom our nation received naught but ill-will and persecution. We initiated against you a campaign of calumny, and only too late we have acknowledged its injustice. The Germans, on the other hand, were alone in affording you a little—oh, a very little!—encouragement. But even so, it is not worth your committing suicide for their sakes. Moreover, you see, in this very hour, these people are succeeding in putting themselves outside the pale of humanity. To march in their company would become not only a danger, but a degradation.
Your influence over your country is fully justified; may you hold her back on that fatal decline to which she seems committed. My letter will be long on the way, but when it arrives your eyes may perhaps be already opened, despite the web of lies in which Germany has entrammelled you.Forgive me if I wish to be of the number of those by whose means some hint of the truth may reach you.
I maintain an unwavering faith in our final triumph, but on the day of our deliverance how would my joy be veiled in mourning if my second country, my country of the Orient, were to bury itself under the débris of the hideous Empire of Prussia.
October, 1914.
Whereabouts, you may ask, did this come to pass? Well, it is one of the peculiarities of this war, that in spite of my familiarity with maps, and notwithstanding the excellence in detail of the plans which I carry about with me, I never know where I am. At any rate this certainly happened somewhere. I have, moreover, a sad conviction that it happened in France. I should so much have preferred it to have happened in Germany, for it was close up to the enemy's lines, under fire of their guns.
I had travelled by motor car since morning, and had passed through more towns, large and small, than I can count. I rememberone scene in a village where I halted, a village which had certainly never before seen motor-omnibuses or throngs of soldiers and horses. Some fifty German prisoners were brought in. They were unshaven, unshorn, and highly unprepossessing. I will not flatter them by saying that they looked like savages, for true savages in the bush are seldom lacking either in distinction or grace of bearing. Such air as these Germans had was a blackguard air of doltish ugliness—dull, gross, incurable.
A pretty girl of somewhat doubtful character, with feathers in her hat, who had taken up a position there to watch them go past, stared at them with ill-concealed resentment.
"Oh indeed, is it with freaks like those that their dirty Kaiser invites us to breed for beauty? God's truth!" and sheclinched her unfinished phrase by spitting on the ground.
For the next hour or two I passed through a deserted countryside, woods in autumn colouring and leafless forests which seemed interminable under a gloomy sky. It was cold, with that bitter, penetrating chill which we hardly know in my home in south-west France, and which seemed characteristic of northern lands.
From time to time a village through which the barbarians had passed displayed to us its ruins, charred and blackened by fire. Here and there by the wayside lay little grave-mounds, either singly or grouped together—mounds lately dug; a few leaves had been scattered above them and a cross made of two sticks. Soldiers, their names now for ever forgotten, had fallen there exhausted and had breathed their last with none to help them.
We scarcely noticed them, for we raced along with ever-increasing speed, because the night of late October was already closing rapidly in upon us. As the day advanced a mist almost wintry in character thickened around us like a shroud. Silence pervaded with still deeper melancholy all that countryside, which, although the barbarians had been expelled from it, still had memories of all those butcheries, ravings, outcries, and conflagrations.
In the midst of a forest, near a hamlet, of which nothing remained save fragments of calcined walls, there were two graves lying side by side. Near these I halted to look at a little girl of twelve years, quite alone there, arranging bunches of flowers sprinkled with water, some poor chrysanthemums from her ruined plot of garden, some wild flowers too, the last scabious of the season, gathered in that place of mourning.
"Were they friends of yours, my child, those two who are sleeping there?"
"Oh no, sir, but I know that they were Frenchmen; I saw them being buried. They were young, sir, and their moustaches were scarcely grown."
There was no inscription on these crosses, soon to be blown down by winter winds and to crumble away in the grass. Who were they? Sons of peasants, of simple citizens, of aristocrats? Who weeps for them? Is it a mother in skilfully fashioned draperies of crape? Is it a mother in the homely weeds of a peasant woman? Whichever it be, those who loved them will live and die without ever knowing that they lie mouldering there by the side of a lonely road on the northern boundary of France; without ever knowing that this kind little girl, whose own home lay desolate, brought them an offering of flowers one autumn evening, while withthe advent of night a bitter cold was descending upon the forest which wrapped them round.
Farther on I came to a village, the headquarters of a general officer in command of an army corps. Here an officer joined me in my motor car, who undertook to guide me to one particular point of the vast battle front.
We drove on rapidly for another hour through a country without inhabitants. In the meantime we passed one of these long convoys of what were once motor-omnibuses in Paris, but have been converted since the war into slaughter-houses on wheels. Townspeople, men and women, sat there once, where now sides of beef, all red and raw, swing suspended from hooks. If we did not know that in those fields yonder there were hundreds of thousands of men to be fed we might well ask why such things were being carted in themidst of this deserted country through which we are hastening at top speed.
The day is waning rapidly, and a continuous rumbling of a storm begins to make itself heard, unchained seemingly on a level with the earth. For weeks now this same storm has thundered away without pause along a sinuous line stretching across France from east to west, a line on which daily, alas! new heaps of dead are piled up.
"Here we are," said my guide.
If I were not already familiar with the new characteristics wherewith the Germans have endued a battle front, I should believe, in spite of the incessant cannonade, that he had made a mistake, for at first sight there is no sign either of army or of soldiers. We are in a place of sinister aspect, a vast plain; the greyish ground is stripped of its turf and torn up; trees here and there are shattered more orless completely, as if by some cataclysm of thunderbolts or hailstones. There is no trace of human existence, not even the ruins of a village; nothing characteristic of any period, either of historical or even of geological development. Gazing into the distance at the far-flung forest skyline fading on all sides into the darkening mists of twilight, we might well believe ourselves to have reverted to a prehistoric epoch of the world's history.
"Here we are."
That means that it is time to hide our motor car under some trees or it will attract a rain of shells and endanger the lives of our chauffeurs, for in that misty forest opposite there are many wicked eyes watching us through wonderful binoculars, by whose aid they are as keen of sight as great birds of prey. To reach the firing-line, then, it is incumbent on us to proceed on foot.
How strange the ground looks! It is riddled with shell-holes, resembling enormous craters; in another place it is scarred and pierced and sown with pointed bullets, copper cartridge-cases, fragments of spiked helmets, and barbarian filth of other sorts. But in spite of its deserted appearance, this region is nevertheless thickly populated, only the inhabitants are no doubt troglodytes, for their dwellings, scattered about and invisible at first sight, are a kind of cave or molehill, half covered with branches and leaves. I had seen the same kind of architecture once upon a time on Easter Island, and the sight of these dwellings of men in this scenery of primeval forest completes our earlier impression of having leapt backwards into the abyss of time.
Of a truth, to force upon us such a reversion was a right Prussian artifice. War, which was once a gallant affair ofparades in the sunshine, of beautiful uniforms and of music, war they have rendered a mean and ugly thing. They wage it like burrowing beasts, and obviously there was nothing left for us but to imitate them.
In the meantime here and there heads look out from the excavations to see who is coming. There is nothing prehistoric about these heads, any more than there is about the service-caps they are wearing; these are the faces of our own soldiers, with an air of health and good humour and of amusement at having to live there like rabbits. A sergeant comes up to us; he is as earthy as a mole that has not had time to clean itself, but he has a merry look of youth and gaiety.
"Take two or three men with you," I say to him, "and go and unpack my motor car, down there behind the trees. You will find a thousand packets of cigarettes andsome picture-papers which some people in Paris have sent you to help to pass the time in the trenches."
What a pity that I cannot take back and show, as a thanksgiving to the kind donors, the smiles of satisfaction with which their gifts were welcomed.
Another mile or two have still to be covered on foot before we reach the firing-line. An icy wind blows from the forests opposite that are yet more deeply drowned in black mists, forests in the enemy's hands, where the counterfeit thunderstorm is grumbling. This plain with its miserable molehills is a dismal place in the twilight, and I marvel that they can be so gay, these dear soldiers of ours, in the midst of the desolation surrounding them.
I cross this piece of ground, riddled with holes; the tempest of shot has spared here and there a tuft of grass, a little moss, a poor flower. The first place I reach is aline of defence in course of construction, which will be the second line of defence, to meet the improbable event of the first line, which lies farther ahead, having to be abandoned. Our soldiers are working like navvies with shovels and picks in their hands. They are all resolute and happy, anxious to finish their work, and it will be formidable indeed, surrounded as it is with most deadly ambushes. It was the Germans, I admit, whose scheming, evil brains devised this whole system of galleries and snares; but we, more subtle and alert than they, have, in a few days, equalled them, if we have not beaten them, at their own game.
A mile farther on is the first line. It is full of soldiers, for this is the trench that must withstand the shock of the barbarians' onset; day and night it is always ready to bristle with rifles, and they who hold the trench, gone to earth scarcely fora moment, know that they may expect at any minute the daily shower of shells. Then heads, rash enough to show themselves above the parapet, will be shot away, breasts shattered, entrails torn. They know, too, that they must be prepared to encounter at any unforeseen hour, in the pale sunlight or in the blackness of midnight, onslaughts of those barbarians with whom the forest opposite still swarms. They know how they will come on at a run, with shouts intended to terrify them, linked arm in arm into one infuriated mass, and how they will find means, as ever, to do much harm before death overtakes them entangled in our barbed wire. All this they know, for they have already seen it, but nevertheless they smile a serious, dignified smile. They have been nearly a week in this trench, waiting to be relieved, and they make no complaints.
"We are well fed," they say, "we eatwhen we are hungry. As long as it does not rain we keep ourselves warm at night in our fox-holes with good thick blankets. But not all of us yet have woollen underclothing for the winter, and we shall need it soon. When you go back to Paris, Colonel, perhaps you will be so kind as to bring this to the notice of Government and of all the ladies too, who are working for us."
("Colonel"—the soldiers have no other title for officers with five rows of gold braid. On the last expedition to China I had already been called colonel, but I did not expect, alas! that I should be called so again during a war on the soil of France.)
These men who are talking to me at the edge of, or actually in, the trench belong to the most diverse social grades. Some were leisured dandies, some artisans, some day labourers, and there are even somewho wear their caps at too rakish an angle and whose language smacks of the ring, into whose past it is better not to pry too curiously. Yet they have become not only good soldiers, but good men, for this war, while it has drawn us closer together, has at the same time purified us and ennobled us. This benefit at least the Germans will, involuntarily, have bestowed upon us, and indeed it is worth the trouble. Moreover our soldiers all know to-day why they are fighting, and therein lies their supreme strength. Their indignation will inspire them till their latest breath.
"When you have seen," said two young Breton peasants to me, "when you have seen with your own eyes what these brutes do in the villages they pass through, it is natural, is it not, to give your life to try to prevent them from doing as much in your own home?"
The cannonade roared an accompanimentin its deep, unceasing bass to this ingenuous statement.
Now this is the spirit that prevails inexhaustibly from one end of the fighting-line to the other. Everywhere there is the same determination and courage. Whether here or there, a talk with any of these soldiers is equally reassuring, and calls forth the same admiration.
But it is strange to reflect that in this twentieth century of ours, in order to protect ourselves from barbarism and horror, we have had to establish trenches such as these, in double and treble lines, crossing our dear country from east to west along an unbroken front of hundreds of miles, like a kind of Great Wall of China. But a hundred times more formidable than the original wall, the defence of the Mongolians, is this wall of ours, a wall practically subterranean, which winds along stealthily, manned by all the heroic youthof France, ever on the alert, ever in the midst of bloodshed.
The twilight this evening, under the sullen sky, lingers sadly, and will not come to an end. It appeared to me to begin two hours ago, and yet it is still light enough to see. Before us, distinguishable as yet to sight or imagination, lie two sections of a forest, unfolding itself beyond range of vision, the contours of its more distant section almost lost in darkness. Colder still grows the wind, and my heart contracts with the still more painful impression of a backward plunge, without shelter and without refuge, into primeval barbarism.
"Every evening at this hour, Colonel, for the last week, we have had our little shower of shells. If you have time to stay a short while you will see how quickly they fire and almost without aiming."
As for time, well, I have really hardly any to spare, and, besides, I have had otheropportunities of observing how quickly they fire "almost without aiming." Sometimes it might be mistaken for a display of fireworks, and it is to be supposed that they have more projectiles than they know what to do with. Nevertheless I shall be delighted to stay a few minutes longer and to witness the performance again in their company.
Ah! to be sure, a kind of whirring in the air like the flight of partridges—partridges travelling along very fast on metal wings. This is a change for us from the muffled voice of the cannonade we heard just before; it is now beginning to come in our direction. But it is much too high and much too far to the left—so much too far to the left that they surely cannot be aiming at us; they cannot be quite so stupid. Nevertheless we stop talking and listen with our ears pricked—a dozen shells, and then no more.
"They have finished," the men tell me then; "their hour is over now, and it was for our comrades down there. You have no luck, Colonel; this is the very first time that it was not we who caught it, and, besides, you would think they were tired this evening, the Boches."
It is dark and I ought to be far away. Moreover, they are all going to sleep, for obviously they cannot risk showing a light; cigarettes are the limit of indulgence. I shake hands with a whole line of soldiers and leave them asleep, poor children of France, in their dormitory, which in the silence and darkness has grown as dismal as a long, common grave in a cemetery.