August, 1915.
In spite of the kindly welcome which the visitor receives and a wholesome spirit of gaiety which never fails, it is an inn that I cannot honestly recommend without reserve.
In the first place it is somewhat difficult of access, so much so that ladies are never admitted. To climb up to it—for it is perched very high—the traveller must needs make his way for hours through ancient forests which the axe had spared until a very few months ago, along unknown paths winding at steep gradients; among giant trees, pines or larches, felled yesterday, which still lie about in all directions; paths that are concealed by close-growinggreenery with such jealous care that in the few open spaces occurring here and there trees have been planted right into the ground, trees uprooted elsewhere, and which are here only to hide the wayfarer behind their dying branches. It may be supposed that on the neighbouring hills sharp eyes, unfriendly eyes, are watching, which necessitate all these precautions.
But there are many people on the road through those forests, which seemed at first sight virgin. Viewing from a little distance all these mountains covered with the same strong growth of forest, so luxuriant, and everywhere so alike in appearance, who would imagine that they sheltered whole tribes? And such strange tribes, evidently survivors of an entirely prehistoric race of men, and in the anomalous position of having no women-folk. Here are nothing but men, and men alldressed alike, with a singular fancy for uniformity, in old, faded, woollen great-coats of horizon blue. They have not paid much attention to their hair or beards, and they have almost the appearance of brigands, except that they all have such pleasant faces and such kindly smiles for the wayfarer that they inspire no terror. So far from this he is tempted rather to stop and shake hands with them. But what curious little dwellings they have built, some isolated, some grouped together into a village! Some of them are quite lightly constructed of planks of wood and are covered over with branches of pine, and within are mattresses of leaves that serve for beds. Some are underground, grim as caves of troglodytes, and the approach to them is protected by huge masses of rock, doubtless their defence against formidable wild beasts haunting the neighbourhood. And these dwellingsare always close to one of the innumerable streams of clear water which rush down babbling from the heights, among pink flowers and mosses—for these miniature waterfalls are many, and all these mountains are full of the pleasant music of running water. From time to time, to be sure, other sounds are heard, hollow sounds of evil import, detonations on the right or the left, which the echoes prolong. Can it be that there is artillery concealed almost everywhere throughout the forest? What want of taste, thus to disturb the symphony of the springs.
They have probably just arrived here, these savage tribes, dressed in greyish blue; they are recent settlers, for all their arrangements are new and improvised, and so likewise is the interminable winding road which they have laid out, and which to-day our motor cars, with the help of a little goodwill, manage to climb so rapidly.
One of the peculiarities of these hidden villages which crouch in the shade of the lofty forest trees is that each has its own cemetery, tenderly cared for, so close that it almost borders on the dwellings, as if the living were anxious not to sever their comradeship with the dead. But how comes it that death is so frequent among these limpid streams, in a region where the air is so invigorating and so pure? These tombs, so disquieting in their disproportionate numbers, are ranged in rows, all with the same humble crosses of wood. They have borders of ferns carefully watered, or of little pebbles, well selected. Flowers such as thrive in shady places and are common in these parts, shoot up their pretty pink spikes all around, and the whole scene is steeped in the green translucent twilight which envelops the whole mountain, the twilight of these unchanging trees, pines andlarches, stretching away into infinity, crowded together like wheat in a field, tall and straight like gigantic masts.
In our haste to reach that Inn of the Good Samaritan, which is our destination, we keep on climbing at a rapid pace, notwithstanding acute-angled corners where our cars have to back before they can effect the turn, and other awkward places where our cars slip on the wet soil, skid, and come to a stop.
These tribes, so primitive in appearance, through whose midst we have been travelling since the morning, seem to be concentrating their energies especially on making these roads, which, one would think, cannot really be necessary to their simple mode of existence. In our onward course we meet nearly all these men, working with might and main, with axes, shovels, stakes and picks, hurrying as if the task were urgent. They stand erectfor a moment to salute us, smiling a little with touching and respectful familiarity, and then they bend down again to their arduous work, levelling, enlarging, timbering, or digging out roots that are in the way, and rocks that encroach. And when we were told that it is scarcely ten months since they began this exhausting work in the midst of forest, virgin hitherto, we are fain to believe that all the Genii of the mountains have roused themselves and lent their magic help.
Oh! what tribute of admiration mingled with emotion do we owe to these men, likewise, the builders of roads, our gallant territorials, who seem to be playing at wild men of the woods. They have revived for us the miracles of the Roman Legions who so speedily opened up roads for their armies through the forests of Gaul. Thanks to their prodigious labour, performed without a break, without a murmur,the conditions of warfare in this region, only yesterday still inaccessible, will be radically changed for the benefit of our dear soldiers. Everything will reach them on the heights ten times more expeditiously than before—arms, avenging shells, rations; and in a few hours the seriously wounded will be gently driven down in carriages to comfortable field hospitals in the plains.
Roughly speaking at an altitude of about fourteen or fifteen hundred metres, the ancient forest with its arching trees ends abruptly. The sky is deep blue above our heads, and infinite horizons unfold around us their great spectacular display of illusive images. The air is very clear and pure to-day in honour of our arrival, and it is so marvellously transparent that we miss no detail of the most distant landscapes.
We are told that we have reached theplateau where stands that hospitable inn; it is, however, not yet in sight. But the plateau itself, where is it situated, in which country of the world? In the foreground around us and below nothing is visible except summits uniformly wooded with trees of the same species; this brings back to mind those great, monstrous expanses of forest which must have covered the entire earth in the beginning of our geological period, but it is characteristic of no particular country or epoch of history. In the distance, it is true, there are signs of a more tell-tale nature. Thus yonder, on the horizon, that succession of mountains, all mantled with the same dark verdure, bears a close resemblance to the Black Forest; that chain of glaciers over there, silhouetting so clearly against the horizon its ridges of rosy crystal, might well be taken for the Alps; and that peak in particular is too strikingly like theJungfrau to admit of any doubt. But I may not be more definite in my description; I will merely say that those bluish plains in the East, rolling away at our feet like a great sea, were but lately French, and are now about to become French once more.
How spacious is this plateau, and how naked it stands among all those other summits mantled with trees. Here there is not even brushwood, for doubtless the winter winds rage too fiercely; here nothing grows but short, thick grass and little stunted plants with insignificant flowers. It is ecstasy to breathe here in this delicious intoxication of pure air and of spaciousness and light. And yet there is some vague sense of tragedy about the place, due perhaps to those great round holes, freshly made; to those cruel clefts with which here and there the earth is rent. What can have fallen here from the sky,leaving such scars on the level surface? We are warned, moreover, that monstrous birds of a very dangerous kind, with iron muscles, often come and hover about overhead in that fair blue sky. And from time to time a cannon shot from some invisible battery comes to disturb the impressive silence and reverberates in the valleys below; and then comes, long drawn out, the whirring of a shell, like a flight of partridges going past.
We notice some French soldiers, Alpinechasseurs, or cavalry on their horses, scattered in groups about this plain, as it may be called, situated at such an altitude. At this moment all lift their heads and look in the same direction; this is because one of those great dangerous birds has just been signalled; it is flying proudly, remote in the open sky, in the clear blue. But immediately it is pursued by white clouds, quite miniature clouds, which give theeffect of being created instantaneously, only to vanish as quickly—little explosions of white cotton wool, one might say—and it seems impossible that they should be freighted with death. However, that evil bird has understood; he is aware that good marksmen are aiming at him, and he turns back on hasty wing, while our soldiers gaily burst out laughing.
And the inn? It lies just in front of us, a few hundred paces away; it is that greyish hut with its gay tricolour floating on the light breeze of these altitudes, but near it stands a very lofty cross of pine-wood, four or five yards high, stretching out its arms as in solemn warning.
The fact is, I must admit, that people die very frequently at this Inn of the Good Samaritan or in its neighbourhood, and it is for this reason that in the beginning I recommended it with reserve. It is surprising, is it not, in such health-giving air?But the truth of it is indisputable, and it has been necessary hurriedly to attach to it a cemetery whose existence this tall cross of pine proclaims from afar to travellers.
Yes, many men die here, but they die so nobly, a death of all deaths most desirable—each according to his own temperament, according to the nature of his soul: some in the calm serenity of duty done, others in magnificent exaltation, but all in glory.
Can this be the famous inn—in other words the dwelling of those officers who command this outpost, and where their friends on rare and brief visits, liaison officers, bearers of dispatches, etc., are sure of finding such cordial and genial hospitality—this modest hutting built of planks? So it is, and that there may be no mistake, there is an imposing signboard in the fashion of old times. Shaped like a shield,it hangs from an iron rod and bears the inscription, "Inn of the Good Samaritan." The legend is painted in ornamental letters, and the humour of it is irresistible among such Crusoe-like destitution. Doubtless one day some officer in a specially happy mood thought of this jest as a welcome for comrades coming thither on special duty. Naturally he found at once among his men one who was a carpenter and another a decorator in civil life, both very much amused at being ordered to put this unpremeditated idea forthwith into execution.
The furniture of the inn is very rough and ready, if the truth be told, and the wall of planks just shelters you from the snow or rain, but from the wind hardly, and from shells not at all. But one fills one's lungs to the full with the air that reaches one through the little windows, and from the threshold, looking downwards, there isa marvellous bird's-eye view of great forests, of an unending chain of glaciers, clear as crystal, of unbounded distances, and even over the tops of clouds.
Ah well! all along the battle front there are such Inns of the Good Samaritan. These others are perched less high, and they do not bear the same name; indeed very often they have no name at all; but in all of them prevails the same spirit of kindly hospitality, firm confidence, smiling endurance and cheerful sacrifice. Here, as there, between two showers of shells, men are capable of amusing themselves with childish trifles, so stout of heart are they, and if access were not forbidden on military grounds I would invite all pessimists in the background, who have doubts of France and of her destiny, to come here for a cure.
And now, having seen the inn, let us pay a pious visit to the annex, the inevitableannex, alas! Around the wooden cross which dominates it is a piece of ground enclosed with an open fence, made of boughs of larch artistically intertwined. Within its bounds those tombs, too numerous already, preserve something of a military aspect, ranged as they are in such correct alignment and all with the same little crosses, adorned with a wreath of greenery. The Cross! In spite of all infidelity, denial, scorn, the Cross still remains the sign to which a tender instinct of atavism recalls us at the approach of death. There is not a tree, not a shrub, for none grow here: on the ground there is only the short grass that grows upon this wind-swept plateau. An attempt has been made, to be sure, to make borders of certain stunted plants found in the neighbourhood, but rows of pebbles last best. And in five weeks or so, thick shrouds of snow will begin to cover up everything, untilanother spring succeeds the snows and the grass grows green again, in the midst of still deeper oblivion.
Nevertheless let us not pity them, for they have had the better part, these young dead who rest there on that glorious mountain-top which is destined to become once more, after the war, a solitude ineffably calm, high above forest, valley and plain.
August, 1915.
The preservation of the lives of our dear wounded, who day by day are stricken down upon the field of battle, depends nine times out of ten on the rapidity with which they are carried in; on the gentleness and promptness with which they are taken to the field hospitals, where they may be put into comfortable beds and left in the care of all the kind hands that are waiting for them. This fact is not sufficiently well known; often it happens that wounds which would have been trifling have become septic and mortal because they have been left too long covered with inadequate, uncleanly bandages, or have trailed for many hours on the earth or in the mud.
In the first weeks of the war when we were taken unawares by the barbarians'attack, treacherous and sudden as a thunderbolt, it was not bullets and shrapnel alone that killed the sons of France. Often, too, it happened that help was slow in arriving; sufficient haste could not be made, and it was impossible to cope right at the beginning with these shortcomings, in spite of much admirable devotion and ingenuity in multiplying and improving the means of service. Since then helpers have poured in from all sides; gifts have been showered with open hands; organisation has been created with loving zeal, and things are already working very well. But much still remains to be done, for the work is immense and complex, and it is our duty to hold ourselves more than ever in readiness, in anticipation of great final struggles for deliverance.
Now a society is being formed for sending to the Front some fresh squadrons of fast motor-ambulances, furnished with cots and mattresses of improved design.Thus thousands more of our wounded will be laid immediately between clean sheets, then brought into hospital with all speed, without that delay which is a cause of gangrened wounds, without those jolts that aggravate the pain of fractured bones and inflict yet more grievous suffering on those dear bruised heads.
But in spite of the first magnificent donations, a remainder of the money has still to be found to complete the enterprise satisfactorily. And so I beseech all mothers, whose sons may fall at any moment; I beseech all those who have in the firing-line a kinsman dear to them; I beseech them to send their offerings without hesitation, without calculation, so that soon, before the April battles begin, several hundreds of those great life-saving ambulances may be ready to start, which will assuredly preserve for us a vast number of precious lives.
August, 1915.
On a beautiful August evening I am hastening in a motor car towards Rheims, one of our martyred towns, where I am hoping to find shelter for the night before continuing my journey to the General Headquarters of another Army. In order to avoid military formalities I wish to enter the town before the sun sets, and it is already too low for my liking.
The evening is typical of one of our splendid French summers; the air is exquisitely clear, of a delightful, wholesome warmth, tempered with a light, refreshing breeze. On the hillsides of Champagne the beautiful vines on which the grapes are ripening spread a uniform expanse of green carpet, and there are so many trees,so many flowers everywhere, gardens in all the villages, and roses climbing up all the walls.
To-day the cannon is heard no more, and one would be tempted to forget that the barbarians are there close at hand if there were not so many improvised cemeteries all along the road. Everywhere there are these little graves of soldiers, all alike, which are now to be found from end to end of our beloved France, all along the battle front; their simple crosses of wood are ranged in straight lines as if for a parade, topped, some of them, with a wreath; others still more pathetically with a simple service-cap, red or blue, falling to rags. We salute them as we pass.
Among these glorious dead there are some whose kindred will seek them out and bring them back to the province of their birth later, when the barbarians have gone away, while others, less favoured, willremain there forever until the great final day of oblivion. But what masses of flowers people have already been at pains to plant there for them all. Around their resting-place there is a brave show of all shades of brilliant colour, dahlias, cannas, China asters, roses. Who has undertaken this labour of love? Girls from the nearest villages? Or perhaps even their own brothers-in-arms, who dwell on the outskirts everywhere like invisible subterranean tribes in these casemates, trench shelters, dug-outs of every shape covered over with green branches?
This region, you must know, is not very safe, and when we arrive at a section of the road which is too much exposed, a sentinel, especially posted there to give warning, instructs us to leave the high road for a moment, where we should run the risk of being seen and shelled, and to take some sheltered traverse behind the curtains of poplars.
One of my soldier-chauffeurs suddenly turns round to say to me:
"Oh look, sir, there is an Arab cemetery. They have put on each grave their little crescents instead of the cross."
Here to be sure the humblestelaeof white wood are all topped with the crescent of Islam, and this is something of a shock to us in the very heart of France. Poor fellows, who died for our righteous cause, so far from their mosques and their marabouts they sleep, and alas! without facing Mecca, because they who laid them piously to rest did not know that this was to them a requisite of peaceful slumber! But the same profusion of flowers has been brought to them as to our own countrymen, and I need not say that we salute them likewise—a little late, perhaps, for we pass them so rapidly.
We reach Rheims just before sunset, and here a sudden sadness chills us. All issilent and the streets almost deserted. The shops are closed, and some of the houses seem to gape at us with enormous holes in their walls.
One of the infrequent wayfarers tells us that at the Hotel Golden Lion, Cathedral Square, we may still be able to find someone to take us in, and soon we are at the very foot of the noble ruin, which is still enthroned as majestically as ever in the midst of the martyred town, dominating everything with its two towers of open stone-work. I stop my car, the sound of whose rolling in such a place seems profanation; the sadness of ruins is intensified here into veritable anguish, and the silence is such that instinctively we begin to talk softly, as if we had already entered the great church that has perished.
The Golden Lion—but its panes of glass are broken, the doors stand open, the courtyard is deserted. I send one of mysoldiers there, bidding him call, but not too loudly, in the midst of all this mournful meditation. He returns; he has received no reply and has seen holes in the walls. The house is deserted. We must seek elsewhere.
It is twilight. A golden after-glow still lingers around the magnificent summits of the towers, while the base is wrapped in shadow. Oh, the cathedral, the marvellous cathedral! what a work of destruction the barbarians have continued to accomplish here since my pilgrimage of last November. It had ever been a lace-work of stone, and now it is nothing but a lace-work torn in tatters, pierced with a thousand holes. By what miracle does it still hold together? It seems as if to-day the least shock, a breath of wind perhaps, would suffice to cause it to crumble away, to resolve itself, as it were, into scattered atoms. How can it ever be repaired? What scaffoldingcould one dare to let lean against those unstable ruins. In an attempt to afford it yet a little protection sandbags have been piled up, mountain high, against the pillars of the porticoes, the same precaution that has been taken in the case of St. Mark's in Venice, of Milan, of all those inimitable masterpieces of past ages which are menaced by the refined culture of Germany. Here the precautions are vain; it is too late, the cathedral is lost, and our hearts are wrung with sorrow and indignation as we look this evening upon this sacred relic of our past, our art, and our faith, in its death throes and its abandonment. Ah, what savages! And to feel that they are still there, close at hand, capable of giving it at any hour itscoup de grâce.
To bid it farewell, perhaps a last farewell, we will walk around it slowly with solemn tread, in the midst of this deathlikesilence which seems to grow more intense as the light fails.
But suddenly, just as we are passing the ruins of the episcopal palace, we hear a prelude of sound, a tremendous, hollow uproar, something like the rumbling of a terrible thunderstorm, near at hand and unceasing. And yet the evening sky is so clear! Ah yes, we were warned, we know whence it comes; it is the bombardment of our heavy artillery, which was expected half an hour after sunset, directed at the barbarians' trenches. This is a change for us from the silence, this cataclysmal music, and it contributes to our walk a different kind of sadness, another form of horror. And we continue to gaze at the wonderful stone carving overhanging us—the bold little arches, the immense pointed arches, so frail and so exquisite. Indeed how does it all still hold together? Up above there are little columns which have lost theirbase and remain, as it were, suspended in the air by their capitals. The windows are no more; the lovely rose-windows have been destroyed; the nave has huge fissures from top to bottom. In the twilight the whole cathedral assumes more and more its phantom-like aspect, and that noise which causes everything to vibrate is still increasing. It is a question whether so many vibrations will not bring about the final downfall of those too fragile carvings which hitherto have held on so persistently at such great heights above our heads.
Here comes the first wayfarer in that solitude, a well-dressed person. He is hurrying, actually running.
"Do not stay there," he shouts to us; "do you not see that they are going to bombard?"
"But it is we, the French, who are firing. It is our own artillery. Come, do not run so fast."
"I know very well that it is we, but each time the enemy revenge themselves on the cathedral. I tell you that there will be a rain of shells here immediately. Look out for yourselves."
He goes on. So much the better; it was kind of him to warn us, but his jacket and his billy-cock jarred upon the melancholy grandeur of the scene.
Where a street opens into the square two girls now appear; they stop and hesitate. Evidently they are aware, these two, that the barbarians have a habit of taking a noble revenge upon the cathedral, and that shells are about to fall. But doubtless they have to cross this square in order to reach their home, to get down into their cellar. Will they have time?
They are graceful and pretty, fair, bare-headed, with their hair arranged in simple bands. They gaze into the air with their eyes raised well up towards theheavens, perhaps to see if death is beginning to pass that way, but more likely to send up thither a prayer. I know not what last brightness of the twilight, in spite of the encroaching gloom, illumines so delightfully their two upturned faces, and they look like saints in stained-glass windows. Both make the sign of the cross, and then they make up their minds, and hand in hand they run across the square. With their religious gestures, their faces expressing anxiety, yet courage too and defiance, they suddenly seem to me charming symbols of the girlhood of France; they run away, indeed, but it is clear that they would remain without fear if there were some wounded man to carry away, some duty to perform. And their flight seems very airy in the midst of this tremendous uproar like the end of the world.
We are going away too, for it is wiser. In the streets there are a very few wayfarerswho are running to take shelter, running with their backs hunched up, although nothing is falling yet, like people without umbrellas surprised by a shower. One of them, who nevertheless does not mind stopping, points out to us the last hotel still remaining open, a "perfectly safe" hotel, he says, over there in a quarter of the town where no shell has ever fallen.
God forbid that I should dream of laughing at them, or fail to admire as much as it deserves their persistent and calm heroism in remaining here, in defiance of everything, in their beloved town, which is suffering more and more mutilations. But who would not be amused at that instinct which causes the majority of mankind to hunch their backs against hail of whatever description? And then, is it because the air is fresh and soft and it is good to be alive that after the unspeakable heartache at the sight of the cathedral andthe passion verging on tears, a calm of reaction sets in and in that moment everything amuses me?
At the end of a quiet street, where the noise of the cannonade is muffled, in the distance, we find the hotel which was recommended to us.
"Rooms," says the host, very pleasantly, standing on his doorstep, "oh, as many as you like, the whole hotel if you wish, for you will understand that in times such as these travellers—— And yet as far as shells go you have nothing to fear here."
An appalling din interrupts his sentence. All the windows in the front of the house are shivered to fragments, together with tiles, plaster, branches of trees. In his haste to run away and hide he misses the step on the threshold and falls down flat on his face. A dog who was coming along jumps upon him, full of importance, recalling him to order with afierce bark. A cat, sprung from I know not where, flies through space like an aerolith, uses my shoulder for a jumping-off place, and is swallowed up by the mouth of a cellar. But words are too tedious for that series of catastrophes, which lasts scarcely as long as two lightning flashes. And they continue to bombard us with admirable regularity, as if timing themselves with a metronome; the wall of the house is already riddled with scars.
It is very wrong, I admit, to take these things as a jest, and indeed with me that impression is only superficial, physical, I might say; that which endures in the depth of my soul is indignation, anguish, pity. But at this entry which the Germans made into our hotel, that peaceful spot, with flourish of their great orchestra, in the presence of so many surprises, how retain one's dignity? There is a fair number of little shells, it seems, but no heavy shells;they travel with their long whistling sound, and burst with a harsh din.
"Into the cellar, gentlemen," cries the innkeeper, who has picked himself up unhurt. Apparently there is nothing else to be done. I should have come to that conclusion myself. So I turn round to order in my three soldiers too, who had remained outside to look at a hole made by shrapnel in the body of the car. But upon my word I believe they are laughing, the heartless wretches; and then I can restrain myself no longer, I burst out laughing too.
Yes, it is very wrong of us, for presently there will be bloodshed and death. But how resist the humour of it all: the good man fallen flat on his face, the self-importance of the dog, who thought he must put a stop to the situation, and especially the cat, the cat swallowed up by an air-hole after showing us as a supreme exhibition of flight its little hindquarters with its tail in the air.
November, 1915.
It is a place of horror, conceived, it might be thought by Dante. The air is heavy, stifling; two or three nightlights, which seem to be afraid of shining too brightly, scarcely pierce the vaporous, overheated darkness which exhales an odour of sweat and fever. Busy people are whispering there anxiously, but the principal sound that is heard is an agonised gasping for breath. This gasping comes from a number of cots, in rows, touching one another, on which are lying human forms, their chests heaving with rapid and laboured breathing, lifting the bedclothes as though the moment of the death-rattle had come.
This is one of our advance field hospitals,improvised, as best might be, the day after one the most damnable abominations committed by the Germans. The nature of their affliction made it impossible to transfer all these sons of France, from whom seems to come the noise of the death-rattle without hope of recovery, to a place farther away. This large hall with dilapidated walls was yesterday a wine cellar for storing barrels of champagne; these cots—about fifty in number—were made in feverish haste of branches which still retain their bark, and they resemble the kind of furniture in our gardens that we call rustic. But why is there this heat, in which it is almost impossible to draw a natural breath, pouring out from those stoves? The reason for it is that it is never hot enough for the lungs of persons who have been asphyxiated. And this darkness: wherefore this darkness, which gives a Dantesque aspect to this place oftorment, and which must be such a hindrance to the gentle, white-gowned nurses? It is because the barbarians are there in their burrows, quite near this village, with the shattering of whose houses and church spire they have more than once amused themselves; and if, at the gloomy fall of a November night, through their ever watchful field-glasses, they saw a range of lighted windows indicating a long hall, they would at once guess that there was a field hospital, and shells would be showered down upon the humble cots. It is well known, this preference of theirs for shelling hospitals, Red Cross convoys, churches.
And so there is scarcely light enough to see through that misty vapour which rises from water boiling in pans. Every minute nurses fetch huge black balloons, and the patients nearest to suffocation stretch out their poor hands for them; they containoxygen, which eases the lungs and alleviates the suffering. Many of them have these black balloons resting on chests panting for breath, and in their mouths they are holding eagerly the tube through which the life-saving gas escapes. They are like big children with feeding bottles; it adds a kind of grisly burlesque to these scenes of horror. Asphyxia has different effects upon different constitutions, and calls for variety in treatment. Some of the sufferers, lying almost naked on their beds, are covered with cupping-glasses, or painted all over with tincture of iodine. Others even—these alas! are very seriously affected indeed—others are all swollen, chest, arms, and face, and resemble toy figures of blown-up gold-beater's skin. Toy figures of gold-beater's skin, children with feeding bottles—although these comparisons alone are true, yet indeed it seems almost sacrilege to make use of them whenthe heart is wrung with anguish and you are ready to weep tears of pity and of wrath. But may these comparisons, brutal as they are, engrave themselves all the more deeply upon the minds of men by reason of their very unseemliness, to foster there for a still longer time indignant hatred and a thirst for holy reprisals.
For there is one man who spent a long time preparing all this for us, and this man still goes on living; he lives, and since remorse is doubtless foreign to his vulturine soul, he does not even suffer, unless it be rage at having missed his mark, at least for the present. Before thus unloosing death upon the world he had coldly combined all his plans, had foreseen everything.
"But nevertheless supposing," he said to himself, "my great rhinoceros-like onrushes and my vast apparatus of carnage were by some impossible chance to hurlitself in vain against a resistance too magnificent? In that case I should dare perhaps, calculating on the weakness of neutral nations, I should dare perhaps to defy all the laws of civilisation, and to use other means. At all hazards let us be prepared."
And, to be sure, the onrush failed, and, timidly at first, fearing universal indignation, he tried asphyxiation after exerting himself, be it understood, to mislead public opinion, accusing, with his customary mendacity, France of having been the originator. His cynical hope was justified; there has been, alas! no general arousing of the human conscience. No more at this than at earlier crimes—organised pillage, destruction of cathedrals, outrage, massacres of children and women—have the neutral nations stirred; it seems indeed as if the crafty, ferocious, deathly look of his Gorgon-like or Medusa-like head hadfrozen them all to the spot. And at the present hour in which I am writing the last to be turned to stone by the Medusa glare of the monster is that unfortunate King of Greece, inconsistent and bungling, who is trembling on the brink of a precipice of most terrible crimes. That some nations remain neutral from fear, that indeed is comprehensive enough; but that nations, otherwise held in the highest repute, can remain pro-German in sentiment, passes our understanding. By what arts have they been blinded, these nations; by what slanders, or by what bribe?
Our dear soldiers with their seared lungs, gasping on their "rustic" cots, seem grateful when, following in the major's footsteps, someone approaches them, and they look at the visitor with gentle eyes when he takes their hand. Here is a man all swollen, doubtless unrecognisable by those who had only seen him before thisterrible turgidity, and if you touch his poor, distended cheeks however lightly, the fingers feel the crackling of the gases that have infiltrated between skin and flesh.
"Come, he is better than he was this morning," says the major, and in a low voice meant for the nurse's ear, he continues, "This man too, nurse, I am beginning to think that we shall save. But you must not leave him alone for one moment on any account."
Oh, what unnecessary advice, for she has not the smallest intention of leaving him alone, this white-gowned nurse, whose eyes have already black rings around them, the result of a watch of forty-eight hours without a break. Not one of them will be left alone, oh no! To be sure of this, it is sufficient to glance at all those young doctors and all those nurses, somewhat exhausted, it is true, but so attentive and brave, who will never let them out of their sight.
And, thank heaven, nearly all of them will be saved.[2]As soon as they are well enough to be moved they will be taken far away from this Gehenna at the Front, where the Kaiser's shells delight to hurl themselves upon the dying. They will be put more comfortably to bed in quiet field hospitals, where indeed they will suffer greatly for a week, a fortnight, a month, but whence they will emerge without excessive delay, better advised, more prudent, in haste to return once more to the battle.
It may be said that the scheme of gas attacks has failed, like that other scheme of attacks in great savage onrushes. The result was not what the Gorgon's head had expected, and yet with what accurate calculation the time for these attacks has been selected, always at the most favourablemoment. It is well knows that the Germans, past masters of the art of spying, and always informed of everything, never hesitate to choose for their attacks of whatever kind, days of relief, hours when newcomers in the trenches opposite to them are still in the disorder of their arrival. So on the evening on which the last crime was committed six hundred of our men had just taken up their advanced position after a long and tiring march. Suddenly in the midst of a volley of shells which surprised them in their first sleep, they could distinguish, here and there, little cautious sibilant sounds, as if made stealthily by sirens. This was the death-bearing gas which was diffusing itself around them, spreading out its thick, gloomy, grey clouds. At the same time their signal lights suddenly ceased to throw out through that mist more than a little dim illumination. Then distracted, alreadysuffocating, they remembered too late those masks which had been given them, and in which in any case they had no faith. They were awkward in putting them on; some of them, feeling the scorching of their bronchia, urged by an irresistible impulse of self-preservation, even yielded to a desire to run, and it was these who were most terribly affected, for, breathing deeply in the effort of running, they inhaled vast quantities of chlorine gas. But another time they will not let themselves be caught in this way, neither these nor any others of our soldiers. Wearing masks hermetically closed, they will station themselves immovably around piles of wood, prepared beforehand, whence sudden flames will arise, neutralising the poisons in the air, and the upshot of it all will be hardly more than an uncomfortable hour, unpleasant while it lasts, but almost always without fatal result. It is true that inthose accursed dens which are their laboratories, Germany's learned men, convinced now that the neutral nations will acquiesce in anything, are making every effort to discover worse poisons still for us, but until they have found them, as on so many other occasions, the Gorgon gaze will have missed its mark. So much is certain. We, alas! have as yet found no means of returning them a sufficiently cruel equivalent; we have no defence other than the protective mask, which, however, is being perfected day by day. And, after all, in the eyes of neutral nations, if they still have eyes to see, it is perhaps more dignified to make use of nothing else. At the same time, how very different our position would be if we succeeded in asphyxiating them too, these plunderers, assassins, aggressors, who broke into our country like burglars, and who, despairing of ever bursting through our lines, attempt tosmoke us out ignominiously in our own home, in our own dear country of France, as they might smoke out rabbits in their burrows, rats in their holes. No language of man had ever anticipated such transcendent acts of infamy which would revolt the most degraded cannibals, and so there are no names for such acts. Our poor victims of their gas, panting for breath in their cots, how ardently I wish that I could exhibit them to all the world, to their fathers, sons, and brothers, to excite in them a paroxysm of sacred indignation and thirst for vengeance. Yes, exhibit them everywhere, to let everyone hear the death-rattle, even those neutral nations who are so impassive; to convict of obtuseness or of crime all those obstinate Pacifists, and to sound throughout the world the alarm against the barbarians who are in eruption all over Europe.