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VERDUN TO THE VOSGES
[Illustration:
Pierre Petit phot.
GENERAL DE CASTELNAU.
]
VERDUN TO THE
VOSGES
_IMPRESSIONS OF THE WAR ON THE
FORTRESS FRONTIER OF FRANCE_
BY
GERALD CAMPBELL
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF _THE TIMES_ IN THE EAST OF FRANCE
AUTHOR OF “EDWARD AND PAMELA FITZGERALD”
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1916
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE
At the beginning of September, 1914, I was commissioned by _The Times_
to go to France as its representative on the eastern frontier, and it so
happens that, during the war, no other English newspaper correspondent
has been stationed for any length of time on the long section of the
front between Verdun and Belfort. One or two paid flying visits to
Lorraine after I was settled there, but they were birds of passage, and
were off again almost as soon as they arrived. In collecting the
material for my despatches and letters I was helped more than I can say
by my colleague, Monsieur Fleury Lamure, a French journalist who had
already worked for _The Times_ in Belgium, where he spent some exciting
days in August dodging about in front of the armies of von Kluck, von
Bulow, and von Hausen as they advanced on Charleroi and Namur. Before
the war he had served two years as an engineer officer in the French and
Russian navies, and had also worked in Manchuria and the Near East,
first as interpreter to General Silvestre, the French military _attaché_
at Kuropatkin’s headquarters, and then as correspondent of the _Novoe
Vremya_, with the Servians, in the second Balkan war. In the course of
our wanderings together we found that the French military and civil
authorities highly appreciated the fact that the newspaper which most of
them consider the greatest of English journals had associated a
Frenchman with me in the work of writing about the operations of their
frontier force. From the first our path was smoothed by what they looked
upon as a graceful and sensible act on the part of the Editor. At a
later stage in the war my French colleague, who has been twice _réformé_
as unfit for the active exercise of his profession, offered himself at
the Admiralty in Paris for one of the auxiliary forces, but was told
that the best thing he could do for his country was to go on working for
_The Times_.
From September, 1914, to January, 1915, after which no correspondents
were allowed in the zone of the armies, we made our headquarters at
Nancy. Between us, at various times, we visited a large part of the
front from Verdun to Ferette, close to the Swiss frontier, and only
fifteen or twenty miles from the Rhine. Sometimes we were in the
trenches, _â bout portant_ of the enemy’s rifles, and for four months
hardly a day or a night passed when we did not hear the sound of the
guns. From what we saw and from what we heard from those who took an
active part in it, we were able to get what is, I believe, a fairly
correct idea of the general run of the fighting on both sides of the
frontier. We were well placed, not only for judging the temper of the
civil population of the invaded provinces, but also the spirit and
fighting qualities of their defenders.
Before we came to Lorraine we had both seen a little of the early
fighting in Belgium—at Namur and Mons, and Charleroi and Dinant. But it
was at Nancy that I really got to know something of French soldiers and
learnt to admire the wonderful cheerfulness and courage of the XXth Army
Corps and the other splendid troops who talked with the enemy in the
gate of France, and blocked the passage with their dead bodies.
All that is long ago, though not so long as it seems after the weary
waiting of more than a year’s work in the trenches. But the end is not
yet. Those army corps, or their successors—for nearly all of the
original officers and men are dead or wounded—are still steadily
pressing the enemy back, almost on the same ground as when we were
there, and, though the full story cannot be told even now, it is neither
too late nor too soon for an Englishman to try and give some idea of the
debt which England owes to the French armies of the east.
But I should like to say a word about England too. It is always
difficult to see ourselves as others see us. Till long after I had gone
abroad for this war—to be quite frank, till the end of 1915—I had no
real idea of the view which other nations held at the beginning of the
chances of our taking a hand in it. I knew, of course, that many Germans
had declared since it began that they for their part had never believed
that we would draw the sword. I knew from Englishmen who were in Berlin
two days, and even I believe one day, before we did declare war, that
Englishmen at that time were received in the streets with cries of “Vive
l’Angleterre,” or rather “Hoch! England!” and that the bitter revulsion
of feeling against us only began when we had thrown down the glove. But
that—as I then thought—extraordinary miscalculation and misunderstanding
of our national temper, the infuriated reaction from which found vent in
the “Gott strafe England” campaign and the “Song of Hate,” I put down to
an inexplicable blindness peculiar to the German nation, and to the sort
of fury to which we are all liable when other people on important
occasions do not act as we wish and expect that they will. Since
then—but only lately—I have learnt better, from the vantage ground of a
neutral nation.
It is a fact that not only the Germanophil but the Francophil Swiss were
genuinely and deeply astonished when they learnt—from the official
_communiqués_—that we intended to intervene in the war because the soil
of Belgium had been invaded. When the thing was done they accepted it as
a fact. They were bound to. But they did not anticipate it. They found
it hard to believe that with an army, as they thought—and they were not
so far wrong—of only 150,000 men, with nothing to gain and everything to
lose, we would be so quixotic as to throw ourselves into a contest in
which we were not directly concerned, and to send our “contemptible
little army” (even smaller than their own) to fight in a foreign country
the battles of another state against the overpowering military might of
Germany.
It is also a fact—and to me a still more astounding revelation—that a
month after the war had begun there were people in France, and among
them soldiers of high standing, who were honestly surprised at what we
had already done in the war, as well as profoundly grateful, and who
even then honestly doubted whether we really meant to put our backs into
it to any purpose.
One can understand their astonishment at what we have done since. Even
an Englishman may say, without excessive national conceit, that the work
of our Navy, the huge volunteer armies raised in a year from the
Mother-country and our Dominions and Colonies and India, and our
subsequent if only partial acceptance of the principle of National
Service, are not everyday affairs. But the initial Swiss doubt or
scepticism as to our possible action, once the neutrality of Belgium had
been violated, and the fears of our friends in France at the beginning,
that having set our hand to the plough we might turn back before the
furrow was finished, are not so easy for us Englishmen to comprehend. We
had thought that they knew us better. No matter what Government had been
in power, once the Germans had declared their intention of passing
through the country of the Belgians, we must inevitably have drawn the
sword to defend or avenge them; more than that, even if Belgium had not
been invaded, we must no less have put our sword at the disposal of
invaded France, for the one wrong was in reality as great as the other.
And, no matter what Government may be in power to-morrow or the day
after, the spirit of England will not change. We stand by the side of
France and our other Allies to the end. And by now, I fancy, the French
have found that out.
But do we, even now, realize fully what the war means, and what, as a
nation, we have got to do before we can expect to win it? I have just
come back to England after an absence of a year and a half. I find that
though Parliament and the great mass of the people in all ranks have
accepted the principle of National Service, there are still in some
quarters powerful organizations which are vehemently opposed to it. I
find that in spite of all the warnings that have been issued in the
Press and by other means as to the imperative necessity of thrift, and
in spite of all the efforts made by countless individuals and large
sections of the community to model their lives in accordance with those
warnings, other individuals and other sections of the community pay no
attention to them at all. Money is being earned in unexampled and
hitherto undreamt-of profusion, and is being spent with reckless
prodigality. Thrift there is on all sides, but cheek by jowl and
hand-in-hand with it there is appalling waste.
We have got to get rid of that word thrift altogether. At the best it is
an affair of calculation, and can never inspire us to great deeds or
counteract the personal and ignoble motives by which human nature, even
in the greatest crises, is too often swayed. There is nothing lofty or
idealistic or spiritual about it. We must get into an altogether higher
region than that of economics. We must learn the lesson not of thrift
but of self-sacrifice. Only that can save us. Without it, even though we
have the dreaded ships and the splendid men and the all-necessary money
too, we shall be in this war as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
With it, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things,
enduring all things, we shall move mountains and overcome the world—the
world of the powers of darkness. It is the lack of it, and nothing but
the lack of it, which is at present preventing us from winning the war
and putting an end to its intolerable misery and evil.
G. C.
LONDON,
March, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
LONDON TO DIJON
PAGE
Departure from London, September 8th, 1914—A German 1
officer’s analysis of the invaders’ plan of
campaign—Paris—General condition of doubt and
uncertainty—Travelling during the Battle of the
Marne—Effect in France of the news of the victory
CHAPTER II
DIJON TO BELFORT
Arrival in Dijon—The laisser-passer difficulty—Besançon—An 11
anxious moment—Arrival at Belfort—Doubtful reception—A
Socialist private—Manifesto “Aux Camerades
Socialistes”—National Service—A Capitalists’ War—The
Strike of Strikes—The struggle for freedom—État de siège—A
city of darkness—Welcome by the Governor
CHAPTER III
IN ALSACE
On German soil—Montreux Vieux—The first ruined 21
village—Towards the Rhine—A night reconnaissance in
Alsace—Ferette—Covert drawn blank—Cheerfulness of the
French soldier—His longing for home—His home at the
front—Taube “over”—A Colonel’s hobby—An army in earnest
CHAPTER IV
ROBBERY UNDER ARMS
Eve of the War—French neutral zone along the frontier—German 33
raids in time of peace—Sunday, August 2nd—The affair at
Joncherey—First blood—A German epic—The Suarce
raid—Robbery under arms—Political importance of the
incident—Prisoners of war where no war was
CHAPTER V
BELFORT TO NANCY
News of Nancy—German lies—Security of Belfort—After twelve 39
months—Breakdown of German plans—Visit to the Préfet of
Belfort—A Prefect’s duties and position—Check on
militarism—Special duties during the war—The Préfets and
Sous-Préfets of the frontier Departments—Posts of
danger—Example and precept—Return to
Dijon—Chalindrey—British Tommies—Wounded French
officers—Toul—Arrival in Nancy
CHAPTER VI
ÉTAT-DE-SIÈGE IN NANCY
Discouraging start in Nancy—General de la Massellière—Visits 48
to the Prefect and Mayor—Their appointment—Madame
Mirman—Their example—The Lorraine stock—Nancy by night—The
sound of the guns—A united people—The French
renaissance—Nancy newspapers—Nancy hospitals—Nursing
sisters
CHAPTER VII
THE FRENCH OFFENSIVE
The German territorial gains—Bearing on peace proposals—The 61
French offensive—General moral effect—Uncertainty as to
direction of German attack—Sources from which eastern
armies were drawn—Their offensive—General account—In the
Woevre—Verdun and Longwy—From the Moselle to Mulhouse—The
frontier force—Justification of the offensive—Description
of frontier—Of Alsace—Importance of the Vosges—The
Sundgau—First French advance on August 7th—Altkirch
retaken
CHAPTER VIII
OCCUPATIONS OF MULHOUSE
Advance on Mulhouse—Unopposed entry—Popular 77
rejoicings—German counter-attack—Smallness of French
force—Their repulse—Terrorism—Harsh treatment of
foreigners—Reorganization of French under General
Pau—Second advance on Mulhouse—Battle round the
town—Victory of the French—Second occupation began
CHAPTER IX
MORHANGE
Description of the Vosges—French advance—Triumphs in 88
Lorraine—The check at Morhange—Why the French fell into
the trap—The disaster—New birth of the army—Bad news—The
offensive abandoned
CHAPTER X
GENERAL DUBAIL’S STAND
Combination of reverses for France—Soldiers’ ignorance of 100
contemporary events—Reliance on barrier of
fortresses—Determination to fight in the open—Different
conditions—Position after Morhange—German advance—Trouée
de Charmes—Epinal—Vesouze, Mortagne, and Meurthe—Brave
resistance of Dubail’s army—The reverse of the picture—The
terrorists’ _Credo_—Condemnation of frightfulness—An
example—The German excuse
CHAPTER XI
THE MARTYRED TOWN
Gerbéviller—Visit with M. Mirman—The ruins—Murder of old 114
men—How the town was taken—Incendiarism—Sœur Julie—An
act of “sacrilege”—Other martyred towns—Badonviller—The
first occupation—The second—Fight in the streets—St.
Benoit—Col de la Chipotte
CHAPTER XII
BATTLE OF THE GRAND COURONNÉ. I
The battle of the Grand Couronné—Two parts—The position 125
south of the Meurthe—Transport of Dragoon regiment from
Alsace—Arrival at Charmes—Towards Lunéville—Procession of
fugitives—Description of field of battle—South and north
of Meurthe up to Nancy-Lunéville road—General Bigot’s
divisions—Retreat of the XVth and XVIth Army Corps—General
retreat—Lunéville abandoned—Position of XXth Army
Corps—The troops from the south reformed—A miracle—The
battle begins—Germans cross Mortagne and Meurthe—A battle
symphony—Across the field of battle—Scenes of
desolation—The battle continued—German attack
checked—Retreat turned into advance—The XVth Army Corps
leaves for the Argonne—Their regeneration
CHAPTER XIII
BATTLE OF THE GRAND COURONNÉ. II
Nancy, the woman-town—Absence of fortifications—Attitude of 141
her defenders—The pivot of the line—Kaiser’s dreams of
conquest—Description of four German lines of attack—Of the
country—General de Castelnau’s line—Champenoux
villages—Réméréville—Farms and cottages—Loopholed
blockhouses—The wounded—The refugees—Account of
Nomeny—German brutality—Rottenness of German
civilization—Germany’s future—Inspiration of soldiers of
Lorraine—The part of the women—A woman’s letter
CHAPTER XIV
BATTLE OF THE GRAND COURONNÉ. III
The attack on Nancy from the north—St. Généviève—The 155
assault—How it was repulsed—The attack from the
east—Dombasle—Courbesseau—Réméréville—Soldiers’ disregard
of fire—In Champagne—French disadvantages in
Lorraine—Their gallantry—Individualism—Main attack from
north-east—Attack on plateau of Amance—September
8th—Importance of the date—What it meant to the
Kaiser—Final assault on Amance—Relations between Battle of
the Marne and Battle of the Grand Couronné—Bombardment of
Nancy—The German retreat—Last struggle in
Champenoux—Losses of the victors—Their graves—The horror
of the horizon—The reassurance of the front
CHAPTER XV
LUNÉVILLE
Effect of Battle of the Grand Couronné on Lunéville—Extent 178
of damage in the town—Entry of Germans—Familiar faces—M.
Minier, M. Mequillet, M. Keller—Faubourg d’Einville
burnt—German Governor’s proclamation—Hostages—Plight of
inhabitants—Outside the town—The turn of the tide—France
and Germany—A duel to the death—Last fights before the
town—German bestiality—General Joffre’s message—The last
advance—French enter the town—Restored to France
CHAPTER XVI
NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS
After the storm—A Prefect’s duties—Newspaper 193
correspondents—War a serious matter—Enemy’s means of
information—On the battlefield—“Behind the front”—German
dread of newspapers—Their own—French and British—The truth
concealed—In Belgium—Effect in neutral Switzerland—Change
of opinion due to knowledge of state of
_internés_—Confidence of M. Mirman—_The Times_ an agent
for good—Expulsion from Nancy—Hopes of return
CHAPTER XVII
A DAY WITH A PREFECT
A Conseil de Révision—Comparison with English 205
recruiting—French boys’ enthusiasm—Their experience of
terrorism—A greybeard—The Mayors of Lorraine—A war to kill
war—Lunch at the Préfecture—Through the French army—At the
front—A deserted village—Towards Nomeny—A check—Retreat—M.
Puech—A souvenir—French sang-froid
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ATTACK ON THE RIVER FORTS
Position after Battle of the Grand Couronné—German failures 218
reviewed—Mystery of Manonviller—Position of Toul—Of the
barrier of fortresses—Description of the Woevre—Troyon—The
first bombardment—German demand for surrender—The
attacking force—Relief from Toul—The attack
abandoned—Renewed bombardment of the river forts—Formation
of the St. Mihiel triangle
CHAPTER XIX
THE “SOIXANTE-QUINZE”
The Emperor William—His advisers—The modern Huns—The barrier 244
of the trenches—The Soixante-Quinze—Its superiority to its
German rival—The French gunner—Pride of the nation in its
artillery—Determination in the workshops—The struggle of
the trenches—A German description
CHAPTER XX
SIEGE WARFARE
Second period of the war—Germany besieged—The pressure on 263
the west—Partial offensives—The lack of shells—Its effect
on the war—“Craters of Death”—Monotony of the trenches—A
National Army—Soldier-priests—Their contempt of
death—Their self-sacrifice—Their spiritual work—Influence
on the troops—The realities of life—Church and State—The
example of the State—Spirit of unity—Points of
attack—Hammer and tongs—The St. Mihiel
salient—Chauvoncourt—Les Eparges—Bois d’Ailly—Bois
Brulé—Bois le Prêtre—The Vosges and Alsace—The soldiers of
France—France and England—The Boche standards of right and
wrong—The German cancer and the end of the war
CHAPTER THE LAST
GERMANY AND THE ALLIES
Pride and prejudice—English pride before the war—Pride of 282
France—Pride of race—_Noblesse Oblige_—Pride of
Germany—Pride of the _parvenu_—Peaceful pre-war invasion
of German commerce and kultur—Neutral views of Germany’s
guilt—French views of England—Redemption by hate—What is
“the right”?—Greater Germany?—Tannenberg’s views—The
Kaiser’s conversion—Germany’s designs on neutral
countries—The new year—The dead
EPILOGUE 301
By M. LÉON MIRMAN
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
General de Castelnau _Frontispiece_
Les Halles, Raon l’Etape 22
French Advance in Village Street of Magnières 36
M. Léon Mirman 44
M. Simon 50
French Advance at Sainte-Barbe 92
General Dubail 104
Gerbéviller 116
Farm of Léomont 134
General Foch 156
Infantry Attack on Farm of Saint Epvre, on the Heights 190
above Lunéville
Outside the Préfecture, Nancy 202
Nomeny 214
Réméréville 222
Château de Haraucourt 222
French Attack from Cemetery of Rehainviller near 258
Lunéville
Church at Drouville 286
LIST OF MAPS
PAGE
Eastern Frontier 59
Alsace and the Vosges 71
Lorraine Frontier _Facing page_ 126
La Woevre ” ” 272
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VERDUN TO THE VOSGES
CHAPTER I
LONDON TO DIJON
We left London on the evening of September the 8th with passports viséd
for Dijon, and a faint hope that, if we were lucky, we might succeed
some day in getting to Belfort, the immediate object of our journey. In
ordinary times, and even now, after more than a year of the war, that is
not a very difficult undertaking. In the second week of September, 1914,
it was in its way quite a little adventure. Everything was obscure,
everybody was in the dark. For all that most of us knew the retreat that
had begun at Mons three weeks before was still going on. The possibility
of the enemy pressing on to Paris was by no means at an end, and even in
the eyes of those who had some inside knowledge of what was happening on
the different fields of battle the risk was still so great that the
French Government had left that capital for Bordeaux some days before.
Nowadays we rattle gaily along in the trains between Paris and Boulogne
or Dieppe, safe in the assurance that though the Germans are not so very
much further off there is between them and us a great gulf of
entrenchments fixed, as well as two huge French and English armies, to
say nothing of King Albert and the Belgians. There were practically no
trenches in those days, and the enemy were in almost overpowering force.
General French’s army, though not so contemptible as the German Emperor
believed, was certainly little. There was still good reason for anxiety
about the possible fate of Paris. After I left Belgium in the middle of
August I had spent some time in Holland, where I saw a good deal of a
young Prussian engineer, who had offices in London, and was also an
officer in the Imperial Flying Corps. He had to report himself at
headquarters in Germany, but had been given short leave to go to
Flushing, and there wait for his English wife, who was to follow him
from London. That was the story he told me, and I believe it was true,
as far as it went, though it is possible that he may also have been
connected with the Intelligence Department of the German army, or what
is commonly termed a spy. In any case there was no doubt about his own
intelligence, which was remarkable, or his fund of information, which
was extensive. Day after day, at the time when the retreat from Mons had
begun and afterwards, he predicted to me (with many apparently genuine
expressions of sympathy for the evil fate that was in store for the
British army and for England) what the next step in the victorious
German advance would be, and day after day he proved to be right. It was
not till I had left Holland and was well on my way to Belfort that I had
the satisfaction of knowing that some of his prophecies were beginning
to go wrong.
I find it interesting to recall now what they were, because they
undoubtedly represented at the time the German plan of campaign, as it
was mapped out by the General Staff, and confidently anticipated by most
of the thinking rank and file of the German army. The great drama, as
everyone knows now, was to be preceded by the violation of Belgium as
the _lever de rideau_. But the plot of the front piece was felt to be
weak, and it had to be strengthened. So the fiction was invented that
French soldiers were already in Belgium before the war began, and that
evidence had been discovered in Brussels of a promise by the Belgian
Government to allow the Allies free passage into Germany through their
territory. The proofs of this conspiracy (the alleged story of which was
not so widely known then as it is now) would, my young Prussian assured
me, be produced at the end of the war. Without that _pièce
justificative_ there could be, he admitted, no excuse for Germany’s
preliminary step. He knew other things that were not at the end of
August common property—outside Germany and the Germans—about Zeppelins
and guns and submarines and other not-to-be-divulged surprises which
were to be sprung on us during the course of the war. He was able, for
instance, to tell me all about the mammoth 42-centimetre guns, served
not by ordinary artillerymen but by specially and secretly trained
artificers from Krupp’s works, which were to batter down the vaunted
French fortresses as they had smashed the forts of Liége. They looked,
he said, less like cannons than huge unwieldy antediluvian animals
compounded of wheels and levers. They had been assigned an important
part in the final act of the drama to be played in front of Paris, which
was timed to finish by the end of the year. More in sorrow than in anger
he explained how Paris would be reached. The armies of the German right
wing which had poured through Belgium (von Kluck’s and the rest) would
be rushed forward in irresistible masses and by incredibly rapid stages
so as to envelop the French and English left wing from the north. At the
same time a corresponding hook (he was continually talking of this
“hook” as the be all and end all of German strategy) would take place
from the south. Under the command of von Haeseler, the idol of the
German troops (a man of iron will with ribs of silver which he wore in
the place of those he lost in the Franco-Prussian War), the left wing
were to advance through the Vosges, Lorraine, and La Woevre, crushing
the cupolas of Belfort and Epinal and Toul and Verdun on their way like
so many egg-shells, and, with the Crown Prince’s army as the connecting
link between them and the northern hook, to round up the whole of the
French and British armies, on or near the plain of Châlons. Meanwhile a
specially detached army was to march on Paris and inform the Government
and its inhabitants that unless the terms of peace proposed by Germany
were immediately signed the city would be bombarded, and the French, he
assured me, sooner than see their beloved Paris reduced to ruins by the
42-centimetre mammoths, would certainly comply, and leave Germany free
to turn her attentions and the super-mammoths which she was preparing
for their especial benefit to London and England.
To-day all this sounds very fantastic and foolish—the idle vapourings of
an irresponsible young man of no importance. But that it was in outline
the German plan there is no doubt, and, but for the heroic resistance of
de Castlenau and Foch and Dubail on the eastern frontier and the
taxi-cab march of Gallieni’s Paris army and the other circumstances
which caused that curious flank march of von Kluck’s on the north at the
moment when his part in the programme was on the eve of completion, it
might have gone near to succeeding. We know that if it had it would not
have ended the war, for the French would undoubtedly have sacrificed
Paris and fought to the bitter end, rather than agree to the proffered
peace. But up to the end of the Battle of the Marne no one could say
with any approach to certainty that they would not be put to the test.
That was the position when we started for Paris. The whole ordered
course of modern civilized life had been upset, and anxiety and
uncertainty had taken its place. Telephones and telegraphs were only
used by the official world, who were nearly as much in the dark as the
rest of us. Channel boats were few and far between. Long-distance trains
were either not running at all or were restricted to not more than two
journeys in the twenty-four hours, and they felt their way like
skirmishers advancing over open country, stopping and making a prolonged
halt at every single station. The journey from Havre in a carriage dimly
lit by a single candle seemed as if it would never end, and I had plenty
of time to reflect with mixed feelings on certain articles which had
recently been published in _The Times_ pointing out the crying necessity
of reducing the time of the whole journey between the two capitals to
something under seven hours. This time it took rather over thirty. I was
beginning to learn the first lesson of the war, the sovereign virtue of
patience.
In Paris we had to put up with another day’s delay. There was, of
course, no question of taking the _ceinture_ or driving straight across
to the Gare de Lyon. Instead we had to dawdle about from five in the
morning till ten at night, getting passports viséd and buying tickets (a
two hours’ job), and then sitting in the train for another two hours
before it started so as to keep the places which by good luck and the
help of a friendly police official, after a series of humiliating
rebuffs from about half a dozen other commissaires and commandants, all
of them harassed and suspicious, we had had the luck to secure. That was
the second lesson, afterwards many times repeated—never to expect to get
a _laisser passer_ or a _permis de voyage_ or _séjour_ or any other
necessity of a journalist’s existence, until you had approached at least
three of the powers that be.
When at last we started, at midnight, the atmosphere of the crowded
carriage was so suffocating that I migrated to the corridor and tried to
sleep, with a suit case for a pillow, on the floor, while other restless
passengers walked about on various parts of my body. Once more we
stopped at every station with a violent bumping and jolting, repeated at
each fresh start, and due to the combined facts that the train was about
a quarter of a mile long, that it was made up of a job lot of carriages,
and that the understudies of the regular drivers and stokers mobilized
for active service were not very well up in their parts. Still, all
things considered, we were uncommonly lucky to reach Dijon in thirteen
hours instead of in five; and, all things considered, we knew quite well
that we had nothing to complain of. As the Battle of the Marne was being
fought at an average distance of about seventy miles from the line on
which we were travelling, the wonder was that passenger trains were
running at all. When the real history of the war is written a good deal
will have to be said of the splendid way in which the railwaymen of
France have done their important but trying and dreary share of the
country’s work in the country’s hour of need.
We were not, as I wrote at the time, a cheerful crowd. Many of us had
come long distances, some even from America. The compelling hand of the
war was on everyone in the train. Except in the deserted streets of
Paris during the few hours that I spent there the day before, I had
never seen such uniform sadness on so many faces at once. The women
especially, bravely as they tried to face their grief and their
anxieties, kind and helpful as they were to one another and the tiny
babies that some of them had with them, were indescribably pathetic.
These people were not refugees, like the trainloads one had seen lately
in Belgium and Holland. They were going to the scene of the war instead
of away from it. Most of them were reservists or the wives and children
of reservists, bound for their old homes near the various headquarters
to which the men had been called up. Some of them were nurses of the
Croix Rouge, middle-aged women and quite young girls; some were on their
way to visit wounded relations. Each and all carried the same heavy
burden. Not one but many of those near and dear to them were at the
front. They knew in some cases that they were already among the dead or
wounded or missing. But generally they knew nothing at all except that,
if they were still alive, they were there somewhere on one of the many
battlefields on the long line of the Allies’ front, face to face with
the enemy and death.
We made many friends of different conditions in life during the slow
hours between dawn and midday, and all had the same story to tell. But
there was no need to ask. It was written in their faces. The natural
vivacity of these sorrowing women of France was gone. They talked, when
they did talk, quietly and sadly, and of only one subject. More often
they sat with unseeing eyes, looking far off into the darkness of the
unknown future, fearful of the fate that waited for the men by their
side, and appalled by the thought of the ruin and suffering that
threatened their homes and their children. The tragedy that has brought
sorrow to the women of half the world had come upon them with the
suddenness of a bomb from a Taube, and some of them were wounded and all
were stunned by its effect. That was when we were still in the dark
about the result of the great battle that had begun to rage on the left
wing near Paris, before the German retreat began. On the second day of
our stay in Dijon there was a sudden change in the emotional atmosphere.
Directly I left the hotel in the evening I felt that good news had come.
Relief and happiness were in the air. In the railway station, in the
streets, in the cafés, on the pavements outside the newspaper offices
where the daily news of the war was posted up, the look of the people
was absolutely different. For the moment personal griefs and losses were
hidden and forgotten. General Joffre’s general order of September 11th
had been published to the troops, and from them the news had spread so
quickly that in half an hour everyone seemed to know what had happened.
It was the first real success of the war, the first time since its very
early days that the French had begun to lose the feeling of apprehension
produced in their minds by the steady retreat of the allied troops from
the Belgian frontier, after the battles of Charleroi and Mons. Even the
officers at Dijon were affected by it. Up till then, though they spoke
confidently enough of eventual success, the subject uppermost in their
minds and their conversation was always the wonderful perfection of the
German organization. That was a nightmare which they had not so far been
able to shake off. Now suddenly it was gone. In a day it had become
evident that France and England had their organization too, as well as
the common enemy, and that the strategy of the allied forces was
beginning at last to tell. And the really hopeful sign of it all was, if
I may venture to say so, the English way in which Dijon and France
received the good news. They behaved, in fact, much better than some
English had done in similar circumstances in past days. There was no
mafficking and no hysterical excitement, but only a more determined
resolution than ever to see the thing through to the end, a
strengthening of the national spirit of unity, and a fuller realization
of the value and sincerity of the alliance with England and of the fine
fighting qualities of our troops.