BELFORT TO NANCY
Our first direct news of Nancy was given us by an army-surgeon whom we
met in Dijon. He had just been invalided home suffering from septic
poisoning as the result of an operation which he had performed in one of
its many hospitals. In these days very little information was getting
through from the Lorraine front. The general situation was so obscure
that at one time some of the map-drawers of the English newspapers,
probably owing to a too naïf confidence in the accuracy of the
statements published by the Wolff bureau, actually placed the line
showing the position of the German front on the west side of Nancy, as
though it had been occupied by the enemy. Fortunately they were
mistaken. Though the capital of Lorraine had been lightly bombarded on
the night of September 9, two days before the médecin-major left it, it
was then, as it has since remained, in spite of the enemy’s persistent
efforts to reach it, _Nancy l’Inviolée_. But though the Germans, after
three weeks of incessant fighting, during which they suffered very heavy
losses, had been driven back, they were still only a few miles away, and
when we got back to Belfort from Alsace, we had already decided that, if
it could be managed, Lorraine was the place for us to go to.
Even if we could have got leave to stay in Belfort the outlook there,
from our point of view, was not promising. The field defences between it
and the frontier, without taking into account the troops stationed at
Montreux Vieux and in other parts of Alsace, were enough to convince us
that there was little chance of the enemy getting anywhere near it. The
lessons of Liége and Namur had not been thrown away. It was pathetic now
to remember how when we were in Belgium everyone had gone about
repeating the parrot cry, “Namur est imprenable” (just as they had said
“Les forts de Liége tiennent, et ils tiendront toujours”), when, except
inside the girdle of the forts, it was not protected by a single
earthwork of any value. The confidence of the French in Belfort was
better founded. The commanders of the garrison had learnt very early in
the war that forts, to be of any use in modern warfare, must themselves
be flanked, as golf-architects guard their greens, with an interminable
network of bunkers. Acting on that principle they had constructed a
position of such formidable strength that not even the German generals,
who had shown such a complete disregard of losses in their advance after
Charleroi, would be likely to face the huge waste of life which a
frontal attack on the Vosges fortress would have entailed.
A year has passed since then, and instead of getting nearer to it they
are miles further back than the place where Lieutenant Mayer met his
death. Pfetterhausen and Montreux Vieux and Dannemarie and a good slice
of Alsace are still in the hands of the French, and the siege of Belfort
(unless the enemy try the desperate expedient of a flanking movement
through Switzerland) is more unlikely than ever. So confident are the
authorities of their security that most of the civil inhabitants who had
been evacuated at the time of our first visit have now been allowed to
return, and the life of the town is becoming almost normal again. That
is a healthy sign. It is one of the numerous proofs that the apparent
deadlock at the front is really a signal victory for the Allies. For it
means that for all their carefully prepared organization and their calm
disregard of the conventions of war by which the other nations consider
themselves bound, the original plans of the enemy have broken down. The
cupolas of the forts of Belfort, which were to have been so easily
crushed, are still intact; their guns have not yet fired a shot, except
at aeroplanes. As in 1870, no German soldier has set foot within its
walls. Its famous lion is still a lion _couchant_.
Just before starting on our way back to Dijon we paid a visit to M.
Goublet, the Civil Governor and Préfet of the Territoire de Belfort (who
has rejoined his old service, the Navy, and is now in command of a small
cruiser), another warm friend and admirer of England and _The Times_.
During the war M. Goublet and all his fellow-préfets of the border
provinces have been most valuable servants of the State. No men in
France, except perhaps the ministers and the great chiefs of the army,
have had heavier responsibilities on their shoulders or more anxious
duties to perform, and no account of the way in which France has faced
the invader can be anything like complete which does not give some idea
of their share in the common work.
We have nothing in England that corresponds to the office of the French
prefect, who, as the direct representative of the Government in his
Department, plays a very important part in the civil administration of
the country. The eighty-six Departments, each governed by its Prefect,
are divided into sub-districts under the sous-préfets, and the
sub-districts into Communes or Mayoralties. The Mayor, as with us, is a
municipal officer, and looks after only what concerns his own commune,
which is called, in the case of the big towns, an Arrondissement. In his
Department the Prefect is supreme. Every civilian official in it—the
Sous-Préfets, the Mayors and their subordinates, and all the minor
officers of the State, such as the gendarmerie and the special police
commissaires whom he controls himself—is under his orders. He is saluted
not only by all these civilian officials and employés, but by the
officers and soldiers of the army. He ranks with the Generals commanding
army-corps, and in time of peace even takes precedence of them. When a
new General comes into a Department he calls on the Prefect, and by him
is introduced to the civil authorities, and in the same way all the
official calls on New Year’s Day are paid first to the Préfecture. Even
in time of war, because the State is greater than its army, it is only
in strictly military matters that the Generals in his Department are his
superiors. Thus a proclamation by a General to the people can only be
issued through the Prefect and over his signature, and he has the power,
subject of course to the General’s right of appeal to the Généralissime
and the Minister of War, to refuse to sanction any decree affecting the
civil population which the military authority might wish to enforce.
There has been one striking instance of the exercise of this power
during the present war. By an agreement between the Prefect and the
Military Governor the population of an important town near the frontier
were evacuated in the early days when it appeared very probable that it
would be besieged by the Germans. After a time, as nothing happened and
all fear of an investment seemed to be at an end, the inhabitants began
gradually to come back, and no notice was taken of their return till
suddenly the Military Governor issued a second proclamation, without
consulting the Prefect, ordering them once more to leave the town. To
this the Prefect objected, on the ground that his sanction had not been
asked. He announced that they might stay, and the action which he had
taken was upheld by the Minister of the Interior.
The Prefect, therefore, acts either as the channel, or (if he thinks it
necessary), as the barrier between the military authorities and the
people of his Department, and is therefore a standing safeguard against
the militarism, which, according to some English critics, is bound to
arise in a country which has a “conscript” army. The mere fact of the
existence of the office, with its extraordinary powers, is a sufficient
guarantee that in France the militarism of which these people make a
bugbear can never make any real headway.
Amongst his other duties the Prefect is responsible for the care of the
main roads and State monuments (such as cathedrals) in his Department;
for the holding of _Conseils de Révision_ (the periodical assemblies of
the young men of the nation, at which they are finally examined, in
classes dependent on the year of their birth, to see if they are
physically and mentally fit for service in the army); for the
provisioning and lighting of the towns and villages in his district; and
for the control of the Press, or what is commonly termed the censorship,
which, in time of war, he exercises jointly with the military
authorities. In the invaded districts the importance of each of these
several duties is obvious, and no praise can be too high for the way in
which they have been carried out, all along the battle-line from Belfort
to Briey, by M. Goublet (Territoire de Belfort), M. Linarès (Vosges), M.
Léon Mirman (Meurthe et Moselle), M. Aubert (Bar le Duc) and the
sous-préfets of Lunéville, Toul, and Briey, M. Minier, M. Mage, and M.
Magre. To the sorely tried people under their charge these men have set
a fine example of unity, hard work, self-sacrifice, confidence, and
courage, with a leaven of the less ornamental virtue of common-sense.
They have unflinchingly carried out the often risky work of visiting, as
soon as the enemy was driven back from one position after another, the
burnt and ruined villages which he left behind him. They have been the
stand-by of the brave mayors who have stuck to their posts in the hour
of danger, they have cheered the wounded in the hospitals, they have
cared for the homeless and destitute refugees, and they have stimulated
and encouraged the whole population by giving them a true and lofty
ideal of what the war means for France and the world, and of the way in
which Frenchmen and French women and children should face its perils and
its inevitable sufferings and distress. And—_si parva licet componere
magnis_—those of them whom we have been fortunate enough to know have
been exceedingly kind and helpful to two grateful journalists from
London.
[Illustration:
Woelflin, Nancy, phot.
M. LEON MIRMAN, PREFECT OF MEURTHE ET MOSELLE.
]
At this particular moment, however, it was the military, rather than the
civil authorities, who were able to help us on our way. By the _service
de renseignements_, or military intelligence department, at Belfort, we
were given a special pass to go to Nancy by way of Dijon and Chalindrey
(the direct route by Epinal being impossible), and when we got back to
Dijon General Brissaud himself _viséd_ our passports for the same
destination.
Armed with these double credentials we started from Dijon on what in
ordinary times is a journey of six hours, instead of which it took us
from three o’clock in the afternoon till half-past eight next morning.
The first big check was at Chalindrey, close to Langres, where we had a
three hours’ wait during which we saw two interesting little sidelights
on the war. In those days all station-restaurants had been taken over
for the use of the army, and as we were not allowed to stay on the
platform or to sit in the train, we thought at first that we should have
to kick our heels till midnight in the station yard. It was a dark and
chilly prospect. However, by the help of a friendly private and
persistent knocking at a back door, we did at last force our way into
the refreshment room, and on the strength of being English were allowed
to order some supper. While we were eating it a taciturn sergeant
demanded our papers and carried them off into the outer darkness. Then
there was a long pause. We waited and waited, each moment getting more
and more afraid that they were not going to get us through after all,
when the door opened and out of the _ewigkeit_, nearly two hundred miles
from the nearest English troops, two Red Cross Tommies, an Australian
and a Lanarkshire miner, walked into the room. They were under the
escort, not to say the arrest, of the Station Commandant, who wanted to
confront them with us to see if the story they told was true. It was, as
a matter of fact, rather lame. They said that after the Battle of the
Marne they had lost the rest of their detachment somewhere near
Compiègne, and being tired of hospital work were trying to reach the
front, in the hope of being allowed to do some fighting. Whether they
were deserters or not they certainly had their full share of Scotch and
Australian mother-wit, or they could never have got so far without being
arrested. Three months later, by some miracle, for they spoke no French
and had only their ordinary soldiers’ passes, they turned up in Nancy,
still on their own, and were taken to Toul, this time, I believe, under
close arrest. As they were the unconscious means of doing us a good
turn, I rather hope that they were not impostors, and that they were not
too hardly dealt with. Hearing me talking to them, a French officer,
Commandant Chesnot of the 360th Regiment of the Reserve, introduced
himself as an ardent admirer of England, and invited us to make the rest
of the journey in the reserved carriage which he shared with another
officer. They were old schoolfellows belonging to the same regiment, who
had been knocked over by the same shell three weeks before at
Réméréville, and were now returning to duty, still limping from the
effect of their wounds. Like every wounded French officer and soldier
whom we met, their one idea was to get out of the surgeon’s hands and
back again to the front as soon as possible. It was lucky for us that
they were so keen.
At Toul, where we had to wait for another three hours, we sat with them
in the waiting-room reserved for soldiers, instead of being herded with
the civilian crowd next door, and from Champigneul, beyond which no
passenger trains had been running for some time, we travelled as their
friends in one of the familiar trucks built to accommodate forty men or
eight horses, sitting on bundles of sacking filled with the disinfected
uniforms of dead soldiers. Since the service had been suspended at the
beginning of the war, we were, I believe, the first civilians who made
their entry into Nancy by train.