There was a battlefield, I was told, with a ruined village near it,
about as far from Paris as Sevenoaks is from London, and I decided to
see it. The preliminaries, they said, would be difficult, but only
patience was needed--patience and one's papers all in order. It would be
necessary to go to the War Bureau, opposite the Invalides.
I went to the War Bureau opposite the Invalides one afternoon. I rang
the bell and a smiling French soldier opened the door. Within were long
passages and other smiling French soldiers in little knots guarding the
approaches, all very bureaucratic. The head of the first knot referred
me to the second knot; the head of the second referred me to a third.
The head of this knot, which guarded the approach to the particular
military mandarin whom I needed or thought I needed, smiled more than
any of them, and, having heard my story, said that that was certainly
the place to obtain leave. But it was unwise and even impossible to go
by any other way than road, as the railway was needed for soldiers and
munitions of war, and therefore I must bring my chauffeur with me, with
his papers, which must be examined and passed.
My chauffeur? I possessed no such thing. Necessary then to provide
myself with a chauffeur at once. Out I went in a fusillade of courtesies
and sought a chauffeur. I visited a taxi rank and stopped this man and
that, but all shied at the distance. At last one said that his garage
would provide me with a car. So off to the garage we went, and there I
had an interview with a manager, who declined to believe that permission
for the expedition would be made at all, except possibly to oblige a
person of great importance. Was I a person of great importance? he asked
me. Was I? I wondered. No, I thought not. Very well then, he considered
it best to drop the project.
I came away and hailed another taxi, driven by a shaggy grey hearthrug.
I told him my difficulties, and he at once offered to drive me anywhere
and made no bones about the distance whatever. So it was arranged that
he should come for me on the morrow--say Tuesday, at a quarter to
eleven, and we would then get through the preliminaries and my lunch
comfortably by noon and be off and away. So do hearthrugs talk with
foreigners--light-heartedly and confident. But Heaven disposes. For when
we reached the Bureau at a minute after eleven the next morning the
smiling janitor told us we were too late. Too late at eleven? Yes, the
office in question was closed between eleven and two; we must return at
two.
"But the day will be over," I said; "the light will have gone. Another
day lost!" Nothing on earth can crystallize and solidify so swiftly and
implacably as the French official face. At these words his smile
vanished. He was not angry or threatening--merely granite. Those were
the rules, and how could anyone question them? At two, he repeated: and
again I left the building, this time not bowing quite so effusively, but
suppressing a thousand criticisms which might have been spoken were not
the French our allies.
Three hours to kill in a city where everything is shut. No Louvre, no
Carnavalet! However, the time went, chiefly over lunch, and at two we
were there again, the hearthrug and I, and were shown into a
waiting-room where far too many other persons had already assembled. To
me this congestion seemed deplorable; but the hearthrug merely grinned.
It was all a new experience to him, and his meter was registering the
time. We waited, I suppose, forty minutes and then came our turn, and we
were led to a little room where sat a typical elderly French officer at
a table. He had white moustaches and was in uniform with blue and red
about it. I bowed, he bowed, the hearthrug grovelled. I explained my
need, and he replied instantly that I had come to the wrong place; the
right place was the Conciergerie.
Another rebuff! In England I might have told him that it was one of his
own idiotic men who had told me otherwise, but of what use would that be
in France? In France a thing is or is not, and there is no getting round
it if it is not. French officials are portcullises, and they drop as
suddenly and as effectively. Knowing this, so far from showing
resentment or irritation, I bowed and made my thanks as though I had
come for no other purpose than a dose of frustration; and again we left
this cursed Bureau.
I re-entered the taxi, which, judging by the meter, I should very soon
have completely paid for, and we hurtled away (for the hearthrug was a
demon driver) to Paris's Scotland Yard. Here were more passages, more
little rooms, more inflexible officials. I had bowed to half-a-dozen and
explained my errand before at last the right one was reached, and him
the hearthrug grovelled to again and called "Mon Colonel." He sat at a
table in a little room, and beside him, all on the same side of the
table, sat three civilians. On the wall behind was a map of France. What
they did all day, I wondered, and how much they were paid for it; for we
were the only clients, and the suggestion of the place was one of
anecdotage and persiflage rather than toil. They acted with the utmost
unanimity. First "Mon Colonel" scrutinised my passport, and then the
others, in turn, scrutinised it. What did I want to go to ---- for? (The
name is suppressed because it is two or three months since the battle
was fought there.) I replied that my motive was pure curiosity. Did I
know it was a very dull town? I wanted to see the battlefield. That
would be _triste_ too. Yes, I knew, but I was interested. "Mon Colonel"
shrugged and wrote on a piece of paper and passed the paper to the first
civilian, who wrote something else and passed it on, and finally the
last one got it and discovered a mistake in the second civilian's
writing, and the mistake had to be initialled by all the lot, each
making great play with a blotter; and at last the precious document was
handed to me and I was really free to start. But it was now dark.
* * *
The road from ---- leaves the town by a hill, crosses a canal, and then
mounts and winds, and mounts again, and dips and mounts, between fields
of stubble, with circular straw-stacks as their only occupants. The
first intimation of anything untoward, besides the want of life, was the
spire of the little white village of ---- on the distant hill, which
surely had been damaged. As one drew nearer it was clear that not only
had the spire been damaged, but that the houses had been damaged too.
The place seemed empty and under a ban.
I stopped the car outside, at the remains of a burned shed, and walked
along the desolate main street. All the windows were broken; the walls
were indented with little holes or perforated with big ones. The roofs
were in ruins. Here was the post-office; it is now half demolished and
boarded up. There was the inn; it is now empty and forlorn. Half the
great clock face leant against a wall. Everyone had fled--it is a
"deserted village" with a vengeance: nothing left but a few fowls.
Everything was damaged; but the church had suffered most. Half of the
shingled spire was destroyed, most of the roof, and the great bronze
bell lay among the _débris_ on the ground. It is as though the enemy's
policy was to intimidate the simple folk through the failure of their
super-natural stronghold. "If the church is so pregnable, then what
chance have we?"--that is the question which it was hoped would be
asked; or so I imagined as I stood before this ruined sanctuary.
Where, I wondered, are those villagers now, and what chances are there
of the rebuilding of these old peaceful homes, so secure and placid only
four months ago?
And then I walked to the battlefield a few hundred yards away, and only
too distinguishable as such by the little cheap tricolors on the
hastily-dug graves among the stubble and the ricks. Hitherto I had
always associated these ricks with the art of Claude Monet, and seeing
the one had recalled the other; but henceforward I shall think of those
poor pathetic graves sprinkled among them, at all kinds of odd angles to
each other--for evidently the holes were dug parallel with the bodies
beside them--each with a little wooden cross hastily tacked together,
and on some the remnants of the soldier's coat or cap, or even boots,
and on some the blue, white and red. As far as one can distinguish,
these little crosses break the view: some against the sky-line, for it
is hilly about here, others against the dark soil.
It was a day of lucid November sunshine. The sky was blue and the air
mild. A heavy dew lay on the earth. Not a sound could be heard; not a
leaf fluttered. No sign of life. We were alone, save for the stubble and
the ricks and the wooden crosses and the little flags. How near the dead
seemed: nearer than in any cemetery.
Suddenly a distant booming sounded; then another and another. It was the
guns at either Soissons or Rheims--the first thunder of man's hatred of
man I had ever heard.
So I, too, non-combatant, as _Anno-Domini_ forces me to be, know
something of war--a very little, it is true, but enough to make a
difference when I read the letters from the trenches or meet a Belgian
village refugee.
* * * * *