FROM METZ TO VERDUN
There is something grim and forbidding about the name of Metz. The
tragedy of shame and defeat with which it was connected during the
Franco-Prussian War hangs round it like a sombre garment. I for one
associated it always in my thoughts with a dark menacing fortress, the
very stones of which cried aloud the tale of France’s humiliation and
the ruthless might of her conquering foe. Historical events have the
power of lending their own colour to the names of localities where
great dramas have played themselves out. Sometimes the very nature of
a place--I take three at random, Mycenae, Blois, Glencoe--harmonises
completely with the sense of tragedy. No one could associate the
shores of Lake Trasimene with the idea of trippers on the beach, or
the plains of Borodino with swings and roundabouts. Yet to this rule,
if it be a rule, Metz is a complete exception. Instead of a gloomy
fortress it is a delightful French town, ideally situated in the
basin of the Mosel. The Mosel breaks up at this point into several
channels, and Metz disposes of itself in somewhat Venetian fashion
among the various branches. The main portion of the town is situated
on a low crest overlooking the stream. The crest falls away to the
river below, gardens, houses, and terraces clinging to the slopes. To
the west across the plain rises a range of hills. From the vantage
point of the Esplanade--the beautiful public gardens on the terraces
above the Mosel--the view of the surrounding country is very fine. The
fortifications of Metz, being of the latest type, are naturally not in
evidence. But the distant hills which rise in such calm beauty from
the plain are honeycombed with everything that is deadly in modern
military equipment. Villages and vineyards may be on their surface, but
the hand of man has been concerned there with other matters than those
of the plough or winepress. No traveller surely can look at the hills
beyond Metz without a catch in the throat? For through them runs the
road to Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour, and so beyond to a place of glory
and endurance greater than theirs--Verdun, shattered and destroyed, but
inviolate and unconquered in the midst of her ruins.
Few districts in Europe are so important in military history as the
country which lies in the neighbourhood of Metz. We came by train from
Saarbrücken, our car being under repair, and nearly every mile of the
way had been a path of destiny for France in 1870. A French customs
official, not a genial specimen of his kind, charged us roundly with
having contraband concealed under the maps spread about the carriage.
We assured him our business at the moment was concerned with history
and geography and not illicit trading, and after shaking the offending
sheets he disappeared with an unfriendly grunt.
The heights of Spicheren are within sight of Saarbrücken. Here
on August 6, 1870, was fought one of the early battles in the
Franco-Prussian War--an indecisive action which was to prove, however,
a strand in the great coil spread round the French armies. To the
east of Metz lies the fateful battlefield of August 14, when after a
desperate struggle centring in particular round Colombey and Nouilly,
the French were forced to give way and the German pincers began to
close in on the doomed city. The history of the 1870 war, that tale
of heroism and mismanagement, is painful beyond bearing to read. It
moves with the precision and inevitableness of a Greek tragedy--France,
so sound at heart, yet superficially so rotten, matched against the
supreme technical skill of a painstaking people guided by the wholly
non-moral purpose of a Bismarck. From the conflict, as it was then, of
the iron with the earthenware pot, only one end could result. Yet
“Nor kind nor coinage buys
Aught above its rate.”
Germany in the person of her rulers bartered in 1870 the first
principles of justice and morality between states. To-day she is paying
the price of that moral treachery on a level of humiliation to which
1870 held no parallel, while a ruined world also bears its testimony to
the eternal truth that, as members one of another, the sin and failure
of the one involves confusion and disaster for all.
Lorraine is a smiling land with rolling plains and hills. Villages,
solid and well-built, lie among their orchards in the folds of
the undulating fields. Important though the mineral wealth of the
province, agriculture plays a part hardly second in value as regards
its resources. The rich red soil is highly cultivated, and farming is
carried on with the thoroughness one associates, alas, with continental
methods alone. The red-tiled roofs of the farmhouses lend a sense
of warmth and colour to the landscape. Especially beautiful is the
contrast when the warm madder-coloured gables rise out of a foam of
fruit blossom. Truly a land to win and to hold the affections of its
children. To see it for the first time, no longer under alien rule but
liberated and restored to the Motherland, was a glad experience of
travel. Indefensible though the German rape of the protesting provinces
in 1870, the case of Lorraine, predominantly and overwhelmingly French
in population and sentiment, was perhaps the greater outrage. A people
annexed against their will are not easy citizens to handle, as for
over forty years French resistance passive and active taught Prussian
officialism.
Thiers fought desperately for the retention of Metz in the peace
negotiations following on the 1870 war. Bismarck, whose ends were
attained by the war itself, was not implacable on the subject.
Personally he favoured the payment of a larger indemnity in lieu of
the city. Military opinion was violently hostile to this proposal, and
with cynical indifference the Chancellor let the soldiers have their
way. To visit Metz in 1920 is to realise how the soul of the city
kept itself free and aloof, heavy though the material yoke imposed
on it. The town is French in every respect. The Germans have added
solid public buildings of practical value in the shape of an excellent
railway station, post office, banks, etc. As a material proposition,
Metz returns to France much richer than when torn away. But the purely
French character of the streets and houses defied all efforts of the
conqueror at any true absorption within the German Reich. The new
buildings lie, like scorned and wealthy parvenus, on the outskirts.
Within are narrow streets, tall houses and shuttered windows--all
the indefinable genre and elegance which French taste and French
architecture bring with them. When the hour of liberation came, Metz
reverted to her natural allegiance with as little difficulty as a
prisoner casts off some hated garment of servitude.
Sign painters must have driven a brisk trade after the Armistice. Not
only have all the names of the streets become French again, but the
names of shops have undergone a similar transformation. So hastily
has the work been done in many cases that the half-obliterated German
letters may be seen under the new paint. Business was clearly urgent
in those early days and the transfer of names to the winning side
permitted of no delay.
The fine fourteenth-century Gothic cathedral is a great adornment to
Metz. The lofty windows, slender and austere, and the splendid glass
still speak of the soul of the Middle Ages no less than of the skill
and cunning hand of the mediaeval builder and craftsman. Yet not
these abiding beauties but a freak decoration of the exterior is what
attracts the average traveller to Metz Cathedral to-day. Under German
rule the church had undergone a “thorough restoration,” ominous words
which, as I have said elsewhere, are the knell of doom to many a fine
building in Germany. French skill was apparently successful in staving
off the barbarisms common in the Rhineland, and the interior has not
suffered. But the addition of a Gothic west portal in 1903 gave William
II. a priceless opportunity of masquerading among saints and holy men
on the new façade. Such a chance possibly did not often come his way.
Certainly he availed himself of it eagerly. He appears, therefore,
on the façade in the guise of the prophet Daniel. The statue is well
executed, though the sculptor, whether or not intentionally, has
endowed the prophet with a sinister expression, especially when viewed
from certain angles. The statue has been allowed to remain, but after
the Armistice the hands were fettered with chains, and in that felon’s
guise William II. still surveys the cathedral square from under the
cowl of his prophet’s cloak.
I have referred in another chapter to the problem presented to
Republican Germany by the redundance of Hohenzollern statues. Metz had
been endowed with more than its fair share of Prussian effigies. “If
you do not like your conquerors, you shall at least have plenty of them
too look at” seems to have been the principle adopted. Hohenzollerns
major and minor abounded therefore in every public place. A huge
equestrian statue of William I. had been erected in the centre of the
Esplanade. The Emperor, with whiskers of a particularly bristling and
aggressive order, flourished a baton in the direction of the French
border. It was certainly not by accident that the statue was designed
to look across the hills to the west, and to convey a challenge to
which France on her side was not slow to reply.
Whatever the embarrassments of a reformed Germany as regards its
former reigning house, naturally they did not weigh with the people of
Metz. The inhabitants after the Armistice rose _en masse_, tore down
the statues of the Hohenzollerns, and generally destroyed every outer
symbol of Prussian domination. The effigy of William I. was overthrown
by an excited crowd, and pictures of the event show the monarch on
the ground while men, women, and children shake their fists at the
prostrate form. The plinth, stripped of its ornaments and inscriptions,
was allowed to remain, and with every possible haste the temporary
figure of a victorious poilu was erected in order to replace that of
the Kaiser. This figure was no longer _in situ_ at the time of our
visit, and the plinth awaits its permanent memorial. The hard-worked
German phrase, “Von seinem dankbaren Volk,” is still visible though
half effaced on the plinth, but on the west side looking towards Verdun
the Hohenzollern devices have been replaced by the three electric words
crisp with victory, “On les a.”
We English, who for centuries have never known the bitterness of
alien conquest--among whom no tradition even survives of its sting
and misery--can enter very faintly either into the anguish or the joy
of countries conquered and then subsequently redeemed. Few stories of
the war are more moving than the tales told of the entry of the French
troops into Metz and Strasbourg. Indescribable enthusiasm prevailed
among the French population. Not only were the liberating legions
greeted with garlands and banners, but weeping men and women followed
the French generals and prayed to be allowed to kiss their hands or
touch the hem of their garments. On the Porte Serpinoise, the ancient
gateway of the city, a long inscription has recently been erected which
tells the tale of Metz in recent times from the treachery of Bazaine
to the reunion with France in 1918. About this inscription there is
little of the calm and measured language of the message usually carved
in stone. The words are burning and passionate, torn from the heart of
suffering, turned though it be at the last to joy. That the years of
“separation cruelle” to which the gateway bears testimony were bitter
indeed no one could doubt who has stood by the Porte Serpinoise and
read its record of both defeat and victory. But has the world even
yet laid to heart the moral of the German seizure of these provinces?
Has France herself, greatest of all sufferers, applied the lesson to
her own circumstances? Coming to Metz from Saarbrücken with a vivid
recollection of all we had seen and heard there, I turned from the
Porte Serpinoise with an uneasy question in my mind. When the first
enthusiasms subside and the flowers and the garlands have faded,
the practical business of life remains. The government of a mixed
population is never an easy task, and the redeemed provinces will make
heavy demands on the wisdom and generosity of France.
Alsace-Lorraine was in fact indulging in all the joys of a general
strike at the time of our visit. Post, telegraph, railway service,
everything was at a standstill the day after our arrival. The trouble
had arisen apparently over the replacement of German employés, now
French subjects, by other French workmen. The long and stubborn
resistance offered by the provinces to German rule is sufficient proof
of the healthy spirit of independence which inspires the population.
But even under the new order, the people of Alsace-Lorraine are likely
to show a spirit no less vigorous in all that concerns their local
affairs. Bureaucratic interference even with the German side of the
population may easily give rise to resentment throughout the whole
community. German bureaucracy, heavy handed though it was, had the
merit of being efficient. French administration would do well to avoid
situations in which irritated citizens begin to make comparisons not
always favourable to those at present in authority.
We hired a car which took us, or rather shook us, to Verdun. The road
crosses some of the most famous of the 1870 battlefields, especially
Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour. The road first climbs the lofty ridge of
hills lying to the west of Metz, on the top of which lies an open
plateau. Fortifications and defences were obvious everywhere. It was
clear, from the masses of barbed-wire entanglements which we passed
at various points, that the Germans had intended to defend Metz if
necessary in the last war. Further, the road along which we travelled
must have been their main artery of supply to Verdun. We saw the
remains of their light railways running in various directions. Dumps
of wire still remained and traces of dumps of ammunition. The light
railways had been ploughed up by the returning peasantry. Yet as we
approached the area of devastation an obvious question arose--why were
these railways not preserved for the task of reconstruction and the
demands on transport reconstruction involves?
We halted at the famous ravine of Gravelotte, where on August 18, 1870,
the terrible struggle took place which decided the fate of Metz. Here,
as everywhere else on the 1870 battlefields, all traces of the German
monuments to the dead have disappeared. The graves in the cemeteries
were untouched, but the eagles had been knocked off the monuments.
Unquestionably the presence of these German memorials on land robbed
from France presented the French Government with a difficult problem.
No doubt many of the “Denkmals” were boastful and vainglorious, after
the usual German fashion in these matters. Clearly they had no place on
redeemed French soil. I could not feel, however, the situation had been
handled very wisely as regards the memorials to the fallen soldiers.
Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have pulled at
the rope which dragged William I. from his plinth. The ignominious
overthrow of statues of kings and princes of a ruling house so
directly responsible for the miseries of Europe is a symbol of victory
over the evil principles for which they stood.
But the soldiers who died doing their duty do not belong to the same
category as the men who plotted the war. Many of the monuments blown
up were merely records of regiments who fought and fell, and had their
historical value. Their destruction has caused great bitterness among
the German section in the province, and no end is served by the further
creation of bad blood between people who are forced to live together.
The 1870 war and its terrible consequences are not to be wiped out by
blowing up a few obelisks. The man who dies fighting bravely for his
country, however much duped as to the righteousness of the cause for
which he gives his life, has a claim to consideration at the hands of a
generous foe. The dignified way out of the difficulty would have been
for the French to call upon the Germans to remove their monuments.
We felt this the more on reaching Mars-la-Tour, the scene of another
fierce battle. The frontier fixed after 1870 ran between Gravelotte
and Mars-la-Tour. On the Mars-la-Tour side of the frontier stands a
wonderful French monument which commemorates the heroism and tragedy
of 1870. A woman symbolising France holds in her arms a dying soldier,
whose head she crowns with laurel. But she is in no way concerned with
the agony gathered next her heart. Her eyes are fixed, not on the dying
man, but grimly, steadily across the frontier. She looks across the
hills of her own lost province, and the fixity of her gaze conveys
a spiritual challenge to that other statue on the crest above the
Mosel--the statue of William I. conquering and insolent. Further, from
the hand of the dying man falls a musket. But two babes playing at the
woman’s feet catch the musket before it lies in the dust and raise it
once more in the air.
This monument, a striking example of its class, is executed with a full
measure of French skill and artistic power. But there cannot be the
least misunderstanding as to its meaning. Every line breathes revenge
and a day of reckoning to come. Mars-la-Tour was occupied by the
Germans in the first days of the recent war. It must, I think, be put
to the credit of the military authorities that, during the four and a
half years that this memorial was in their power, no damage of any kind
was done to it.
Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour are both dirty ramshackle villages, with
middens out in the street blocking the entrance to the houses. Perhaps
the inhabitants of frontier villages are inspired by a justifiable
pessimism as to the futility of building decent dwelling-houses.
Certainly the standard of life seems unusually low. Shortly after
leaving Mars-la-Tour we began to pick up occasional signs of war, signs
which, of course, multiplied as we entered the plain of the Woevre,
and began to draw near the ridge of hills to the west on the far side
of which Verdun lies. One battlefield is painfully like another. The
destroyed villages and desolate fields told the same tale of death and
suffering which is impressed on the long belt of devastation running
across the Continent. Yet to me in future a cowslip field will always
bring with it memories of Verdun. The familiar yellow flowers were
growing in sheets by the roadside, striving, as it were, pathetically
to throw the cover of their freshness and grace across the stricken
land.
The interest of Verdun, apart from its heroic defence, lies in the fact
that the line of attack being very intensive was relatively small,
and owing to the hilly and varied nature of the ground it is possible
to visualise more or less accurately the various attacks and counter
attacks. We approached Verdun from the south-west, a point from which
the damage was relatively small. The whole of the Verdun ridge on which
the forts are situated runs north and south, and commands the plain of
the Woevre to the east and the valley of the Meuse to the west. All
this district was formerly a great forest. On the southern slopes we
found the trees practically intact. We turned to the right and, keeping
along the top of the ridge, had our first view of the valley of the
Meuse, and Verdun with its twin towers lying far below us in the plain.
Verdun, never a considerable city, has nevertheless emerged into fame
on more than one occasion in the course of its long history. It gives
its name to the one event of capital importance in the evolution of
modern Europe. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 may be taken as the starting
point of the long struggle between France and Germany. Under this
Treaty the united empire of Charlemagne was broken up between his three
grandsons. France and Germany parted company, never to meet again
during the course of the next thousand years but on terms of fire and
sword. Revolutionary France offered its own example of frightfulness
at Verdun. The city was taken by the Prussians in 1792. The struggle
was not of an embittered character, and some young ladies of the city
not only welcomed the conquerors but presented them with sweets.
Fraternising with the enemy was not included apparently in the then
revolutionary interpretation of fraternity, and three of the girls were
sent to the scaffold when the French retook Verdun after Valmy. The
little place sustained a siege of three weeks in 1870, and surrendered
with the full honours of war after a gallant resistance.
But at Verdun as elsewhere the scale of events has been flung utterly
out of focus by the recent struggle, to which history has no parallel.
The town itself has suffered cruelly. Every other house is a ruin.
But at least it never yielded, never bowed the head to the conqueror.
How near, terribly near, the Germans came to complete success, we
appreciated better on the spot than anything we had been led to believe
by the official communiqués issued at the time. A discreet veil was
flung over the German capture of Fort Douaumont. As a matter of fact
not only was the fort taken, but the Germans penetrated for a mile and
a half further westward beyond that point. One remaining fort alone
lay between them and their prey. Heroic though the defence, it is
clear that but for the Somme offensive and the diversion of forces it
entailed, Verdun itself must have fallen.
Fort Vaux and Fort Douaumont are the central points of interest in the
defence, but every yard of the district is full of poignant and tragic
association. Trees and vegetation had disappeared before we reached
Fort Vaux. The ground had become a mere crater field. It was almost
impossible to believe that this blasted hillside and neighbouring
ravines had once formed part of a beautiful forest. As to Douaumont,
little of the fort remains beyond a heap of rubble and rubbish.
Imagination stumbles and halts as to what the bombardment must have
been which could blast fortress and land alike out of being. Still
more impossible is it to gauge the human endurance which could survive
any experience so hideous as the fighting which raged round these key
points. Just below Douaumont is a trench where a French platoon was
overwhelmed and enfiladed by German fire. The ground fell in, burying
the men where they stood. The bodies have not been removed, and the
tops of the rifles can still be seen sticking out of the ground. The
trench is enclosed by barbed wire to keep the tourist at bay, but I
hope that this gruesome sight may not be perpetuated for the benefit of
the tripper. The tourist invasion of the battlefields is inevitable,
but it is intolerable if they bring with them to soil which is sacred
anything of the orange peel and ginger-beer bottle atmosphere. Two or
three chars-à-bancs filled with visitors were already on the ground,
early though the season. However, they were mercifully cowed into
silence by the all-pervading desolation.
All the hillsides round Verdun are scarred with the marks of trenches.
Every name, every ridge in the district is famous. We looked on a
given heap of ruins and remembered with what anxiety and suspense
the name of this or that obscure village filled half the world a few
years since. There was a tangle of wire in many places, though much
clearance of the battlefield has gone on. Here and there the roots of
the unconquerable trees had begun to throw up a sort of scrub. Here and
there coarse grass and coarser brambles were hiding the shell holes.
But on the hillsides about Vaux and Douaumont, Froide Terre, Poivre,
and Haudromont, there was no sign of life. The subsoil had been blasted
out of existence, and vegetation had not been able up till then to
reassert itself.
The area of destruction round Verdun extends for a long distance,
and the general impression left by the ruined villages is painful in
the extreme. In the area of moving battle the land is not destroyed,
but the houses are mostly in ruins. The task of reconstruction is
formidable indeed, and there were few signs in April 1920 that it was
being grappled with on adequate lines. People were beginning to creep
back, it is true, to their ruined homes, but under circumstances which
seemed very undesirable. The ruins had been patched up in some places,
and the owners were living among them in a state of indescribable and
insanitary squalor. There were no signs of a big scheme of reparation,
which should have aimed first and foremost at the scrapping of these
small dirty centres and starting new villages on fresh sites. The
average French village is apt to be a dirty place. The sanitary
conditions left by a bombardment are better imagined than described.
I cannot help feeling that the inhabitants of the devastated areas have
a most real grievance as regards this question of reconstruction. The
French Government has wholly failed to deal with it up to the present
on a big scale. Progress has been made with areas in the north; other
districts, of which Verdun is an example, remain practically untouched.
The French complain that they cannot get work-people or materials. I
cannot say from what causes the deadlock springs, but the evidences
of deadlock in the Verdun district are complete. One feels this state
of affairs to be a terrible hardship for the poor people concerned.
One of the reparation proposals put forward by the German Government
is a scheme for rebuilding and re-equipping the devastated areas. It
excites, naturally, a chorus of disapproval from greedy contractors and
other people who would like the money allocated for houses, furniture,
and implements to go into their pockets. But in the interests of the
inhabitants--surely the paramount interest--any scheme which would deal
promptly with the problems concerned with the return to normal life
among the ruined villages should be examined closely.
Further, England and America ought not to miss their opportunities
in this respect. The movement for the adoption by English centres of
French towns and villages is wise and generous, and if widely spread
through the United States as well as our own country should result
in substantial assistance to the victims of the war. The basis of
any adequate reparation scheme must be national. But destruction so
great leaves ample scope for additional voluntary assistance. It is
often whispered--one of the unfriendly whispers which circulate in
corners--that the French are over-willing to let other people shoulder
the burthen of the devastated areas. Whether or not the wealthy French
could have made greater efforts on behalf of their compatriots, the
position of England and America in this matter remains unaffected. They
cannot err on the side of over-generosity. The sufferings of the poor
and humble in the devastated areas have been atrocious. In so far as we
render France every material assistance within our power, our position
is the stronger if from time to time we are forced to cry halt about
matters concerning her general policy. Between the Allies there may be,
indeed there must be at times, differences which are fundamental as
regards their outlook on post-war problems. But on one point there can
only be complete unity of feeling and idea--sympathy for the innocent
victims on whom the material brunt of the war has fallen in its most
acute form; whole-hearted desire to make good the losses endured.