road, their feet tired from service and their boots road-worn--crowds of
men beyond numbering, as far as one could see into the dry, volleying
dust and beyond the dust; men coming toward me, a nation of them. They
came at a long, uneven jog, a cluttered walk. Every figure was sprinkled
and encircled by dust--dust on their gray temples, and on their wet,
streaming faces, dust coming up in puffs from their shuffling feet, too
tired to lift clear of the heavy roadbed. There was a hot, pitiless sun,
and every man of them was shrouded in the long, heavy winter coat, as
soggy as a horse blanket, and with thick leather gaiters, loose,
flapping, swathing their legs as if with bandages. On the man's back was
a pack, with the huge swell of the blanket rising up beyond the neck and
generating heat-waves; a loaf of tough black bread fastened upon the
knapsack or tied inside a faded red handkerchief; and a dingy, scarred
tin Billy-can. At his shapeless, rolling waist his belt hung heavy with
a bayonet in its casing. On the shoulder rested a dirt-caked spade, with
a clanking of metal where the bayonet and the Billy-can struck the
handle of the spade. Under a peaked cap showed the bearded face and the
white of strained eyes gleaming through dust and sweat. The man was too
tired to smile and talk. The weight of the pack, the weight of the
clothes, the dust, the smiting sun--all weighted down the man, leaving
every line in his body sagging and drooping with weariness.
These are the men that spade the trenches, drive the food-transports and
ammunition-wagons, and carry through the detail duties of small honor
that the army may prosper. When has it happened before that the older
generation holds up the hands of the young? At the western front they
stand fast that the youth may go forward. They fill in the shell-holes
to make a straight path for less-tired feet. They drive up food to give
good heart to boys.
War is easy for the young. The boy soldier is willing to make any day
his last if it is a good day. It is not so with the middle-aged man. He
is puzzled by the war. What he has to struggle with more than bodily
weakness is the malady of thought. Is the bloody business worth while?
Is there any far-off divine event which his death will hasten? The wines
of France are good wines, and his home in fertile Normandy was pleasant.
As we stood in the street in the sun one hot afternoon, four men came
carrying a wounded man. The stretcher was growing red under its burden.
The man's face was greenish white, with a stubble of beard. The flesh of
his body was as white as snow from loss of blood. It was torn at the
chest and sides. They carried him to the dressing-station, and half an
hour later lifted him into our car. We carried him in for two miles.
Four flies fed on the red rim of his closed left eye. He lay silent,
motionless. Only a slight flutter of the coverlet, made by his
breathing, gave a sign of life. At the Red Cross post we stopped. The
coverlet still slightly rose and fell. The doctor, brown-bearded, in
white linen, stepped into the car, tapped the man's wrist, tested his
pulse, put a hand over his heart. Then the doctor muttered, drew the
coverlet over the greenish-white face, and ordered the marines to remove
him. In the moment of arrival the wounded man had died.
In the courtyard next our post two men were carrying in long strips of
wood. This wood was for coffins, and one of them would be his.
A funeral passes our car, one every day, sometimes two: a wooden cross
in front, carried by a soldier; the white-robed chaplain chanting; the
box of light wood, on a frame of black; the coffin draped in the
tricolor, a squad of twenty soldiers following the dead. That is the
funeral of the middle-aged man. There is no time wasted on him in the
brisk business of war; but his comrades bury him. One in particular
faithful at funerals I had learned to know--M. Le Doze. War itself is so
little the respecter of persons that this man had found himself of value
in paying the last small honor to the obscure dead as they were carried
from his Red Cross post to the burial-ground. One hopes that he will
receive no hasty trench burial when his own time comes.
I cannot write of the middle-aged man of the Belgians because he has
been killed. That first mixed army, which in thin line opposed its body
to an immense machine, was crushed by weight and momentum. Little is
left but a memory. But I shall not forget the veteran officer of the
first army, near Lokeren, who kept his men under cover while he ran out
into the middle of the road to see if the Uhlans were coming. The only
Belgian army today is an army of boys. Recently we had a letter from
André Simont, of the "Obusiers Lourdes, Beiges," and he wrote:
If you promise me you will come back for next summer, I won't get
pinked. If I ever do, it doesn't matter. I have had twenty years of
very happy life.
If he were forty-five, he would say, as a French officer at Coxyde said
to me:
"Four months, and I haven't heard from my wife and children. We had a
pleasant home. I was well to do. I miss the good wines of my cellar.
This beer is sour. We have done our best, we French, our utmost, and it
isn't quite enough. We have made a supreme effort, but it hasn't cleared
the enemy from our country. _La guerre--c'est triste._"
He, too, fights on, but that overflow of vitality does not visit him, as
it comes to the youngsters of the first line. It is easy for the boys of
Brittany to die, those sailors with a rifle, the stanch Fusiliers
Marins, who, outnumbered, held fast at Melle and Dixmude, and for twelve
months made Nieuport, the extreme end of the western battle-line, a
great rock. It is easy, because there is a glory in the eyes of boys.
But the older man lives with second thoughts, with a subdued philosophy,
a love of security. He is married, with a child or two; his garden is
warm in the afternoon sun. He turns wistfully to the young, who are so
sure, to cheer him. With him it is bloodshed, the moaning of shell-fire,
and harsh command.
One afternoon at Coxyde, in the camp of the middle-aged--the
territorials--an open-air entertainment was given. Massed up the side of
a sand-dune, row on row, were the bearded men, two thousand of them.
There were flashes of youth, of course--marines in dark blue, with
jaunty round hat with fluffy red centerpiece; Zouaves with dusky
Algerian skin, yellow-sorrel jacket, and baggy harem trousers; Belgians
in fresh khaki uniform; and Red Cross British Quakers. But the mass of
the men were middle-aged--territorials, with the light-blue long-coat,
good for all weathers and the sharp night, and the peaked cap. Over the
top of the dune where the soldiers sat an observation balloon was
suspended in a cloudless blue sky, like a huge yellow caterpillar.
Beyond the pasteboard stage, high on a western dune, two sentries stood
with their bayonets touched by sunlight. To the south rose a monument to
the territorial dead. To the north an aëroplane flashed along the line,
full speed, while gun after gun threw shrapnel at it.
As I looked on the people, suddenly I thought of the Sermon on the
Mount, with the multitude spread about, tier on tier, hungry for more
than bread. It was a scene of summer beauty, with the glory of the sky
thrown in, and every now and then the music of the heart. Half the songs
of the afternoon were gay, and half were sad with long enduring, and the
memory of the dear ones distant and of the many dead. Not in lightness
or ignorance were these men making war. When I saw the multitude and how
they hungered, I wished that Bernhardt could come to them in the dunes
and express in power what is only hinted at by humble voices. I thought
how everywhere we wait for some supreme one to gather up the hope of the
nations and the anguish of the individual, and make a music that will
send us forward to the Rhine.
But a better thing than that took place. One of their own came and
shaped their suffering into song. And together, he and they, they made a
song that is close to the great experience of war. A Belgian, one of the
boy soldiers, came forward to sing to the bearded men. And the song that
he sang was "_La valse des obus_"--"The Dance of the Shells."
"Dear friends, I'm going to sing you some rhymes on the war at the
Yser."
The men to whom he was singing had been holding the Yser for ten months.
"I want you to know that life in the trenches, night by night, isn't
gay."
Two thousand men, unshaved and tousled, with pain in their joints from
those trench nights, were listening.
"As soon as you get there, you must set to work. It doesn't matter
whether it's a black night or a full moon; without making a sound, close
to the enemy, you must fill the sand-bags for the fortifications."
Every man on the hill had been doing just that thing for a year.
Then came his chorus:
"Every time we are in the trenches, _Crack!_ There breaks the shell."
But his French has a verve that no literal translation will give. Let us
take it as he sang it:
"_Crack!_ Il tombe des obus," sang the slight young Belgian, leaning out
toward the two thousand men of many colors, many nations; and soon the
sky in the north was spotted with white clouds of shrapnel-smoke.
"There we are, all of us, crouching with bent back--_Crack!_ Once more
an obus. The shrapnel, which try to stop us at our job, drive us out;
but the things that bore us still more--_Crack!_--are just those obus."
With each "_Crack!_ Il tombe des obus," the big bass-drum boomed like
the shell he sang of. His voice was as tense and metallic as a taut
string, and he snapped out the lilting line in swift staccato as if he
were flaying his audience with a whip. Man after man on the hillside
took up the irresistible rhythm in an undertone, and "Cracked" with the
singer. In front of me was being created a folk-song. The bitterness
and glory of their life were being told to them, and they were hearing
the singer gladly. Their leader was lifting the dreary trench night and
death itself into a surmounting and joyous thing.
"When you've made your entrenchment, then you must go and guard it
without preliminaries. All right; go ahead. But just as you're moving,
you have to squat down for a day and a night--yes, for a full
twenty-four hours--because things are hot. Somebody gives you half a
drop of coffee. Thirst torments you. The powder-fumes choke you."
Here and there in the crowd, listening intently, men were stirring. The
lad was speaking to the exact intimate detail of their experience. This
was the life they knew. What would he make of it?
"Despite our sufferings, we cherish the hope some day of returning and
finding our parents, our wives, and our little ones. Yes, that is my
hope, my joyous hope. But to come to that day, so like a dream, we must
be of good cheer. It is only by enduring patience, full of confidence,
that we shall force back our oppressors. To chase away those cursed
Prussians--_Crack_! We need the obus. My captain calling, '_Crack_!
More, still more of those obus!' Giving them the bayonet in the bowels,
we shall chase them clean beyond the Rhine. And our victory will be won
to the waltz of the obus."
It was a song out of the heart of an unconquerable boy. It climbed the
hillock to the top. The response was the answer of men moved. His song
told them why they fought on. There is a Belgium, not under an alien
rule, which the shells have not shattered, and that dear kingdom is
still uninvaded. The mother would rather lose her husband and her son
than lose the France that made them. Their earthly presence is less
precious than the spirit that passed into them out of France. That is
why these weary men continue their fight. The issue will rest in
something more than a matter of mathematics. It is the last stand of the
human spirit.
What is this idea of country, so passionately held, that the women walk
to the city gates with son and husband and send them out to die? It is
the aspect of nature shared in by folk of one blood, an arrangement of
hill and pasture which grew dear from early years, sounds and echoes of
sound that come from remembered places. It is the look of a land that is
your land, the light that flickers in an English lane, the bells that
used to ring in Bruges.
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LA VALSE DES OBUS
I
Chers amis, je vais
Vous chanter des couplets,
Sur la guerre,
A l'Yser.
Pour vous faire savoir,
Que la vie, tous les soirs,
Aux tranchées,
N'est pas gaie.
A peine arrivé,
'l Faut aller travailler.
Qu'il fasse noir' ou qu'il y ait clair de lune,
Et sans fair' du bruit,
Nous allons près de l'ennemi,
Remplir des sacs pour fair' des abris.
Ir et IIe Refrain
Chaqu' fois que nous sommes aux tranchées,
Crack! Il tombe des obus.
Nous sommes tous là, le dos courbée
Crack! Encore un obus.
Les shrapnels pour nous divetir,
Au travail, nous font déguerpir.
Mais, et qui nous ennuie le plus,
Crack! se sont les obus.
II
L'abri terminé,
'l Faut aller l'occuper,
Sans façons.
Allez-donc.
Pas moyen d' se bouger
Donc, on doit y rester
Accroupi,
Jour et nuit,
Pendant la chaleur,
Pour passer vingt-quatr' heures.
On nous donn' une d'mi gourde de café.
La soif nous tourmente,
Et la poudre asphyxiante,
Nous étouffe au dessus du marché.
III
Malgré nos souffrances,
Nous gardons l'espérance
D' voir le jour,
De notr' retour
De r'trouver nos parents,
Nos femmes et nos enfants.
Plein de joie,
Oui ma foi,
Mais pour arriver,
A ce jour tant rêvé,
Nous devons tous y mettre du coeur,
C'est avec patience,
Et plein de confiance,
Que nous repouss'rons les oppresseurs.
Refrain
Pour chasser ces maudits All'mands
Crack! Il faut des obus.
En plein dedans mon commandant,
Crack! Encore des obus.
Et la baionnett' dans les reins,
Nous les chass'rons au delà du Rhin.
La victoire des Alliés s'ra dûe
A la valse des obus.
_There is little value in telling of suffering unless something can
be done about it. So I close this book with an appeal for help in a
worthy work._
REMAKING FRANCE
There was a young peasant farmer who went out with his fellows, and
stopped the most powerful and perfectly equipped army of history. He
saved France, and the cause of gentleness and liberty. He did it by the
French blood in him--in gay courage and endurance. He was happy in doing
it, or, if not happy, yet glorious. But he paid the price. The enemy
artillery sent a splinter of shell that mangled his arm. He lay out
through the long night on the rich infected soil. Then the stretcher
bearers found him and lifted him to the car, and carried him to the
field hospital. There they had to operate swiftly, for infection was
spreading. So he was no longer a whole man, but he was still of good
spirit, for he had done his bit for France. Then they bore him to a base
hospital, where he had white sheets and a wholesome nurse. He lay there
weak and content. Every one was good to him. But there came a day when
they told him he must leave to make room for the fresher cases of need.
So he was turned loose into a world that had no further use for him. A
cripple, he couldn't fight and he couldn't work, for his job needed two
arms, and he had given one, up yonder on the Marne. He drifted from shop
to shop in Paris. But he didn't know a trade. Life was through with him,
so one day, he shot himself.
That, we learn from authoritative sources, is the story of more than one
broken soldier of Joffre's army.
To be shot clean dead is an easier fate than to be turned loose into
life, a cripple, who must beg his way about. Shall these men who have
defended France be left to rot? All they ask is to be allowed to work.
It is gallant and stirring to fight, and when wounded the soldier is
tenderly cared for. But when he comes out, broken, he faces the
bitterest thing in war. After the hospital--what? Too bad, he's
hurt--but there is no room in the trades for any but a trained man.
Why not train him? Why not teach him a trade? Build a bridge that will
lead him from the hospital over into normal life. That is better than
throwing him out among the derelicts. Pauperism is an ill reward for the
service that shattered him, and it is poor business for a world that
needs workers. If these crippled ones are not permitted to reconstruct
their working life, the French nation will be dragged down by the
multitude of maimed unemployable men, who are being turned loose from
the hospitals--unfit to fight, untrained to work: a new and
ever-increasing Army of The Miserable. The stout backbone and stanch
spirit of even France will be snapped by this dead-weight of suffering.
In our field hospital at Fumes, we had one ward where a wave of gaiety
swept the twenty beds each morning. It came when the leg of the bearded
man was dressed by the nurse. He thrust it out from under the covering:
a raw stump, off above the ankle. It was an old wound, gone sallow with
the skin lapped over. The men in the cots close by shouted with laughter
at the look of it, and the man himself laughed till he brought pain to
the wound. Then he would lay hold of the sides of the bed to control
his merriment. The dressing proceeded, with brisk comment from the
wardful of men, and swift answers from the patient under treatment. The
grim wound had so obviously made an end of the activity of that
particular member and, as is war's way, had done it so evilly, with such
absence of beauty, that only the human spirit could cover that hurt. So
he and his comrades had made it the object of gaiety.
For legless men, there are a dozen trades open, if they are trained.
They can be made into tailors, typists, mechanicians. The soldiers'
schools, already established, report success in shoemaking, for
instance. The director sends us this word:--
"From the first we had foreseen for this the greatest success--the
results have surpassed our hopes. We are obliged to double the size of
the building, and increase the number of professors.
"Why?
"Because, more than any other profession, that of shoemaking is the most
feasible in the country, in the village, in the small hamlet. This is
the one desire of most of these wounded soldiers: before everything,
they wish to be able to return to their homes. And all the more if a
wife and children wait them there, in a little house with a patch of
garden. Out of our fifty men now learning shoemaking, twenty-nine were
once sturdy farm laborers. The profession is not fatiguing and, in spite
of our fears, not one of our leg-amputated men has given up his
apprenticeship on account of fatigue or physical inability."
Very many of the soldiers are maimed in hand or arm. On the broad beach
of La Panne, in front of the Ocean Hospital of Dr. Depage, a young
soldier talked with my wife one afternoon. Early in the war his right
arm had been shot through the bicep muscle. He had been sent to London,
where a specialist with infinite care linked the nerves together. Daily
the wounded boy willed strength into the broken member, till at last he
found he could move the little finger. It was his hope to bring action
back to the entire hand, finger by finger.
"You can't do anything--you can't even write," they said to him. So he
met that, by schooling his left hand to write.
"Your fighting days are over," they said. He went to a shooting gallery,
and with his left arm learned how to hold a rifle and aim it. Through
the four months of his convalescence he practised to be worthy of the
front line. The military authorities could not put up an objection that
he did not meet. So he won his way back to the Yser trenches. And there
he had received his second hurt and this time the enemy wounded him
thoroughly. And now he was sitting on the sands wondering what the
future held for him.
Spirit like that does not deserve to be broken by despair. Apparatus has
been devised to supply the missing section of the arm, and such a trade
as toy-making offers a livelihood. It is carried on with a sense of fun
even in the absence of all previous education. One-armed men are largely
employed in it. Let us enter the training shop at Lyon, and watch the
work. The wood is being shot out from the sawing-machine in thin strips
and planed on both sides. This is being done by a man, who used to earn
his living as a packer, and suffered an amputation of his right leg. The
boards are assembled in thicknesses of twenty, and cut out by a "ribbon
saw." This is the occupation of a former tile layer, with his left leg
gone. Others employed in the process are one-armed men.
Of carpentry the report from the men is this: "This work seems to
generate good humor and liveliness. For this profession two arms are
almost necessary. It can be practised by a man whose leg has been
amputated, preferably the right leg, for the resting point, in handling
the plane, is on the left leg. However, we cannot forget that one-armed
men have achieved wonderful results."
The profits of the work are divided in full among the pupils as soon as
they have reached the period of production. Each section has its
individual fund box. The older members divide among themselves two
thirds of the gain. The more recently trained take the remainder. The
new apprentices have nothing, because they make no finished product as
yet. That was the rule of the shop. But certain sections petitioned that
the profits should be equally divided among all, without distinction.
They said that among the newcomers there were many as needy as the
older apprentices.
The director says:
"This request came from too noble a sentiment not to be granted,
especially as in this way we are certain that our pupils will see to the
discipline of the workshops, being the first concerned that no one shall
shirk."
He adds:
"I wish to cite an incident. One of the pupils of the group of
shoemakers, having been obliged to remain over a month in the hospital,
had his share fall to nothing. His comrades got together and raised
among themselves a sum equal to their earnings, so that his enforced
absence would not cause him to suffer any loss. These are features one
is happy to note, because they reveal qualities of heart in our pupils,
much to be appreciated in those who have suffered, and because they show
that our efforts have contributed to keep around them an atmosphere
where these qualities can develop."
The war has been ingenious in devising cruel hurts, robbing the painter
of his hand, the musician of his arm, the horseman of his leg. It has
taken the peasant from his farm, and the mason from his building. Their
suffering has enriched them with the very quality that will make them
useful citizens, if they can be set to work, if only some one will show
them what to do. For each of these men there is an answer for his
wrecked life, and the answer is found in these workshops where disabled
soldiers can learn the new trade fitted to their crippled condition.
It costs only four to five francs a day to support the man during his
period of education. The length of time of his tuition depends on the
man and his trade--sometimes three months, sometimes six months. One
hundred dollars will meet the average of all cases. The Americans in
Paris raised $20,000 immediately on learning of this need. In our
country we are starting the "American Committee for Training in Suitable
Trades the Maimed Soldiers of France." Mrs. Edmund Lincoln Baylies is
chairman for the United States. Her address is Room B, Plaza Hotel, New
York.
We have been owing France through a hundred years for that little
matter of first aid in our American Revolution. Here is an admirable
chance to show we are still warmed by the love and succor she rendered
us then.
At this moment 30,000 maimed soldiers are asking for work; 30,000 jobs
are ready for them. The employers of France are holding the positions
open, because they need these workers. Only the training is lacking.
This society to train maimed soldiers is not in competition with any
existing form of relief work: it supplements all the others--ambulances
and hospitals and dressing stations. They are temporary, bridging the
month of calamity. This gives back to the men the ten, twenty, thirty
years of life still remaining. They must not remain the victims of their
own heroism. They ask only to be permitted to go on with their work for
France. They will serve in the shop and the factory as they have served
at the Aisne and the Yser. This is a charity to do away with the need of
charity. It is help that leads directly to self-help.
THE END
FOOTNOTES
[A] When I first published these statements the following letter
appeared in the "New York Tribune":--
GERMANY'S SPY SYSTEM
To the Editor of "The Tribune."