M. LE MAIRE
By rights, Canizy belongs with three other hamlets, to the commune of
Hombleux. The mayor of Hombleux is therefore in reality also the mayor
of Canizy. But each of the hamlets has an acting mayor besides. And,
to complicate this matter of mayors still further, the real mayor of
the commune has left his post to reside in his mansion in the Boulevard
Haussmann in Paris. Inquiring into the reason of his non-residence, I
was told that he was broken in health, and belonged to a political party
which, at the moment, was no longer in power. Hence the so-called mayors,
with whom rests the welfare of our villages.
Before the war, the present mayor of Hombleux was one of the _grands
cultivateurs_. With Mme. la Baronne, Mme. Desmarchez and M. Gomart,
he owned most of the rich acres encircling the town. Hombleux itself
contained then about 1200 inhabitants, and was an industrial as well
as an agricultural centre, having a distillery and two refineries for
sugar-beets. Of the factories, practically nothing now remains, and of
the inhabitants, 250 have survived the German deportations. Zélie, the
kitchen maid, has told me of these last. “The first deportation,” she
said, “was one of five hundred. The officers came to the doors at seven
o’clock with the names, and told us to be ready to start at dawn. O
Mademoiselle, the night! All the neighbours ran to and fro; all night
we washed and sewed and ironed, and in the morning, each with a sack
of fresh linen, my father, my sister, M. le Curé,—the flower of our
village,—were marched away. And after, what weeping!” Zélie put down her
broom to wring her hands, as if still dry-eyed from too much suffering.
“The next time,” she continued, “the Boches gave us no warning. They
came at midnight, and dragged us from our beds.” “Did you then go?” I
inquired. “But yes,” she replied, and her eyes flashed. “They tried to
make us work; there were five of us, friends, from our village. But work
for the enemies of France? We would not! They put us in prison; they fed
us almost nothing, but we would not work. One day they summoned us. ‘Go,’
they said, ‘go where you like, beasts of the Somme!’ Hungry, foot-sore,
travelling mostly by night from the frontier, we came home. It was
midnight when we reached Hombleux. In my own house, my mother had barred
the door. I tapped on the window to wake her. At first, she would not
believe that it was I. Even now, she looks at me with a question in her
eyes as if asking continually, ‘Zélie, is it thou?’”
Our mayors have no such heroic past! They not only saved their own skins,
but reside to this day with their wives and daughters; comely daughters
of an age for the German draft. Of one it is more than whispered that he
is a spy. Many carrier pigeons he had in his dovecote, and whether there
were any connection or not, _he knew of the impending German invasion_,
and left his comfortable house and growing crops, to spend the summer of
1914 in Normandy. Nor did he return till the summer of 1917. Meantime,
his little hamlet had held a town meeting of its refugees, and elected
a lady as mayor. In fact, M. Renet, on his return, found himself the
only man in the village. He found also—a suspicious circumstance in
the eyes of his neighbours—his house the only one undestroyed. I have
talked with him there, looking out of his casement windows into a walled
garden, where the fruit trees are uncut, and the walks are still bordered
with close-trimmed box. He assumes an injured air, recounting his
unpopularity. It is unfortunate, but since M. the Deputy has again asked
him to act as mayor, _que voulez-vous_? He is compelled.
His superior, the mayor of the entire commune, did not fare so well. On
our first visit, we found him inhabiting a loft in his partially ruined
barn. But despite his chubby person, this mayor is a man of action.
Week after week, Hombleux receives shifting regiments of troops back
from the trenches _en repos_. These are detailed for construction work.
Carpenters set up the _baraques_, which the Government furnishes to
homeless families; masons and bricklayers are slowly raising the walls
of the village bakery. The mayor has taken his share of the materials
and workmen, and is now housed in a two-room lean-to, with a new slate
roof, and lace-curtained windows. Here, beside an open fire, he transacts
business.
He it is to whom returning refugees come to report and register; through
him claims of damage (based on pre-war valuation of property) are filed,
which the Government has promised to honor after the war. To him,
requests for _baraques_ are made, and sent by him to the _Sous-Préfet_
of the Department, to be forwarded in turn to the Minister of the
Interior, with whom such matters rest. The mayor calculates the amount
of _allocation_ or pension to which each family in the devastated area
is entitled, varying according as they are _réfugiés_ or _rapatriés_,
according to the number of bread-winners imprisoned or serving with the
colors, according to the number of children, or, in some cases, to the
decorations won by their soldiers, for decorations carry pensions.[5]
This entire matter of income is adjusted finally for our district by the
_Préfet_ at Péronne. Besides housing and pensioning, the Government
has undertaken to supply a certain amount of cereals, coffee, sago and
the like. These the mayor distributes. Furniture as well is provided
by the Government: bedsteads, mattresses (not forgetting bolsters),
stoves, cupboards, chairs, tables and _batteries de cuisine_. Before our
coming to take charge of the district, the mayor signed the furniture
requisitions which were understood by the fortunate recipients to
represent a part of their “_indemnité de guerre_.” He also had the even
more delicate task of distributing relief supplies left in bulk by the
Red Cross or other agencies on their hurried passage through the ruined
villages. Naturally, the supply fell short of the demand; and it was with
unconcealed pleasure that the Mayor at the instance of the _Sous-Préfet_
turned over these two thankless tasks to us. Yet we found him—or rather
his wife and daughter—always ready to advise and coöperate. On demand,
they furnished immaculately penned lists of all inhabitants, whether
grouped by sex and by age, by family, or by the main division of adults
and juveniles. They know the number of families in each hamlet, the
number of persons in each family, the name and the age of each. Much more
they know, of gossip, and of human nature, and laughed, I fear a trifle
derisively, at our manifest difficulties.
All these activities, centring in the Mayor, belong to the civil
administration of the Department. The Ministry of Agriculture has
its share in reconstruction also, but is more independent of local
officials, having an office of its own in the commune. To it belong the
ploughing and seeding, the replacing of orchards, and to a certain extent
of livestock. But on all these matters, as to whose fields shall be
ploughed, or who shall plant two apple trees or own a goat, the verdict
of the Mayor is sought. He himself, you may be sure, is dependent on no
such circuitous methods. Together with two other _grands cultivateurs_,
he has bought an American tractor, a harrow, and a mowing machine. These
can even be hired for the same price as the government-owned tractors,
which is forty francs an hectare. Over all reconstruction, considered as
a part of the civil administration, preside the _Sous-Préfet_ and the
_Préfet_ of the Somme.
On the other hand, food supplies in general, such as bread, are
controlled by the army. In fact, every detail of life in the War Zone is
their care if they choose to assume it. Troop movements delay shipments;
therefore there may be no bread. Cavalry needs fodder; the sergeant at
Hombleux goes out to forage with rick and trio of white horses and buys
it at a fixed price. Mme. N—— is ill; the army doctor visits her, and if
she seems to him a menace to the health of the soldiers, he removes her
to a hospital. In view of the military importance attached to the Zone,
the confidence of the French Government in giving over a section of it to
the care of a group of American women, wholly unacquainted with the task
before them, seems truly touching.
[Illustration: —_Rien que ça de pain! Vous mangez bien chez vous!_
—_Ben ... on n’est pas des boches!_
[Only that much bread! You eat well at your house!
Well ... we are not Boches!]]
In fact, it seemed appalling, as I learned from day to day the problems
for which I was myself responsible in Canizy. Not the least of these was
its mayor. Unlike his _confrère_ at B——, M. Thuillard had not fled his
property until forced to do so with the rest of the villagers immediately
prior to the Retreat of 1917. During the occupation, he kept his store as
usual. And even though his horses and cattle, his fat rabbits and plump
chickens, were requisitioned by the Germans, they say that he was paid
for them. To see him, however, housed in a miserable hut, with a dirt
floor so uneven that the very chairs looked tipsy; to hear the complaints
of his querulous wife, and the references of his daughter to their former
comfort, was calculated to enlist one’s sympathy. Mme. Thuillard was ill,
and he was lame, and the daughter’s husband was a prisoner, and they had
lost heavily, because they had the most to lose. All this they told me
over the saucerless cups of black coffee which they offered me “out of a
good heart.”
But when I considered the Mayor’s duty to his village, my own heart
hardened. Here is the entry I find in my notebook on my first survey of
Canizy. “Canizy, dependence of Hombleux, Thuillard, Oscar, in charge.
Curé of Voyennes has charge of the children; 4 k. away. No church, no
school, no bread, no water fit to drink.” There was something, of course,
in the Mayor’s own contention that the village had been forgotten; and
one could understand why the Curé came only to burials when one saw
him,—so ill he looked. But in M. Thuillard’s barn were two stout horses,
and two carts stood before his door. On his own business, he could
travel. “Why, then,” I inquired, “has he not fetched the bread supply
from Hombleux to which the village is entitled?” “Because he has nothing
to gain,” and the good wife I interrogated shrugged her shoulders and
laughed. “Look you,” she continued, “M. Thuillard is rich; 26 kilos of
money he buried, and it is not in sous.” This rumour, which gave the
one-legged Mayor something of the air of a land pirate, I heard on all
sides. Even the school teacher of Hombleux repeated it; and her husband,
an officer, nodded his head to emphasize his “_Oui, c’est vrai_.”
Of one of our mayors, however, I would like to record nothing but praise.
Widow of a soldier, left with two little girls, and absolutely no other
possession in the world, she ruled our home village at the Château with
justice and dignity. She never complained. When at last the _baraque_ on
the ruins of her farm was completed, all except the fitting of the glass
in the windows, she insisted on moving in so that we could make use of
the space she vacated in our _basse-cour_. I met her one bitter evening
shortly afterward, as I was returning from Canizy. “Is it not cold in the
_baraque_, Madame?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” she replied, “but what would you?
It is so good to be at home!”