regiment without getting oneself disliked was to refrain from exerting
more authority than was strictly necessary. One must not be always on
the look-out for faults. Officers made a mistake in seeing everything
at all times; there are moments when, as Nelson found, the blind eye was
convenient. A Frenchman is not naturally inclined towards discipline;
the quicker his intelligence, the more likely he is to feel resentment
at clumsy authority. The peasant, slower to think and to take offence,
is more amenable. He gives up his will and individuality with greater
readiness to the leader, and even courts direction. But in the veins of
every Frenchman is some trace of the _frondeur_ and revolutionary. His
mind is impatient of restraint and leaps readily to conclusions and,
sometimes, to tragic resolutions. Mere authority, as authority, chafes
him; he dislikes it in the abstract. To render it acceptable, there
must be an idea behind it. If you want to lead him, you must be
prepared to undertake gladly the same risks as he, to go out and meet
them with a gay insouciance. You must show him that you do not count
your life more valuable than his, or shelter yourself behind your
position. You must lead him by going in front, not by driving him from
behind. It is an age of miracles; astounding things may happen;
notwithstanding his nonchalance and objection to play the hero, at the
moment of action he becomes transformed. You have only to know how to
draw him out, to find the formula which unlocks his heart, to discover
the hidden springs of his emotion. For an idea, it has been said, he is
ever ready to shoulder a rifle behind a barricade. And when that idea
is the country, with patriotism leaping high, his _frondeur_ spirit is
capable of all. Centuries have not dimmed its ardent inflammability,
and each successive phase in history renews his high susceptibility,
until one feels that the Great War, instead of exhausting the fruitful
soil of France, has enriched it with new virtues and a new potentiality.
Rifles have spoken again from the barricades, but this time the nation
is ranged on one side of it and the invader on the other. Patriotism
and ideality flow perennially from the mountains of Latin youth, ready
to be diverted to any holy cause.
The spirit is manifest even in the midst of the battle. At the critical
moment, when officers have fallen in the hurricane of iron, a man
emerges from the ranks to lead on his comrades to the attack. From his
knapsack, the legendary baton has slipped into his strong, tenacious
hand. He has shown qualities of leadership in the supreme hour.
General Sir Robert Baden-Powell recognised this genius of the race for
instant adaptation when he visited the French Front and heard stories of
improvisation; the native initiative of the soldier comes ever to his
aid in the tightest corners, where German mechanism inevitably fails.
Years ago, De Vigny, in a celebrated phrase, proclaimed the inherent
power of a Frenchman to become a man of war. Time and again he has
proved his martial qualities--a sheer instance of atavism. A sergeant
leads a battalion into the jaws of death with such fire and courage that
each man is electrified, loses his constitutional timidity and becomes a
lion in the fight. Under this magic influence he is irresistible, like
Cromwell's Ironsides, whom, strange to say, he physically resembles.
The low steel bonnet crowns the same sort of ruddy visage and brown
beard which marked the East Anglian in the seventeenth century. There
is something of the Englishman in him, something of the Berserker
employing his "irresistible fury" in a national cause. His spirit of
adventure has been translated into terms of patriotic achievement.
And the officers themselves know how to acquire rapidly the science of
the trench. Many in the regular army fell in the early days of the war;
the professional leader trained and set apart for the career scarcely
existed any more. Then up sprang the officer of reserve, until then
engaged in civilian pursuits; nine-tenths were in that condition. But,
taught in the hard school of war, they developed into the most
accomplished chiefs.
Though the French _pioupiou_ is readily accessible to daring, and
glories in a passionate achievement, he is not hypnotised by names, but
demands a real aristocracy. It is an error to suppose that he resents
superiority. On the contrary, he is constantly looking for it and is
eager to recognise it when found. He is equally impressed by it, whether
he finds it in the plain, plebeian features of Dupont or in the
aristocratic mien of a De Rochefoucauld. The name matters nothing; the
qualities are everything. But if he disregards family, he is insistent
on a real distinction. Dupont must not shelter his mediocrity under
democracy, or can the patrician hope to win devotion by a mere show of
elegance. The accent is not of much account in the trenches; there, as
elsewhere, must be a real superiority. If it is wanting, if the officer
is mediocre and vulgar in his taste and habits, shows the same
deficiencies and the same lack of control as the lower ranks, then his
supremacy will be short-lived, whatever his grade. And it does happen
that old soldiers, promoted from the ranks, sometimes fail to inspire
the respect that should be theirs, because they cling to the old habits,
the old _laisser-aller_, and know not how to assume the new virtues that
should go with the new position. For commissioned rank in the French as
in the other armies of the world must mark a real ascendancy, moral,
mental, and even physical, to be effective in the best sense. It is
part of the panoply of power.
None the less, the adaptability of the nation is never better shown than
in the speed with which the officer, newly risen from the ranks, for
bravery and coolness on the field, puts on the whole armour of
leadership. Yet his speech, probably, will remain homely, and he will
adopt no airs which jar with his humble origin and native simplicity.
Perhaps the least successful of these leaders are those who have longest
served in some capacity, such as _adjudant_ (a rank above sergeant),
because they are rooted fast in their old associations and have not
those natural qualities of authority which should be inseparable from
commissioned rank. The essential is that a man shall show the temper of
a chief, and for this reason the sportsman often proves more successful
in handling his men than the more intellectual type of soldier, who is
better able, no doubt, to perceive the purpose of a movement. Yet the
rank and file will certainly expect high attainments from their ultimate
leaders, and are intelligent enough to know that no amount of practical
experience is a real substitute for sound military culture. Obviously,
a knowledge of military history and of the principles of strategy are
not required of the subaltern who leads an attack on a village; but it
is equally true that only to the student are accessible those solutions
of the past which are of such importance in understanding the present.
The sportsman, then, rather than the office soldier, inspires the
affection of his men. The type is more often found, no doubt, amongst
the aristocracy and the higher _bourgeoisie_ than amongst the artisan
class, for in France at least the last-named has rarely the chance of
playing games and of acquiring dexterity in manly sports. Again, the men
know that those who have risen from the ranks are harder to serve than
the "gentleman" class, just as the works' foreman is a severer
taskmaster than the employer; thus of all the officers the type that
best succeeds in drawing out the qualities of his men is he who has had
the broadest education and is the best example of finished manhood. The
birth and social advantage are merely the make-weight, not the
ground-work, for his command; the contrary is alien to the Republican
instinct and would be resented. But if the men are touched with the
feeling that Jack is as good as his master, they like that master to be
a fine, upstanding fellow, recommending himself as much by his handsome
physical appearance as by his urbanity and _savoir-faire_. If to this
can be added a lively temperament, disdain of danger and an evident
liking for bodily exercise, his dominion will be complete. But these
things do not come from books, or are they handed down from generation
to generation like a Roman nose or a Bourbon chin. And thus is exposed,
no doubt, the weakness of the hereditary principle. Alas! man cannot
transmit, like a letter in the post, his courage and adroitness to his
descendants. Meeting cross currents by the way, the atavic message
becomes hopelessly confused.
Yet the French system in its elasticity is admirably adapted to the
genius of the race, for it gives free play to improvisation. No account
is taken of social status, but I have shown that social rank, coupled
with mental and moral attributes, do aid a man even in Republican
France. Valour is no respecter of persons--the poor man may be as brave
as the most favoured of the gods. Thus there is ever in the breast of
the soldier the splendid hope that to-morrow he may begin his ascent to
the temple of Fame. Cases of promotion are so numerous that they have
ceased to be exceptional, and represented, at least during the Great
War, half the number of commissioned officers. The _garcon de bureau_,
earning his five francs a day at the Hotel de Ville, is a lieutenant of
reserve. In time of war he rejoins his regiment and becomes a captain.
He is mentioned for bravery and is rewarded by the red ribbon of the
Legion. No one finds it strange that this young man, son of a roadmaker
in municipal employ, should be on the high road to honours whilst his
father works on the low road of obscurity.
And the man--an amiable functionary of the Ville de Paris--from whom I
had this instance of Republican grandeur and simplicity recalled his own
military service and the _adjudant_ studying to be an officer, who on
wet days instructed young conscripts in the elementary lessons of the
great battles. He remembers particularly his description of Fontenoy and
his vivid presentation of the forces in contact and the different
dispositions of the generals, which ended in our undoing and the victory
of the French. The lecturer had kept the rugged speech of his class, but
his obvious enthusiasm and knowledge of his subject found a quick road
to the hearts and comprehension of his young hearers. That simple,
rough fellow with a taste for study is a Brigadier-General to-day. The
Great War gave him his chance to show his mettle. It is a common enough
story in the French Army, particularly in the first eighteen months of
the war, when the Great Retreat and several sharp offensives had
inflicted immense loss on the corps of officers.
The material of the French Army, then, is pretty fine stuff, but it has
to be treated with a delicate discrimination and with that peculiar
French quality known as _doigte_. We have seen that town and country,
side by side in the same unit, must be dealt with perspicaciously by the
officer. Anything that looks like mere routine and a mere waste of time
and energy is particularly obnoxious to the sharp fellow from the large
centres of population. "A quoi bon tout ca?" he asks, with a scarcely
concealed irritation. He is difficult to lead unless he comprehends the
military utility of the order. Once his sympathetic intelligence has
been gained, he puts his soul into the work. The peasant farmer, on the
other hand, accepts everything with the stolid passivity of those who
work upon the land. He does not suffer moral torture from the feeling
that he is wasting his time. Is he not out in the open? And the food
is good. His intelligence does not rebel against red tape, which is so
distasteful to his lively contemporary from the town workshops. And so
the commander has to show discretion in his manner of utilising the
human material to his hand. The mechanic probably will prove an
excellent scout and give a vivid account of the country through which he
passes and the enemy whom he has sighted. His interest has been
excited, and all his qualities of resourcefulness and ready adaptability
come to the surface. He feels that he is being worthily employed, and
is happy in the knowledge that he has been of service to his superior.
But put him to guard a haystack and he is much less happy. That is a
peasant's job, he feels. And the peasant, indeed, is perfectly at home
in front of the hay; his nostrils dilate with pleasure at the sweet
scent of it; it makes him think of his own bit of grass growing there in
Brittany on one of those shining slopes where the gorse flames.
As a general rule, mechanical drill is irksome to the Latin mind; it
fetters his individuality. The idea of turning perpetually in a barrack
square to attain perfection in movements in mass is by no means to his
liking. He has never been attracted to it, nor to the cult of buttons
and straps and military tailoring. He cares little for such things. On
the march, he considers only the question of covering the ground in the
quickest manner with the least expenditure of force. He is largely
indifferent to his appearance. Perhaps his artistic instinct tells him
that sweat-covered, with the dust of the road upon him, he is vastly
more picturesque, more like the real, traditional "poilu," than
immaculate in a new uniform of celestial blue. He is proud of the
general's praise of his fitness and stamina after his march of fifty
kilometres with a heavy pack on his back; he would consider it
intolerable if he were reproached for some slackness in his dress, for
buttons that had been displaced, for a belt that had slipped. These
things are of no consequence, he says, impatiently. He does not
understand that attention to minutiae which is the bee in the bonnet of
the old-style disciplinarian. And yet tradition counts in this nation
of soldiers in a manner surprising to those who associate indifference
with an outward air of insouciance. It is as if each man were a Fregoli
capable of a dozen roles. Certainly, at the end of a long march he will
pull himself together with a brave air if he has to pass before the eyes
of foreign officers or through a village street with the inhabitants
lined up to receive him. There is pride at the bottom of his character
as readily aroused as those instinctive martial qualities which he
inherits from the great-grandfather of the Napoleonic Wars.
*CHAPTER X*
*GALLIENI AND HIS POPULARITY*
General Gallieni[1] came to his task of defending Paris with a
reputation gained in Madagascar. Nine years of successful government
had transformed the island, torn with conflict, into a peaceful
possession. Already credited with great organising powers, he was
suspected of being a good strategist, and he was soon to prove it. His
very appearance, energetic, thin, with large, osseous face looking like
an eagle in spite of the _pince-nez_, gave Paris a wonderful impression
of youth and energy. He was a man who would make things happen,
conjectured the citizens--and, certainly, he looked like it. His stride
was masterly, and his orderly officers grew thin in his service; there
was a story of a plump private secretary who visibly dwindled in an
effort to keep pace with the "patron's" energetic gait.
[1] General Gallieni died May 28, 1916, while this book was in the
press.
Paris had never faltered in its attitude of pure valour even when news
lacked and rumour stalked, gaunt-eyed, and unfettered by the least fact,
along the Boulevards. Gallieni's appointment to the governorship of the
city put fire into hesitating pulses and new courage into hearts. To
see him crossing the street in his uniform of cerulean blue, that
attractive colour of the French Army, was to receive a lesson in youth
and virility. He had the look of the fighter grateful to Parisians,
who, recalling their past, did not like the notion of being handed over
tamely to the enemy as an "open" city. An open city, forsooth! What
ignominy for the capital of all the talents! When the Governor was
formally invested on August 26, 1914, the muscles of his _administres_
grew tense with resolution. Then there would be resistance, resistance
to the point of street fighting. Inch by inch the town would be
disputed. The Eiffel Tower would be blown up, so that the enemy could
not use its apparatus and antennae to transmit or receive messages;
bridges would be destroyed and the Underground would be rendered
useless. The two million inhabitants who remained faithful to the city
would be evacuated to the communes south and west of the metropolitan
area. This was the plan as revealed later, and was apparently authentic.
That the Governor thought the measures would be necessary I do not
believe; but it was well to be prepared.
In his military eye the enemy could not enter the city until the home
army had been destroyed; that was an elementary principle of warfare.
But how much did the Germans know, definitely, of the condition of the
Allies? One had to be quite sure of that before one could forecast with
accuracy their line of action. Did they consider the Allies were
definitely crushed? It seems almost certain that they did. Such a
state of mind is revealed in the despatches they sent from the front,
each more affirmative than the other. They told of the utter rout of
the French, of their inability to withstand the advance. Thus, as
Colonel Feyler points out, the Germans were in much the frame of mind of
Napoleon at Waterloo. History was repeating itself in new conditions.
Napoleon disdained Wellington, whom he considered a mediocre general,
and Bluecher, a brave but blundering hussar, and so, without sufficient
preparation, sent his legions against the British lines. If the German
commanders had not the sublime arithmetic of Napoleon: "One hundred and
twenty thousand men _and I_ make two hundred thousand," that was the
spirit of their calculations. They were impressed with their own
invincibility. And there was some excuse for their belief that the
English had been annihilated and the French demoralised. The British
Army was only saved by bull-dog tenacity and a constitutional inability
to accept defeat; the French showed a new quality of resistance because
of the presence of their Three-Year soldiers--the three "Regular"
classes with the colours--wherewith the reserves were stiffened into
homogeneity. In any case, the Germans exaggerated the effect of their
successes. The wish was father to the thought. The apparent direction
of the retreat induced them to believe that the fruit was ripe and ready
to fall into their expectant mouths. Surely, they argued, Joffre is
going to repeat the mistake of Bazaine in 1870 and shut himself up in
Paris as his predecessor did in Metz. He is anxious, certainly, they
said, to seek the protection of the Paris forts, and yet he must know
their shortcomings, for, forty years before, he had helped to build
them.
But the cold fact remained that Joffre did not enter Paris, but flung
down the gage of battle on the Marne, leaving Paris on his left as a
protection to that flank and the eastern forts on his right to prevent
his line from being turned in that direction. Gallieni was quick to
realise the situation, to see its possibilities and its dangers and the
necessity for swift decision. If Paris had to be fought, the best
defence was a forward move outside the city, an offensive-defensive.
But a bare week remained before the Germans approached within striking
distance. In those feverish days, the Governor of the city mobilised
thousands of labourers and set them to work digging trenches. It was
obviously impossible to do more than erect a temporary barrier against
the tide, but the Parisians were caught and fascinated by the energy of
their chief, who instilled into them his own confidence and his own
combativeness. Gallieni knew his public with the divination of a
psychologist, and he built barriers at the narrow city entrances with
felled trees and stones torn from the roads. Obviously such
fortifications could not stand a moment against artillery, but their
purpose was as much moral as military. If they prevented Uhlans from
capturing the gates by a forward rush, they were equally operative in
inspiring Parisians with the reality of war, which some were in danger
of forgetting, and at the same time gave them the assurance that they
were being protected. The temperament of _la ville lumiere_ has
something of the child in it: a curiosity and interest in everything, a
thoughtless courage, and the need of constant assurance that it is being
cared for.
And when the hosts advanced, sweeping from the north of Paris to the
east, it was Gallieni who saw the fault and determined to profit by it.
Von Kluck had disregarded the Paris army either through ignorance or
temerity, and he was to pay the price. The Governor collected an army
from here, there and everywhere, placed it under a superb tactician,
General Maunoury, and at the critical moment carried it to the field of
battle. Our "intellectual general," as Gabriele d'Annunzio calls him,
combined activity with perception. There was something Napoleonic and
something Parisian, too, in his notion of utilising taximeters to carry
soldiers to the German right wing, which, threatened, had reinforced
itself with a _corps d'armee_ and now seemed likely to envelop the
French left. Up aloft Von Kluck's airmen decided that the Parisians
were leaving their city by the thousand in taxicabs. It was Gallieni's
army of Zouaves and Territorials hurrying out to strike a rapid and
decisive blow at the invaders.
When Von Kluck marched straight upon Paris as if to devour it and turned
aside to the south-east, he gave Gallieni, as we have said, the
opportunity he sought. It is, of course, wrong to assume that the
Germans suddenly changed their plan; this was not so, unless they wished
to fly in the face of all accepted rules of war. It is highly dangerous
to neglect one's main objective, the crushing of an enemy, for a
subsidiary one. And if the Germans had entered Paris without defeating
the Allies, they would have committed a heavy blunder. Heaven-born
commanders like Napoleon could afford to take the risks and by their
genius escape; lesser men have to abide by the rules of the game. Yet
the Germans, proud in their superiority of numbers and equipment, might
have supposed that they could detach part of their forces to finish off
the Allies and with the remainder occupy the city. After all, strategy
is a matter of common sense, and the plain man can see the danger to a
general of entering a city whilst his enemy is at large, powerful enough
to imprison him within the walls and to cut his communications. To a
strategist of Gallieni's calibre the problem was perfectly clear.
What he could not know, however, was the exact intentions of the
Germans: whether they were going to attack the Home Army and
simultaneously enter the city, or whether they would relinquish
occupation until they had made certain of the destruction of the Allies.
To meet the alternative he employed his habitual energy and resource; he
was prepared for the two events. Even after the battle he took
unlimited precautions, accumulating vast stocks of fodder and cattle in
the Bois de Boulogne, until the famous playing-ground looked like a
western cattle-ranch; he took, also, a careful census of the city, so
that food might be apportioned to the population. As a military
precaution he continued to construct trenches and defences of all sorts.
Why did he pursue this mole-like activity of throwing up earth, since
the danger was past? Gallieni had a double purpose: to reassure
Parisians against the return of the Germans and to train the young
soldier in the art of modern war. And so he built endless lines of
trenches, until the country round Paris from Beauvais in the north to
Fontainebleau in the south was scored and ribbed with excavations. In
their depths he hid monstrous black cannon, ready to belch flame and
disappear again into their pits. He left nothing to chance.