France, where this war of "wait and see," this terrible game of
patience, racked the nerves not only of the soldiers in the trenches,
but of the multitudes who scanned the morning news in the hope of some
startling manoeuvre and stunning victory which should end the hideous
nightmare of trench warfare. Had Napoleon and his like passed, then,
for ever? Could France never produce his peer? A man who would rise
above all difficulties; who would drag guns over the snows in
hollowed-out tree-trunks; who would arrive where no man had arrived; who
would achieve the impossible? Times, it is true, had changed, but sound
opinion urged the recognised fact that there is only one kind of
strategy, just as there is only one geometry. The geometric truth of
to-day is the geometric truth of a thousand years ago; it never changes.
Thus, strategy is always strategy though the circumstances may change,
and the cafe critic was a little inclined to blame the military command
for the dreary monotony of the conduct of the war.
Historians such as Dupuis and Aulard, the eminent professor at the
Sorbonne recalled Convention days, when youthful Generals were selected
through the intervention of commissioners from the Government, who
visited the armies, interrogated everybody and discovered talent.
Sometimes they did not discover it, but only thought they did. The
unhappy man, perhaps only just promoted from non-commissioned ranks, was
dragged from his obscurity and placed, often against his own will, in
command of an army and told to get victories or take the consequences.
Good patriots were not allowed to refuse such signal honour as serving
the country in a position of responsibility; and, placed between the
devil of their own incompetence and the deep sea of the guillotine (for
if they failed they would be hailed, certainly, before the tribunal and
treated as traitors), they occasionally managed in sheer desperation to
win; but more often they miserably failed, and joined the number of the
suspected in the Conventional prisons.
Not only were these unfortunate people appointed, willy-nilly, to the
command of armies whenever they attracted the eye of the
representatives, but, once arrived at the perilous summit of their
power, they were watched and their conduct noted as if they were the
most disreputable of mortals. And their judges were not only the
Convention, but the secret committees and clubs which flourished at that
moment. Nevertheless, the results of this terrible system were
astonishing. The most celebrated of the representatives was Carnot, who
was in every way an exceptional man. On the eve of the battle of
Wattignies, in October 1793, he obliged Jourdan, the General-in-Chief,
to effect a frontal attack, which failed. Thereupon a council was held,
and the two men were seen to differ materially in their views. Carnot,
with characteristic impetuosity, offered to assume responsibility for
his opinion and even to see to the execution of his plan. On the
morrow, Carnot, who kept Jourdan under close observation, noted a column
falling back before the pressure of the enemy. Instantly he seized a
rifle, placed himself at the head of the retreating force and led them
back into action. Thanks largely to his energy, the battle was won.
Saint Just was a man of similar type. In the operations on the Sambre,
which were unfortunate, for a time, for the Revolutionaries, Saint Just
and Le Bas pushed the armies to combat, it has been said, like a pack of
dogs, without observing any rule of war. There is a memorable scene
related by Dupuis. Saint Just convoked the Generals to a midnight
council. "You are convoked," he said, "to do something great--worthy of
the Republic. To-morrow there must be a siege or a battle; decide!" On
Kleber smiling satirically, Saint Just rushed out into the darkness of
the garden and remained there, hatless, for two hours, though the rain
was falling in torrents. However, from all this confusion and tyrannous
intervention and diversity of counsel emerged the victory of Fleurus, in
the neighbourhood of Mons and Charleroi, which speaks so closely
nowadays to our hearts. The Revolutionaries crossed and recrossed the
river many times before they succeeded finally in overcoming the
Austrians. And this victory marked the end of the peril of invasion,
which was the excuse of the presence of the representatives with the
armies. Washington said that an army must be led with absolute despotism
to ensure victory; the armies of the Revolution certainly merited
success from that point of view rather than by the talent of terrorised
chiefs--men whose previous career was often that of a sous officier, and
totally unfitted them for positions of authority. Balland, who
commanded a division at Wattignies, was a drummer in a company of
grenadiers, and, according to a contemporary historian, "cleaned our
boots and ran our errands."
Yet some of outstanding character and talents profited by this system,
which advanced a man like Napoleon to dazzling heights. The terror and
confusion of the time gave him the chance he needed to soar. Whilst
weaker men drowned in the storm, he rose triumphantly above it. And his
first chance came through his connection with Saliceti, one of the
representatives, who was a fellow Corsican and had taken part with
Napoleon in struggles in the island against the dictatorship of Paoli.
They met on the Riviera, where Napoleon, a simple captain, was
transporting war stores. Toulon was being besieged; Napoleon, in the
ardour of his temperament, proposed a plan to Saliceti and his
colleague, Augustin Robespierre, the brother of the dictator, who
happened to be there, insisted on conferring on him the rank of
Brigadier-General, with command over the artillery in the army of Italy.
Without these influences, Napoleon would have had to wait long for his
preferment. Robespierre was particularly struck by Napoleon, whom he
regarded as of transcending merit and, moreover, a sound and perfervid
Republican!
Though Napoleon was accompanied, as the others had been, by the
commissioners of the Convention in his campaign in Italy, they were men
of an ordinary type, and he knew how to get the better of them.
Moreover, he was extremely astute in his dealings with his possible
accusers, and played a definite political role. He became, then, the
favourite of Barras, the most influential of the Directorate, and
finally, thanks to Barras and Carnot, obtained command of the Italian
Army, which was the height of his ambition. Here he was able to give
the measure of his military genius. His ardour and audacity were equal
to every situation, and his popularity rose to such heights with the
masses dazzled by his victories, and he inspired such confidence amongst
the Convention itself, that he conquered his independence of action.
Under the former tyrannous rule of the Convention the strategist was a
mere puppet in the hands of the Government; Napoleon was not long in
restoring all the old power to the General and giving to strategy its
full amplitude, for he was able, as he rose to be Consul Life Consul,
and finally Emperor--all in four years--to control the political
destinies of France, and thus add to the military arm the civil power,
and make the former serve the ends of his foreign and internal policy.
It is well to remember that Napoleon owed much of his advancement--his
promotion at the age of twenty-seven to the rank of
Commander-in-Chief--to his clever utilisation of the social disorder
which followed the Revolution, and he obtained that liberty of which he
had need to beat the enemy, as Colonel Dupuis points out, by his adroit
relations with the Government. His personal prestige soon placed him
above those who had given him the power. Finally, strong in his immense
successes he threw off the remaining shackles and conquered the right to
act as he thought best. He himself became the Executive. He was in the
enviable situation of a man who gives orders to himself.
This page of the past is sufficient answer to the clamour for the heroic
methods of the Revolution. French people have only to look back to
recognise the danger of allowing ambition to realise itself either in
the army or in politics--still worse when the two are united. A later
instance, and one even more terrifying than that of Napoleon I, was that
of Napoleon III; for, though his Empire similarly ended in disaster,
brought about by foreign intervention, in the one case it represented
the paling of a star of surpassing effulgence, whereas in the other it
was the mere pricking of a bubble, if "historic," reputation. But in
each event it brought humiliation and the foot of the invader on the
soil. Joffre, therefore, a democratic and constitutional commander--the
antithesis of Napoleon--is the only type of general really acceptable to
the French Republic; and though the thoughtless individual may sigh for
the breathless succession of events of Napoleonic days, there is hardly
a Frenchman who would be prepared to accept the consequences of a return
of the Napoleonic system; and Joffre, working for war that he may
accomplish peace, eschewing inspiration and "strokes of genius,"
steadily developing in quietude and reflection the details of a
preconceived plan, is an ideal figure in a country as profoundly
democratic as France, where a chief modelled on the Prussian type or
given to vain display and the "panache" would inevitably cause a
reaction unfortunate in the interests of national defence. Never again
will the French, having learned in the bitter school of experience,
place power in the hands of a man who, by his masterly temperament,
raises in their minds the fears of a dictator. _Non bis in idem_.
But not until the second year of the war was Joffre given that supreme
command and that independence of action so essential to success. Only
in 1916 was it recognised that there must be a co-ordination of effort
in the different fields; that the Allies could not act separately
without relation to each other and hope thereby to advance the common
cause; they must carry out a certain preconceived plan and carry it out
with a common energy, subserving all questions of persons and national
prestige to the unique end of winning the war. The English Army, after
the retirement of Marshal French, was placed directly under the orders
of Joffre; thereafter it had its exact place in the common movement and
represented a certain intimate part of the general machine. England
thereby showed her loyalty and her conception of the necessities of the
hour in bending to the principle of French dominance. It was
inevitable, for the French were the chief combatants on the Western
Front; their army was necessarily the more numerous and they were
defending their own hearths and homes; the war to them was in reality a
war of liberation. After, then, the general objects of the Allies were
defined, it was seen that there must be unity of command. I remember
how urgently a celebrated French General spoke to me on this subject
after the war had lasted a year. "For the sake of our common action,"
he said, "do insist in England on the necessity of oneness in the
command. Otherwise, the problem is impossible." And when that
principle was at last acknowledged, and England merged her military
fortunes more deeply with those of France, sacrificing also some of her
independence in the field, the Allies were approaching the German
homogeneity, where the Kaiser conducted the mixed orchestra and called
the tune. Whatever the music was like, the general effect was certainly
better than if there had been two or more chiefs and as many tunes.
But although Revolutionary times were no more, when generals of
twenty-three gained such triumphs as when Rocroi was won by Conde, yet
the fierce spirit of the Revolution remained. In that sombre hour
France triumphed because she had the fierce determination to win;
because she was ruthless with old-established reputations unless they
responded to the exigencies of the hour; and also because, having her
back against the wall, she realised that it was literally a case of
"conquer or die." So in the war of to-day, the military command was
aided by the popular clamour which speeded up the machine. When Charles
Humbert, Senator of the Meuse, and certainly one of the organisers of
victory, claimed almost daily in _Le Journal_, which he directs with
such vigour, "more cannon and more munitions," he was but repeating, at
a distance of one hundred and twenty years, the cry of Carnot and
Lindet, who were rather disdainfully called "the Workers" by their
colleagues of the Convention. But the harvest of the Revolution that
the Generalissimo reaps most richly is that extraordinary and
unsuspected virtue which our Allies have shown, that bull-dog tenacity
and resistance which, blending with the natural _allegresse_ of the
French, made them irresistible in battle where the conditions were at
all equal. In the last resort, the quality of the fighter prevails;
every observer has recognised that fact. The guns may thunder and deal
out death and destruction, but the machine which finally counts is the
white arm, "Rosalie," as the bayonet is named in the familiar speech of
the "poilu." This fact accounts for the superiority of the French on
the field of battle; for the final word is to the common soldier, to
that astonishing peasant and tiller of the land, who constitutes the
greater part of the armies of the Republic. He fights, as I have said
earlier in this book, not because he must, but because he feels he is
privileged to defend his fields against the invader. Ever present to
his mind, as he meets the Hun, are the depredations and deeds of horror
of this civilised savage, and his arm is nerved by the determination to
save his own village and his own kith and kin, if possible, from his
devastations. The personal feeling enforces the personal element in
battle; and, after all, a Holy Cause is the best sort of armour in which
to engage in battle and the deadliest weapon to wield against those who
have sinned against all the laws of humanity.
*CHAPTER XVII*
*THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES*
The spirit of the trenches is the spirit of France. Never did mirror
more faithfully reflect the personal traits than those endless trenches
across France the splendid valour of the race. In no preceding war in
history has courage been so abounding. Trench warfare created a spirit
of intimacy as well as a spirit of adventure. Men of differing
stations, of utterly opposed traditions, of antagonistic education, were
thrown together in a narrow, self-contained comradeship, and the result
was a firm and singular fusion. They partook of the same risks, they
experienced the same emotions, whether standing shoulder to shoulder in
the trenches, or racing, side by side, in some rush attack, storming
villages, or retiring, it might be, beneath the pressure of an
overwhelming cannonade. And out of this comradeship grew a conventual
feeling. Though isolated from the ordinary world, they were yet of it,
for family ties triumphed over even so radical a difference in
experience and mode of life. The rigours and segregation of the
camp-life could not separate from kith and kin.
Some have compared their existence with the cloistered life. True, they
took no vows of celibacy, nor was continence the necessary attribute of
their association, but they had sworn to serve in a deathless constancy.
They slept and lived hard, exposed to inclemency; passed days in a
narrow semi-darkness, and at night slept in the roughest shelters or in
grottoes deep in the ground. Yet there was an essential difference in
their state and that of those bound to the Church, for their thoughts
were of earth rather than of Heaven--of some distant spot whereon stood
a little white house surrounded with trees, with green fields beyond,
where cattle grazed, children played, and geese cackled. Tender
memories accompanied their vigils, and such human sentiments removed
them from the category of the saints, who are not supposed to listen to
the heart, and from the old professional class of soldier, the
_grognards_ of Napoleon's day. For between waiting France and fighting
France there passed hourly a warm current of correspondence, ascending
and descending, informed with honest passion, homely and kindly virtues,
which softened and humanised the soldier's solitude and heartened the
civilian. It was the "poilu" who, going to the war, comforted those who
remained behind, and the strange thing was that pessimism more readily
took root in security, far from the lines, than at the Front itself.
And the soldier's courage was as much seen in his letters as in his
conduct in the field--wonderful tribute to its depth and sincerity. For
there were moments in the interminable war to try the nerves of the
hardened campaigner, much more those of the young man but lately broken
to its severities.
Yet there was never a tremor in the living wall encircling _la patrie_,
no touch of despair in the letters that Dupont pencilled home in the
intervals of bombardment. His natural gaiety found an expression there,
as well as his courage and his calm. Letters from only sons, out of
reach for the first time of maternal solicitude, manifested an almost
disconcerting enjoyment of danger and the independent life. And those
women who had feared hitherto for the health of their darlings now
seemed to rejoice in new proofs of their courage and contempt of death.
Lads, apparently the most deeply wedded to the soft and unheroic
existence of towns, found an unexpected satisfaction in the strenuous
routine of camps. The influence of the _milieu_, the daily contact with
the hard practices and risks of the _metier_, riveted armour about the
soul and bound the brows with brass. Men, whose habit in civil life led
none to suspect the martial temperament, proved lions in the fight. And
I knew a timid soul, a little delicate, much given to study and
reflection who, after a few months' actual experience of the trenches,
became utterly changed. No longer apologising for existence as in the
old days, he bore himself proudly in the field, and performed acts of
exceptional bravery. Of his civilian friends he asked with strange calm:
"Do you know how many Boches I've killed since the war began?" And in
the surprised silence which followed, he gave a tally, which was
staggeringly significant.
Apart from the professional pride which dictated an air of gaiety, when
a visitor arrived, the occupant of the trench did not in his off moments
assume the mien of the troubadour. On the contrary, he looked grave and
serious, and often austere. It was remarkable that when he went to
Paris for a few days' relief from the monotony of danger, he found
little enjoyment in the old-time pleasures. And those who had been
distinguished for a high thoughtlessness, for an abandonment to the Red
Gods, proved hardy and virile warriors in the new life, with a speed
that astonished all who had not realised the French adaptability.
Frivolous in the days before the war, they now adopted an attitude of
disapproval and even of positive disgust towards some outward symptoms
of the "light heart."
There was not necessarily opposition between "poilu" and "pekin" (as the
civilian is amusingly called by the army), but there was, nevertheless,
a gulf fixed between the two: the one had seen visions and experienced
realities which were denied the other in his peaceful civilian path. It
made all the difference in the world. Whatever his sympathy, the
civilian brother had not suffered as had the "poilu"; he had been immune
from the hourly risk, he had not endured cold and hunger; he had not
lain out in the frosty moonlight, in the No Man's Land of the trenches,
terribly wounded by one of the murderous engines of war; he had not
known the anguish of mind in hospital, the doubt whether the limb could
be saved or not, or whether he must go through life halt and maimed.
No, for all his sympathy and moral suffering, the civilian had not
reached the experiences of the other.
Reflections of this sort no doubt obtruded on the mind of the soldier in
his hours of lonely watch. Sometimes, when echoes of the old life were
wafted back to him in the trenches, or when he saw the report in
newspapers of some futile discussion in the Chamber, a smile of disdain
crossed his lips. Frankly, he was a little tired of this sort of thing.
"If the Deputies were here, they would not talk quite so loudly," he
reflected with bitterness. And then the headings of another column
caught his eye: "Great scandal, a contractor charged with fraud! Huge
and hidden profits." "Ah!" he exclaims, and his lips purse again. This
time his comments are far severer than against the Parliamentarians.
"After all," he says, "those Deputies are paid to talk; it is their
business; but the blackguards who make money out of us, out of our lives
and limbs----" The phrase is never finished, but the intonation leaves
you in no doubt as to the fate of the offenders if they had fallen into
his hands. On the following day, perhaps, he sees another scandal of
the sort, and now his anger knows no bounds. "What--again? Then they
are all at it!" he exclaims. In his excited imagination a considerable
part of civilian France is engaged in plundering military France.
Happily, there was great exaggeration in his sweeping assumptions.
Certainly there were scandals in France during the Great War, as there
were scandals elsewhere; but they were few and far between--so few that
their rarity magnified their importance.
The soldier's sufferings in the trenches had warped a little his
judgment. He was rather hard on others, disregarding their sacrifices
and their griefs, none the less real because they had not been exposed
to sudden death. The hard work of munition workers turning out shot and
shell with ceaseless activity often escaped him, and if, as might
happen, he was deceived in his most intimate affections, and a moral
catastrophe awaited him at home, then his cup of bitterness was filled,
and in his wrath he declared that all women were faithless and all men
perjurers and conspirators against his honour or security. And these
were the people for whom he was risking his life and sacrificing his
professional prospects!
The close union of every day with men engaged in the strong-hearted and
ruthless profession of war was bound to have a reaction upon thoughts
and ways of life. In the rude existence of camps, something of the
veneer of drawing-rooms disappeared and man returned to primitive
directness and simplicity of thought and speech. He became impatient of
subtlety and complicated ways, which seemed to him duplicity and the
enemy of plain-dealing. A thing must be frank and clear to appeal to
him. He had the soldier's disgust of those who whispered in secret in
the warmth and shelter whilst he was exposed to the blast. A new
temperament was forged in the out-of-doors born of the sun and wind and
rain. And the thoughts of those who struggle with the elements and the
incredible difficulties of a man-made warfare often take on the rugged
character of their surroundings.