to a vast extent by the stream of volunteers of all nationalities who
loved France and rushed to her succour. There were Italians, Belgians,
Greeks, English, Americans, who were anxious to take up arms for the
invaded country. Poles, Russians, Croates, Slovanes, Serbs, Finns,
Montenegrins, and Tcheques joined. Some came to France from the
uttermost ends of the earth to offer their services: Peruvians, Swiss,
Argentines, Norwegians. There were German Poles and Danes from
Sleswig-Holstein, Spaniards, Galicians, and Italians from the Trentino,
and ten thousand Alsatians, German subjects, who had escaped. There
were thus available 35,000 men, a veritable army corps. This was the
figure, in spite of the rejection of a great number by the recruiting
board at the Invalides. They all left for their depots four days later.
These volunteers were of all ages and of all nationalities--boys of
eighteen, and mature men of fifty and even more; Polish miners from the
north of France; Kabyle workmen from factories in the Seine et Oise;
Russian artists, international boxers (including a negro champion),
famous trick cyclists, and jockeys, who had often worn winning colours
at Longchamp and Auteuil. Alec Carter the well-known jockey was killed.
There were also young artists from various nations at the Ecole des
Beaux Arts. Prominent writers and artists, a son of Maxime Gorki, and
several quite well-known poets from Central America; the son of the
Russian ambassador, M. Iswolsky, and a famous pelota player, Pablo
Irraguerro.
The regiment has fought splendidly at the Front, partaking all the
sufferings of the soldiers, all their danger and their glory too. The
force has been employed in all the grand _coups de chien_. There was
the spirited address of a Captain who read out the order of the General,
and then said, "Mes Enfants, we have the honour of attacking the first.
Pay no heed to those who fall. If I go down, leave me; push on without
thinking of anything else." Some sang the _Marseillaise_ and others
their national hymns. Their conduct on that great day was sublime.
They rushed fearlessly forward under the storm of shell, bayonets
glittering in the sunshine of an early May morning. Nothing stops the
formidable advance. They swarm over the parapet; the course commences.
Their orders were to carry Hill 140, and they fulfilled their
instructions. The Polish Legion was extraordinarily brave, and it saw
fall at its head, brandishing the colours, Ladislas de Szuynski, son of
the celebrated Polish historian. Concerning the Polish Legion there is
the pretty story of a Pole who, wishing to discover whether there were
Poles among the enemy, crawled on his stomach in the night to the German
trenches. Once arrived there, he sang, very quietly, an old Polish
song. Surprised, the German Poles lifted their heads, observed the bold
singer, and allowed themselves to forget the horrors of war. When he had
finished the listeners began to talk about Poland, that the Prussian
kept underfoot. A Pole surely should not fight against France, who
fights for Poland, insinuated the emissary. There was another song, and
then, under the enchantment of the old memories, the Poles allowed
themselves to be persuaded and carried over to the French trenches.
One of the principal elements of the new Foreign Legion were the
Garibaldians, who showed immense fervour. They formed a part of the
10th Division under General Gouraud in the Argonne, and with them were
the six grandsons of Garibaldi. Their tactics were extraordinarily
impetuous, and in a three-days' fight they lost 800 men. The special
corps into which they were formed was disbanded on Italy's declaration
against Austria, but their valour had been such that Joffre expressed
his sense of honour in commanding them.
Wherever it has fought, whether to-day or yesterday, the Foreign Legion
has always left a record of valour, daring and devilry. An amusing
story is recalled from Crimean days, when Canrobert stopped in front of
a Legionary and asked him what sort of shoes he was wearing? Strange
shoes indeed! for he had blackened his feet, having sold his boots for
_eau de vie_. But episodes such as this are ever typical of a corps
that sells its shoes for a little brandy, and its life for a spice of
glory.
The colonial troops of the French Army were called, until a few years
ago, Marine Infantry, and were attached directly to the Navy. Nowadays
the system adopted is that of some regiments in the British Army; that
is to say, one battalion remains at home whilst the other battalions
serve in the colonies. They wear a dark blue uniform with yellow
epaulettes. During the course of the war their composition became very
mixed, and negroes and tribesmen from the Soudan were embodied with
them. In this case also the colonial troops are perhaps less adapted to
European warfare than they are to their own special field of action in
the colonies against insurrectionary tribes.
A very fine corps, which covered itself with glory at Dixmude, is the
Marine Fusiliers. The force retreated to Dixmude when their original
mission, which was to defend Antwerp, failed, owing to the collapse of
the Belgian defence. Here they held their ground with the greatest
heroism for over a month, though the original plan was that they should
be relieved in a few hours, and at this spot a peculiarly tragic
incident took place. A second in command, a naval captain, Janiaud,
went up to take the surrender of two German companies of infantry, which
were surrounded by the Marines. The Germans seized the captain and kept
him prisoner. The Fusiliers then opened fire, which was briskly
returned by the Germans, but during the short engagement which ended in
the capitulation of the enemy force, the captain was shot dead by two
German officers with their revolvers. After this act of treachery,
which took place in November 1914, the Marine Fusiliers swore to take no
further prisoners, a resolution to which they have rigorously held in
their various engagements ever since.
*CHAPTER XIX*
*THE AIRMAN IN WAR*
"Ah, monsieur, you fly like a bird!" said an admirer one day to Pegoud.
"A bird!" was the famous reply, "Les oiseaux ne savent pas voler!"
("The birds don't know how to fly!") And indeed the bird-man, soaring
at immense height and incredible speed, has left the little denizen of
the air far behind. The wings of the machine are rigid, it is true, but
also they are tireless; and the skill of the inventor and science of the
mathematician have excelled the pulsing wings of flesh and feather. A
few years back--ten years ago to be exact--the birds must have tittered
as they watched at Bagatelle the fearsome efforts of the ugly ducklings
of the early days of aviation. On November 13, 1906, a famous date in
the history of flying, Santos Dumont flew 220 metres in twenty-one
seconds, that is, at the rate of nearly thirty-eight kilometers an hour.
He had won the prize of the Aero Club for a hundred meters in a straight
line. The experiments began at ten in the morning, but the test was not
accomplished until late in the afternoon. Two enormous birds spreading
their white wings of canvas--the one belonging to Santos Dumont and the
other to Bleriot--lay upon the green carpet of the ground. A crowd of
enthusiasts, amongst whom were some of the great names in aeronautics,
such as M. Archdeacon, the Marquis de Dion, Surcouf, Louis Renault and
M. Besancon, were upon the ground surrounding the two pioneers and
eagerly discussing the theories of lighter than air and heavier than
air--that is, the bag filled with hydrogen that floated in air, or the
aeroplane which flew by its own means of engine and wings. The machine
of Santos Dumont was a weird-looking thing. Some compared it with an
ibis or heron as it rose into the air with its long neck outstretched
and its wings spread--a strange thing like an antediluvian bird. Its
planes were formed of canvas frames divided into cubes, so that at one
angle it looked like a flying cupboard. The square box-like head in
front was the steering apparatus. The tail of the beast was represented
by the screw continually lashing its way through the air. The pioneer
sat in a little cage arrangement between the planes, so that his head
and body emerged and he had the appearance of riding astride. The first
starts were a little unpromising. The machine rose a few inches, and
then a few yards, and came to earth abruptly in each case. In three
separate attempts it flew one hundred and fifty yards in all, achieving,
in the third attempt, eighty yards in seven seconds. But it was not
until the light was failing that the machine really rose to any height.
It then flew at six metres from the ground at a tremendous rate. The
airman, however, was forced to descend for fear of an accident to the
crowd, which was following his movements with impassioned interest. He
had won the prize of the Aero Club for sustained flight, an advance, at
any rate, upon the series of leaps in the air which had passed for
flight before that. It was said that the Wright brothers had flown
twenty-five miles; but that was in America, and, besides, the Parisians
were not very sure about it; but here in France it was the first time
that mortal man had flown over the heads of humanity by mechanical
means. The Bleriot-Voisin machine, though very ingenious in its
construction, did not succeed that day; Santos Dumont, the little plucky
Brazilian, was the real conqueror: future laurels were being reserved
for M. Bleriot. The French, indeed, have pioneered in the air. The
brothers Montgolfier were the first to make ascents in their balloon;
and the balloon originally appeared as a military engine for observation
above the battle-field of Fleurus, where the Revolutionary General
Jourdan vanquished the Austrians in 1794. The dirigible is also largely
the product of French invention.
One of the amazing features of the war was the rapid development of
aviation after the outbreak of hostilities. In a few months only the
aeroplane emerged from its experimental stage and appeared as a highly
finished and accurate instrument of war. An immense stride was attained
when the machine was first adapted by the French to carry cannon, which
enabled the attack upon another aeroplane to be made in the horizontal
plane instead of vertically, as was necessary when one machine had to
mount above another in order to drop bombs or _flechettes_--one of those
refinements of cruelty which the present war has produced.
Incidentally, there are some who say that the German _flechettes_,
launched from the skies, were of such inferior steel that they buckled
up when they touched a hard object. However that may be (and we have no
reason to complain of such an arrangement), weight, whether in the form
of cannon or other armaments, was constantly added to the aeroplane, and
the problem then arose as to the maintenance of speed. In the aerial
machine, speed is the first requisite, especially nowadays when it is
necessary to mount and mount, perhaps, to six thousand yards to overfly
the enemy craft, be he Zeppelin or fellow airman. And a few minutes make
all the difference--the difference of kilometers--in the pursuit; thus
speed must always be combined with those offensive properties that are
being gradually added to the battle-plane.
And a third difficulty was that of starting the machine quickly in
pursuit of an enemy travelling at the great heights that are now
customary--and indeed obligatory--with the development of anti-aircraft
artillery. Naturally the machine even of the speedier sort loses time
as it mounts spirally or in a series of inclined planes to give battles
to the Zeppelin or Fokker. Would it be possible to turn the observation
balloon into a sort of perch for the airman, so that he would be
suspended always midway between earth and sky ready instantly (if one
may suppose him able to detach himself) to fly away in pursuit of the
stranger? Yet in the present stage of development such a desideratum is
difficult of realisation. The airman must start from the ground or
return to it every time he wants to overhaul his engine or replenish his
reservoirs. That is his touch with solid realities: otherwise one might
suppose him flying for days, never setting foot to earth, the modern
Guardian Angel, hovering eternally in the heavens.
The aeroplane has completely revolutionised warfare, inasmuch as it has
deprived strategy of its chief weapon--surprise. As the eyes of the
army the aeroplane played its most important role. A light and very
speedy machine is the scout, and it is his duty to make reconnaissances,
report upon gun emplacements, the numbers of the opposing troops, the
movements of the enemy, and the disposition of his trenches. But the
aeroplanes used in warfare are not all alike. The tendency is towards
differentiation, and while the scout is swift and light, the
battle-plane is extremely powerful and heavily armed with cannon or
machine-guns, sometimes also carrying a spur for ramming enemy craft;
and again there is a third type of machine armed also for defence, but
adapted principally to range-finding, and fitted with signalling and
photographic apparatus; it hovers continually over the enemy lines
directing artillery fire. None of the offices of the aeroplane proved
more valuable than that of giving the range of enemy positions to one's
own artillery, and then registering the shots, marking where they fell
too short, or overpassed the mark. This is one of the most dangerous as
well as the most useful of the services rendered by the man-bird. It
requires great nerve, judgment, and coolness on the part of the aviator,
for he must hang over the enemy trenches and expose himself to the fire
of their anti-aircraft guns, the efficacity of which made rapid strides
as the war progressed. The German method of signalling to the opposing
batteries by means of smoke bombs with different-coloured fuses was soon
improved upon by the French, who used wireless telegraphy and the
heliograph by day. But the role of the aeroplane is not confined even
to these important services. It becomes at times the instrument of
aerial bombardment for the destruction of fortified places, military
stores, railway junctions, dirigible sheds, encampments, bridges, and
roads used by the military. When war broke out, the French airmen
received explicit instructions not to bombard any town for fear of
inflicting harm upon civilians, but the Germans were not so scrupulous,
and their defiance of the dictates of humanity forced a change in the
policy of their Allies, if only in self-defence.
The aeroplane could be used also as a link for communicating with armies
and their staffs, particularly in the case of a besieged army or town.
And, finally, the man-bird is admirable in the capacity of aerial
policeman; he can watch the clouds and he can prevent the passage of the
enemy pilots. Not that it is possible to suppose that one force of
aeroplanes, however numerous, can completely occupy the heavens, for the
skies are broad; but bold aviators ever on the watch, patrolling the sky
in constant relays (as was the case in the aerial defence of Paris
against the Zeppelins), will generally succeed, whatever measures are
taken against them, in overtopping the adversary; and the French aviator
is remarkably good in that sort of warfare where native audacity and
resource are in demand--that is why the Frenchman is so superb a
performer in the air. None the less it is impossible quite to bar out
the enemy. The clouds may always hide a foe; the fog is ever the
possible lurking ground of the hostile airship. But although the
barrage system (so successfully applied on solid earth in the _tir de
barrage_) cannot absolutely prevent a Zeppelin attack upon a
wide-spreading town, yet the aerial dam has given good results in the
war of the air. The procedure is to institute a barrage of aeroplanes
over against a certain locality--a certain restricted space. The enemy
is marked down and prevented from passing. Undesirable visitors are
invited to "move on," and they do not wait for a repetition of the
request! I have heard of one hardy airman who, charged to watch the
heavens against the passage of the adversary, so manoeuvred that the
thick heavy clouds which hung in the sky were positively useful to him
as a screen. Noting that at one point there was a clear space in the
dense curtain of fog, he placed himself there and watched as a look-out
might in the embrasure of a fort. None came to challenge his vigilance.
Again the barrage tactics are extremely useful in the prevention of
secrets being divulged to the enemy. Certain important movements, such
as the moving up of reinforcements, are taking place in a certain part
of the line, and to keep the enemy from knowledge of the fact
_squadrillas_ of battle-planes are sent up to bar the way to the enemy
scouts, and nothing can penetrate the screen of the _avions_. Thus it
has so happened that, thanks to the barrage system, the enemy has been
without definite news of the Allies' movements during twenty-four hours.
But let it be remembered that the aerial dam implies the mastery of the
air, as important to the Allies as the mastery of the seas: indeed, one
could establish a very close analogy between the two. The mastery of
the air--the complete mastery--would have meant the finish of the war,
the absolute victory for that side which possessed it. And the aerial
fleet must consist of aeroplanes, not Zeppelins. For after all the
Zeppelins failed miserably either in their bombardment of England or
their assault upon French towns. True they have taken toll of a certain
number of innocent lives in England, but an infinitesimal number in
comparison with the holocaust caused by a terrestrial bombardment.
Cumbersome, unwieldy, unable to operate except in a fog, the Zeppelin
was comparatively ineffectual as an engine of war, and would not have
been employed by the Germans except to prevent the public exposure of a
mistaken policy. Six aeroplanes could effect more damage than one
Zeppelin, whose radius of action is circumscribed by the fact that it
has to carry vast weight for a long journey, that it is expensive to
build, and consumes immense quantities of fuel _en route_; that it is
almost as dangerous to itself as to the enemy on account of its
vulnerability from cannon and from high winds, and moreover it is
constantly exposed to attack from the upper strata of air by the
aeroplane which swoops down upon it with the speed of the eagle, and
against which the Zeppelin has no defence. No, it is the aeroplane that
has come to stay, and a very prominent airman--a man who bears a
household name in aeronautics--declared to me that the side which could
furnish ten thousand aeroplanes with the airmen to mount them would win
the war. For if aerial bombardment had, up to that moment, taken very
little place in the hostilities it was because it was on so small a
scale. Very little effect was to be obtained by sending half a dozen
apparati over a town--it is true that in some of the French raids over
German towns there were as many as thirty machines employed, but this
was the great exception. It is easy to conjure up the effect of a
gigantic bombardment--a shower of metal from the sky--rained everywhere
upon the enemy troops on the march, upon the enemy convoys in the rear,
upon his stores and magazines, upon his bridges and railways. Such a
bombardment, if it could be continued systematically for long enough,
would mean his forced surrender, for retreat would not save him. His
aerial foes would be always quicker than he, even his quickest motor
transport, and would bombard him from the skies. So that the mastery of
the sky would ensure the victory for any army.
The development of the aeroplane is full of the most startling
possibilities. Already it has far outflown the vision of its inventors,
for, a very short time ago it seems, one of the Voisin _freres_ declared
to me that the aeroplane would never be other than a rich man's hobby,
of little use in war-time other than the dropping of a few explosives.
My informant has since trodden the path of so many brave pilots, but had
he lived he would have admitted to-day that the possibilities of the
aeroplane seem limitless. The appearance of the Sikorski machine in
Russia carrying five or six men in its cabin encourages the belief that
the aerobus will soon be a practical reality, and the imagination is
fired by the prospect of the air humming with giant aeroplanes, which,
by the way, the Germans also attempted to use during the war. There is
more than a possibility--so many surprising things have happened--that,
in the future, commanders will have aerial motor lorries at their
disposal for the rapid transport of their troops. Thus strategy and the
physiognomy of the fight would be completely changed. It would effect a
complete metamorphosis. The commander who possessed this aerial fleet
would be able to carry the whole of his army with the speed and ease of
the magic carpet of the _Arabian Nights_ to some distant point and
descend even into the enemy country. Nevertheless, as M. Blanchon in
the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ suggests, the General who resorted to these
aerial methods could not carry out normal military operations for the
reason that his _materiel_ must go by road. But when the science of
air-transport is sufficiently advanced to allow armies to pass in the
sky, presumedly that army will know how to take care of its lines of
communication.
These are dreams of the future, however, and their realisation is
problematical. But the vision which is in no wise uncertain--the vision
which will be realised in the near future, is that of vast armies of
wings gathered in the sky. Nations will no longer possess fleets of
hundreds of aeroplanes, but tens of thousands will lie in readiness to
skim into enemy country and scatter terror and death over vast areas.
The nations that plunge into war will no longer pledge only their
fighting men; they will enter into battle knowing that their women and
children must also endure the worst agony of horror, for modern science
has destroyed civilised warfare, and modern man has joined hands with
primitive man and wars upon the innocent and helpless.
But it must be conceded that superiority in the machines should be
accompanied by superiority in pilots. In a conversation which I had at
the time of writing this chapter with M. Louis Bleriot (who knows as
much as any man living of the practical side of aviation and even its
scientific side), the famous winner of the cross-Channel prize confessed
that France had not sufficiently developed her rich treasure in expert
and adventurous men--the very pick of the pilots of the world--though
the English, too, were extraordinary for their _sang-froid_ and were
remarkable airmen. For in the air as on the land, in the last resort,
it is the personal element which tells. A school, urged Bleriot, was
necessary to form such super-pilots as Garros and Pegoud, men renowned
for ever for their prowess in the air.
For the conquest of the air is to the swift and strong and fearless.
Prudence and sagacity, and the slow measured wisdom that comes with the
years, play no part in so breathless a pursuit. It is a game for young
gods, not for the pale _savant_; a sport for young eagles, for a man
must be sharp of eye, strong of claw and sinews to cleave his way
through the clouds, right into the face of day. These super-men who
ride fearlessly amongst the stars must be the very pick of humanity,
revelling in the sensations of supreme danger, glorying in the knowledge
that in a few seconds an assailant may emerge from yonder cloud with
whom he must come into death grapples, and well aware that the
vanquished will crash down thousands of feet to earth. Youth: youth has
been poured out with a lavish hand on the smoking, bloody altar of the
war. Youth: there is no incense more precious to the gods. Alas! a
monstrous sort of selection is exercised. The young are mowed down by
Death with the scythe, leaving the least adventurous, the timid and
calculating--those who are sure eventually to die of a cold in the
head--to live on.