HIGH STRATEGY
I was going out into the yard, with my three or four papers spread out
in my hand, when I heard myself called. I stopped. It was Captain Ribet.
"Newspapers are prohibited!" he said.
I was standing at attention. I gazed at him. Was he joking? In peace
time, I knew they were not allowed. But to-day! Was it a pet fad of
his? Or else were there special instructions?
His features relaxed. He continued:
"Will you lend me one?"
I handed him the whole bundle.
"Allow me ..." he said. "Just a glance."
He ran through the first page, and was just going to turn over.
I made bold to say:
"There's nothing so exhilarating as that reading, I consider, sir! I
confess I was thinking of letting my men profit by it...." He cut me
short:
"I understand, I understand you. You're a good sort, Dreher! Two or
three of you have turned out to be extraordinarily useful! I was a
little bit prejudiced against you young _bourgeois_. I thought you
would be selfish, and not care a rap about your work or anything else.
I was mistaken."
He added:
"I wish all your comrades were like you!"
I opened my mouth but he stopped me.
"I know what I'm talking about. I'm quite well aware of it. Look here,
only this morning I had a talk with Descroix and Humel. I've warned
them of one thing, and that is, that if during the first engagement
their men flinch.... Ah! I'm not going to stand any nonsense! It'll be
a case of summary justice, I can tell you!"
I put in a few words on Humel's behalf.
"Yes, he's getting himself in hand again, since he's had something to
do with you others!"
Bless the man! Nothing escaped him. He continued:
"As for Playoust, nothing on earth will induce me to have him in
my firing-line again. I'm going to arrange to have him sent to the
ammunition-train, but I shall warn them to keep an eye on him there!"
I said nothing as I felt slightly embarrassed. It was certainly the
first time that the company commander had lingered in tête-à-tête with
one of his N.C. O's. Ravelli, who was a few yards off, must think I was
getting a wigging. I tried to escape.
"Stop a minute," said Ribet, "if I'm not boring you...."
He smiled.
"And stand at ease, Dreher!"
I moved my left leg, and smiled in my turn.
Then he began to talk to me in an unexpectedly familiar tone--this man
whom I had thought so proud, so incapable of confiding in any one. He
told me his whole history, how when quite small he had always longed
to be a soldier, how he had been kept back by an illness, and had
failed for St. Cyr (I had always thought he had been through it), why
he had enlisted.... He loyally reported all his disappointments, and
mortifications. It was the last trade in peace time. He appealed to me
to corroborate this statement from the knowledge gained from my brother
whom I had just lost. Oh, the slow advancement, the insufficient pay,
the spirit of jealousy and tyranny...!
He made a speech for the prosecution. The greatest part of the army was
a mass of laziness, lies, and intrigue. There were two ways of rising
from the ranks: the military school, where hard work did not succeed
except when combined with push (except in regard to successes with the
fair sex), and the Colonies. He had got himself sent to the Soudan,
as an ambitious young subaltern, but at the end of a few months his
liver had become inflamed. Weeks of fever, and a long martyrdom at the
hospital at Brazzaville had followed, and he had finally been sent back
to France with the advice never to set foot in Africa again. It had
meant that his life was wrecked--that he must grow old in the dreary
atmosphere of little garrison towns.
His tone grew still more bitter when he described the utter boredom,
the flat distractions, the lack of any intellectual milieu, and beyond
that the moral subjection, the physical over-work. The machine was worn
out before its time, one became fit for nothing.
I could not help asking him:
"Why ... can't you clear out in time?"
"Why? Because when once you're in it, you stay there. Made a captain
after fifteen years' service, I waited ten more for--can you guess
what? A trumpery bit of rubbish, the military cross!"
He continued:
"When I retired, I was used up, done! The time for aspiring to
something higher was past, or at all events for the realisation of it.
I was made a tax-collector. That was all that was left for me!"
Yes, theirs was an odd fate, I thought, the peace-time soldiers, who
come out and mature, acquire lace and age, and end by disappearing
without having realised that for which they imagined they were born.
I said in order to console him:
"But since you're fighting to-day...."
He drew himself up:
"Exactly. To-day I'm fighting. I am taking risks, I obey and command;
I am, in fact, of some use. At my age, if I had been in the reserve,
they'd have left me at the depôt!"
He tossed his head.
"It's true. Taking everything into account, I don't think I regret
anything."
His eyes shone.
Of some use! Yes, indeed, this company commander, who had three hundred
men in his charge, and played his part conscientiously, had used and
not abused the power placed in his hands. It was the eternal swing of
the pendulum. Greatness after Servitude!
He went on with his confidences.
"You'll laugh at me! The things I was keenest about were the studies
which form the crown of our art--strategy and tactics. To handle masses
of men, and face those many-sided problems--the offensive, the pursuit,
the retreat.... I worked a lot on my own account. There are some
questions on which I don't think ... any one could catch me out."
He was working himself up.
Fancy holding the fate of a section in your hands! Or being
commander-in-chief on a day when the victory he has prepared comes to
pass.
At this point a little irony crept into my thoughts and chilled my
admiration for him. What was to become of all these ambitions of a
company commander in this fine "dug-out" from St. Maixent? The idea
of exploiting his mania occurred to me. I might get some interesting
information out of him....
I looked at him.
"Well, what do you think of the situation at the moment?"
Did he guess my secret tendency to sarcasm? A struggle seemed to be
going on in him. Mistrust obviously won the day. He would not lay
himself open to ridicule. He treated me to the usual commonplace. We
must hold on, and leave the Russians time to throw all their weight
into the balance. It was a necessity for the Germans to finish us off
quickly.
"Then you don't think we ought to meet their attack?"
"That depends!"
"Well then, do you think our retreat is nearly over?"
"Ask Joffre!"
I sounded him:
"Some people consider that we ought to go and wait for the enemy on the
Loire."
That was too much for him. He cried:
"Oh, no, no. That would be absolutely idiotic. I know there was some
talk of it!"
"How far, then?"
He hesitated:
"I hope some day we may be in a position to take the offensive again!"
I looked up.
"Yes," I said, "because at the moment...."
"Well?"
"What are we doing?"
He scrutinised my face.
"Follow up your idea."
"We are shutting ourselves into a camp."
"Does that distress you?"
"I may be a bad judge."
He twirled his moustache.
"Really! You too, you too! You look at things like that?"
I had him--I had led him on to the point from which I knew he would
launch out.
"If the worst came to the worst, and Paris was stormed, there would
only be one thing for us, the troops collected here, to do. That would
be to stick in the trenches covering the approach to the forts, and be
killed, down to the last man!... For that matter I think they'd be in a
bit of a hole with our army on their flank. But that's not at all the
position. For four days, Dreher, four days you understand, their new
objective has been visible. They are inclining towards the south-east.
They are set on surrounding all our forces in the field. Under these
circumstances, I think--it seems to me--that a decisive movement...."
This time he threw restraint to the winds. He began by explaining all
he had been able to follow of the operations since the beginning. In
a lump, of course, but how much I valued that first sight I had had
of things as a whole, at a time when I was sighing after light from
the depths of my ignorance. It was in vain that I had instinctively
put myself on guard against the pretensions of an officer in a
subordinate position. I was forced to admire the masterly way in which
he stated the facts, the precision and lucidity of his words, which
would have made of him a remarkable professor of military history.
He summed up for me, in a few words, the action in the North which
until then had been shrouded in a thick mist for me. Our premature
offensive, the strength of the German right under Von Kluck exceeding
all expectations--our English Allies overcome in spite of heroic
efforts--the enemy's wing set in motion and hurled towards Paris by
forced marches which it was impossible to hinder in spite of terrible
sacrifices--our men falling back, fighting day and night, on to the
outskirts of the capital. That was last week's balance sheet. To-day
the enemy had given up the idea of Paris, provisionally and was
applying the new principle: the search for, and the annihilation of,
the hostile armies in the field. It was a far-reaching conception. Just
think of the gigantic forces they had hurled into Lorraine too, which
had just forced us back in a few days from Sarrebourg and Morhange to
the St. Dié-Nancy front. It was a colossal enveloping movement. Our
front pierced towards Neufchâteau, as the principal German mass fell
back by Châlons--our communications cut, that meant all our forces in
the east, and the whole system of our fortified towns caught at one
haul, three-quarters of our strength destroyed, the war virtually over.
"Then?" I said panting in spite of myself.
"We have a chance. Will they know how to make use of it? I believe
so--First of all, our right must hold out. Castelnau is down there,
he is the only man who has held his own. Then you see Von Kluck is
clearly leaving Paris on one side. He does not set much store by the
place, only sees it in the stake of victory. That is perhaps a mistake,
perhaps _the_ mistake. Perhaps our one object was to get him to make
that mistake!"
He took a deep breath:
"Dreher, listen to this! If we were in the camp in force--and why
shouldn't we be?--if we had had time to concentrate several corps
there, a hundred thousand men say, which I believe is the case--if
we threw ourselves on their flank, imprudently uncovered--if at that
precise instant our other armies made headway against them--if Von
Kluck were suddenly to find himself wedged in a vice...."
The captain pulled up short. Was he afraid of having said too much, of
having ventured too far in his bold inferences?
He went on:
"However, they may be tempted to keep us as a last resource."
But he could not bear this idea, and refuted it himself instantly:
"No, a thousand times no! A bad calculation. All the forces on the
spot, and at the right moment! That was what was wanted!"
He interrupted himself again, with beads of perspiration on his
forehead ... and suddenly said in a detached tone of voice:
"I say that to you, but I know nothing, nothing. The staffs are the
only judges. Are our numbers sufficient? Is our combination assured,
and the enemy's compromised?"
An aeroplane passed by. The captain raised his arm:
"Is it that bird that is bringing decisive information?"
"Or the order to attack?" I murmured.
He was silent, and I could get no more out of him but idle
generalities, but I read in his eyes, and face his approbation of my
wish, the conformity of our desire.