Preparing The Defense Of Verdun
Every three months, if the military situation will allow of it and every
other man in his group has likewise been away, the French soldier gets a
six days' furlough. The slips of paper which are then given out are
called feuilles de permission, and the lucky soldier is called a
permissionnaire. When the combats that gave the Bois-le-Prêtre its
sinister nickname began to peter out, the poilus who had done the
fighting were accorded these little vacations, and almost every
afternoon the straggling groups of joyous permissionnaires were seen on
the road between the trenches and the station. The expression on the
faces was never that of having been rescued from a living hell; it
expressed joy and prospect of a good time rather than deliverance.
When I got my permission, a comrade took me to the station at a certain
rail-head where a special train started for Paris, and by paying extra I
was allowed to travel second class. I shall not dwell on the journey
because I did not meet a single human being worth recording during the
trip. At eight at night I arrived in Paris. So varied had been my
experiences at the front that had I stepped out into a dark and deserted
city I should not have been surprised. The poilu, when he sees the city
lights again, almost feels like saying, "Why, it is still here!" Many of
them look frankly at the women, not in the spirit of gallant adventure,
but out of pure curiosity. In spite of the French reputation for roguish
licentiousness, the sex question never seems to intrude very much along
the battle-line, perhaps because there is so little to suggest it.
Certainly conversation at the front ignores sex altogether, and speech
there is remarkably decent and clean. Of course, when music-hall songs
are sung at the concerts, the other sex is sometimes more than casually
mentioned. It is the comic papers which are responsible for the myth
that the period of furlough is spent in a Roman orgy; this is, of
course, true of some few, but for the great majority the reverse rules,
and une permission is spent in a typically French way, paying formal
calls to the oldest friends of the family, being with the family as much
as possible, and attending to such homely affairs as the purchase of
socks and underclothes. In the evening brave Jacques or Georges or
François is visited by all his old cronies, who gather round the hero
and ask him questions, and he is solemnly kissed by all his relatives.
One evening is sure to be consecrated to a grand family reunion at a
restaurant.
I determined to observe, during my permission, the new France which has
come into being since the outbreak of the war, and the attitude of the
French toward their allies. I knew the old France pretty well. Putting
any ridiculous ideas of French decadence aside, the France of the last
ten years did not have the international standing of an older France.
The Delcassé incident had revealed a France evidently untaught by the
lesson of 1870, and if the Moroccan question ended in a French victory,
it was frankly won by getting behind the petticoats of England. The
nation was unprepared for war, torn by political strife, and in a
position to be ruthlessly trampled on by the Germans. The France of
1900-13 is not a very pleasant France to remember.
For one thing, the bitter strife aroused by the breaking of the
Concordat and the seizure of the property of the Church was slowly
crystallizing into an icy hatred, the worst in the world, the hatred of
a man who has been robbed. The Church Separation Law may have been right
in theory, and with the liberal tendencies of the reformers one may have
every sympathy, but the fact remains that the sale and dispersion of the
ecclesiastical property passed in a storm of corruption and graft.
Properties worth many thousands of dollars were juggled among political
henchmen, sold for a song, and sold again at a great profit. Even as the
Southerners complain of the Reconstruction rather than of the Civil War,
so do the French Catholics complain, not of the law, but of its
aftermath. The Socialist- Labor Party exultant, the Catholic Party
wronged and revengeful, and all the other thousand parties of the French
Government at one another's throats, there seemed little hope for the
real France. The tragedy of the thing lay in the fact that this disunion
and strife was caused by the excess of a good quality; in other words,
that the remarkable ability of every Frenchman to think for himself was
destroying the national unity.
Meanwhile, what was the state of the army and navy?
The Minister of War of the radicals who had triumphed was General André,
a narrow, bigoted doctrinaire. The force behind the evil work of this
man can be hardly realized by those who are unfamiliar with the passion
with which the French invest the idea. There are times when the French,
the most brilliant people in the world as a nation, seem to lack mental
brakes--when the idea so obsesses them, that they become fanatics,--not
the emotional, English type of fanatic, but a cold, hard-headed,
intellectual Latin type. The radical Frenchman says, "Are the Gospels
true?" "Presumably no, according to modern science and historical
research." "Then away with everything founded on the Gospels," he
replies; and begins a cold-blooded, highly intellectual campaign of
destruction. Thus it is that the average French church or public
building of any antiquity, whether it be in Paris or in an obscure
village, has been so often mutilated that it is only a shadow of itself.
France is strewn with wrecks of buildings embodying disputed ideas. And
worst of all, these buildings were rarely sacked by a mob; the
revolutionary commune, in many cases, paying laborers to smash windows
and destroy sculpture at so much a day.
André believed it his mission to extirpate all conservatism, whether
Catholic or not, from the army. In a few short months, by a campaign of
delation and espionage, he had completely disorganized the army, the
only really national institution left in France. Officers of standing,
suspected of any reactionary political tendency, were discharged by the
thousand; and officers against whom no charge could be brought were
refused ammunition, even though they were stationed at a ticklish point
on the frontier. At the same time a like disorganization was taking
place in the navy, the evil genius of the Marine being the Minister
Camille Pelletan.
Those who saw, in 1912, the ceremonies attendant on the deposition of
the bones of Jean Jacques Rousseau in the Pantheon were sick at heart.
Never had the Government of France sunk so low. The Royalists shouted,
the extreme radicals hooted, and when the carriage of Fallières passed,
it was seen that humorists had somehow succeeded in writing jocose
inscriptions on the presidential carriage. The head of the French
nation, a short, pudgy man, the incarnation of pontifying mediocrity,
went by with an expression on his face like that of a terrified,
elderly, pink rabbit. The bescrawled carriage and its humiliated
occupant passed by to an accompaniment of jeering. Everybody--parties
and populace--was jeering. The scene was disgusting.
The election of Poincaré, a man of genuine distinction, was a sign of
better times. Millerand became Minister of War, and began the
reorganization of the army, thus making possible the victory of the
Marne. But a petty intrigue led by a group of radicals caused the
resignation of this minister at a time when the First Balkan War
threatened to engulf Europe. The maneuver was inexcusable. Messimy, an
attaché of the group who had led the attack, took Millerand's place.
When the war broke out, Messimy was invited to make himself scarce, and
Millerand returned to his post. Thanks to him, the army was as ready as
an army in a democratic country can be.
The France of 1915-16 is a new France. The nation has learned that if it
is to live it must cease tearing itself to pieces, and all parties are
united in a "Holy Union" (l'Union Sacrée). Truce in the face of a common
danger or a real union? Will it last? Alarmists whisper that when the
war is over, the army will settle its score with the politicians. Others
predict a great victory for the radicals, because the industrial classes
are safe at home making shells while the conservative peasants are being
killed off in the trenches. Everybody in France is saying, "What will
happen when the army comes home?" There is to-day only one man in France
completely trusted by all classes--General Joffre, and if by any chance
there should be political troubles after the war, the army and the
nation will look to him.
The French fully realize what the English alliance has meant to them,
and are grateful for Engish aid. As the titanic character of England's
mighty effort becomes clearer, the sympathy with England will increase.
Of course one cannot expect the French to understand the state of mind
which insists upon a volunteer system in the face of the deadliest and
most terrible foe. The attitude of the English to sport has rather
perplexed them, and they did not like the action of some English
officers in bringing a pack of hounds to the Flanders front. It was
thought that officers should be soldiers first and sportsmen afterward,
and the knowledge that dilettante English officers were riding to hounds
while the English nation was resisting conscription and Jean, Jacques,
and Pierre were doing the fighting and dying in the trenches, provoked a
secret and bitter disdain.
But since the British have got into the war as a nation, this secret
disdain has been forgotten, and the poilu has taken "le Tommie" to his
heart.
I heard only the friendliest criticism of the Russians.
It is a rather delicate task to say what the French think of the
Americans, for the real truth is that they think of us but rarely. Our
quarrel with Germany over the submarines interested them somewhat, but
this interest rapidly died away when it became evident that we were not
going to do anything about it. They see our flag over countless charity
dépôts, hospitals, and benevolent institutions, and are grateful. The
poilu would be glad to see us in the fray simply because of the aid we
should bring, but he is reasonable enough to know that the United States
can keep out of the mêlée without losing any moral prestige. The only
hostile criticism of America that I heard came from doctrinaires who saw
the war as a conflict between autocracy and democracy, and if you grant
that this point of view is the right one, these thinkers have a right to
despise us. But the Frenchman knows that the Allies represent something
more than "virtue-on-a-rampage."
In Lyons I saw a sight at once ludicrous and pathetic. Two little
dragoons of the class of 1917, stripling boys of eighteen or nineteen at
the most, walked across the public square; their uniforms were too large
for them, the skirts of their great blue mantles barely hung above the
dust of the street, and their enormous warlike helmets and flowing
horse-tails were ill-suited to their boyish heads. As I looked at them,
I thought of the blue bundles I had seen drying upon the barbed wire,
and felt sick at the brutality of the whole awful business. The sun was
shining over the bluish mists of Lyons, and the bell of old Saint-Jean
was ringing. Two Zouaves, stone blind, went by guided by a little, fat
infirmier. At the frontier, the General Staff was preparing the defense
of Verdun.
One great nation, for the sake of a city valueless from a military point
of view, was preparing to kill several hundred thousand of its citizens,
and another great nation, anxious to retain the city, was preparing
calmly for a parallel hecatomb. There is something awful and dreadful
about the orderliness of a great offensive, for while one's imagination
is grasped by the grandeur and the organization of the thing, all one's
faculties of intellect are revolted by the stark brutality of death en
masse.
Early in February we were called to Bar-le-Duc, a pleasant old city some
distance behind Verdun. Several hundred thousand men were soon going to
be killed and wounded, and the city was in a feverish haste of
preparation. So many thousand cans of ether, so many thousand pounds of
lint, so many million shells, so many ambulances, so many hundred
thousand litres of gasoline. Nobody knew when the Germans were going to
strike.
During the winter great activity in the German trenches near Verdun had
led the French to expect an attack, but it was not till the end of
January that aeroplane reconnoitering made certain the imminence of an
offensive. As a first step in countering it, the French authorities
prepared in the villages surrounding Bar-le-Duc a number of dépôts for
troops, army supplies, and ammunition. Of this organization, Bar-le-Duc
was the key. The preparations for the counter-attack were there
centralized. Day after day convoys of motor-lorries carrying troops
ground into town and disappeared to the eastward; big mortars mounted on
trucks came rattling over the pavements to go no one knew where; and
khaki-clad troops, troupes d'attaque, tanned Marocains and chunky,
bull-necked Zouaves, crossed the bridge over the Ornain and marched
away. At the turn in the road a new transparency had been erected, with
VERDUN printed on it in huge letters. Now and then a soldier, catching
sight of it, would nudge his comrade.
On the 18th we were told to be in readiness to go at any minute and
permissions to leave the barrack yard were recalled.
The attack began with an air raid on Bar-le-Duc. I was working on my
engine in the sunlit barrack yard when I heard a muffled Pom! somewhere
to the right. Two French drivers who were putting a tire on their car
jumped up with a "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?" We stood together looking
round. Beyond a wall on the other side of the river great volumes of
brownish smoke were rolling up, and high in the air, brown and silvery,
like great locusts, were two German aeroplanes.
"Nom d'un chien, il y'en a plusieurs," said one of the Frenchmen,
pointing out four, five, seven, nine aeroplanes. One seemed to hang
immobile over the barrack yard. I fancy we all had visions of what would
happen if a bomb hit the near-by gasoline reserve. Men ran across the
yard to the shelter of the dormitories; some, caught as we were in the
open, preferred to take a chance on dropping flat under a car. A
whistling scream, a kind of shrill, increasing shriek, sounded in the
air and ended in a crash. Smoke rolled up heavily in another direction.
Another whistle, another crash, another and another and another. The
last building struck shot up great tongues of flame. "C'est la gare,"
said somebody. Across the yard a comrade's arm beckoned me, "Come on,
we've got to help put out the fires!"
The streets were quite deserted; horses and wagons abandoned to their
fate were, however, quietly holding their places. Faces, emotionally
divided between fear and strong interest, peered at us as we ran by,
disappearing at the first whistle of a bomb, for all the world like
hermit-crabs into their shells. A whistle sent us both scurrying into a
passageway; the shell fell with a wicked hiss, and, scattering the
paving-stones to the four winds, blew a shallow crater in the roadway. A
big cart horse, hit in the neck and forelegs by fragments of the shell,
screamed hideously. Right at the bridge, the sentry, an old territorial,
was watching the whole scene from his flimsy box with every appearance
of unconcern.
Not the station itself, but a kind of baggage-shed was on fire. A hose
fed by an old-fashioned seesaw pump was being played on the flames.
Officials of the railroad company ran to and fro shouting unintelligible
orders. For five minutes more the German aeroplanes hovered overhead,
then slowly melted away into the sky to the south-east. The raid had
lasted, I imagine, just about twenty minutes.
That night, fearing another raid, all lights were extinguished in the
town and at the barracks. Before rolling up in my blankets, I went out
into the yard to get a few breaths of fresh air. Through the night air,
rising and falling with the wind, I heard in one of the random silences
of the night a low, distant drumming of artillery.