And in those days the French people loved the English and their
kinsfolk, so that when the first British troops appeared they went mad
with joy, as I saw, kissing them, with streaming tears, dancing round
them, flinging flowers to them, giving them fruit, as those boys,
clean-shaven, bronzed, smart, laughing, singing, “It’s a long, long way
to Tipperary,” went forward to be killed, wounded, maimed, blinded,
broken, as most of them were before the end came, and some very soon.
_Vivent les Anglais!_... Have the French people forgotten, or have we?
I was in Paris, after wild adventures, with two comrades on a day in
September when it seemed that the city was doomed. It was already
deserted. At mid-day, between the Place de la Concorde and the Etoile,
we saw only one man, and that a policeman on a bicycle. It was no
longer the seat of Government. Vast numbers had fled. We had seen
them storming the trains. All others sat indoors, with their shutters
closed, waiting for the tramp of German soldiers down the streets. The
German guns were as close as Chantilly. Only a miracle could save
Paris, as we knew, having seen the retreat of a French Army through
Amiens, and the stragglers of the British Army after the Retreat from
Mons, and the advance of the enemy as far as Beauvais, and a hundred
signs of impending tragedy. The sun was glittering on the golden eagles
above one of the bridges. The palaces, domes, spires of Paris were
clear-cut under a cloudless sky. All the beauty of the city, all its
meaning to the world in knowledge and art and history, invaded our
hearts. If Paris were taken and France beaten, civilisation itself
would be defeated and life would be worthless, and God mocked. It could
not happen like that. A miracle must happen first. For God’s sake!
The miracle happened—the miracle of the Marne. The German tide was
turned at last. By the blunder of the German Staff, by the audacity of
Foch, by Galliéni with his army in taxi-cabs, by the desperate valour
of French soldiers, fighting, dying, maddened by thirst, with untended
wounds, with rage in their hearts, agonising, but without surrender in
their souls because the life of France was in their guard that day.
They won a victory which smashed back the German Army and destroyed
their plan.
The British Army had a small share in that victory of the Marne. Its
weight did not count for much, but its artillery harassed the German
retreat with deadly execution, and in fighting down from Mons it had
helped to spoil the German time-table and to bar the way to Paris for
just that little time which enabled France to stand on its line of
battle and repair the dreadful blunders of its first defence.
Have the French forgotten that? It happened ten years ago!