Women came carrying on their heads packs which looked like their entire
household paraphernalia. The men were more unassuming, and, as a rule,
carried a package considerably lighter and comporting more with their
superior masculine dignity. I recall one little woman in particular.
She was bearing a burden heavy enough to send a strong American athlete
staggering down to the ground, while at her side majestically marched
her faithful knight, bearing a birdcage, and there wasn't any bird in
it, either.
Nothing could be more mirth-provoking than that sight; yet, strangely
enough, the most tear-compelling memory of the war is connected with
another birdcage. Two children rummaging through their ruined home dug
it out of the débris. In it was their little pet canary. While fire and
smoke rolled through the house it had beat its wings against the bars
in vain. Its prison had become its tomb. Its feathers were but slightly
singed, yet it was dead with that pathetic finality which attaches
itself to only a dead bird--its silver songs and flutterings, once the
delight of the children, now stilled forever.
The photographers had long looked for what they termed a first-class
sob-picture. Here it was _par excellence_. The larger child stood
stroking the feathers of her pet and murmuring over and over "Poor
Annette," "Poor Annette!" Then the smaller one snuggling the limp
little thing against her neck wept inconsolably.
Instead of seizing their opportunity, the movie man was clearing his
throat while the freelance was busy on what he said was a cinder in
his eye. Yet this very man had brought back from the Balkan War of
1907 a prime collection of horrors; corpses thrown into the death-cart
with arms and legs sticking out like so much stubble; the death-cart
creeping away with its ghastly load; and the dumping together of bodies
of men and beasts into a pit to be eaten by the lime. This man who had
gone through all this with good nerve was now touched to tears by two
children crying over their pet canary. There are some things that are
too much for the heart of even a war-photographer.
To give the whole exodus the right tragic setting, one is tempted to
write that tears were streaming down all the faces of the refugees,
but on the contrary, indeed, most of them carried a smile and a pipe,
and trudged stolidly along, much as though bound for a fair. Some of
our pictures show laughing refugees. That may not be fair, for man is
so constituted that the muscles of his face automatically relax to the
click of the camera. But as I recall that pitiful procession, there was
in it very little outward expression of sorrow.
Undoubtedly there was sadness enough in all their hearts, but people in
Europe have learned to live on short rations; they rarely indulge in
luxuries like weeping, but bear the most unwonted afflictions as though
they were the ordinary fortunes of life. War has set a new standard
for grief. So these victims passed along the road, but not before the
record of their passing was etched for ever on our moving-picture
films. The coming generation will not have to reconstruct the scene
from the colored accounts of the journalist, but with their own eyes
they can see the hegira of the homeless as it really was.
The resignation of the peasant in the face of the great calamity was a
continual source of amazement to us. Zola in "_Le Debacle_" puts into
his picture of the battle of Sedan an old peasant plowing on his farm
in the valley. While shells go screaming overhead he placidly drives
his old white horse through the accustomed furrows. One naturally
presumed that this was a dramatic touch of the great novelist. But
similar incidents we saw in this Great War over and over again.