What I have seen--can that be told? When will words be found simple
enough and infinite enough to tell of so much heroism, so much sorrow,
so much beauty, so much terror? All those sublimities: how can they be
explained without losing their soul, without taking away their value,
which is of mystery and miracle? All those hideous things, all those
unnatural crimes; how can they be revealed with cold and ponderous
reasoning, while one is still trembling, keeping back tears, smothering
cries?
It must be done, though, and that French shyness that hates all that
is bluff or bragging, and which fain would wait that our glory and
suffering be understood, it too must be conquered. We must rise above
that too delicate conscience which says: "Speak? What good will it do?
Truth is luminous; it shines before all eyes." Yes, but it must be
helped to shine, and without delay.
That is why, I have decided to address the American nation, to tell it
that which I know, that which is evident, undeniable--to take it to the
frightful and divine Calvary of truth.
For six months I have been living among our soldiers, our wounded.
I live in my Paris. That Paris that every one visits and that no one
knows. I have only left it for some brief excursions to the cathedrals
in agony, to the villages in ashes, to the ambulances at the front, to
the old peasants who have nothing left--not even tears! To the little
orphans with tragic and stupefied eyes.
Sent to distribute woolens to the combatants, I have heard a language,
haughty and superb. I have clasped the rude hands, sometimes deformed,
of more than twenty-two thousand soldiers, some wounded, others well
again, returning to the firing line, a flame in their eyes and in their
hearts. I have bent over more than ten thousand beds of mutilated young
men, many of them with gangrene. I have held hundreds in my arms on the
operating tables--I who could not support the sight of blood, nor of
illness--hundreds of poor things with atrocious wounds, and only felt
during those minutes one care--a superhuman desire to discover in the
surgeon's look or attitude the hope the poor boy would be saved.