that of a little Protestant soldier from the Montbéliard country, who
died in the Gare d'Amberieu hospital:
"Lord, may Thy will and not mine be done. I have consecrated
myself to Thee since my youth, and I hope that the example I
have offered may serve to glorify Thee.
"Lord, Thou knowest that I have not desired war, but that I
have fought to do Thy will; I offer my life for peace.
"Lord, I pray Thee for the welfare of my people. Thou
knowest how greatly I love them all, my father, my mother,
my brothers and my sisters.
"Lord, return manyfold to these nurses the good they have
done me; I am but a poor man but Thou art the dispenser of
riches. I pray to Thee for them all."
This prayer, in which the little soldier had put his last living
thoughts, was received by a Catholic sister who had cared for him,
and sent by her to his sorrowing family--a touching proof of sacred
union.
All of them, Catholics, Protestants and Jews, speak of God and pray to
Him.... Read this letter from Captain Cornet-Acquier, that captain to
whom his wife wrote, "I would urge you on with my voice if I saw you
charging the enemy." He tells this little incident:
"A Catholic captain was saying the other day that he said
his prayers before each battle. The commanding officer
remarked that that was not the proper moment and that he
would do better to make his military arrangements.
"'Sir,' he replied, 'that does not prevent me from making my
military arrangements and from fighting. I feel better for
it.'
"Then I said:
"'Captain, I do the same thing you do. And I find I get
along pretty well.'"
This is the letter a young Catholic wrote the evening before a battle
to his fiancée:
MY DEAR JEANNE:
Tomorrow at ten o'clock, to the sounds of "Sidi Brahim" and
the "Marseillaise" we charge the German lines. The attack
will probably be deadly. On the eve of this great day, which
may be my last, I want to recall to you your promise....
Comfort my mother. For a week she will have no news. Tell
her that when a man is in an attack he can not write to
those he loves. He must be content with thinking of them.
And if time passes and she hears nothing from me, let her
live in hope. Help her. And if you learn at last that I have
fallen on the field of honor, let the words come from your
heart that will console her, my dear Jeanne.
This morning I attended mass and communion with faith. It
was held some yards away from the trenches. If I am to die,
I shall die a Christian and a Frenchman.
I believe in God, in France and in Victory. I believe in
beauty and youth and life. May God guard me to the end. But,
Lord, if my blood is useful for victory, may Thy will be
done.
Finally, here is a priest, Father Gilbert de Gironde, second
lieutenant in the 81st infantry, who was killed on the seventh of
December, 1914, at Ypres, writing his last letter.... For of the
twenty-five thousand priests who went off at the beginning of the
mobilization, three hundred were called military chaplains, the rest
were officers, stretcher-bearers, or common soldiers--and note the
4,000 citations in the army orders which the "Journal Officiel" has
published, which report the acts of courage and of bravery done by
these priests on the battle field:
To die young. To die a priest. To die as a soldier in the
attack, marching to the assault in full sacerdotal garb,
perhaps in the act of granting an absolution; to shed my
blood for the Church, for France, for her Allies, for all
those who carry in their hearts the same ideal I do, and for
the others also, that they may know the joy of belief ...
how beautiful that is, how beautiful that is!
Catholics, Protestants, Jews, priests, ministers and rabbis, that is
what they write. It is a belittling, a profanation, that, in spite of
myself, I have separated and differentiated among them. For down
there, in the bloody mud of the trenches, they are one body which
lives together and dies together.
There was a little Breton who, on the Battle field of the Marne, was
shot in the chest. The death agony at once set in, and in his agony he
asked for a crucifix. No priest happened to be on the spot, there was
only a Jewish rabbi. The rabbi ran to get the crucifix, he brought it
to the lips of the dying man, and he, in his turn, was killed!...
In a little barrack in the hollow of one of the depressions at Verdun
lived together a priest, a minister and a rabbi. We often saw the
place. On the evening after a frightful battle, they were all three in
the charnel house where the dead bodies are brought. They were
surrounded by stretcher-bearers, who said to them:
"We do not dare throw earth on the bodies of our comrades without a
prayer being said over them."
The Catholic priest asked to what faith they belonged.
"We do not know. How can we find out? But can't you arrange among
yourselves?"
"Well, we shall bless them one after the other."
And there in the bleeding night was seen the incomparable sight of the
three men side by side, the Catholic, the Protestant and the Jew,
reciting the last prayer and disappearing....
M. Maurice Barrès, the celebrated French writer, from whose
magnificent book, "The Spiritual Families of France," I have borrowed
a great number of the letters I have quoted, has pointed out that all
French churches are fighting in this hour, forming one great church.
Yes, every church and every saint is fighting! These saints belong to
all beliefs, some of them to no belief. But one religion has united
and solidified them all--the religion of their country, the religion
of Liberty, the religion of civilization. All speak the same prayer,
all have the same faith in their hearts, all fall martyrs in the same
cause.
The old walls which, in times of peace, separated parties and men,
have crumbled into dust at the same time when the German shells
crumbled into dust the little village churches. An infinite
cathedral, a cathedral that is invisible and great has risen on high.
It is the cathedral of the faith of France, in which all faiths
commune in the same hope--a cathedral which time and suffering and
death itself shall not destroy.
III
FRANCE SUFFERING BUT NOT BLED WHITE
Listen to the man in the street when he speaks--that man in the street
who reflects public opinion whether it is just or unjust, genuine or
sophisticated. Listen to him when he speaks and you will hear him say:
"Yes, we know. France has a well tempered spirit. But the blood is
gone out of her body. France would like to fight on, to fight to the
bitter end, but France is suffering. France is worn out. France is
bled white."
France is suffering ... that is true. In the cataclysm that she did
not wish for, that she did not start, that she did not prepare, she
has lost more than a million men. And what men they were! The Ecole
Normale, which is the preparatory school for the French university,
lost seventy per cent of its pupils. That means that three-quarters
of the thinkers, the literary men, the scientists, the philosophers,
the professors of the France of tomorrow have been wiped out. They
were the flower of her youth, the élite of her intelligence. Add to
that seven departments, roughly 20,000 square kilometers in area,
which have been invaded, devastated, ruined and pillaged. In these
seven departments all the machinery, all the raw materials, all the
merchandise, all the furniture even to the door-knobs and the boards
in the floors have been taken away. These departments were among the
richest and most prosperous of those on which France prided herself
most industrially.
Add to that the cultivation that has been destroyed, the soil that has
been made untillable, the trees that have been cut down, the roads
that have been torn up and the bridges that have been destroyed. All
the misery, all the mourning, all the sickness: a million wounded and
injured men who have been lost as living forces by a nation which did
not have too many inhabitants. Add the hundred thousand prisoners
Germany sends back to us who have been made tuberculous, paralytics,
nervous wrecks or lunatics because they have been physically
maltreated. Yes, France is suffering.
But it is not true that she is worn out. It is not true that she is
bled white. The horrible hope Germany had formed of emptying France of
her strength, of leaving her, fighting for breath and conquered,
beaten to the earth for centuries to come, has not been realized.
France always stands upright, her arm is still strong, her muscles
vigorous and her blood rich.
To destroy the lie that France is bled white, we must let figures,
facts, statistics and definite proofs speak. The public shall judge
for itself....
A nation that is worn out and bled white has no army to defend itself.
France not only still has an army, but she has an army that is
numerically and materially stronger than it was at the war's
beginning. In 1914, at the Marne, France had an army of 1,500,000 men;
today, after four years of war, France has on her battle front, in
the war zone, an army of 2,750,000 men.
But the value of fighting men today lies only in the artillery they
have to support them behind the lines. It lies in the shells the
artillery is able to fire, in all that material that makes up the
sinews of war of the present day. Here we find the most extraordinary
and marvelous effort that history records. France, invaded, occupied,
weakened; France that had no munitions industry prior to 1914--or a
small munitions industry at best--that France has built up a war
industry that is doubtless the best in the world, which is equal to
the German war industry and on which the Allies can draw in the common
cause.
Listen to these figures and keep them in your heads. They are vouched
for by M. Millerand, who was minister of war during the first year of
hostilities:
The Battle of the Marne emptied our storehouses.
On the seventeenth of September, 1914, the minister of war,
who had then been scarcely three weeks in office, was
informed that munitions threatened to fail our artillery,
and that it was necessary without delay to bring to the
front 100,000 shells per day instead of 13,500 for the .75
guns. This was merely a beginning. Three days later, on the
twentieth of September, the minister assembled at Bordeaux
the representatives of the munitions industry and divided
them up into regional groups. At the head of each one he
made one establishment or one individual the responsible
person. In the face of difficulties which could not be
conceived unless they had been overcome, with establishments
diminished in personnel as well as in raw material,
inexperienced for the most part in the complex and delicate
operations which were expected of them, the manufacture of
shells for the .75's mounted from 147,000 which it had been
in the month of August, 1914, to 1,970,000 in the month of
January, 1915, and then to 3,396,000 during the month of
July, 1915.
222 .75 guns per month have been constructed since the month
of May, 1915. 227 were constructed in the month of July, 407
in the month of January, 1916. For this construction, as for
all the others, once a start was made, there was no stopping
it.
All orders for heavy guns had been countermanded at the
beginning of August, 1914. They were resumed in the month
of September, 1914. Seventy-five per cent of the orders for
heavy guns, on which we got along until April, 1917, had
been given out between September, 1914, and the thirty-first
of October, 1915. In the first seven months of the war, from
September, 1914, to April, 1915, there were constructed
three hundred and sixty pieces of heavy artillery. On August
first, 1914, we had only sixty-eight batteries. A year
later, to the day, on the first of August, 1915, we had two
hundred and seventy-two batteries of heavy artillery.
Now consider these figures, given out by M. André Tardieu, High
Commissioner of the French Republic at Washington, in a letter to the
Hon. Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War:
In the matter of heavy artillery, in August, 1914, we had
only three hundred guns distributed among the various
regiments. In June, 1917, we had six thousand heavy guns,
all of them modern. During our spring offensive in 1917, we
had roughly one heavy gun for every twenty-six meters of
front. If we had brought together all our heavy artillery
and all our trench artillery, we would have had one gun for
every eight meters in the battle sector.
In August, 1914, we were making twelve thousand shells for
the .75's per day, now we are making two hundred and fifty
thousand shells for the .75's and one hundred thousand
shells for the heavy guns per day.
If you wish to consider the weight of the shells which fell
on the German trenches during our last offensives, you will
find the following figures for each linear meter:
Field artillery 407 kilos
Trench artillery 203 kilos
Heavy artillery 704 kilos
High Power artillery 12 kilos
----
Total 1442 kilos
And these are the figures for the monthly expenditure in
munitions for the .75's alone:
July, 1916 6,400,000 shells
September, 1916 7,000,000 shells
October, 1916 5,500,000 shells
During the last offensive the total expenditure amounted to
twelve million projectiles of all calibers.
This incomparable war industry has permitted us not only to fight, to
defend ourselves and to attack the enemy, but also to supply our
friends, our Allies, with the munitions necessary to fight. Up to
January, 1918, these are the amounts of munitions France was able to
hand over to the nations fighting at her side in Europe:
1,350,000 rifles
800,000,000 cartridges
16,000,000 automatic rifles
10,000 mitrailleuses
2,500 heavy guns
4,750 airplanes
And to France has come the honor of making the light artillery for the
American Army--amounting to several hundred guns per month.
* * * * *
A nation that is worn out and bled white has an empty treasury and is
no longer able to obtain taxes from its ruined citizens. Let us
consider what France had done in a financial way in this war.
From the first of August, 1914, to the first of January, 1918, the
French Parliament voted war credits amounting to twenty billions of
dollars. Of this enormous fund only two billions have been borrowed
from outside sources; all the remainder has been subscribed or paid
for by taxation or by loans in France herself. More than a billion
dollars has been loaned to her Allies by France.
In 1917 France had the heaviest budget in all her history. The single
item of taxes was raised to six billion francs ($1,200,000), and these
taxes were paid to the penny, although ten million Frenchmen were
mobilized in the Army, in the factories, and on the farms, or were
untaxable in the occupied regions.
In 1915, 1916 and 1917 France raised three great national loans. That
of 1915 amounted to exactly 13,307,811,579 francs, 40 centimes, of
which 6,017 millions were paid in hard cash. That of October, 1916,
amounted in round numbers to ten billions francs, of which more than
five billions were paid in hard cash. That of December, 1917, amounted
to 10,629,000,000 francs, of which 5,254 millions were paid in cash.
Thus, in spite of the war, her invaded territories, and her mobilized
citizens, France has in three years raised three national loans of
almost seventeen billions francs in hard cash. That is three times the
amount of the war indemnity she paid Prussia in 1871.
A nation worn out and bled white has no more monetary reserve, no more
funds in its treasury, and has been brought into bankruptcy. The Bank
of France, which is probably the leading national bank in the world,
whose credit has never weakened in the gravest hours of the nation's
history, declared on the first of January, 1918, a gold reserve of
5,348 millions of francs, an increase of 272 millions over the gold in
hand on January first, 1917. This is the greatest deposit the bank has
ever had. All this came from the national resources: the weekly
payments are still a million and a half francs, which are paid without
compulsion and without legal processes.
The individual deposits in the great credit establishments of France
which, on the thirty-first of December, 1914, amounted to only 4,050
millions of francs, amounted to 6,050 millions on the thirty-first of
December, 1917.
And during the first three months of the year 1918, from the first of
January to the thirty-first of March, the surplus deposits made by the
peasants and the working classes in the National Saving Bank was
seventy-five millions of francs, an excess of more than eight hundred
thousand francs daily.
* * * * *
A nation that is worn out and bled white is incapable of manufacturing
and sees its commerce and industry perish. Here is the statement of M.
Georges Pallain, Governor of the Bank of France, representing the
accounting of the Counsel General of the Bank for 1917:
From the industrial and commercial point of view, a
satisfactory amelioration is noticeable. The investigation
of the Minister of Industry in July last permits the
statement that the percentage of factories and business
houses rendering a periodical accounting, of which the
advantage is not yet established, is only twenty-three per
cent; it was fifty-five per cent in August, 1914.
An indication of the development of industrial activity is
furnished by the continued increase of the demand for coal.
Operations for mining ore have been pushed with vigor. Coal
production increased greatly in 1914. On the whole it still
remains less than it was before the war, since the invasion
has deprived us of the valleys in the north and the richest
portion of Pas-de-Calais; but in the regions where mining is
still possible the production exceeds by about forty per
cent the figures for 1913.
This remarkable increase has compensated to a certain extent
for the falling off in the importations of coal from
England; nevertheless it leaves our supply of coal less than
our demand for it.
To remedy this insufficiency and, at the same time, to give
our national industry greater independence, researches and
experiments have been equally intensified with a view to
employing our hydraulic resources. In the Alps, in the
Pyrenees and in the central Massif new installations are
under way, and they have already attracted important
metallurgic and chemical plants.
The development of industrial production has had the result
of an increase in the volume of commercial transactions.
These continue to look after themselves and, for the most
part, they are on a cash basis. The gradual resumption of
credit operations, which former years signalized, is still
on the increase. In 1917 the receipts from commerce were
thirty-seven per cent greater than in 1916. There is a
notable progression of discounts, while the total of our
delayed payments has been brought back to 1,140 millions.
A nation that is worn out and bled white is unable to bind up its
wounds or relieve its bed of suffering. France has not waited for the
end of the war and the evacuation of her territory to bring in life
where the Germans thought they had left only death.
In eighty-four of the liberated cantons the work of reconstruction has
already commenced. Commissions have been appointed. These commissions
have proceeded already to the evaluation of the damage done and,
without waiting for authorization, the administration has paid
advances amounting to a not inconsiderable figure. Thus a sum
totalling more than one hundred and forty millions francs has been
expended for the reconstruction of the liberated regions. Seventeen
millions have been expended in cash for repairs; in advances to the
farmers for work or supplies, twenty millions; in advances to workmen,
a half million; for the circulation of funds to the farmers, merchants
and small manufactures, two millions; under the heading of
reconstruction of buildings or the rapid reinstallation of the
evacuated population, one hundred millions.
An _Office National de Reconstruction_ for the villages has been
established, and an agricultural _Office National de Reconstitution_
has been organized; great things have already been realized from
private organizations. This is the account of what one of them, the
organization of National Nurseries, sent in 1914 to the front and into
the liberated regions:
6,717,575 cabbage plants
1,980,000 turnip and rutabaga plants
41,000 radish plants
27,200 cauliflowers
270,250 white beets
5,340,500 leek plants
1,836,800 chicory and endive plants
104,500 celery plants
105,000 tomato plants
16,900 tarragon plants
9,569,450 onion sprouts
26,009,175 total plants of various kinds.
These plants have been divided up into 2,436 shipments, and
they have sufficed to nourish not only the people who have
returned to the devastated villages but also the troops at
the front.
* * * * *
A nation that is worn out and bled white has no colonies, or, if she
has, these same colonies are likewise bloodless and worn out. The
French colonial empire remains intact while the German colonial empire
has disappeared from the face of the earth. The support the colonies
brought to the mother country is wonderful and deserves a separate
study on its own account.
Here is the picture the celebrated German colonial empire offers.
In 1914 Germany possessed a colonial empire two million square
kilometers in area. It represented approximately four times the area
of the German Empire, and before the war its exports amounted to about
one hundred millions of francs or twenty-five millions of dollars.
There were German Southwest Africa, 35,000 square kilometers in
extent, with 1,750 kilometers of railroads, with its copper and
diamond mines, its metals which were worth commercially thirty-seven
millions of marks in 1911; German East Africa, twice as big as the
German Empire, having 1,225 kilometers of railroads, with its harbors
where nine hundred and thirty-three merchant ships had touched in
1911; German New Guinea, as large as two-thirds of Prussia, with its
rich deposits of gold and coal, its maritime commerce of 240,000 tons;
the Samoan Islands, one single port of which, Apia, was visited by one
hundred and ten steamers in a year; Tsing-Tao which, in 1911, had
exported 32,500,000 marks' worth of merchandise, whose maritime
interest was represented by five hundred and ninety steamers which
carried a million tons of freight. All that has fallen away; all that
is actually in the hands of the Allies.
The conquest was difficult; it was finished only in 1916. An order of
the day of General Aymerich, commander-in-chief of the troops which
conquered Kameroon, points with brief eloquence to some of the
difficulties which have been overcome:
Officers, Europeans and troops who are natives of Africa and
Belgian Congo.
At the cost of hardship and unheard-of efforts, you have
just wrenched from the Germans one of their best and richest
colonies.
Followed without a minute's respite from possession to
possession, the enemy has been obliged to abandon the last
bit of Kameroon. For eighteen months you have experienced
the torrid heat of the days and the cold dampness of the
nights without a change, you have been under the torrential
equatorial rains, you have traversed impassable forests and
fetid marshes, you have without a rest taken the enemy's
positions one after another, leaving dead in each one a
number of your comrades. Lacking food and often without
munitions, with your clothing in tatters, you have continued
your glorious march without complaint or murmur, until you
have attained the end for which you set out.
In this conquest France played a large part, just as was the case in
the conquest of Togoland, with her Senegalese Tirailleurs, the famous
Tirailleurs, so much decried and discussed before the war, who were to
win the admiration of the English generals under whose orders they
fought.
It is appropriate to cite here the order of the day of the commanding
officer of these troops, because it shows us a side of the colonial
wars, about which little has been said: