I was building up in my mind the historic meaning of the day. Before
nightfall I should have to get it written--the spirit as well as the
facts, if I could--in time for the censors and the despatch-riders.
The facts? By many scraps of conversation with men and women in the
streets I could already reconstruct pretty well the life of Lille in
time of war. I found many of their complaints rather trivial. The
Germans had wanted brass and had taken it, down to the taps in the
washing-places. Well, I had seen worse horrors than that. They had
wanted wool and had taken the mattresses. They had requisitioned all
the wine but had paid for it at cheap rates. These were not atrocities.
The people of Lille had been short of food, sometimes on the verge of
starvation, but not really starved. They complained of having gone
without butter, milk, sugar; but even in England these things were
hard to get. No, the tragedy of Lille lay deeper than that. A sense of
fear that was always with them. “Every time there was a knock at the
door,” said one man, “we started up in alarm. It was a knock at our
hearts.” At any time of the day or night they were subject to visits
from German police, to searches, arrests, or orders to get out of their
houses or rooms for German officers or troops. They were denounced by
spies, Germans, or debased people of their own city, for trying to
smuggle letters to their folk in other towns in enemy occupation, for
concealing copper in hiding-places, for words of contempt against the
Kaiser or the Kommandantur, spoken at a street-corner between one
friend and another. That consciousness of being watched, overheard,
reported and denounced, poisoned the very atmosphere of their lives,
and the sight of the field-grey men in the streets, the stench of
them--the smell was horrible when German troops marched back from the
battlefields--produced a soul-sickness worse than physical nausea. I
could understand the constant fret at the nerves of these people, the
nagging humiliation,--they had to doff hats to every German officer
who swaggered by--and the slow-burning passion of people, proud by
virtue of their race, who found themselves controlled, ordered about,
bullied, punished for trivial infractions of military regulations,
by German officials of hard, unbending arrogance. That must have
been abominable for so long a time; but as yet I heard no charges of
definite brutality, or of atrocious actions by individual enemies.
The worst I had heard was that levy of the women for forced labour in
unknown places. One could imagine the horror of it, the cruelty of it
to girls whose nerves were already unstrung by secret fears, dark and
horrible imaginings, the beast-like look in the eyes of men who passed
them in the streets. Then the long-delayed hope of liberation--year
after year--the German boasts of victory, the strength of the German
defence that never seemed to weaken, in spite of the desperate attacks
of French and British, the preliminary success of their great offensive
in March and April when masses of English prisoners were herded through
Lille, dejected, exhausted, hardly able to drag their feet along
between their sullen guards--by Heaven, these people of Lille had
needed much faith to save them from despair. No wonder now, that on
the first day of liberation, some of them were wet-eyed with joy, and
others were lightheaded with liberty.
In the Grande Place below the old balustraded Town Hall I saw young
Cyril Clatworthy, one of the Intelligence crowd, surrounded by a
group of girls who were stroking his tunic, clasping his hands,
pushing each other laughingly to get nearer to him. He was in lively
conversation with the prettiest girl whom he kept in front of him. It
was obvious that he was enjoying himself as the central figure of this
hero-worship, and as I passed the boy (twenty-four that birthday, he
had told me a month before), I marvelled at his ceaseless capacity for
amorous adventure, with or without a moment’s notice. A pretty girl, if
possible, or a plain one if not, drew him like a magnet, excited all
his boyish egotism, called to the faun-spirit that played the pipes of
Pan in his heart. It was an amusing game for him with his curly brown
hair and Midshipman Easy type of face. For the French girls whom he had
met on his way--little Marcelle on Cassel Hill, Christine at Corbie on
the Somme, Marguérite in the hat-shop at Amiens (what became of her,
poor kid?), it was not so amusing when he “blew away,” as he called it,
and had a look at life elsewhere.
He winked at me, as I passed, over the heads of the girls.
“The fruits of victory!” he called out. “There is a little Miss
Brown-Eyes here who is quite enchanting.”
It was rather caddish of me to say:
“Have you forgotten Marguérite Aubigny?”
He thought so too, and reddened, angrily.
“Go to blazes!” he said.
His greatest chum, and one of mine,--Charles Fortune--was standing
outside a café in the big Place, not far from the Vieille Bourse with
its richly-carved Renaissance front. Here there was a dense crowd, but
they kept at a respectful distance from Fortune who, with his red tabs
and red-and-blue arm-band and row of ribbons (all gained by heroic
service over a blotting-pad in a Nissen hut) looked to them, no doubt,
like a great General. He had his “heroic” face on, rather mystical and
saintly. He had a variety of faces for divers occasions--such as the
“sheep’s face” in the presence of Generals who disliked brilliant men,
the “intelligent” face--bright and enquiring--for senior officers who
liked easy questions to which they could give portentous answers, the
noble face for the benefit of military chaplains, foreign visitors
to the war-zone, and batmen before they discovered his sense of
humour; and the old-English-gentleman face at times for young Harding,
who belonged to a county family with all its traditions, politics,
and instincts, and permitted Fortune to pull his leg, to criticise
Generals, and denounce the British Empire, as a licensed jester.
Fortune was addressing four gentlemen of the Town Council of Lille who
stood before him, holding ancient top-hats.
“Gentlemen,” said Charles Fortune in deliberate French, with an
exaggerated accent, “I appreciate very much the honour you have just
paid me by singing that heroic old song, ‘It’s a long, long way to
Tipperary.’ I desire, however, to explain to you that it is not as
yet the National Anthem of the British People, and that personally I
have never been to Tipperary, that I should find some difficulty in
finding that place on the map, and that I never want to go there. This,
however, is of small importance, except to British Generals, to whom
all small things are of great importance--revealing therefore their
minute attention to detail, even when it does not matter--which, I
may say, is the true test of the military mind which is so gloriously
winning the war, after many glorious defeats (I mean victories)
and----” (Here Fortune became rather tangled in his French grammar, but
rescued himself after a still more heroic look) “and it is with the
deepest satisfaction, the most profound emotion, that I find myself in
this great city of Lille on the day of liberation, and on behalf of the
British Army, of which I am a humble representative, in spite of these
ribbons which I wear on my somewhat expansive chest, I thank you from
my heart, with the words, _Vive la France!_”
Here Fortune heaved a deep sigh, and looked like a Field Marshal while
he waited for the roar of cheers which greeted his words. The mystical
look on his face became intensified as he stood there, a fine heroic
figure (a trifle stout, for lack of exercise), until he suddenly caught
sight of a nice-looking girl in the crowd nearest to him, and gave her
an elaborate wink, as much as to say, “You and I understand each other,
my pretty one! Beneath this heroic pose I am really human.”
The effect of that wink was instantaneous. The girl blushed vividly and
giggled, while the crowd shouted with laughter.
“_Quel numéro! Quel drôle de type!_” said a man by my side.
Only the four gentleman of the Town Hall, who had resumed their
top-hats, looked perplexed at this grotesque contrast between the
heroic speech (it had sounded heroic) and its anti-climax.
Fortune took me by the arm as I edged my way close to him.
“My dear fellow, it was unbelievable when those four old birds sang
‘Tipperary’ with bared heads. I had to stand at the salute while they
sang three verses with tears in their eyes. They have been learning it
during four years of war. Think of that! And think of what’s happening
in Ireland--in Tipperary--now! There’s some paradox here which contains
all the comedy and pathos of this war. I must think it out. I can’t
quite get at it yet, but I feel it from afar.”
“This is not a day for satire,” I said. “This is a day for sentiment.
These people have escaped from frightful things----”
Fortune looked at me with quizzical grey eyes out of his handsome,
mask-like face.
“Et tu, Brute? After all our midnight talks, our laughter at the
mockery of the gods, our intellectual slaughter of the staff, our
tearing down of all the pompous humbug which has bolstered up this
silly old war!”
“I know. But to-day we can enjoy the spirit of victory. It’s real,
here. We have liberated all these people.”
“We? You mean the young Tommies who lie dead the other side of the
canal? We come in and get the kudos. Presently the Generals will come
and say, ‘We did it. Regard our glory! Fling down your flowers! Cheer
us, good people, before we go to lunch.’ They will not see behind
them the legions they sent to slaughter by ghastly blunders, colossal
stupidity, invincible pomposity.”
Fortune broke into song. It was an old anthem of his:
“Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche.”
He had composed it after a fourth whiskey on a cottage piano in his
Nissen hut. In crashing chords he had revealed the soul of a General
preparing a plan of battle--over the telephone. It never failed to make
me laugh, except that day in Lille when it was out of tune, I thought,
with the spirit about us.
“Let’s put the bitter taste out of our mouth to-day,” I said.
Fortune made his sheep-face, saluted behind his ear, and said, “Every
inch a soldier--I don’t think!”