[From The London Times.]
_The following letter from a soldier at the front who has
taken part in the first fighting appears in the Temps of
Paris, Aug. 16:_
We are now able to realize the state of mind in which they arrive. The
army corps to which I belong has already brought its guns into action.
We have seen prisoners, and we have observed battlefields, and we have
noticed a thing or two. First of all, these prisoners are not the least
bit fanatics. Many of them don't know what they are fighting about. They
have been told a thousand phantasmagoria--that France had declared war,
that the Belgians and the Italians were helping the Germans, &c.; and
one of them was tremendously proud at having the Czar Nicholas as his
honorary Colonel! They were taken for the most part in isolated patrols,
and it happened so often that it was impossible to get others to start
off on reconnoissances, since their comrades never came back and they
had no desire to share a like fate.
The prisoners are gentle and calm, and follow with their eyes the bits
of bread which are passed about near them and which one gives them, and
they eat them voraciously. For two days they have only received two
rations of coffee. Their appetite is so great that, though in presence
of a French officer they will click their heels together properly, they
never cease at the same time to munch noisily and to fill out their
hollow cheeks.
One feels that they believe us French to be up to every sort of
devilment, that we are going to undress them, to take their papers, and
they tremble from head to foot in fear of being shot. Even when you give
them a cigarette, it does not seem to allay their mistrust. One of them,
who was dying of thirst, would not drink the water that was offered him
before the gendarme had tasted it in front of him.
They are all astonished at their adventure. They had been told that they
were going to enter Maubeuge in company with the Belgians; to seize
Maubeuge would be as easy as taking a _café au lait_--and there they are
without their _café au lait_!
The officers are absolutely different. Prussian pride gave them an
assurance which their mishap has transformed into irritation. A young
Baron Lieutenant, like von Forstner, pretended that he couldn't make his
bed, and refused to answer before simple soldiers. He couldn't feel
anything but the humiliation of being a prisoner, and couldn't get
accustomed to his new situation.
We found on the field of battle the medicine chest of a vet., who jotted
down his impressions from minute to minute. When he was killed he was
writing: "I see the shells bursting with a white smoke in the sky, which
is lighted up from the south; luckily my helmet protects me from
sunstroke." Evidently he was on an excursion, this veterinary surgeon,
and was counting on coming to Paris, and had taken the most minute
precautions of hygiene and of elegance. He was provided with scent and
eau de cologne. He had even brought with him a rose ointment for the
nails, and a superb gilt shoulder-belt which was to raise his prestige
for when he passed under the Arc de Triomphe. The battery to which he
belonged is annihilated now. We could observe on the spot the terrific
effect of our artillery, which was very well commanded. Six abandoned
guns, of which three are impossible to move, are there on the ground
with all their crews, all their officers, all their horses--the pieces
still mounted, riddled with splinters. They were taken back to the rear,
and attracted all the way along the curiosity of the soldiers, with
their sumptuous armorial bearings and their motto, _Ultima regis ratio_.
But this lesson seems to have made a bit of an impression on the Germans
who have fled, and it has given a new energy to our troops, because the
battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded.
The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as
in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see
_francs-tireurs_ everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular
army quite close to the frontier.
They arrive in a village toward 8 in the morning; three French dragoons
are there as patrols. When the German column is within range, the three
dragoons bring down the Colonel and dash off at full gallop from the
other end of the village. The Germans are furious and swear that they
have been attacked by _francs-tireurs_, and that they are going to
inflict punishment. They seize the curé, a notable inhabitant, and two
or three peasants, and take them off to be present at the burning of
their houses, while waiting to be executed themselves.
I have this story from the curé, who arrived to us absolutely done, with
his cassock in rags, without a hat on, after a day of shocks such as he
has certainly never had in his life before. Although he has got the
superb beard of a missionary, they made him march with the chasseurs,
hitting him with the butts of their rifles till the moment when the
French shrapnel arrived. Then it was _sauve qui peut_. Our brave curé
saw all his butchers fall around him. When the noise had finished, five
unarmed German chasseurs rushed toward him crying with their great,
thick accent, "Catholics, Catholics!" They were Poles who were flying
from the army and coming over to our lines. "With my own arms," said the
curé proudly, "I made five prisoners."
Altogether bewilderment, softness, and indifference on the part of the
men; vanity, cruelty, and foolery on the part of the officers. Those are
the virtues which they offered us on first acquaintance. Just compare
them with ours!