The Secret War
1
It was the most astounding thing in modern history, the secrecy
behind which great armies were moving and fighting. To a civilization
accustomed to the rapid and detailed accounts of news, there was
something stupefying in the veil of silence which enshrouded the
operations of the legions which were being hurled against each other
along the frontiers. By one swift stroke of the military censorship
journalism was throttled. All its lines of communication were cut,
suddenly, as when, in my office, I spoke from Paris to England, and
found myself with a half-finished sentence before a telephone which
would no longer "march," as they say across the Channel. Pains and
penalties were threatened against any newspaper which should dare
to publish a word of military information beyond the official
communiqués issued in order to hide the truth. Only by a careful
study of maps from day to day and a microscopic reading between
the lines could one grope one's way to any kind of clear fact which
would reveal something more than the vague optimism, the patriotic
fervour, of those early dispatches issued from the Ministry of War.
Now and again a name would creep into these communiqués which
after a glance at the map would give one a cold thrill of anxiety and
doubt. Was it possible that the enemy had reached that point? If so,
then its progress was phenomenal and menacing. But M. le Marquis
de Messimy, War Minister of France, was delightfully cheerful. He
assured the nation day after day that their heroic army was making
rapid progress. He omitted to say in what direction. He gave no
details of these continual victories. He did not publish lists of
casualties. It seemed, at first, as though the war were bloodless.
2
One picture of Paris, in those first days of August, comes to my mind
now. In a great room to the right of the steps of the War Office a
number of men in civilian clothes sit in gilded chairs with a strained
look of expectancy, as though awaiting some message of fate. They
have interesting faces. My fingers itch to make a sketch of them, but
only Steinlen could draw these Parisian types who seem to belong to
some literary or Bohemian coterie. What can they be doing at the
Ministry of War? They smoke cigarettes incessantly, talk in whispers
tête-â-tête, or stare up at the steel casques and cuirasses on the
walls, or at the great glass candelabra above their heads as though
they can only keep their patience in check by gazing fixedly at some
immovable object. Among the gilded chairs and beneath the Empire
mirrors which reflect the light there are three iron bedsteads with
straw mattresses, and now and again a man gets up from one of
these straight-backed chairs and lies at full length on one of the beds.
But a minute later he rises silently again and listens intently,
nervously, to the sound of footsteps coming sharply across the
polished boards. It seems to be the coming of the messenger for
whom all these men have been waiting. They spring to their feet and
crowd round a table as a gentleman comes in with a bundle of papers
from which he gives a sheet to every outstretched hand. The Parisian
journalists have received the latest bulletin of war. They read it
silently, devouring with their eyes those few lines of typewritten words.
Here is the message of fate. Those slips of paper will tell them
whether it goes well or ill with France. One of them speaks to his
neighbour:
"Tout va bien!"
Yes, all goes well, according to the official bulletin, but there is not
much news on that slip of paper, not enough for men greedy for
every scrap of news. Perhaps the next dispatch will contain a longer
story. They must come again, these journalists of France, to smoke
more cigarettes, to stare at the steel armour, to bridle their impatience
with clenched hands. This little scene at the Ministry of War is played
four times a day, and there is a tremendous drama behind the
quietude of those waiting men, whose duty it is to tell France and the
world what another day of war has done for the flag.
3
Another little scene comes to my mind as I grope back to those first
days of war. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the Quai d'Orsay,
there is more quietude. It is difficult to realise that this house has been
the scene of a world-drama within the last few days, and that in one
of its reception-rooms a German gentleman spoke a few quiet words,
before asking for some papers, which hurled millions of men against
each other in a deadly struggle involving all that we mean by
civilization. I went to that house and waited for a while in an ante-
chamber where the third Napoleon once paced up and down before a
war which ended disastrously for France. Presently a footman came
through the velvet curtains and said, "Monsieur le Président vous
attend." I was taken into another room, a little cabinet overlooking a
garden, cool and green under old trees through which the sunlight
filtered. A stone goddess smiled at me through the open windows. I
saw her out of the corner of my eye as I bowed to M. Doumergue,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and, for a time, Prime Minister of France.
For some reason my imagination was touched by that garden of
peace where a Greek goddess smiled in the green twilight.
But M. Doumergue was smiling, too, with that expression of tout va
bien which masked the anxiety of every statesman who had seen
behind the veil. After a few preliminary words he spoke of the
progress of the war and of its significance to the world.
"Civilization itself," he said, "depends upon the success of our arms.
For years Germany has played the part of a bully, basing her policy
upon brute force, and thrusting her sword before the eyes of men.
She was swollen-headed with her military pride. She preached the
gospel of the swashbuckler. And now, after the declaration of this
war, which was none of our seeking, how are they behaving, these
Germans? Like barbarians. They have treated our Ambassador with
infamous discourtesy. They have behaved with incredible insolence
and boorishness to our Consuls. The barbaric nature of the enemy is
revealed in a way which will never be forgotten. Fortunately, we have
European civilization on our side. All the cultured races sympathize
with us. They know that Europe would be lost if the German Empire,
with its policy of blood and iron, with its military caste and tyranny,
should become more dominant and stride across the frontiers of
civilized States. But of the ultimate issue of this war there can be no
doubt. With Great Britain fighting side by side with France, with
Russia attacking on the Eastern front, what hopes can Germany
nourish now? The war may be a long struggle; it may lead to many
desperate battles; but in the end the enemy must be doomed. Where
is her boasted organization? Already our prisoners tell us that they
were starving when they fought. It seems as though these critics of
French military organization were demoralized at the outset. Ils ont
bluffé tout le temps! I can assure you that we are full of confidence,
and perfectly satisfied with the way in which the war is progressing."
4
This Minister of France was "perfectly satisfied." His optimism
cheered me, though all his words had not told me the things I wanted
to know, nor lifted the corner of that veil which hid the smoke and
flash of guns. But the French had taken prisoners and somewhere or
other masses of men were fighting and dying. ... As I came back from
the Quai d'Orsay and a stroll in the Champs Elysées through the
golden twilight of a splendid day, when the lamps of Paris began to
gleam like stars through the shimmering haze and the soft foliage of
the most beautiful highway in the world, there came a clatter of hoofs
and the music of soldiers' harness. It was a squadron of the Garde
Républicaine riding on the last patrol of the day round the ramparts of
Paris. I watched them gallop through the Arc de Triomphe, their black
crinières streaming backwards like smoke from their helmets. They
rode towards the setting sun, a crimson bar across the blue of the
sky, and when I walked back slowly to the heart of Paris the
boulevards were already quiet, and in the velvety darkness which
overtook me there was peace and order. Only the silence of the
streets told me that France was at war.
6
Obviously it was hopeless to stay in Paris waiting for official
permission to follow the armies as a correspondent and to penetrate
more deeply into the heart of that mystery which was fogged more
deeply by the words that came forth every day from the Ministry of
War. The officials were very polite and took great trouble to soothe
the excited emotions of would-be war correspondents. "In a few days,
gentlemen, if all continues to go well." They desired our photographs,
in duplicate, a medical certificate of health, recommendations as to
our mental and moral qualities, formal applications and informal
interviews. But meanwhile the war was being fought and we were
seeing nothing.
News of great victory came to Paris when the bulletins announced
the advance of French troops in Alsace and the capture of Mulhouse
and Altkirch. Instantly there were joyous scenes in the streets.
Boulevards, which had been strangely quiet, became thronged with
men and women called out from the twilight of their rooms by this
burst of sunlight, as it seemed. The news held the magic thrill of an
Alsace restored to France. ... It was long afterwards that Paris heard
strange and evil rumours of reverses down there, of a regiment which
flung down its rifles and fled under a tempest of shells, of officers shot
by their own guns, of a general cashiered for grievous errors.
From Liège there came more news. The imagination of Paris,
deprived of all sustenance as regards its own troops, fed greedily
upon the banquet of blood which had been given to it by the gallant
Belgians. In messages coming irregularly through the days and
nights, three or four lines at a time, it was possible to grasp the main
facts of that heroic stand against the German legions. We were able
to perceive from afar the raking fire of the forts around the city, which
swept the ground so that the most famous regiments of the German
army were mowed down as they advanced with desperate courage.
"If Liège holds out the German troops are in a hopeless position."
These words were repeated along the boulevards of Paris, and
because Liège held out so long the spirit of Paris was exalted.
But, as a journalist out to see things, I was depressed. It was useless
to wait in Paris while the days were slipping by and history was being
made. Official permission was delayed, by fair and courteous words. I
decided to go in search of the war without permission and to get
somehow or other behind the scenes of its secrecy. So my
adventures began, and in a little while my eyes became seared with
the sight of tragedy and my soul filled with the enormous woe of war.
6
It was a strange kind of melodrama that experience in the first two
months of the war. Looking back upon it now, it has just the effect of
a prolonged nightmare stimulated by hasheesh or bang--fantastic, full
of confused dreams, changing kaleidoscopically from one scene to
another, with vivid clear-cut pictures, intensely imagined, between
gulfs of dim twilight memories, full of shadow figures, faces seen a
little while and then lost, conversations begun abruptly and then
ended raggedly, poignant emotions lasting for brief moments and
merging into others as strong but of a different quality, gusts of
laughter rising between moods of horrible depression, tears
sometimes welling from the heart and then choked back by a brutal
touch of farce, beauty and ugliness in sudden clashing contrasts, the
sorrow of a nation, the fear of a great people, the misery of women
and children, the intolerable anguish of multitudes of individuals each
with a separate agony, making a dark background to this too real
dream from which there was no awakening.
I was always travelling during those eight or nine weeks of history--for
the most time I had two companions with me--dear fellows whose
comradeship was a fine personal pleasure, in spite of all the pain into
which we plunged. Together we journeyed continually and
prodigiously, covering thousands of miles during those weeks, in all
sorts of directions, by all sorts of ways, in troop trains and cattle
trucks, in motor-cars and taxi-cabs, and on Shanks's nag. There were
no couriers in those days between France and England, and to get
our dispatches home we often had to take them across the Channel,
using most desperate endeavours to reach a port of France in time
for the next boat home and staying in Fleet Street only a few hours
before hurrying back to Dover or Folkestone in order to plunge again
into the fever of invaded France. Later Paris was our goal, and we
would struggle back to it along lines choked with munitions of war or
completely held for the transport of great masses of troops, arriving,
at night as a rule, weary for lack of sleep, dirty from the filth of cattle
trucks crowded with unwashed men and women, hungry after
meagre rations of biscuits and cheese, mentally and physically
exhausted, so that one such night I had to be carried upstairs to my
room, so weak that I could not drag one leg after the other nor lift a
hand from the coverlet. On another day one of my companions--the
Strategist--sat back, rather quiet, in a taxi-cab which panted in a
wheezy way along the interminably straight roads of France, through
villages from which all their people had fled under the shadow of a
great fear which followed them, until when the worn-out vehicle could
go no further, but halted helplessly on a lonely highway remote as it
seemed from any habitation, my friend confessed that he was weak
even as a new-born babe and could not walk a hundred yards to
save his life. Yet he is a strong man who had never been in a doctor's
hands since childhood.
His weakness, the twist of pain about his mouth, the weariness in his
eyes, scared us then. The Philosopher, who had not yet begun to feel
in his bones the heat of the old tropical fever which afterwards made
him toss at nights and call out strange words, shook his head and
spoke with the enormous gravity which gives an air of prophecy and
awful wisdom to a man whose sense of humour and ironic wit have
often twisted me into painful knots of mirth. But there was no glint of
humour in the Philosopher's eyes when he stared at the greyness of
the Strategist.
"The pace has been too hot," he said. "We seem to forget that there's
a limit to the strain we can put on the human machine. It's not only
the physical fatigue. It's the continual output of nervous energy. All
this misery, all that damn thing over there"--he waved his paw at the
darkening hills beyond which was a great hostile army--"the sight of
all these refugees spilt out of their cities and homes as though a great
hand had tipped up the earth, is beginning to tell on us, my lads. We
are spending our reserve force, and we are just about whacked!"
Yet we went on, mixed up always in refugee rushes, in masses of
troops moving forward to the front or backwards in retreat, getting
brief glimpses of the real happenings behind the screen of secrecy,
meeting the men who could tell us the hidden truth, and more than
once escaping, by the nick of time only, from a death-trap into which
we had tumbled unwittingly, not knowing the whereabouts of the
enemy, nor his way of advance.
7
In the early days of the war, the first stampede which overwhelmed
us had a touch of comedy unless one's imagination were shocked by
the panic of great crowds, in which always and for whatever cause
there is something degrading to the dignity of human nature. It was
the panic rush of the world's tourists suddenly trapped by war in the
pleasure haunts of Europe. They had come out to France,
Switzerland, Italy and Egypt with well-lined purses, for the most part,
and with the absolute conviction not disturbed by any shadow of
doubt, that their ways would be made smooth by Cook's guides, hotel
managers, British and American consuls, and foreigners of all classes
eager to bow before them, to show them the sights, to carry their
baggage, to lick, if need be, their boots. They had money, they
belonged to the modern aristocracy of the well-to-do. Was not Europe
their garden of pleasure, providing for them, in return for the price of a
season ticket, old monuments, famous pictures, sunsets over Swiss
mountains, historic buildings starred by Baedeker, peculiar customs
of aborigines, haunts of vice to be viewed with a sense of virtue, and
good hotels in which there was a tendency to over-eat?
The pleasure of these rich Americans and comfortable English
tourists was suddenly destroyed by the thunderbolt of war. They were
startled to find that strong laws were hastily enacted against them and
put in force with extraordinary brutality. Massed under the name of
étrangers--they had always looked upon the natives as the only
foreigners--they were ordered to leave certain countries and certain
cities within twenty-four hours, otherwise they would be interned in
concentration camps under armed guards for the duration of the war.
But to leave these countries and cities they had to be provided with a
passport--hardly an American among them had such a document--
and with a laisser-passer to be obtained from the police and
countersigned by military authorities, after strict interrogation.
The comedy began on the first day of mobilization, and developed
into real tragedy as the days slipped by. For although at first there
was something a little ludicrous in the plight of the well-to-do, brought
down with a crash to the level of the masses and loaded with paper
money which was as worthless as Turkish bonds, so that the
millionaire was for the time being no richer than the beggar, pity
stirred in one at the sight of real suffering and anguish of mind.
Outside the commissariats de police in Paris and provincial towns of
France, like Dijon and Lyons, and in the ports of Calais, Boulogne
and Dieppe, there were great crowds of these tourists lined up in
queue and waiting wearily through the hours until their turn should
come to be measured with their backs to the wall and to be
scrutinized by'police officers, sullen after a prolonged stream of
entreaty and expostulation, for the colour of their eyes and hair, the
shape of their noses and chins, and the "distinctive marks" of their
physical beauty or ugliness.
"I guess I'll never come to this Europe again!" said an American lady
who had been waiting for five hours in a side street in Paris for this
ordeal. "It's a cruel shame to treat American citizens as though they
were thieves and rogues. I wonder the President of the United States
don't make a protest about it. Are people here so ignorant they don't
even know the name of Josiah K. Schultz, of Boston, Massachusetts?"
The commissary's clerk inside the building was quite unmoved by the
name of Josiah K. Schultz, of Boston, Massachusetts. It held no
magic for him, and he seemed to think that the lady-wife of that
distinguished man might be a German spy with American papers. He
kept her waiting, deliberately, though she had waited for five hours in
the street outside.
8
The railway time-tables ceased to have a meaning after the first hour
of mobilization. Bradshaw became a lie and civil passengers were
only allowed on the rare trains which ran without notice at any hour of
the day or night, at the discretion of military officers, according to the
temporary freedom of the line from troop trains and supply trains.
Those tourist crowds suffered intolerable things, which I shared with
them, though I was a different kind of traveller. I remember one such
scene at Dijon, typical of many others. Because only one train was
starting on that day to the capital, and the time of it was utterly
unknown to the railway officials, three or four hundred people had to
wait hour after hour, for half a night, penned up in a waiting-room,
which became foul with the breath and heat of so many people. In
vain did they appeal to be let out on to the platform where there would
be more air and space. A sentry with fixed bayonet stood with his
back to them and barred the way. Old ladies sat down in despair on
their baggage, wedged between legs straddled across their bags. A
delicate woman near me swooned in the stifling atmosphere. I had
watched her grow whiter and whiter and heard the faintness of her
sighs, so that when she swayed I grasped her by the arm and held
her up until her husband relieved me of her weight. A Frenchwoman
had a baby at her breast. It cried with an unceasing wail. Other
babies were crying; and young girls, with sensitive nerves, were
exasperated by this wailing misery and the sickening smell which
pervaded this closed room.
When the train came in, the door was opened and there was a wild
rush for the carriages, without the English watchword of "women and
children first." Thrust on one side by sharp elbows, I and my two
friends struggled at last into the corridor, and for nineteen hours sat
there on the sharp edges of our upturned trunks, fixed rigidly between
the bodies of other travellers. To the left of us was a French peasant,
a big, quiet man, with a bovine gift of patience and utterly taciturn.
After the first five minutes I suspected that somewhere concealed
about his person was a ripe cheese. There was a real terror in the
malodorous vapours which exhaled from him. In a stealthy way they
crept down the length of the corridor, so that other people, far away,
flung open windows and thrust out heads, in spite of the night air with
a bite of frost in it. I dozed uneasily with horrid dreams as I sat on
three inches of hard box, with my head jogging sideways. Always I
was conscious of the evil smell about me, but when the peasant was
still I was able to suffer' it, because of sheer weariness, which
deadened my senses. It was when he moved, disturbing invisible
layers of air, that I awakened horribly.
10
For the nice people of the world whom fate had pampered, there was
a cruelty in this mode of travel. Hunger, with its sharp tooth, assailed
some of them for the first time. We stopped at wayside stations--still
more often between the stations--but American millionaires and
English aristocrats were stupefied to find that not all their money
could buy a sandwich. Most of the buffets had been cleaned out by
the army passing to the front. Thirst, intolerable and choking, was a
greater pain in those hot dog-days and in those tedious interminable
journeys.
Yet it is only fair to say that on the whole those tourists chased across
the Continent by the advancing spectre of war, behaved with pluck
and patience. Some of them had suffered grievous loss. From Bale
and Geneva to Paris and Boulogne the railways were littered with
their abandoned luggage, too bulky to be loaded into overcrowded
trains. On the roads of France were broken-down motor-cars which
had cost large sums of money in New York and London. But because
war's stupendous evil makes all other things seem trivial, and the gifts
of liberty and life are more precious than wealth or luxury, so these
rich folk in misfortune fraternized cheerfully in the discussion of their
strange adventures and shared the last drop of hot tea in a Thermos
flask with the generous instincts of shipwrecked people dividing their
rations on a desert isle.
11
This flight of the pleasure-seekers was the first revelation of the way
in which war would hurt the non-combatant and sacrifice his business
or his comfort to its supreme purpose. Fame was merely foolishness
when caught in the trap of martial law. I saw a man of European
reputation flourish his card before railway officials, to be thrust back
by the butt end of a rifle, No money could buy a seat in a railway
carriage already crowded to suffocation. No threat to write a letter to
the Times would avail an old-fashioned Englishman when his train
was shunted for hours on to a side line to make way for troop trains,
passing, passing, through the day and night. Nations were at war,
and whatever stood in the way of the war's machine would be
trampled underfoot or thrust on one side with brutal indifference. Their
fame did not matter nor their struggles to escape from a closing net.
Neither the beauty of women nor the weakness of children nor the
importance of the world's great somebodies mattered a jot. Nothing
mattered except fighting-men, and guns, and food for guns and men.
12
The French soldiers who were being sent towards the unknown front
--not knowing their own destination and forbidden to ask--had
recovered from the shock of the sudden call to the colours and the
tragedy of their hurried partings from wives, and sweethearts, and old
mothers, who are always dearest to Frenchmen's hearts. The thrill of
a nation's excitement brought a sparkle to their eyes and a flush to
their cheeks. The inherent gaiety of the French race rose triumphant
above the gloom and doubt which had preceded the declaration of
war. Would they never tire of singing the Marseillaise? Would all this
laughter which came in gusts through the open doors of cattle trucks
and the windows of third-class carriages change into the moan of the
wounded at their journey's end? It was hard to look forward to that
inevitable fate as I watched them pass. They had tied flowers to the
handles of their trains and twisted garlands round the bars. There
were posies in their kepis, and bouquets were pinned by the plump
hands of peasant girls to the jackets of the soldiers of the line,
gunners, cuirassiers, dragoons, and fusiliers marins. Between the
chorus of the Marseillaise came snatches of songs learnt in the
cabarets of Montmartre and the cafés chantants of provincial towns.
They swarmed like bees--in blue coats and red trousers--upon those
enormous troop trains which passed through Gournai and Pontoise,
Rouen and Amiens. Rows of them, grinning down under peaks at
freakish angles, dangled their legs over as they squatted on the roofs
of the wooden trucks. They hung on to the iron ladders of the guards'
vans. Sometimes six of them would be installed on the ledge behind
the funnel of the engine, with their russet faces to the wind. In the
argot of Paris slums, or in the dialects of seaport towns, they hurled
chaff at comrades waiting on the platforms with stacked arms, and
made outrageous love to girls who ran by the side of their trains with
laughing eyes and saucy tongues and a last farewell of "Bonne
chance, mes petits! Bonne chance et toujours la victoire!" At every
wayside halt artists were at work with white chalk drawing grotesque
faces on the carriage doors below which they scrawled inscriptions
referring to the death of "William," and banquets in Berlin, and
invitations for free trips to the Rhine. In exchange for a few English
cigarettes, too few for such trainloads, they gave me ovations of
enthusiasm, as though I stood for England.
"Vive l'Angleterre! Vos soldats, ou sont ils, camarade?" Where were
the English soldiers? It was always that question which sprang to their
lips. But for a little while I could not answer. It was strange. There was
no news of the crossing of the Expeditionary Force to France. In the
French and English newspapers no word was said about any British
soldiers on French soil. Was there some unaccountable delay, or
were we fulfilling our bond privately, a great drama being played
behind the scenes, like the secret war?
13
Then just for a moment the veil was lifted and Lord Kitchener allowed
the British people to know that their soldiers had landed on the other
side. Even then we who knew more than that were not allowed to
mention the places to which they had gone. Never mind. They were
here. We heard quite suddenly the familiar accents of English
Tommies in provincial towns of France, and came unexpectedly upon
khalfi-clad battalions marching and singing along the country roads.
For the first time there rang out in France the foolish ballad which has
become by a queer freak the war song of the British Army: "It's a long
way to Tipperary," learnt with comical accent by French peasants and
French girls, who, in those early days, in the first fine thrill of
enthusiasm, sang it emotionally as though it were a hymn, holding all
their love for England, all their hope of England's help, all their
admiration of these clean-shaven boys going to war in France in a
sporting spirit as though it were a great game. I went back to Paris for
a day when General French arrived, and even now in remembrance I
hear those shouts of "Vive l'Angleterre!" which followed the motor-car
in which our General made his triumphant progress. The shopgirls of
Paris threw flowers from the windows as the car passed. Dense
crowds of citizens thronged the narrow street of the Faubourg St.
Honoré, and waited patiently for hours outside the Embassy to catch
one glimpse of the strong, stern, thoughtful face of the man who had
come with his legions to assist France in the great hour of need. They
talked to each other about the inflexibility of his character, about the
massive jaw which, they said, would bite off Germany's head. They
cheered in the English manner, with a "Heep! heep! hooray!"--when
they caught sight for the first time of the khaki uniforms of English
officers on the steps of the Ministry of War. The arrival of English
troops here was red wine to the hearts of the French people. It
seemed to them the great guarantee of victory. "With England
marching side by side with us," they said, "we shall soon be in Berlin!"
14
A train-load of Royal Engineers came into one of the stations where I
happened to be waiting (my memory of those days is filled with weary
hours on station platforms). It was the first time I was able to talk to
British Tommies in France, and to shake their hands, and to shout
out "Good luck!" to them. It was curious how strong my emotion was
at seeing those laughing fellows and hearing the cockney accent of
their tongues. They looked so fine and clean. Some of them were
making their toilet in the cattle trucks brushing their hair as though for,
a picnic party, shaving before little mirrors tacked up on the planks.
Others, crowding at the open doorways of the trucks, shouted with
laughter at the French soldiers and peasants, who grabbed at their
hands and jabbered enthusiastic words of welcome.
"Funny lingo, Bill!" said one of the men. "Can't make out a bit of it. But
they mean well, I guess!"
It was impossible to doubt that they meant well, these soldiers of
France greeting their comrades of England. One man behaved like a
buffoon, or as though he had lost his wits. Grasping the hand of a
young engineer he danced round him, shouting "Camarade!
camarade!" in a joyous sing-song which was ridiculous, and yet
touching in its simplicity and faith. It was no wonder, I thought, that the
French people believed in victory now that the British had come. A
Jingo pride took possession of me. These Tommies of ours were the
finest soldiers in the world! They went to war with glad hearts. They
didn't care a damn for old Von Kluck and all his hordes. They would
fight like heroes, these clean-limbed chaps, who looked upon war as
a great game. Further along the train my two friends, the Philosopher
and the Strategist, were in deep conversation with different groups. I
heard gusts of laughter from the truck-load of men looking down on
the Philosopher. He had discovered a man from Wapping, I think,
and was talking in the accent of Stratford-atte-Bow to boys from that
familiar district of his youth. The Strategist had met the engineers in
many camps in England. They were surprised at his knowledge of
their business. And what were we doing out here? Newspaper
correspondents? Ah, there would be things to write about! When the
train passed out, with waving hands from every carriage, with
laughing faces caught already by the sun of France, with farewell
shouts of "Good luck, boys!" and "Bonne chance, camarades!" three
Englishmen turned away silently and could not speak for a minute or
two. Why did the Philosopher blink his eyes in such a funny way, as
though they smarted at specks of dust? And why did the Strategist
look so grave all of a sudden, as he stood staring after the train, with
his cap in his hand, so that the sunlight gleamed on his silver-grey
hair?
15
So the British Army had come to France, and a strange chapter was
being written in the history of the world, contrasting amazingly with
former chronicles. English battalions bivouacked by old French
houses which had looked down upon scenes of revolution in 1789,
and in the shadow of its churches which rang for French victories or
tolled for French defeats when Napoleon's generals were fighting
English regiments exactly one hundred years ago. In seaport villages
and towns which smell of tar and nets and absinthe and stale wine I
saw horses stabled in every inn-yard; streets were littered with straw,
and English soldiers sauntered about within certain strict boundaries,
studying picture postcards and giving the "glad eye" to any little
French girl who peeped at them through barred windows. Only
officers of high rank knew where they were bound. The men, devoid
of all curiosity, were satisfied with the general knowledge that they
were "on the continong," and well on the way to "have a smack at the
Germans." There was the rattle and rumble of English guns down
country highways. Long lines of khaki-clad men, like a writhing brown
snake when seen from afar, moved slowly along winding roads,
through cornfields where the harvest was cut and stacked, or down
long avenues of poplars, interminably straight, or through quaint old
towns and villages with whitewashed houses and overhanging
gables, and high stone steps leading to barns and dormer-chambers.
Some of those little provincial towns have hardly changed since
D'Artagnan and his Musketeers rode on their way to great adventures
in the days of Richelieu and Mazarin. And the spirit of D'Artagnan was
still bred in them, in the France of Poincaré, for they are the dwelling-
places of young men in the cuirassiers and the chasseurs who had
been chasing Uhlans through the passes of the Vosges, capturing
outposts even though the odds were seven to one.
The English officers and men will never have to complain of their
welcome in France. It was overwhelming--even a little intoxicating to
young soldiers. As they marched through the towns peasant girls ran
along the ranks with great bouquets of wild flowers, which they thrust
into the soldiers' arms. In every market square where the regiments
halted for a rest there was free wine for any thirsty throat, and soldier
boys from Scotland or England had their brown hands kissed by girls
who were eager for hero worship and had fallen in love with these
clean-shaven lads and their smiling grey eyes. In those early days
there seemed no evil in the worship of the women nor in the hearts of
the men who marched to the song of "Tipperary." Every man in khaki
could claim a hero's homage for himself on any road in France, at
any street corner of an old French town. It was some time before the
romance wore off, and the realities of human nature, where good is
mixed with evil and blackguardism marches in the same regiment
with clean-hearted men, destroyed some of the illusions of the French
and demanded an iron discipline from military police and made poor
peasant girls repent of their abandonment in the first ecstasy of their
joyous welcome.
16
Not yet did the brutalities of the war spoil the picture painted in khaki
tones upon the green background of the French countryside. From
my notebook I transcribe one of the word pictures which I wrote at the
time. It is touched with the emotion of those days, and is true to the
facts which followed:
"The weather has been magnificent. It has been no hardship to sleep
out in the roads and fields at night. A harvest moon floods the country
with silver light and glints upon the stacked bayonets of this British
Army in France when the men lie down beneath their coats, with their
haversacks as pillows. Each sleeping figure is touched softly by those
silver rays while the sentries pace up and down upon the outskirts of
the camp. Some of the days have been intensely hot, but the British
Tommy unfastens his coat and leaves his shirt open at the chest, and
with the sun bronzing his face to a deeper, richer tint, marches on,
singing a cockney ballad as though he were on the road to
Weybridge or Woking. They are young fellows, many of them--
beardless boys who have not yet been hard-bitten by a long
campaign and have not received their baptism of fire. Before they
have been many days in the fields of France they will not look so
fresh and smart. Those grey eyes of theirs will be haunted by the
memory of battlefields at night, when the stretcher-bearers are
searching for the wounded who lie among the dead. Not yet do these
boys know the real meaning of war. But they belong to the same
breed of men who a hundred years ago fought with Wellington in the
Peninsula. There is no possible need to doubt that they will maintain
the old traditions of their regiments and add new records to their
colours. Before this war is finished these soldiers of ours, who are
singing on their way, in dapper suits of khaki, will be all tattered and
torn, with straw tied round their feet, with stubby beards on their chins,
with the grime of gunpowder and dust and grease and mud and
blood upon their hands and faces. They will have lost the freshness
of their youth: but those who remain will have gained--can we doubt
it?--the reward of stubborn courage and unfailing valour."
17
Not many days after these words were written, I came upon a scene
which fulfilled them, too quickly. At a French junction there was a
shout of command in English, and I saw a body of men in khaki, with
Red Cross armlets, run across a platform to an incoming train from
the north, with stretchers and drinking bottles. A party of English
soldiers had arrived from a battle at a place called Mons. With French
passengers from another train, I was kept back by soldiers with fixed
bayonets, but through the hedge of steel I saw a number of
"Tommies" with bandaged heads and limbs descending from the
troop train. Some of them hung limp between their nurses. Their
faces, so fresh when I had first seen them on the way out, had
become grey and muddy, and were streaked with blood. Their khaki
uniforms were torn and cut. One poor boy moaned pitiably as they
carried him away on a stretcher. They were the first fruits of this
unnatural harvesting, lopped and maimed by a cruel reaper. I stared
at them with a kind of sickness, more agonized than afterwards when
I saw more frightful things. It came as a queer, silly shock to me then
to realize that in this secret war for which I was searching men were
really being smashed and killed, and that out of the mystery of it, out
of the distant terror from which great multitudes were fleeing, out of
the black shadow creeping across the sunlit hills of France, where the
enemy, whom no fugitives had seen, was advancing like a moving
tide, there should come these English boys, crippled and broken,
from an unknown battle. I was able to speak to one of them, wounded
only in the hand, but there was no time for more than a question or
two and an answer which hardly gave me definite knowledge.
"We got it in the neck!" said the sergeant of the R.F.A. He repeated
the words as if they held all truth. "We got it in the neck!" "Where?" I
asked.
He waved his wounded hand northwards, and said: "Mons."
"Do you mean we were beaten? In retreat?" He shrugged his
shoulders.
"We gave 'em what for. Oh, yes, they had to pay right enough. But
they were too much for us. Came on like lice... swarming... Couldn't
kill enough... Then we got it in the neck... Lost a good few men...
Gord, I've never seen such work! South Africa? No more than child's
play to this 'ere game!"
He gave a queer kind of grin, with no mirth in his eyes, and went
away with the other wounded men.
Mons? It was the first I had heard of a battle there And our men were
having a hard time. The enemy were too much for us. Was it a
retreat? Perhaps a rout?
18
The Philosopher answered these unspoken questions.
"You always get the gloomy view from wounded men. I dare say it's
not an easy thing to stop those blighters, but I've faith in the justice of
God. The Great Power ain't going to let Prussian militarism win out.
It's going to be smashed because of its essential rottenness. It's all
right, laddie!"
The Strategist was studying his map, and working out military
possibilities.
"Mons. I expect our next line of defence will be Le Cateau and
Cambrai. If we're hard pressed we shall hear something about St.
Quentin, too. It's quite on the cards we shall have to fall back, but I
hope to Heaven in good order and with sound lines of communication."
"It's frightful!" I said. "We are seeing nothing of all this. Nothing!
If only we could get near it!"
19
It was some time before we heard the guns, but not long before we
saw the effects of war, in blood, anguish, and tears.
The French newspapers, telling little of the truth, giving barely one
single fact to a page full of heroic sentiment, had not let us guess
that, beyond the frontiers of France, the enemy was doing frightful
damage, with a rapidity and ruthlessness which, after the check at
Liège, was a tremendous menace to the Allied armies. I understood
these things better, in a stark nakedness of truth, when I found myself
caught in the tumult of a nation in flight.
I have already touched upon one tide of panic--the stampede of the
pleasure-seekers. That was a mere jest lacking all but the touch of
cruelty which gives a spice to so many of life's witticisms; but the
second tide, overflowing in wave after wave of human misery,
reached great heights of tragedy which submerged all common
griefs. From that day in August until many months of war had passed
I was seldom out of sight of this ruin of Belgium.
I went into the heart of it, into the welter of blood and wreckage, and
stood, expecting death, in the very process of its deadly torture.
Week after week, month after month, I walked and talked with
Belgian fugitives, and drifted in that stream of exiled people, and
watched them in the far places of their flight, where they were
encamped in settled hopelessness, asking nothing of the fate which
had dealt them such foul blows, expecting nothing. But I still
remember my first impressions of war's cruelty to that simple people
who had desired to live in peace and had no quarrel with any Power.
It was in a kind of stupor that I saw the vanguard of this nation in
retreat, a legion of poor old women whose white hairs were wild in this
whirl of human derelicts, whose decent black clothes were rumpled
and torn and fouled in the struggle for life; with Flemish mothers
clasping babies at their breasts and fierce-eyed as wild animals
because of the terror in their hearts for those tiny buds of life; with
small children scared out of the divine security of childhood by this
abandonment of homes which had seemed the world to them, and
terrorized by an unknown horror which lurked in the name of
Germany; with men of all classes and all ages, intellectuals and
peasants, stout bourgeois, whose overload of flesh was a burden to
their flight, thin students whose book-tired eyes were filled with a
dazed bewilderment, men of former wealth and dignity reduced to
beggary and humiliation; with school-girls whose innocence of life's
realities was suddenly thrust face to face with things ugly and
obscene, and cruel as hell.
20
I think it is impossible to convey to those who did not see this exodus
of the Belgian people the meaning and misery of it. Even in the midst
of it I had a strange idea at first that it was only a fantasy and that
such things do not happen. Afterwards I became so used to it all that
I came to think the world must always have been like this, with people
always in flight, families and crowds of families drifting about
aimlessly, from town to town, getting into trains just because they
started somewhere for somewhere else, sitting for hours on bundles
which contained all their worldly goods saved from the wreckage of
ancient homes, losing their children on the roadside, and not fretting
very much, and finding other children, whom they adopted as their
own; never washing on that wandering, so that delicate women who
had once been perfumed with fine scents were dirty as gipsies and
unashamed of draggled dresses and dirty hands; eating when they
found a meal of charity, sleeping in railway sidings, coalsheds, and
derelict trains shunted on to grass-covered lines; careless as pariah
dogs of what the future held in store now that they had lost all things
in the past.
21
On the railway sidings near Calais there was one sight that revealed
the defeat of a nation more even than these crowds of refugees.
Hundreds of Belgian engines had been rushed over the frontier to
France to escape from being used in the enemy's service. These
derelict things stood there in long rows with a dismal look of
lifelessness and abandonment, and as I looked at them I knew that
though the remnants of the Belgian army might be fighting in its last
ditch and holding out at Antwerp against the siege guns of the
Germans, there could be no hope of prolonged resistance against
overwhelming armies. These engines, which should have been used
for Belgian transport, for men and food and guns, were out of action,
and dead symbols of a nation's ruin.
22
For the first time I saw Belgian soldiers in France, and although they
were in small number compared with the great army of retreat which,
after the fall of Antwerp, I saw marching into Dunkirk, their weariness
and listlessness told a tale of woe. At first sight there was something
comical in the aspect of these top-hatted soldiers. They reminded me
of battalions of London cabbies who had ravaged the dustbins for
discarded "toppers." Their double-breasted coats had just the cut of
those of the ancient jehus who used to sit aloft on decrepit "growlers."
Other bodies of Belgian soldiers wore ludicrous little képis with
immense eye-shades, mostly broken or hanging limp in a dejected
way. In times of peace I should have laughed at the look of them. But
now there was nothing humorous about these haggard, dirty men
from Ghent who had borne the first shock of the German attack. They
seemed stupefied for lack of sleep, or dazed after the noise of battle.
I asked some of them where they were going, but they shook their
heads and answered gloomily:
"We don't know. We know nothing, except that our Belgium is
destroyed. What is the news?"
23
There was no news--beyond what one could glean from the
incoherent tales of Belgian refugees. The French newspapers still
contained vague and cheerful bulletins about their own military
situation, and filled the rest of their meagre space with eloquent
praise of les braves petits Belges. The war was still hidden behind
impenetrable walls of silence. Gradually, however, as I dodged about
the western side of France, from the middle to the end of August, it
became clear to me, and to my two friends, the Philosopher and the
Strategist, who each in his way of wisdom confirmed my worst
suspicions, that the situation for both the French and the British
armies was enormously grave. In spite of the difficulty of approaching
the war zone--at that time there was no certain knowledge as to the
line of front--we were seeing things which could not be concealed by
any censorship. We saw, too clearly for any doubt, that the war zone
was approaching us, steadily and rapidly. The shadow of its looming
terror crept across the fields of France, though they lay all golden in
the sunlight of the harvest month.
24
After the struggling tides of fugitive tourists, and overlapping the
waves of Belgian refugees, there came new streams of panic-stricken
people, and this time they were French. They came from the northern
towns--Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Armentières, and from scores of
villages further south which had seemed utterly safe and aloof from
hostile armies which, with faith in official communiqués issued by the
French Ministry of War, we believed to be still checked beyond the
French frontier in Belgium. Lille? Was Lille threatened by the Kaiser's
troops? It had been evacuated? No, that could not be true, unless
treachery had been at work, Lille could hold out, surely, at least as
long as Liège! Had we not read long articles by the military experts of
the French Press describing the strength of that town and the
impregnable position of its forts? Yet here were refugees from Lille
who had heard the roar of German guns, and brought incredible
stories of French troops in retreat, and spoke the name of a French
general with bitter scorn, and the old cry of "Nous sommes trahis!"
The refugees from the north were in as pitiable a state as those who
had preceded them from Belgium. More pitiable, because when they
reached such ports as Calais or Boulogne or Havre, the hotels and
lodging-houses were overcrowded from attic to cellars, the buffets
had been swept clear of food, and committees of relief were already
distracted with the overwhelming needs of a Belgian invasion.
25
I remember a day and night in Boulogne. The narrow streets--evil with
odours brought forth by a hot sun, were filled with surging crowds
which became denser as new trains arrived from Calais and Dunkirk
and junctions on northern lines. The people carried with them the
salvage of their homes, wrapped up in blankets, sheets, towels and
bits of ragged paper. Parcels of grotesque shapes, containing
copper pots, frying pans, clocks, crockery and all kinds of
domestic utensils or treasured ornaments, bulged on the pavements
and quaysides, where whole families sat encamped. Stalwart
mothers of Normandy and Picardy trudged through the streets with
children clinging to their skirts, with babies in their arms and with big
French loaves--the commissariat of these journeys of despair--
cuddled to their bosoms with the babes. Old grandfathers and
grandmothers, who looked as though they had never left their native
villages before, came hand in hand, with shaking heads and watery
eyes, bewildered by all this turmoil of humanity which had been thrust
out, like themselves, from its familiar ways of life. Well-to-do
bourgeois, shot with frayed nerves, exhausted by an excess of
emotion and fatigue, searched for lodgings, anywhere and at any
price, jostled by armies of peasants, shaggy-haired, in clumping
sabots, with bundles on their backs, who were wandering on the
same quest for the sake of the women and children dragging wearily
in their wake. I heard a woman cry out words of surrender: "Je n'en
peux plus!" She was spent and could go no further, but halted
suddenly, dumped down her bundles and her babies and, leaning
against a sun-baked wall, thrust the back of a rough hand across her
forehead, with a moan of spiritual pain.
"Dieu! ... C'est trop! c'est trop!"
All day long these scenes went on, until I could bear them no longer,
but went indoors to the room which made me feel a selfish monster
because I shared it with only two friends. Boulogne became quiet in
the darkness. Perhaps by some miracle all those homeless ones had
found a shelter. ... I awakened out of a drowsy sleep to hear the
tramp of innumerable feet. A new army of fugitives had come into the
town, I heard voices murmuring below my window, arguing, pleading.
There was a banging at doors down the street.
"C'est impossible! Il n'y a pas de place! Il y a une foule qui dort en
plein air. Voyez! voyez!"
The night porter slammed his own door in a rage. Perhaps there was
pity in his heart as well as rage, but what can a man do when people
demand admittance to an hotel where there are already six people in
the bathroom and sixty on the floor of the salon, and stiff bodies
wrapped in blankets, like corpses in eternal sleep, lying about in the
corridors?
"There are crowds of people sleeping in the open air," he said, and
when I leaned out of the window, staring into the darkness of the
night and breathing in the cool air which had an autumn touch, I saw
dimly on the pavement below huddled figures in the doorways and
under the shelter of the eaves. A baby wailed with a thin cry. A
woman's voice whimpered just below my window, and a man spoke
to her.
"C'est la guerre!"
The words came up to me as though to answer the question in my
own mind as to why such things should be.
"C'est la guerre!"
Yes, it was war; with its brutality against women and children, its
horrible stupidity, its senseless overthrow of all life's decencies, and
comforts, and security. The non-combatants were not to be spared,
though they had not asked for war, and hated it.