Gibbons, long the friend of Alsace, and in some wise, as I told them, the
god of the machine directing my steps to them; Mr. John Weare; and others
whom I don’t recall. There had been, too, a fair and fleeting vision of
Mrs. Bliss one snowy winter day.
Many beautiful words were said of my country, and in that hour I think
it was, to them of the reconquered triangle, “_dulce et decora_” to have
even the least of the daughters of the Stars and Stripes at their board,
that hers should have been among the feet bringing “the glad tidings of
good things.”
When coffee and _quetsch_ and cigarettes were passed around, the
schoolmasters made ready to pour some of the heady white liqueur into the
glasses of even the smallest of the little boys, but the commandant said,
“No,” and cigarettes only are offered to the babes. I would put my hand
in the fire (knowing I could draw it out unsinged) that it was not the
first time they had puffed “caporals.” The seven-year-old one held his
with an astounding ease, not entirely hereditary. When he had finished he
was stood on a chair, from which he recited “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_,” the
lines concerning the now extremely well-demonstrated “_La raison du plus
fort est toujours la meilleure_,” being given almost at a breath, one
word tightly tied to another in quite an ingenious way.
An older one, whose naturally flashing eye was slightly restrained only
by the solemnity of the occasion, gave us the equally classic, “_Maidre
corpeau sur un arbre bergé_.” He hadn’t been caught so young, and the old
Adam in the shape of his German accent was heavy upon him. Then, standing
in a row, they sang “_Le Chant du Départ_,” that greatest of all the
wars’ marching songs, and the childish voices cut my heart like a knife,
and tears were loosened, and through their blur I seemed to see the march
of the generations of Alsace adown the ages, fulfilling the shifting,
cruel destinies of border peoples. Ghosts of the Thirty Years’ War, of
the Napoleonic wars, of 1870, and of 1914, and of the other dateless
struggles that have ravaged their rich valleys, come before me. I weep
and weep, and my handkerchief is a microscopic, damp, gray ball. I have
an idea that pride of sex alone restrained the blue-clad men from tears.
Peace, lovely Peace, desired like the morning, was arising, but her light
was to shine on rivers of blood, running through such black ruins that
her glory and her sweetness, and even her hope, hurt with a great hurt,
and I thought again on those who, empty-armed, must yet rejoice....
Afterward I strolled along the banks of the pebbly Thur with the
commandant and Captain Saint-Girons. There is a river-path leading under
balconied, red-roofed houses, or by gray walls, and there is an old round
tower having a caplike roof with a point on the top, and against it are
silhouetted a poplar and a sycamore. Nearly everywhere the lovely gray
lace spire of the cathedral shows above roof or tree or chimney; and it
is said that though Strasbourg’s cathedral is higher and Friburg’s is
wider, Thann’s is the loveliest.[16]
When the Mission had its headquarters at Thann, the commandant and
Captain Saint-Girons were wont to walk along this path in the afternoon,
holding a sort of tribunal, receiving petitions, granting favors,
righting differences that may occur even among the delivered, quite after
the fashion of Saint-Louis receiving the petitions of his people under
the great tree.
The river flows through the heart of the lovely old town, badly bombarded
in spots. To our left as we walked rose the deep-colored hills in the
full afternoon burnishing of their deep rusty reds and pale gilts.
As we pass up the steep winding road we meet the Duc de Trévise,
under-lieutenant, with a sketch in his hand of a shell-shot historic
corner of Thann, the commandant wishing to save at least a memorial
wherever he can. Furthermore, Thann was black-spotted with our negro
troops. Sometimes I stopped and spoke, sometimes I waved as I passed,
just to see the full, white-toothed smile against the exotic background.
[Illustration: THANN. LA VIEILLE TOUR]
The orphanage toward which we are bound is in the old Château de
Marsilly, beautifully situated in the cleft of its own hill and restored
not too cruelly. Close above it rises the Engelberg, the tower of whose
castle was blown up when Turenne practised the arts of war in the valley.
Part of it lies like a great ring, and is called the “Eye of the Witch.”
To our right as we mount is a V-shaped glimpse of the valley where the
Germans lie intrenched, formed by close, rich hillsides, on which lie in
lovely, ruglike designs the vineyards of _l’heureuse Alsace féconde en
vignobles_.
A charming, vivacious nun whose age was unguessable by twenty years,
dark-eyed and satin-skinned, whose manners could not have been surpassed
for ease by any woman of the great world, greets us. I think for the
thousandth time how perfect the polish the conventual life gives. I have
seen in peasant cottages the rooms wherein they were born, these women
of restrained gesture, of dignified mien, of easy charm in conversation,
of finished courtesy, and realize again that something invisible,
imponderable, yet all-powerful, shapes the coarse block, polishes the
rough surface, till there is no resemblance to that out of which it was
hewn.
As we turn to go down we stand for a moment looking again through the
V-shaped cleft at the rich, blue plain held by the enemy.
“How often,” said Captain Saint-Girons, after a silence, “it has
seemed to me like the Promised Land, and how often during these four
interminable years have I longed to look at these hills _from_ the plain.”
“Now all is fulfilling itself,” I answered.
The commandant said nothing, but his gaze, too, was fixed on the wide
horizon.
Then we visited the military cemetery, a pleasant place, as cemeteries
go, with many trees, and fallen, rustling leaves, and a few late-blooming
flowers. Many sons of France were lying there since “the beginning”;
others had been but lately laid away. The two officers stood for a moment
with uncovered heads by the graves of four comrades of the Mission,
killed by a bomb in front of the Mairie, as they were going in for lunch.
Again I bowed my head and tears were loosened. Never as in this war has
“death been made so proud with pure and princely beauty.” How can we so
soon be engaged in “business as usual,” compete with the splendor of
these dead?
Then we pass down the valley of the Thur, so greatly loved by those who
dwell therein, inclosed by purple and dark-amber hills, but inclosed
easily, widely, leaving room for fancy, for delight, with no sense of
being shut in by heaps of earth that press too tight.
As we enter St.-Amarin, the long, central street is like a pale-blue
ribbon, for through it a battalion of some Marseilles regiment is
passing. As my eye received it I knew the lovely picture for some
bleaching daguerreotype, its color and lineaments to fade in the bright
light of peace. We stop a moment at the Administration building and see
again M. de Maroussem, to whom, on meeting him first at Madame Galland’s,
I had said, “You are an Englishman?” And to those who have frequented
international worlds I don’t need to say how he looks. To others I would
say that he is tall, blond, athletic, wearing easily a well-cut, not too
new uniform, and having a perceptive blue eye (which, however, is really
a very French eye when one takes a second look). One would have known
that he hunted in England and had polo-ponies in France. In civil life he
is a banker.
Now among other things he is chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ and tells
me dinner is at 7.45 “tapant.” The hour is near wherein I am to be shown
how far superior the St.-Amarin _popote_ is to that of Masevaux.
Then the commandant accompanies me to the house of M. Helmer, the
well-known Alsatian lawyer who is counsel for the Mission. Also it was
he who defended Hansi when he was brought before the German courts and
condemned for _lèse-majesté_.[17]
From the great bowed window of Madame Helmer’s drawing-room I could look
down the suddenly mystical-seeming valley, discerned by the spirit rather
than the eye at 4.30 of a November afternoon. It was but a stretch of
white filmy substance between violet hills, under a gray-green heaven,
with something warm and precious at its western edge. Such a passing of
the day as the saints of old would have loved.
Hung along the wall opposite the great window are engravings of the
Mantegna frieze from Hampton Court, and there were many books.
After tea the commandant took his leave and Madame Helmer showed me to
my comfortable room where I had thirty saving minutes, horizontal and in
the dark, fully conscious, but completely resting, thought consecutive
but not active, flowing in a smooth way between banks of quiet nerves in
quiet flesh.
“Seven forty-five tapant” finds me again at the Administration building,
whither M. Helmer accompanied me, and it is very pleasant as I enter.
Commandant Poulet is sitting at a huge desk signing papers, more
blue-clad officers and two _infirmières_ are presented, after which we
pass into the dining-room, whose doors are flung open in classic style by
a well-trained orderly. In Masevaux we simply gathered and sat down. Now
the mess-table of St.-Amarin has a decided touch of elegance, too, in the
way of pink-shaded candles, and in the middle there was an arrangement
of chrysanthemums and autumn leaves. Instead of a Mère Labonne they have
a _cordon bleu_ who performs his rites very suitably in the dark-blue
uniform of the chasseurs. We sit down to a dinner that might have been
served with pride at Voisin’s or the Café de Paris, where all except
the chairs is extra and getting back a cane or hat costs the remaining
eye (if one remains) of the head. I am indeed impressed, as I was meant
to be, and M. de Maroussem might have said, “Didn’t I tell you so?” in
his pure and pleasant English. I sat between the commandant and Captain
Perdrizet, chief of the Forestry Service of the Thann district, and
to the sound of cannon, which in spite of peace prospects was heavily
firing over the Hartmannswillerkopf, we consumed _carpes à la Flamande_,
a course of game elaborately presented with all its feathers, finishing
with _poires Bordaloue_, the whole perpetuated on a charming menu card
decorated with the classic Alsatian stork by Andrieux, one of the
officers of the mess.
As I sat down I saw in front of me a sign over the door leading into
the pantry, a somewhat Y.M.C.A.-ish sign, “_Sois sobre et tu vivras
longtemps_” (“Be sober and you will live long”), and de Maroussem’s
feelings were almost hurt when I asked if perhaps behind me there was one
that said, “_Mange peu et tu seras invité souvent_” (“Eat little and you
will be invited often”). And when it came time for coffee and cigarettes
and some especially old _quetsch_ he brought out the book, “The Friends
of France,” that I had first seen at Harry Sleeper’s in Gloucester Bay, a
thousand years ago, it seemed, and we turned to the death and citation of
Norman Hall, Commandant Poulet recalling again that he had begun his work
in Alsace on the 25th of December, 1914, and on the 26th he had stood by
Norman Hall’s open grave.
Then a radio, just received, concerning the Parlementaries, is discussed;
among them is slated von Hintze, leading to talk of the days when I had
known him in Mexico. Count Oberndorf, too, husband of a dear and charming
friend of Dutch and American birth, was on the list, and we spoke of
Vienna as it had been—and was no more. _Sic transit_ ... though I thought
within myself, as I looked, for a flashing moment, down the vista of
history, many things return.
It was late when two officers accompanied me to my dwelling, to the
sucking sound of boots in mud, and under a starless sky hanging dark
and heavy over a black, black earth. At last I could draw literally the
drapery of my couch about me and lie down to dreams of _my_ men in blood
and glory before Sedan.
XI
THE RE-GALLICIZING OF ALSACE
_November 8th, St.-Amarin, Night._—Fancy and feeling too quickened for
sleep. If there is anything I did not see or anything I did not feel, in
and about St.-Amarin, I challenge some one of the Mission to produce it.
This was my day, or rather half of it. At 8.45 Lieutenant Fress,
Inspector of Schools, came to fetch me, and not knowing how to be late
(alack!), I am on the stairs as he rings the bell. We pass out into a
white, rather flat November world toward the schoolhouses, everywhere the
clean odor of freshly hewn wood and sawdust hanging on the November air.
Now the re-Gallicizing of Alsace is one of the most interesting political
operations I have ever seen, and Heaven knows I’ve seen many in many
lands. But this washing out and marking in of history on the clean slate
of childhood is different from anything else, though easier than most
things, the eye of youth glancing easily from earth to heaven and from
heaven to earth—and soft and eager the slate of its mind.
The St.-Amarin schoolhouse is a large, solid building, its walls hung
everywhere with huge war-posters, all of those one sees in Paris and many
besides.
The classes for the smaller children, in accordance with the traditions
of the valley, here also are in the hands of the Sisters of “The Divine
Providence,” who, in the earliest years of the nineteenth century,
opened in St.-Amarin the first school for girls. The other classes are
taught by carefully selected Alsatian teachers or by mobilized French
schoolmasters. Formerly French was the language of honor, for the
well-to-do only, but now this article, once “of luxury,” is for all the
language of their country and their heart, and pride mixes with the zeal
with which the peasants pursue _la belle langue_—not always successfully.
For in these border regions the tongue has an un-Gallic thickness; the
voice is placed far back in the throat, with a strong accent on the
tonic, nothing of the light flinging from the lips that makes the beauty
of the French language and its conquest so difficult.
We begin with a class of small children, where a smiling, almost
exuberantly happy nun is teaching a group of little delivered darlings to
sing, “_il y avait une bergère et ron, ron, ron, petit pat à pon_”—to my
surprise, in the latest manner of Jacques Dalcroze. They evidently mean
to keep abreast of the times here in Alsace.
While they recited I looked about. The room was large, light, and
superheated by a small, black, iron stove fiercely burning. On the wall
were maps of the Old World, and, I had almost said, of the world to come,
for new divisions of countries were indicated. Among the many posters and
in the place of honor was a big colored text, which I afterward saw in
every room, with the head-line, “_Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure une
paix fondée sur la parole de l’Allemagne_” (“Why one cannot make a peace
founded on the word of Germany”).
The children were literally as good as gold. No scuffling of feet nor
restless rubbing about on the seats. I remarked this as we left the room
after listening to “_Le Loup et l’Agneau_” recited in those shrill, thin
voices, and Lieutenant Fress said, with a smile:
“What remains of the Boche discipline makes them docile and attentive
scholars; they are often several hours in class without needing to be
reprimanded for chattering or lack of attention.”
Later I delicately inquired about ink-throwing or “spitballs,” but it
appeared they’re unknown.
We then betook ourselves upstairs to a class of older girls, from ten
to thirteen or thereabouts, to whom Lieutenant Fress, with the greatest
confidence, put the most difficult questions. It was a class of French
history, and he began boldly with the Druids and finished with the war of
1914. He has a gift for teaching, and was so easy with those children,
whom I should have been embarrassed, not to say terrified, to approach,
that the answers came pleasantly and quickly. When at a certain moment,
however, there was a delay, I got anxious, thinking to myself, suppose
the Sister or Lieutenant Fress were to say to the class:
“You don’t know? Then we must ask this _aimable_ lady who has come across
the ocean to visit you. _She_ will tell us.” And of Charles the Fat,
then engaging our attention, I only remembered vaguely that he had had
a saintly wife of whom he grew tired. There were other questions, too,
about Louis of Aquitaine, which awakened only the faintest echoes in
memory, but which to my relief were answered to complete satisfaction by
a determined, dark-eyed, round-faced girl of twelve or thereabouts.
Lieutenant Fress then asked who could recite “_La Laitière et le Pot au
Lait_.” All hands shot up, and the recitation proceeded with much _brio_.
“What does this teach us?” he boldly asked at the end.
At this a heavy-jawed, but very bright, near-together-eyed girl raised
her hand without a second’s hesitation, and equally without a second’s
hesitation answered:
“To think only of the present.” As is elegantly expressed in the enemies’
tongue, that girl wasn’t one of whom it would be said she would be “left
hanging,” except of course as regards the imponderabilities.
Lieutenant Fress: “But is it well to think only of the present? What of
imagination, and things that may happen in the future?”
A small, undersized girl with a deep-blue eye somewhat nervously answered:
“In imagination one builds castles in Spain.”
This was encouraging, but what she called _châteaux d’Espagne_ seemed
not, however, to find great favor, for a silence fell on that bright-eyed
class.
“But isn’t that all right?” continued Lieutenant Fress, giving a fillip.
“Must we think only of the things we can see and touch?”
At the mention of seeing and touching, hands again shot up. He indicated
a thick-haired, heavy-browed girl.
“In thinking of the things she doesn’t see, the good housewife would
forget to cook the dinner, _et cela serait tommage_,” was the answer
coming from the deepest depths of her consciousness.
On which we leave the schoolroom, with its extremely practical
atmosphere, the argument being unanswerable, even by Lieutenant Fress.
I could but think on that long line of peasants who have wrestled with
realities, begotten, brought forth, tilled the soil, baked the bread,
struggling all the time with their border-destiny, nature and history,
even more than their own wills, having made them what they are. It
struck me as reasonable that they should be a canny set, those little
girls. Something alert, perceptive of realities, was forming them, they
could not be over-given to dreams, for which one is both sorry and glad,
according to the way one happens to feel about human things at the
moment—and not necessarily the way they are. Even Marcus Aurelius tells
us that “if a thing displease us” (I suppose he only forgot to add,
“or if a thing please us”) “it is not that thing, but our view of that
thing.” And certainly a lot of perfectly good things are spoiled by the
point of view.
In the next room they were having a lesson in American history, quite in
the note everywhere these days, and I know the Sister saw the hand of God
as I entered at that special moment (she was a quiet-eyed, not very young
Sister, who had trod further paths than those of learning). Then and
there I heard the tale of the Boston Tea-party, and its consequences, of
the War of the Rebellion, and the name of Lincoln, pronounced “Lancone,”
who “wanted all men to be free and equal,” sounded through the room. No
one, of course, expressed a doubt, nor ever will in schoolrooms, that men
aren’t free, neither are they equal. As for myself, I thank God nearly
every morning that some men always will be better than others, realizing
that there is more difference between man and man than between man and
beast, which truth was recalled to me but shortly by an equalitarian
friend of the New Republic—but it’s not for schools, like many other
truths. Even Saint Paul can do nothing except cry out, “Shall not the
potter have power to shape the vessel as he will, some to honor, some
to dishonor?” which again recognizes the fact of inequality without
explaining it. However, there’s no use going into that now.
I soon found myself in a class of boys of twelve to fifteen years of age.
They were having a lesson in German, and were reading a “piece” called
“_Der arme Sepp_,” the history of whose misfortunes (he was a stable-boy,
and the horse ran away and the wagon was broken, and he was received by
his master with blows) didn’t seem to stick; for after it had been read
out no boy, in answer to Lieutenant Fress’s questions, could recount the
short and simple annals of poor Sepp.
They weren’t nearly so bright as the girls. Dull-eyed, pimply-faced,
squeaky-voiced, they were wrestling with something that was for the time
stronger than books—the eternal _Frühlings Erwachen_, that has always
occupied philosophers and scientists—though not so much parents, who are
apt to avoid the issues involved.
We passed finally into a class where young women were dissecting _Les
Obsèques de la Lionne_, under the guidance of a brown-bearded, one-armed
teacher in uniform. It was a small room, and you could have cut the
air with a knife. And for the mist I could scarcely see the placard
“_Pourquoi on ne peut pas conclure une paix fondée sur la parole
d’Allemagne_” and the portraits of Clémenceau and Poincaré.
About this time I began to understand that La Fontaine is the pillar of
the French educational system; and there is no doubt that he _did_ clear
up a lot of doubtful things, in the most liquid use of the clearest of
all languages.
We listened here to dissertations on the falseness of courts and
courtiers, the charms of which were not touched on. How those who
frequented them learned disastrous habits of dissimulation, not to
say lying, and how ’twas better to live in obscurity (which for some
reason is always supposed to be cheerful and where nobody ever lies
perhaps because it isn’t worth while). Courts are not in favor anywhere
just now, but everybody will admit they’ve had a glorious past; and as
for democracy’s future, which the Bolsheviki and the New Freedom are
decidedly handicapping, they _may_ run it a close second. This class
was not so interesting, however, as were the children’s—discussions of
intellectual propositions by people who aren’t intellectual being an
awful bore at any time.
Toward the end there was a horrid moment, Lieutenant Fress bearing up
with equanimity, when the over-bold teacher, interrupting the reading,
asked the meaning of the word “_apothéose_.” Dead silence.
“_Continuez_,” he finally said, though a young woman with an immense
amount of corn-colored hair waved low about some spectacled blue eyes,
and wearing a large silver pin with the word “_Adieu_” on it, showed
signs of being about to bring forth the answer.
They finished the fable in unison in their strong border-accent, which
seemed to get thicker and thicker as we got farther up the flights of
learning.
_Amusez les rois par tes songes,_
_Flattez-les, payez les d’agréables mensonges._
_Quelque intignation dont leur cœur soit rembli,_
_Ils goberont l’abbât, vous serez leur ami._
But methought it isn’t anything like what the “people” will have to
“swallow,” when everybody is free and nobody is equal. And I wondered
again at those who think to change the destinies of nations from without,
by formulas or commands, when each evolves mysteriously, mystically,
inevitably from within, out of its own particular shape and substance
and strength. Even one from over the seas, clad in the supremest power a
great nation has ever lent a mortal, though he pull the earth to pieces
in the attempt, cannot change this law of nature. “_Que direz-vous, races
futures?_”
And time respects nothing that is done without it.
As we came out into the square, little boys were bringing in armfuls of
wood for their schoolroom stoves, others were already noisily scampering
home for dinner in the crisp, sawdusty air; straight columns of smoke
from many chimneys evoked women standing about noonday fires; there was a
homely, human feeling about it all....