The notes which I sent to the "Figaro" from China are to be collected
in a volume which will be published in Paris before my return, so that
it will be impossible for me to look it over. I am therefore a little
uneasy as to how such a collection may turn out; it will doubtless
contain much repetition. Yet I beg that you will accept this dedication
as a token of the profound and affectionate respect of your first
aide-de-camp. You will be more indulgent than any one else, because
you know under what conditions it was written,--from day to day during
a painful campaign in the midst of the continual excitement of life
aboard ship.
I have restricted myself to noting the things which have come under my
own observation while undertaking the missions to which you assigned
me, and in the course of the journey which you allowed me to take into
a certain part of China hitherto almost unknown.
When we reached the Yellow Sea, Pekin had been taken, and the war was
over. I could, therefore, only observe our soldiers during the period
of peaceful occupation. Under these circumstances I have seen them
always kind and almost fraternal in manner toward the humblest of the
Chinese. May my book contribute its small part toward destroying the
shameful stories published against them!
Perhaps you may reproach me, Admiral, for saying almost nothing of
the sailors who remained on our ships, who were constantly toiling
with never a murmur or a loss of courage during our long and dangerous
sojourn in the waters of Petchili. Poor sequestered beings living
between steel walls! They did not have, to sustain them, as their
superiors had, any of the responsibilities which make up the interest
of life, or the stimulus that comes from having to decide serious
questions. They knew nothing, they saw nothing, not even the sinister
coast in the distance. In spite of the heat of a Chinese summer, fires
were burning day and night in their stifling quarters; they lived
bathed in a moist heat, dripping with perspiration, coming out only for
exhausting drill-work in small boats, in bad weather, and often in the
dead of night and on boisterous seas.
One needs but a glance at their thin pale faces now, to understand how
difficult their obscure rôle has been.
But if I had told of the monotony of their hardships, and of their
silent unending devotion, no one would have had the patience to read me.