[4] All numbers relate to the stories herein told--not to the chapters
in the book.
"THE SOUL OF THE WAR"--TALES OF THE HEROIC FRENCH
_Revelations of a War Correspondent_
_Told by Philip Gibbs, Special Correspondent for the "London Daily
Chronicle"_
The eye-witness stories of this gifted English author lay bare the
soul of the Great War. He tells of the human and psychological side
of warfare as he has seen it on the battle field under heavy shell
fire, in bombarded towns, in field hospitals and amid great movements
of troops. He reveals the throbbing heart of the ghastly brute force
that mangles the body and tortures the mind of heroic men. The author
says in his conclusion: "More passionate than any other emotion that
has stirred man through life is my conviction that any man that has
seen these things, if he has ... any human pity, should dedicate his
head and heart to the sacred duty of preventing another war like
this." The stories herein given are by permission of his publishers,
_Robert M. McBride and Company_ (Copyright 1915), and are taken from
but one chapter of this notable book, in which he relates nearly a
thousand anecdotes.
[5] I--STORY OF THE SOLDIERS OF FRANCE
The Germans, however great their army, could never have captured the
soul of Paris....
When in the first days of the war I saw the soldiers of France on
their way to the front, I had even then a conviction that the fighting
qualities of the nation had not degenerated in forty-four years of
peace.... Afterwards, during many months as a wanderer in this war, I
came to know the French soldier with the intimacy of long conversations
to the sound of guns, in the first line of trenches facing the enemy,
in hospitals, where he spoke quietly while comrades snored themselves
to death, in villages smashed to pieces by shell-fire, in troop trains
overcrowded with wounded, in woods and fields pockmarked by the holes
of "marmites," and in the restaurants of Paris and provincial towns
where, with an empty sleeve or one trouser-leg dangling beneath the
tablecloth, he told me his experiences of war with a candor in which
there was no concealment of truth; and out of all these friendships
and revelations of soul the character of the soldiers of France stands
before my mind in heroic colors....
He does not like death--he dreads the thought of it--but without
questioning his soul he springs forward to save this mother-country of
his and dies upon her bosom with a cry of "Vive la France!"
The French soldier ... needs feminine consolation, and all his ideals
and his yearnings and his self-pity are intimately associated with the
love of women, and especially of one woman--his mother. When Napoleon,
in the island of St. Helena, used to talk about the glories of his
victorious years, and then brooded over the tragedy of his overthrow so
that all his soul was clouded with despair, he used to rouse himself
after the silence which followed those hours of self-analysis and say,
"Let us talk about women--and love." Always it is the feminine spirit
in which a Frenchman bathes his wounds. One small incident I saw a year
or two ago gave me the clue to this quality in the French character.
It was when Védrines, the famous airman, was beaten by only a few
minutes in the flight round England. Capitaine Conneau--"Beaumont,"
as he called himself--had outraced his rival and waited, with French
gallantry, to shake the hand of the adversary he had defeated on
untiring wings. A great crowd of smart men and women waited also at
Brooklands to cheer the second in the race, who in England is always
more popular than the prize-winner. But when Védrines came to earth out
of a blue sky he was savage and bitter. The loss of the prize-money was
a great tragedy to this mechanic who had staked all his ambition on
the flight. He shouted out harsh words to those who came to cheer him,
and shook them off violently when they tried to clap him on the back.
He was savagely angry. Then suddenly something seemed to break in his
spirit, and his face quivered.
"Is there any woman to embrace me?" he asked. Out of the crowd came a
pretty Frenchwoman and, understanding the man, though she had not met
him before, she held out her arms to him and raised her face.
"Allons-donc, mon vieux!" she said.
The man put his arms about her and kissed her, while tears streamed
down his face, covered in sweat and dust. He was comforted, like a
boy who had hurt himself, in his mother's arms. It was a queer little
episode--utterly impossible in the imagination of an Englishman--but a
natural thing in France.
So when a Frenchman lies dying, almost unconscious before the last
breath, it is always a woman's name that he cries out, or whispers,
though not always the name of his wife or mistress. One word is heard
again and again in the hospital wards, where the _poilus_ lie, those
bearded fellows, so strong when they went out to the war, but now so
weak and helpless before death.
"Maman! Maman!"
It is to the bosom of motherhood that the spirit of the Frenchman goes
in that last hour.
"Oh, my dear little mamma," writes a young lieutenant of artillery, "it
would be nice to be in my own room again, where your picture hangs
over my bed looking down on the white pillows upon which you used to
make the sign of the Cross before I went to sleep. I often try to dream
myself into that bedroom again, but the cold is too intense for dreams,
and another shell comes shrieking overhead. War is nothing but misery,
after all."
Yet if the English reader imagines that because this thread of
sentiment runs through the character of France there is a softness in
the qualities of French soldiers, he does not know the truth. Those men
whom I saw at the front and behind the fighting lines were as hard in
moral and spiritual strength as in physical endurance....