It is curious how long the song of La Marseillaise has held its power.
It has been like a leit-motif through all the drama of this war in
France, through the spirit of the French people waiting patiently for
victory, hiding their tears for the dead, consoling their wounded and
their cripples, and giving their youngest and their manhood to the
God of War. What is the magic in this tune so that if one hear it even
on a cheap piano in an auxiliary hospital, or scraped thinly on a
violin in a courtyard of Paris, it thrills one horribly? On the night
of August 2, when I traveled from Paris to Nancy, it seemed to me that
France sang La Marseillaise--the strains of it rose from every wayside
station--and that out of its graveyards across those dark hills and
fields, with a thin luminous line on the far horizon the ghosts of
slain soldiers rose to sing it to those men who were going to fight
again for liberty.
Since then it has always been in my ears. I heard it that night in
Amiens when the French army was in retreat, and when all the young men
of the city, not yet called to the colours because of their youth,
escaped hurriedly on truck trains before a bridge was blown up, so that
if they stayed they would be prisoners in German hands. It was these
boys who sang it, with fresh, clear voices, joining in a fine chorus,
though not far away the soldiers of France were limping through the
night from abandoned positions:
_Entendez-vous, dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Aux armes, citoyens!
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons!..._
I listened to those boys' voices, and something of the history of the
song put its spell upon me then. There was the passion of old heroism
in it, of old and bloody deeds....
Poor devils! Hundreds of them have told me their stories and at the end
of a tale of misery have said: "I do not complain, you know. It's war,
and I am glad to do my duty for the sake of France." And yet sometimes,
when they thought back, to the homes they had left, and their old ways
of civil life, they had moments of weakness in which all the strength
of their souls seemed to ebb away.
"It's fatal to think of one's life before the war," said a young
Frenchman who sat with me at the table of a little café not far from
the front. He was a rich young man, with a great business in Paris
which had been suspended on the first day of mobilization, and with a
pretty young wife who had just had her first baby. Now he was a simple
soldier, and for nine months he had not seen Paris or his home or his
pretty wife. The baby's eyes were gray-blue, it seemed, but he had not
been able to test the truth of that description.
"As a rule," he said, "one doesn't think back to one's old life. A
great gulf lies between us and the past and it is as though one had
been born again just to be a soldier in this war. The roots of our
former existence have been torn up. All one's old interests have been
buried. My wife? I hardly ever think of her. My home? Is there such
a place?... It is only at night, or suddenly, sometimes, as one goes
marching with one's company that one's thoughts begin to roam back
over old grounds for a moment or two. The other fellows know what
one's silence means, and one's deafness, so that one doesn't hear
a neighbour's joke or answer his question. It gives one a horrible
heartache and one is overwhelmed with depression.... Great God, how
long is this war going to last?"
(This brilliant young English author continues to relate the scenes his
eyes have witnessed with the skill of the master. His description of
Paris during the siege is a literary masterpiece.--EDITOR.)