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WAR
WAR
BY
PIERRE LOTI
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
MARJORIE LAURIE
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
_Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A._
TO MY FRIEND
LOUIS BARTHOU, P.L.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. A LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF MARINE 9
II. TWO POOR LITTLE NESTLINGS OF BELGIUM 12
III. A GAY LITTLE SCENE AT THE BATTLE FRONT 18
IV. LETTER TO ENVER PASHA 28
V. ANOTHER SCENE AT THE BATTLE FRONT 34
VI. THE PHANTOM BASILICA 53
VII. THE FLAG WHICH OUR NAVAL BRIGADE DO NOT YET
POSSESS 68
VIII. TAHITI AND THE SAVAGES WITH PINK SKINS LIKE
BOILED PIG 80
IX. A LITTLE HUSSAR 85
X. AN EVENING AT YPRES 95
XI. AT THE GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE BELGIAN ARMY 111
XII. SOME WORDS UTTERED BY HER MAJESTY, THE QUEEN OF
THE BELGIANS 127
XIII. AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN
THE EAST 139
XIV. SERBIA IN THE BALKAN WAR 148
XV. ABOVE ALL LET US NEVER FORGET! 151
XVI. THE INN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN 157
XVII. FOR THE RESCUE OF OUR WOUNDED 174
XVIII. AT RHEIMS 177
XIX. THE DEATH-BEARING GAS 192
XX. ALL-SOULS' DAY WITH THE ARMIES AT THE FRONT 205
XXI. THE CROSS OF HONOUR FOR THE FLAG OF THE
NAVAL BRIGADE 211
XXII. THE ABSENT-MINDED PILGRIM 219
XXIII. THE FIRST SUNSHINE OF MARCH 242
XXIV. AT SOISSONS 265
XXV. THE TWO GORGON HEADS 299
WAR
I
A LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF MARINE
CAPTAIN J. VIAUD OF THE NAVAL RESERVE, TO THE MINISTER OF
MARINE.
_Rochefort, August 18th, 1914._
SIR,
When I was recalled to active service on the outbreak of war I had hopes
of performing some duty less insignificant than that which was assigned
to me in our dock-yards.
Believe me, I have no reproaches to make, for I am very well aware that
the Navy will not fill the principal role in this war, and that all my
comrades of the same rank are likewise destined to almost complete
inaction for mere lack of opportunity, like myself doomed, alas! to see
their energies sapped, their spirits in torment.
But let me invoke the other name I bear. The average man is not as a
rule well versed in Naval Regulations. Will it not, then, be a bad
example in our dear country, where everyone is doing his duty so
splendidly, if Pierre Loti is to serve no useful end? The exercise of
two professions places me as an officer in a somewhat exceptional
position, does it not? Forgive me then for soliciting a degree of
exceptional and indulgent treatment. I should accept with joy, with
pride, any position whatsoever that would bring me nearer to the
fighting-line, even if it were a very subordinate post, one much below
the dignity of my five rows of gold braid.
Or, on the other hand, in the last resort, could I not be appointed a
supernumerary on special duty on some ship which might have a chance of
seeing real fighting? I assure you that I should find some means of
making myself useful there. Or, finally, if there are too many rules and
regulations in the way, would you grant me, sir, while waiting until my
services may be required by the Fleet, liberty to come and go, so that I
may try to find some kind of employment, even if it be only ambulance
work? My lot is hard, and no one will understand that the mere fact that
I am a captain in the Naval Reserve dooms me to almost complete
inaction, while all France is in arms.
(_Signed_) JULIEN VIAUD.
(PIERRE LOTI.)
II
TWO POOR LITTLE NESTLINGS OF BELGIUM
_August, 1914._
One evening a train full of Belgian refugees had just entered the
railway station of one of our southern towns. Worn out and dazed, the
poor martyrs stepped down slowly, one by one, on to the unfamiliar
platform where Frenchmen were waiting to welcome them. Carrying with
them a few articles of clothing, caught up at haphazard, they had
climbed up into the coaches without so much as asking themselves what
was their destination. They had taken refuge there in hurried flight,
desperate flight from horror and death, from fire, mutilations
unspeakable and Sadic outrages--such things, deemed no longer possible
on earth, had been brooding still, it seemed, in the depths of
pietistic German brains, and, like an ultimate spewing forth of primeval
barbarities, had burst suddenly upon their country and upon our own.
Village, hearth, family--nothing remained to them; without purpose, like
waifs and strays, they had drifted there, and in the eyes of all lay
horror and anguish. Among them were many children, little girls, whose
parents were lost in the midst of conflagrations or battles; aged
grandmothers, too, now alone in the world, who had fled, scarce knowing
why, clinging no longer to life, yet urged on by some obscure instinct
of self-preservation. The faces of these aged women expressed no
emotion, not even despair; it seemed as if their souls had actually
abandoned their bodies and reason their brains.
Lost in that mournful throng were two quite young children, holding each
other tightly by the hand, two little boys, evidently two little
brothers. The elder, five years of age perhaps, was protecting the
younger, whose age may have been three. No one claimed them; no one knew
them. When they found themselves alone, how was it that they understood
that if they would escape death they, too, must climb into that train?
Their clothes were neat, and they wore warm little woollen stockings.
Evidently they belonged to humble but careful parents. Doubtless they
were the sons of one of those glorious soldiers of Belgium who fell like
heroes upon the field of honour--sons of a father who, in the moment of
death, must needs have bestowed upon them one last and tender thought.
So overwhelmed were they with weariness and want of sleep that they did
not even cry. Scarcely could they stand upright. They could not answer
the questions that were put to them, but above all they refused to let
go of each other; that they would not do. At last the big, elder
brother, still gripping the other's hand for fear of losing him,
realised the responsibilities of his character of protector; he summoned
up strength to speak to the lady with the brassard, who was bending down
to him.
"Madame," he said, in a very small, beseeching voice, already
half-asleep, "Madame, is anyone going to put us to bed?"
For the moment this was the only wish they were capable of forming; all
that they looked for from the mercy of mankind was that someone would be
so good as to put them to bed. They were soon put to bed, together, you
may be sure, and they went to sleep at once, still holding hands and
nestling close to each other, both sinking in the same instant into the
peaceful oblivion of children's slumbers.
One day long ago, in the China Seas during the war, two bewildered
little birds, two tiny little birds, smaller even than our wren, had
made their way, I know not how, on board our iron-clad and into our
admiral's quarters. No one, to be sure, had sought to frighten them, and
all day long they had fluttered about from side to side, perching on
cornices or on green plants. By nightfall I had forgotten them, when the
admiral sent for me. It was to show me, with emotion, his two little
visitors; they had gone to sleep in his room, perched on one leg upon a
silken cord fastened above his bed. Like two little balls of feathers,
touching and almost mingling in one, they slept close, very close
together, without the slightest fear, as if very sure of our pity.
And these poor little Belgian children, sleeping side by side, made me
think of those two nestlings, astray in the midst of the China Seas.
Theirs, too, was the same trust; theirs the same innocent slumber. But
these children were to be protected with a far more tender solicitude.
III
A GAY LITTLE SCENE AT THE BATTLE FRONT
_October, 1914._
At about eleven o'clock in the morning of that day I arrived at a
village--its name I have, let us say, forgotten. My companion was an
English commandant, whom the fortunes of war had given me for comrade
since the previous evening. Our path was lighted by that great and
genial magician, the sun--a radiant sun, a holiday sun, transfiguring
and beautifying all things. This occurred in a department in the extreme
north of France, which one it was I have never known, but the weather
was so fine that we might have imagined ourselves in Provence.
For nearly two hours our way lay hemmed in between two columns of
soldiers, marching in opposite directions. On our right were the English
going into action, very clean, very fresh, with an air of satisfaction
and in high spirits. They were admirably equipped and their horses in
the pink of condition. On our left were French Artillerymen coming back
from the Titanic battle to enjoy a little rest. The latter were coated
with dust, and some wore bandages round arm and forehead, but they still
preserved their gaiety of countenance and the aspect of healthy men, and
they marched in sections in good order. They were actually bringing back
quantities of empty cartridge cases, which they had found time to
collect, a sure proof that they had withdrawn from the scene of action
at their leisure, unhurried and unafraid--victorious soldiers to whom
their chiefs had prescribed a few days' respite. In the distance we
heard a noise like a thunderstorm, muffled at first, to which we were
drawing nearer and yet nearer. Peasants were working in the adjoining
fields as if nothing unusual were happening, and yet they were not sure
that the savages, who were responsible for such tumult yonder, would not
come back one of these days and pillage everything. Here and there in
the meadows, on the grass, sat groups of fugitives, clustered around
little wood fires. The scene would have been dismal enough on a gloomy
day, but the sun managed to shed a cheerful light upon it. They cooked
their meals in gipsy fashion, surrounded by bundles in which they had
hurriedly packed together their scanty clothing in the terrible rush for
safety.
Our motor car was filled with packets of cigarettes and with newspapers,
which kind souls had commissioned us to carry to the men in the
firing-line, and so slow was our progress, so closely were we hemmed in
by the two columns of soldiers, that we were able to distribute our
gifts through the doors of the car, to the English on our right, to the
French on our left. They stretched out their hands to catch them in
mid-air, and thanked us with a smile and a quick salute.
There were also villagers who travelled along that overcrowded road
mingling in confusion with the soldiers. I remember a very pretty young
peasant woman, who was dragging along by a string, in the midst of the
English transport wagons, a little go-cart with two sleeping babies. She
was toiling along, for the gradient just there was steep. A handsome
Scotch sergeant, with a golden moustache, who sat on the back of the
nearest wagon smoking a cigarette and dangling his legs, beckoned to
her.
"Give me the end of your string."
She understood and accepted his offer with a smile of pretty confusion.
The Scotchman wound the fragile tow-rope round his left arm, keeping his
right arm free so that he might go on smoking. So it was really he who
brought along these two babies of France, while the heavy transport
lorry drew their little cart like a feather.
When we entered the village, the sun shone with increasing splendour.
Such chaos, such confusion prevailed there as had never been seen
before, and after this war, unparalleled in history, will never again be
witnessed. Uniforms of every description, weapons of every sort, Scots,
French cuirassiers, Turcos, Zouaves, Bedouins, whose burnouses swung
upwards with a noble gesture as they saluted. The church square was
blocked with huge English motor-omnibuses that had once been a means of
communication in the streets of London, and still displayed in large
letters the names of certain districts of that city. I shall be accused
of exaggeration, but it is a fact that these omnibuses wore a look of
astonishment at finding themselves rolling along, packed with soldiers,
over the soil of France.
All these people, mingled together in confusion, were making
preparations for luncheon. Those savages yonder (who might perhaps
arrive here on the morrow--who could say?) still conducted their great
symphony, their incessant cannonade, but no one paid any attention to
it. Who, moreover, could be uneasy in such beautiful surroundings, such
surprising autumn sunshine, while roses still grew on the walls, and
many-coloured dahlias in gardens that the white frost had scarcely
touched? Everyone settled down to the meal and made the best of things.
You would have thought you were looking at a festival, a somewhat
incongruous and unusual festival, to be sure, improvised in the vicinity
of some tower of Babel. Girls wandered about among the groups; little
fair-haired children gave away fruit they had gathered in their own
orchards. Scotsmen in shirt-sleeves were persuaded that the country they
were in was warm by comparison with their own. Priests and Red Cross
sisters were finding seats for the wounded on packing-cases. One good
old sister, with a face like parchment, and frank, pretty eyes under her
mob-cap, took infinite pains to make a Zouave comfortable, whose arms
were both wrapped in bandages. Doubtless she would presently feed him as
if he were a little child.
We ourselves, the Englishman and I, were very hungry, so we made our way
to the pleasant-looking inn, where officers were already seated at table
with soldiers of lower rank. (In these times of torment in which we
live hierarchal barriers no longer exist.)
"I could certainly give you roast beef and rabbit _saute_," said the
innkeeper, "but as for bread, no indeed! it is not to be had; you cannot
buy bread anywhere at any price."
"Ah!" said my comrade, the English commandant, "and what about those
excellent loaves over there standing up against the door?"
"Oh, those loaves belong to a general who sent them here, because he is
coming to luncheon with his aides-de-camp."
Hardly had he turned his back when my companion hastily drew a knife
from his pocket, sliced off the end of one of those golden loaves, and
hid it under his coat.
"We have found some bread," he said calmly to the innkeeper, "so you can
bring luncheon."
So, seated beside an Arab officer of _la Grande Tente_, dressed in a
red burnous, we luncheon gaily with our guests, the soldier-chauffeurs
of our motor car.
When we left the inn to continue our journey the festival of the sun was
at its height; it cast a glad light upon that ill-assorted throng and
the strange motor-omnibuses. A convoy of German prisoners was crossing
the square; bestial and sly of countenance they marched between our own
soldiers, who kept time infinitely better than they; scarcely a glance
was thrown at them.
The old nun I spoke of, so old and so pure-eyed, was helping her Zouave
to smoke a cigarette, holding it to his lips rather awkwardly with
trembling, grandmotherly solicitude. At the same time she seemed to be
telling him some quite amusing stories--with the innocent, ingenuous
merriment of which good nuns have the secret--for they were both
laughing. Who can say what little childish tale it may have been? An
old parish priest, who was smoking his pipe near them--without any
particular refinement, I am bound to admit--laughed, too, to see them
laugh. And just as we were going into our car to continue our journey to
those regions of horror where the cannon were thundering, a little girl
of twelve ran and plucked a sheaf of autumn asters from her garden to
deck us with flowers.
What good people there are still in the world! And how greatly has the
aggression of German savages reinforced those tender bonds of
brotherhood that unite all who are truly of the human species.
IV
LETTER TO ENVER PASHA
_Rochefort, September 4th, 1914._
MY DEAR AND GREAT FRIEND,
Forgive my letter for the sake of my affection and admiration for
yourself and of my regard for your country, which to some extent I have
made my own. In the country round Tripoli you played the part of
splendid hero, without fear and without reproach, holding your own, ten
men against a thousand. In Thrace it was you who recovered Adrianople
for Turkey, and this feat, the recapture of that town of heroes, you
effected almost without bloodshed. Everywhere, with the violence
necessitated by the circumstances, you suppressed cruelty and
brigandage. I witnessed your indignation against the atrocities of the
Bulgarians, and you yourself desired me to visit, in your service motor
car, the ruins of those villages through which the assassins had passed.
Well, I will tell you a fact of which you are doubtless yet ignorant: In
Belgium, in France, and moreover _by order_, the Germans are committing
these same abominations which the Bulgarians committed in your country,
and they are a thousand times more detestable still, for the Bulgarians
were primitive mountaineers under the influence of fanaticism, whereas
these others are civilised. Civilised? So fundamental is their brutality
that culture has no grasp of their souls and nothing can be expected of
them.
Turkey to-day desires to win back her islands; this point no one who is
not blinded with prejudice can fail to understand. But I tremble lest
she should go too far in this war. Alas! well do I divine the pressure
that is brought to bear upon your dear country and yourself by that
execrable being, the incarnation of all the vices of the Prussian race,
ferocity, arrogance, and trickery. Doubtless he has seen good to take
advantage of your fine and ardent patriotism, luring you on with
illusive promises of revenge. Beware of his lies! Assuredly he has
contrived to keep truth from reaching you, else would he have alienated
your loyal soldier's heart. Even as he has convinced a section of his
own people, so he has known how to persuade you that these butcheries
were forced upon him. It is not so; they were planned long ago with
devilish cynicism. He has succeeded in inspiring you with faith in his
victories, though he knows, as to-day the whole world knows, that in the
end the triumph will rest with us. And even if by some impossible chance
we were to succumb for a time, nevertheless would Prussia and her
dynasty of tigerish brutes remain nailed fast forever to the most
shameful pillory in all the history of mankind.
How deeply should I suffer were I to see our dear Turkey, by this
wretch, hurl herself in his train into a terrible venture. More painful
still were it to witness her dishonour, should she associate herself
with these ultimate barbarians in their attack upon civilisation. Oh,
could you but know with what infinite loathing the whole world looks
upon the Prussian race!
Alas! you owe no debt to France, that I know only too well. We lent our
authority to Italy's attempt upon Tripoli. Later, in the beginning of
the Balkan War, we forgot the age-long hospitality so generously offered
to us Frenchmen, to our seminaries, to our culture, to our language,
which you have almost made your own. In thoughtlessness and ignorance we
sided with your neighbours, from whom our nation received naught but
ill-will and persecution. We initiated against you a campaign of
calumny, and only too late we have acknowledged its injustice. The
Germans, on the other hand, were alone in affording you a little--oh, a
very little!--encouragement. But even so, it is not worth your
committing suicide for their sakes. Moreover, you see, in this very
hour, these people are succeeding in putting themselves outside the pale
of humanity. To march in their company would become not only a danger,
but a degradation.
Your influence over your country is fully justified; may you hold her
back on that fatal decline to which she seems committed. My letter will
be long on the way, but when it arrives your eyes may perhaps be already
opened, despite the web of lies in which Germany has entrammelled you.
Forgive me if I wish to be of the number of those by whose means some
hint of the truth may reach you.
I maintain an unwavering faith in our final triumph, but on the day of
our deliverance how would my joy be veiled in mourning if my second
country, my country of the Orient, were to bury itself under the debris
of the hideous Empire of Prussia.
V
ANOTHER SCENE AT THE BATTLE FRONT
_October, 1914._
Whereabouts, you may ask, did this come to pass? Well, it is one of the
peculiarities of this war, that in spite of my familiarity with maps,
and notwithstanding the excellence in detail of the plans which I carry
about with me, I never know where I am. At any rate this certainly
happened somewhere. I have, moreover, a sad conviction that it happened
in France. I should so much have preferred it to have happened in
Germany, for it was close up to the enemy's lines, under fire of their
guns.
I had travelled by motor car since morning, and had passed through more
towns, large and small, than I can count. I remember one scene in a
village where I halted, a village which had certainly never before seen
motor-omnibuses or throngs of soldiers and horses. Some fifty German
prisoners were brought in. They were unshaven, unshorn, and highly
unprepossessing. I will not flatter them by saying that they looked like
savages, for true savages in the bush are seldom lacking either in
distinction or grace of bearing. Such air as these Germans had was a
blackguard air of doltish ugliness--dull, gross, incurable.
A pretty girl of somewhat doubtful character, with feathers in her hat,
who had taken up a position there to watch them go past, stared at them
with ill-concealed resentment.
"Oh indeed, is it with freaks like those that their dirty Kaiser invites
us to breed for beauty? God's truth!" and she clinched her unfinished
phrase by spitting on the ground.
For the next hour or two I passed through a deserted countryside, woods
in autumn colouring and leafless forests which seemed interminable under
a gloomy sky. It was cold, with that bitter, penetrating chill which we
hardly know in my home in south-west France, and which seemed
characteristic of northern lands.
From time to time a village through which the barbarians had passed
displayed to us its ruins, charred and blackened by fire. Here and there
by the wayside lay little grave-mounds, either singly or grouped
together--mounds lately dug; a few leaves had been scattered above them
and a cross made of two sticks. Soldiers, their names now for ever
forgotten, had fallen there exhausted and had breathed their last with
none to help them.
We scarcely noticed them, for we raced along with ever-increasing
speed, because the night of late October was already closing rapidly in
upon us. As the day advanced a mist almost wintry in character thickened
around us like a shroud. Silence pervaded with still deeper melancholy
all that countryside, which, although the barbarians had been expelled
from it, still had memories of all those butcheries, ravings, outcries,
and conflagrations.
In the midst of a forest, near a hamlet, of which nothing remained save
fragments of calcined walls, there were two graves lying side by side.
Near these I halted to look at a little girl of twelve years, quite
alone there, arranging bunches of flowers sprinkled with water, some
poor chrysanthemums from her ruined plot of garden, some wild flowers
too, the last scabious of the season, gathered in that place of
mourning.
"Were they friends of yours, my child, those two who are sleeping
there?"
"Oh no, sir, but I know that they were Frenchmen; I saw them being
buried. They were young, sir, and their moustaches were scarcely grown."
There was no inscription on these crosses, soon to be blown down by
winter winds and to crumble away in the grass. Who were they? Sons of
peasants, of simple citizens, of aristocrats? Who weeps for them? Is it
a mother in skilfully fashioned draperies of crape? Is it a mother in
the homely weeds of a peasant woman? Whichever it be, those who loved
them will live and die without ever knowing that they lie mouldering
there by the side of a lonely road on the northern boundary of France;
without ever knowing that this kind little girl, whose own home lay
desolate, brought them an offering of flowers one autumn evening, while
with the advent of night a bitter cold was descending upon the forest
which wrapped them round.
Farther on I came to a village, the headquarters of a general officer in
command of an army corps. Here an officer joined me in my motor car, who
undertook to guide me to one particular point of the vast battle front.
We drove on rapidly for another hour through a country without
inhabitants. In the meantime we passed one of these long convoys of what
were once motor-omnibuses in Paris, but have been converted since the
war into slaughter-houses on wheels. Townspeople, men and women, sat
there once, where now sides of beef, all red and raw, swing suspended
from hooks. If we did not know that in those fields yonder there were
hundreds of thousands of men to be fed we might well ask why such things
were being carted in the midst of this deserted country through which
we are hastening at top speed.
The day is waning rapidly, and a continuous rumbling of a storm begins
to make itself heard, unchained seemingly on a level with the earth. For
weeks now this same storm has thundered away without pause along a
sinuous line stretching across France from east to west, a line on which
daily, alas! new heaps of dead are piled up.
"Here we are," said my guide.
If I were not already familiar with the new characteristics wherewith
the Germans have endued a battle front, I should believe, in spite of
the incessant cannonade, that he had made a mistake, for at first sight
there is no sign either of army or of soldiers. We are in a place of
sinister aspect, a vast plain; the greyish ground is stripped of its
turf and torn up; trees here and there are shattered more or less
completely, as if by some cataclysm of thunderbolts or hailstones. There
is no trace of human existence, not even the ruins of a village; nothing
characteristic of any period, either of historical or even of geological
development. Gazing into the distance at the far-flung forest skyline
fading on all sides into the darkening mists of twilight, we might well
believe ourselves to have reverted to a prehistoric epoch of the world's
history.
"Here we are."
That means that it is time to hide our motor car under some trees or it
will attract a rain of shells and endanger the lives of our chauffeurs,
for in that misty forest opposite there are many wicked eyes watching us
through wonderful binoculars, by whose aid they are as keen of sight as
great birds of prey. To reach the firing-line, then, it is incumbent on
us to proceed on foot.
How strange the ground looks! It is riddled with shell-holes,
resembling enormous craters; in another place it is scarred and pierced
and sown with pointed bullets, copper cartridge-cases, fragments of
spiked helmets, and barbarian filth of other sorts. But in spite of its
deserted appearance, this region is nevertheless thickly populated, only
the inhabitants are no doubt troglodytes, for their dwellings, scattered
about and invisible at first sight, are a kind of cave or molehill, half
covered with branches and leaves. I had seen the same kind of
architecture once upon a time on Easter Island, and the sight of these
dwellings of men in this scenery of primeval forest completes our
earlier impression of having leapt backwards into the abyss of time.
Of a truth, to force upon us such a reversion was a right Prussian
artifice. War, which was once a gallant affair of parades in the
sunshine, of beautiful uniforms and of music, war they have rendered a
mean and ugly thing. They wage it like burrowing beasts, and obviously
there was nothing left for us but to imitate them.
In the meantime here and there heads look out from the excavations to
see who is coming. There is nothing prehistoric about these heads, any
more than there is about the service-caps they are wearing; these are
the faces of our own soldiers, with an air of health and good humour and
of amusement at having to live there like rabbits. A sergeant comes up
to us; he is as earthy as a mole that has not had time to clean itself,
but he has a merry look of youth and gaiety.
"Take two or three men with you," I say to him, "and go and unpack my
motor car, down there behind the trees. You will find a thousand packets
of cigarettes and some picture-papers which some people in Paris have
sent you to help to pass the time in the trenches."
What a pity that I cannot take back and show, as a thanksgiving to the
kind donors, the smiles of satisfaction with which their gifts were
welcomed.
Another mile or two have still to be covered on foot before we reach the
firing-line. An icy wind blows from the forests opposite that are yet
more deeply drowned in black mists, forests in the enemy's hands, where
the counterfeit thunderstorm is grumbling. This plain with its miserable
molehills is a dismal place in the twilight, and I marvel that they can
be so gay, these dear soldiers of ours, in the midst of the desolation
surrounding them.
I cross this piece of ground, riddled with holes; the tempest of shot
has spared here and there a tuft of grass, a little moss, a poor flower.
The first place I reach is a line of defence in course of construction,
which will be the second line of defence, to meet the improbable event
of the first line, which lies farther ahead, having to be abandoned. Our
soldiers are working like navvies with shovels and picks in their hands.
They are all resolute and happy, anxious to finish their work, and it
will be formidable indeed, surrounded as it is with most deadly
ambushes. It was the Germans, I admit, whose scheming, evil brains
devised this whole system of galleries and snares; but we, more subtle
and alert than they, have, in a few days, equalled them, if we have not
beaten them, at their own game.
A mile farther on is the first line. It is full of soldiers, for this is
the trench that must withstand the shock of the barbarians' onset; day
and night it is always ready to bristle with rifles, and they who hold
the trench, gone to earth scarcely for a moment, know that they may
expect at any minute the daily shower of shells. Then heads, rash enough
to show themselves above the parapet, will be shot away, breasts
shattered, entrails torn. They know, too, that they must be prepared to
encounter at any unforeseen hour, in the pale sunlight or in the
blackness of midnight, onslaughts of those barbarians with whom the
forest opposite still swarms. They know how they will come on at a run,
with shouts intended to terrify them, linked arm in arm into one
infuriated mass, and how they will find means, as ever, to do much harm
before death overtakes them entangled in our barbed wire. All this they
know, for they have already seen it, but nevertheless they smile a
serious, dignified smile. They have been nearly a week in this trench,
waiting to be relieved, and they make no complaints.
"We are well fed," they say, "we eat when we are hungry. As long as it
does not rain we keep ourselves warm at night in our fox-holes with good
thick blankets. But not all of us yet have woollen underclothing for the
winter, and we shall need it soon. When you go back to Paris, Colonel,
perhaps you will be so kind as to bring this to the notice of Government
and of all the ladies too, who are working for us."
("Colonel"--the soldiers have no other title for officers with five rows
of gold braid. On the last expedition to China I had already been called
colonel, but I did not expect, alas! that I should be called so again
during a war on the soil of France.)
These men who are talking to me at the edge of, or actually in, the
trench belong to the most diverse social grades. Some were leisured
dandies, some artisans, some day labourers, and there are even some who
wear their caps at too rakish an angle and whose language smacks of the
ring, into whose past it is better not to pry too curiously. Yet they
have become not only good soldiers, but good men, for this war, while it
has drawn us closer together, has at the same time purified us and
ennobled us. This benefit at least the Germans will, involuntarily, have
bestowed upon us, and indeed it is worth the trouble. Moreover our
soldiers all know to-day why they are fighting, and therein lies their
supreme strength. Their indignation will inspire them till their latest
breath.
"When you have seen," said two young Breton peasants to me, "when you
have seen with your own eyes what these brutes do in the villages they
pass through, it is natural, is it not, to give your life to try to
prevent them from doing as much in your own home?"
The cannonade roared an accompaniment in its deep, unceasing bass to
this ingenuous statement.
Now this is the spirit that prevails inexhaustibly from one end of the
fighting-line to the other. Everywhere there is the same determination
and courage. Whether here or there, a talk with any of these soldiers is
equally reassuring, and calls forth the same admiration.
But it is strange to reflect that in this twentieth century of ours, in
order to protect ourselves from barbarism and horror, we have had to
establish trenches such as these, in double and treble lines, crossing
our dear country from east to west along an unbroken front of hundreds
of miles, like a kind of Great Wall of China. But a hundred times more
formidable than the original wall, the defence of the Mongolians, is
this wall of ours, a wall practically subterranean, which winds along
stealthily, manned by all the heroic youth of France, ever on the
alert, ever in the midst of bloodshed.
The twilight this evening, under the sullen sky, lingers sadly, and will
not come to an end. It appeared to me to begin two hours ago, and yet it
is still light enough to see. Before us, distinguishable as yet to sight
or imagination, lie two sections of a forest, unfolding itself beyond
range of vision, the contours of its more distant section almost lost in
darkness. Colder still grows the wind, and my heart contracts with the
still more painful impression of a backward plunge, without shelter and
without refuge, into primeval barbarism.
"Every evening at this hour, Colonel, for the last week, we have had our
little shower of shells. If you have time to stay a short while you will
see how quickly they fire and almost without aiming."
As for time, well, I have really hardly any to spare, and, besides, I
have had other opportunities of observing how quickly they fire "almost
without aiming." Sometimes it might be mistaken for a display of
fireworks, and it is to be supposed that they have more projectiles than
they know what to do with. Nevertheless I shall be delighted to stay a
few minutes longer and to witness the performance again in their
company.
Ah! to be sure, a kind of whirring in the air like the flight of
partridges--partridges travelling along very fast on metal wings. This
is a change for us from the muffled voice of the cannonade we heard just
before; it is now beginning to come in our direction. But it is much too
high and much too far to the left--so much too far to the left that they
surely cannot be aiming at us; they cannot be quite so stupid.
Nevertheless we stop talking and listen with our ears pricked--a dozen
shells, and then no more.
"They have finished," the men tell me then; "their hour is over now,
and it was for our comrades down there. You have no luck, Colonel; this
is the very first time that it was not we who caught it, and, besides,
you would think they were tired this evening, the Boches."
It is dark and I ought to be far away. Moreover, they are all going to
sleep, for obviously they cannot risk showing a light; cigarettes are
the limit of indulgence. I shake hands with a whole line of soldiers and
leave them asleep, poor children of France, in their dormitory, which in
the silence and darkness has grown as dismal as a long, common grave in
a cemetery.
VI
THE PHANTOM BASILICA
_October, 1914._
To gaze upon her, our legendary and wonderful basilica of France, to bid
her a last farewell before she should crumble away to her inevitable
downfall, I had ordered a _detour_ of two hours in my service motor car
at the end of some special duty from which I was returning.
The October morning was misty and cold. The hillsides of Champagne were
deserted that day, and their vineyards with dark brown leaves, wet with
rain, seemed to be wrapped completely in a kind of shining fleece. We
had also passed through a forest, keeping our eyes open and our weapons
ready in case of a meeting with Uhlan marauders.
At last, far away in the fog, uplifting all its great height above a
sprinkling of reddish squares, doubtless the roofs of houses, we saw the
form of a mighty church. This was evidently the basilica.
At the entrance to Rheims there are defences of all kinds: stone
barriers, trenches, _chevaux de frise_, sentinels with crossed bayonets.
To gain admission it is not sufficient to be in uniform and military
accoutrements; explanations have to be made and the countersign given.
In the great city where I am a stranger, I have to ask my way to the
cathedral, for it is no longer in sight. Its lofty grey silhouette,
which, viewed from afar, dominated everything so imposingly, as a castle
of giants would dominate the houses of dwarfs, now seems to have
crouched down to hide itself.
"To get to the cathedral," people reply, "you must first turn to the
right over there, and then to the left, and then to the right, etc."
And my motor car plunges into the crowded streets. There are many
soldiers, regiments on the march, motor-ambulances in single file, but
there are many ordinary footfarers, too, unconcerned as if nothing were
happening, and there are even many well-dressed women, with prayer-books
in their hands, in honour of Sunday.
At a street-crossing there is a gathering of people in front of a house
whose walls bear signs of recent damage, the reason being that a shell
has just fallen there. It is just one of their little brutal jests, so
to speak; we understand the situation, look you; it is a simple pastime,
just a matter of killing a few persons, on a Sunday morning for choice,
because there are more people in the streets on Sunday mornings. But it
seems, indeed, as if this town had reconciled itself to its lot, to
live its life watched by the remorseless binoculars, under the fire of
savages lurking on the neighbouring hillside. The wayfarers stop for a
moment to look at the walls and the marks made by the shell-bursts, and
then they quietly continue their Sunday walk. This time, we are told, it
is women and little girls who lie weltering in their blood, victims of
that amiable peasantry. We hear about it, and then think no more of the
matter, as if it were of the smallest importance in times such as these.
This quarter of the town is now deserted. Houses are closed; a silence
as of mourning prevails. And at the far end of a street appear the tall
grey gates, the lofty pointed arches with their marvellous carvings and
the soaring towers. There is no sound; there is not a living soul in the
square where the phantom basilica still stands in majesty, where the
wind blows cold and the sky is dark.
The basilica of Rheims still keeps its place as if by miracle, but so
riddled and rent it is, that it seems ready to collapse at the slightest
shock. It gives the impression of a huge mummy, still erect and
majestic, but which the least touch would turn into ashes. The ground is
strewn with its precious fragments. It has been hastily enclosed with a
hoarding of white wood, and within its bounds lies, in little heaps, its
consecrated dust, fragments of stucco, shivered panes of glass, heads of
angels, clasped hands of saints, male and female. The calcined
stone-work of the tower on the left, from top to bottom, has assumed a
strange colour like that of baked flesh, and the saints, still standing
upright in rank on the cornices, have been decorticated, as it were, by
fire. They have no longer either faces or fingers, yet, still retaining
their human form, they resemble corpses ranged in rows, their contours
but faintly defined under a kind of reddish shroud.
We make a circuit of the square without meeting anyone, and the hoarding
which isolates the fragile, still wonderful phantom is everywhere firmly
closed.
As for the old palace attached to the basilica, the episcopal palace
where the kings of France were wont to repose on the day of their
coronation, it is nothing more than a ruin, without windows or roof,
blackened all over by tongues of flame.
What a peerless jewel was this church, more beautiful even than
_Notre-Dame de Paris_, more open to the light, more ethereal, more
soaringly uplifted with its columns like long reeds, astonishingly
fragile considering the weight they bear, a miracle of the religious art
of France, a masterpiece which the faith of our ancestors had wakened
into being in all its mystic purity before the sensual ponderousness of
that which we have agreed to call the Renaissance had come to us from
Italy, materialising and spoiling all. Oh, how gross, how cowardly, how
imbecile was the brutality of those who fired those volleys of
scrap-iron with full force against tracery of such delicacy, that had
stayed aloft in the air for centuries in confidence, no battles, no
invasions, no tempests ever daring to assail its beauty.
That great, closed house yonder in the square must be the archbishop's
palace. I venture to ring at the door and request the privilege of
entering the church.
"His Eminence," I am told, "is at Mass, but would soon return, if I
would wait."
And while I am waiting, the priest, who acts as my host, tells me the
history of the burning of the episcopal palace.
"First of all they sprinkled the roofs with I know not what diabolical
preparation; then, when they threw their incendiary bombs, the woodwork
burnt like straw, and everywhere you saw jets of green flame which
burned with a noise like that of fireworks."
Indeed the barbarians had long prepared with studied foresight this deed
of sacrilege, in spite of their idiotically absurd pretexts and their
shameless denials. That which they had desired to destroy here was the
very heart of ancient France, impelled as much by some superstitious
fancy as by their own brutal instincts, and upon this task they bent
their whole energy, while in the rest of the town nothing else, or
almost nothing, suffered damage.
"Could no attempt be made," I ask, "to replace the burnt roof of the
basilica, to cover over as soon as possible these arches, which will not
otherwise withstand the ravages of next winter?"
"Undoubtedly," he replies, "there is a risk that at the first falls of
snow, the first showers of rain, all this will crumble to ruins, more
especially as the calcined stones have lost their power of resistance.
But we cannot even attempt to preserve them a little, for the Germans do
not let us out of their sight. It is the cathedral, always the
cathedral, that they watch through their field-glasses, and as soon as a
single person appears in the bell turret of a tower the rain of shells
begins again. No, there is nothing to be done. It must be left to the
grace of God."
On his return, His Eminence graciously provides me with a guide, who has
the keys of the hoarding, and at last I penetrate into the ruins of the
basilica, into the nave, which, being stripped bare, appears the loftier
and vaster for it.
It is cold there and sad enough for tears. It is perhaps this unexpected
chill, a chill far more piercing than that of the world without, which
at first grips you and disconcerts you. Instead of the somewhat heavy
perfume that generally hangs about old basilicas, smoke of so much
incense burned there, emanations of so many biers blessed by the
priests, of so many generations who have hastened there to wrestle and
pray--instead of this, there is a damp, icy wind which whistles through
crevices in the walls, through broken windows and gaps in the vaults.
Towards those vaults up yonder, pierced here and there by shrapnel, the
eyes are raised, immediately, instinctively, to gaze at them. The sight
is led up towards them, as it were, by all those columns that jut out,
shooting aloft in sheaves, for their support. They have flying curves,
these vaults, of exquisite grace, so designed, it seems, that they may
not hinder prayers in their upward flight, nor force back to earth a
gaze that aims at heaven. One never grows tired of bending the head
backwards to gaze at them, those sacred vaults hastening to destruction.
And then high up, too, quite high up, throughout the whole length of the
nave, is the long succession of those almost ethereal pointed arches
which support the vaults and arches, alike, yet not rigidly uniform, and
so harmonious, despite their elaborate carving, that they give rest to
the eye that follows them upwards in their soaring perspective. These
vast ceilings of stone are so airy in appearance, and moreover so
distant, that they do not oppress or confine the spirit. Indeed they
seem freed from all heaviness, almost insubstantial.
Moreover, it is wiser to move on under that roof with head turned upward
and not to watch too closely where the feet may fall, for that pavement,
reverberating rather sadly, has been sullied and blackened by charred
human flesh. It is known that on the day of the conflagration the
church was full of wounded Germans lying on straw mattresses, which
caught fire, and a scene of horror ensued, worthy of a vision of Dante;
all these beings, their green wounds scorched by the flames, dragged
themselves along screaming, on red stumps, trying to win through doors
too narrow. Renowned, too, is the heroism of those stretcher-bearers,
priests and nuns, who risked their lives in the midst of falling bombs
in their attempt to save these unhappy wretches, whom their own German
brothers had not even thought to spare. Yet they did not succeed in
saving all; some remained and were burnt to death in the nave, leaving
unseemly clots of blood on the sacred flagstones, where formerly
processions of kings and queens had slowly trailed their ermine mantles
to the sound of great organs and plain-song.
"Look," said my guide, showing me a wide hole in one of the aisles,
"this is the work of a shell which they hurled at us yesterday evening.
And now come and see the miracle."
And he leads me into the choir where the statue of Joan of Arc,
preserved it may be said by some special Providence, still stands
unharmed, with its eyes of gentle ecstasy.
The most irreparable disaster is the ruin of those great glass windows,
which the mysterious artists of the thirteenth century had piously
wrought in meditation and dreams, assembling together in hundreds,
saints, male and female, with translucent draperies and luminous
aureoles. There again German scrap-iron has crashed through in great
senseless volleys, shattering everything. Irreplaceable masterpieces are
scattered on the flagstones in fragments that can never be
reassembled--golds, reds and blues, of which the secret has been lost.
Vanished are the transparent rainbow colours, perished those saintly
personages, in the pretty simplicity of their attitudes, with their
small, pale, ecstatic faces; a thousand precious fragments of that
glasswork, which in the course of centuries has acquired an iridescence
something in the manner of opals, lie on the ground, where indeed they
still shine like gems.
To-day there is silence in the basilica, as well as in the deserted
square around it; a deathlike silence within these walls, which for so
long had vibrated to the voice of organs and the old ritual chants of
France. The cold wind alone makes a kind of music this Sunday morning,
and at times when it blows harder there is a tinkling like the fall of
very light pearls. It is the falling of the little that still remained
in place of the beautiful glass windows of the thirteenth century,
crumbling away entirely, beyond recovery.