not yet begun to fall, but the thick clouds of northern winters cast
upon the earth this kind of yellowish obscurity. Round about the lofty
ruins, the open spaces are full of soldiers standing still, or slowly
making their rounds, all with a certain air of seriousness, as if
remembering or expecting some event, of which everyone is aware, but
which no one discusses. There are also women poorly dressed, with
anxious faces, and little children, but the humble population of
civilians is merged in a crowd of rough uniforms, almost all of them
faded and coated with earth, obviously returned after prolonged
engagements. The yellow khaki uniforms of the English and the almost
black uniform of the Belgians mingle with the "horizon" blue of
great-coats worn by our French soldiers, who are in a majority; all
these different shades blend into an almost neutral colour scheme, and
two or three red burnouses of Arab chiefs strike a vivid note,
unexpected, disconcerting, in that crowd, coloured like the misty winter
evening.
Here are ruins indeed, but on closer inspection, inexplicable ruins, for
their collapse seems to date from yesterday, and the crevices and gaps
are unnaturally white among the greyish tints of the facades or towers,
and here and there, through broken windows, on the interior walls is
visible the glittering of gilding. Indeed it is not time that has
wrought these ravages--time had spared these wonders--nor yet until our
own days, even in the midst of the most terrible upheavals and most
ruthless conquest, had men ever attempted to destroy them. No one had
dared the deed until the coming of those savages, who are still there,
close at hand, crouching in their holes of muddy earth, perfecting each
day their idiotic work, and multiplying their volleys of scrap-iron,
wreaking their vengeance on these sacred objects whenever they are
seized again by an access of rage in consequence of a new repulse.
Near the mutilated cathedral, that palace of a hundred windows, which in
the main still stands, is the famous Cloth Hall, built when Flanders was
at the height of her glory, a building vulgarised in all its aspects by
reproductions, ever since the vindictiveness of the barbarians rendered
it still more famous. One November night, it will be remembered, it
blazed with sinister magnificence, side by side with the church and the
precious buildings surrounding it, illuminating with a red light all the
open country. The Germans had brought up in its honour the best that
they could muster of incendiary material; their benzine bombs consumed
the Hall and then all that it contained; all the treasures that had been
preserved there for centuries, its state-rooms, its wainscoting, its
pictures, its books, all burned like straw. Now that it is bereft of its
lofty roof it has acquired something rather Venetian and surprising in
its appearance, with its long facades pierced with uninterrupted rows of
floreated pointed arches. In the midst of its irremediable disorder, it
is strange and charming. The symmetrical turrets, slender as minarets,
set in the angles of the walls, have hitherto escaped those insensate
bombs and rise up more boldly than ever, whereas the woodwork of the
pointed roofs no longer soars with them up into the air. But the belfry
in the centre, which ever since the Middle Ages has kept watch over the
plains, is to-day hatefully disfigured, its summit clean cut off,
shattered, cleft from top to bottom. It is scarcely in a condition to
offer further resistance; a few more shells, and it will collapse in one
mass. On one of its sides, very high up, still hangs the monumental
dial of a ruined clock, of which the hands point persistently to
twenty-five minutes past four--doubtless the tragic moment at which this
giant among Flemish belfries received its death blow.
Around the great square of Ypres, where these glories of past ages had
so long been preserved for us intact, several houses, the majority of
them of ancient Flemish architecture, have been eviscerated in like
manner, without object, without excuse, their interior visible from
outside through great, gaping holes. But this the barbarians did not do
on purpose; it was merely that they happened to be too near, these
houses, too closely adjacent to the targets they had chosen, the
cathedral and the old palace. It is known that everywhere here, as at
Louvain, at Arras, at Soissons, at Rheims, their greatest delight is to
direct their fire at public buildings, ruining again and again all that
is famous for beauty, art or memories. So then, except for its historic
square, the town of Ypres has not suffered very greatly. Ah, but wait! I
was forgetting the hospital yonder, which likewise served them for
target; for the matter of that the Germans have notoriously a preference
for bombarding places of refuge, shelters for wounded and sick,
ambulances, first-aid stations and Red Cross wagons.
These acts of destruction, transforming into a rubbish heap that
tranquil country of Belgium, which was above everything an incomparable
museum, all are agreed to stigmatise as a base, ignoble crime. But it is
more than that, it is a masterpiece of the crassest stupidity--the
stupidity that Schopenhauer himself could not forbear to publish in the
frank outburst evoked by his last moments; for after all it amounts to
signing and initialling the ignominy of Germany for the edification of
neutrals and of generations to come. The bodies of men tortured and
hanged, of women and children shot or mutilated, will soon moulder away
completely in their poor, nameless graves, and then the world will
remember them no more. But these imperishable ruins, these innumerable
ruins of museums or churches, what overwhelming and damning evidence
they are, and how everlasting!
After having done all this it is perhaps still more foolish to deny it,
to deny it in the very face of such incontrovertible evidence, to deny
it with an effrontery that leaves us Frenchmen aghast, or even to invent
pretexts at whose childish imbecility we can only shrug our shoulders.
"A people of born liars," said the Latin writer. Yes, and a people who
will never eradicate their original vices, a people who, moreover,
actually dared, despite the most irrefutable written documents, to deny
the premeditation of their crimes and the treachery of their attack.
What absurd childishness they reveal in their impostures! And who can be
the simpletons whom they hope to deceive?
The light is still fading upon the desolate ruins of Ypres, but how
slowly to-day! That is because even at noon the light was scarcely
stronger on this dull day of March; only at this hour a certain
atmosphere, indefinite and sad, broods upon the distant landscape,
indicating the approach of night.
They look instinctively at the ruins, these thousands of soldiers,
taking their evening walk in such melancholy surroundings, but generally
they remain at a distance, leaving the ruins to their magnificent
isolation. However, here are three of them, Frenchmen, probably
newcomers, who approach the ruins hesitatingly. They advance until they
stand under the little arches of the tottering cathedral with a sober
air, as if they were visiting tombs. After contemplating them at first
in silence, one of them suddenly ejaculates a term of abuse (to whom it
is addressed may be easily imagined!), doubtless the most insulting he
can find in the French language, a word that I had not expected, which
first makes me smile and then, the next moment, impresses me on the
contrary as a valuable discovery.
"Oh those hooligans!"
Here the intonation is missing, for I am unable to reproduce it, but in
truth the compliment, pronounced as he pronounced it, seems to me
something new, worth adding to all the other epithets applied to
Germans, which are always pitched in too low a key and moreover too
refined; and he continues to repeat, indignant little soldier that he
is, stamping with rage:
"Oh those hooligans among hooligans!"
At last the fall of night is upon us, the true night, which will put an
end here to all signs of life. The crowd of soldiers gradually melts
away along streets already dark, which, for obvious reasons, will not be
lighted. In the distance the sound of the bugle summons them to their
evening soup in houses or barracks, where they will fall asleep with no
sense of security, certain of being awakened at any moment by shells, or
by those great monsters that explode with a crash like thunder. Poor,
brave children of France, wrapped in their bluish overcoats, none can
foresee at what hour death will be hurled at them, from afar, blindly,
through the misty darkness--for the most playful fancy presides over
this bombardment; now it is an endless rain of fire, now only a single
shell which comes and kills at haphazard. And patiently awaiting the
rest of the great drama lie the ruins, enveloped in silence. Here and
there a little timid light appears in some house still inhabited, where
the windows are pasted over with paper to enable them to resist the
shock of explosions close at hand, and where the air-holes of the
cellars of refuge are protected by sandbags. Who would believe it?
Stubborn people, people too old or too poor to flee, have remained at
Ypres, and others even are beginning to return, with a kind of
fatalistic resignation.
The cathedral and the great belfry project only their silhouettes
against the sky, and these seem to have been congealed, gesturing with
broken arms. As the night enfolds the world more completely in its thick
mists, memory conjures up the mournful surroundings in which Ypres is
now lost, deep plains unpeopled and soon plunged in darkness, roads
broken up, impassable for fugitives, fields blotted out or mantled with
snow, a network of trenches where our soldiers, alas! are suffering cold
and discomfort, and so near, hardly a cannon-shot away, those other
ditches, more grim, more sordid, where men of ineradicable savagery are
watching, always ready to spring out in solid masses, uttering Red
Indian war whoops, or to crawl sneakingly along to squirt liquid fire
upon our soldiers.
But how the twilight has lengthened in these last few days! Without
looking at the clock it is evident that the hour is late, and the mere
fact of still being able to see conveys in spite of all a vague presage
of April; it seems that the nightmare of winter is coming to an end,
that the sun will reappear, the sun of deliverance, that softer breezes,
as if nothing unusual were happening in the world, will bring back
flowers and songs of birds to all these scenes of desolation, among all
these thousands of graves of youth. There is yet another sign of
spring, three or four little girls, who rush out into the deserted
square in wild spirits, quite little girls, not more than six years old;
they have escaped, fleet of foot, from the cellar in which they sleep,
and they take hands and try to dance a round, as on an evening in May,
to the tune of an old Flemish song. But another child, a big girl of
ten, a person in authority, comes along and reduces them to silence,
scolding them as if they had done something naughty, and drives them
back to the underground dwellings, where, after they have said their
prayers, lowly mothers will put them to bed.
Unspeakably sad seemed that childish round, tentatively danced there in
solitude at the fall of a cold March night, in a square dominated by a
phantom belfry, in a martyred city, in the midst of gloomy, inundated
plains, all in darkness, and all beset with ambushes and mourning.
Since this chapter was written the bombardment has continued, and Ypres
is now no more than a shapeless mass of calcined stones.
XI
AT THE GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE BELGIAN ARMY
_March, 1915._
To-day on my way to the General Headquarters of the Belgian Army,
whither I am bound on a mission from the President of the French
Republic to His Majesty King Albert, I pass through Furnes, another town
wantonly and savagely bombarded, where at this hour of the day there is
a raging storm of icy wind, snow, rain, and hail, under a black sky.
Here as at Ypres the barbarians bent their whole soul on the destruction
of the historical part, the charming old town hall and its surroundings.
It is here that King Albert, driven forth from his palace, established
himself at first. Thereupon the Germans, with that delicacy of feeling
to which at present no one in the world disputes their claim,
immediately made this place their objective, in order to bombard it with
their brutal, heavy shells. I need hardly say that there was scarcely
anyone in the streets, where I slowed down my motor so that I might have
leisure for a better appreciation of the effects of the Kaiser's "work
of civilisation"; there were only some groups of soldiers, fully armed,
some with their coat-collars turned up, others with the back curtains of
their service-caps turned down. They hastened along in the squalls,
running like children, and laughing good-humouredly, as if it were very
amusing, this downpour, which for once was not of fire.
How is it that there is no atmosphere of sadness about this half-empty
town? It is as if the gaiety of these soldiers, in spite of the gloomy
weather, had communicated itself to the ruined surroundings. And how
full of splendid health and spirits they seem! I see no more on any
faces that somewhat startled, haggard expression, common at the
beginning of the war. The outdoor life, combined with good food, has
bronzed the cheeks of these men whom the shrapnel has spared, but their
principal support and stay is their complete confidence, their
conviction that they have already gained the upper hand and are marching
to victory. The invasion of the Boches will pass away like this horrible
weather, which after all is only a last shower of March; it will all
come to an end.
At a turning, during a lull in the storm, I come very unexpectedly upon
a little knot of French sailors. I cannot refrain from beckoning to
them, as one would beckon to children whom one had suddenly found again
in some distant jungle, and they come running to the door of my car
equally delighted to see someone in naval uniform. They seem to be
picked men: they have such gallant, comely faces and such frank,
spirited eyes. Other sailors, too, who were passing by at a little
distance and whom I had not called, come likewise and surround me as if
it were the natural thing to do, but with respectful familiarity, for
are we not in a strange country, and at war? Only yesterday, they tell
me, they arrived a whole battalion strong, with their officers, and they
are camping in a neighbouring village while waiting to "down" the
Boches. And I should like so much to make a _detour_ and pay them a
visit in their own camp if I were not pressed for time, tied down to the
hour of my audience with His Majesty. Indeed it gives me pleasure to
associate with our soldiers, but it is a still greater delight to
associate with our sailors, among whom I passed forty years of my life.
Even before I caught sight of them, just from hearing them talk, I
could recognise them for what they were. More than once, on our military
thoroughfares in the north, on a pitch-dark night, when it was one of
their detachments who stopped me to demand the password, I have
recognised them simply by the sound of their voices.
One of our generals, army commander on the Northern Front, was speaking
to me yesterday of that pleasant, kindly familiarity which prevails from
the highest to the lowest grade of the military ladder, and which is a
new tone characteristic of this essentially national war in which we all
march hand in hand.
"In the trenches," he said to me, "if I stop to talk to a soldier, other
soldiers gather round me so that I may talk to them too. And they are
becoming more and more admirable for their high spirits and their
brotherliness. If only our thousands of dead could be restored to us
what a benefit this war would have bestowed upon us, drawing us near
together, until we all possess but one heart."
It is a long way to the General Headquarters. Out in the open country
the weather is appalling beyond description. The roads are broken up,
fields flooded until they resemble marshes, and sometimes there are
trenches, _chevaux de frise_, reminding the traveller that the
barbarians are still very near. And yet all this, which ought to be
depressing, no longer succeeds in being so. Every meeting with
soldiers--and the car passes them every minute--is sufficient to restore
your serenity. They have all the same cheerful faces, expressive of
courage and gaiety. Even the poor sappers, up to their knees in water,
working hard to repair the shelter pits and defences, have an expression
of gaiety under their dripping service-caps. What numbers of soldiers
there are in the smallest villages, Belgian and French, very fraternally
intermingling. By what wonderful organisation of the commissariat are
these men housed and fed?
But who asserted that there were no Belgian soldiers left! On the
contrary, I pass imposing detachments on their way to the front, in good
order, admirably equipped, and of fine bearing, with a convoy of
excellent artillery of the very latest pattern. Never can enough be said
in praise of the heroism of a people who had every reason for not
preparing themselves for war, since they were under the protection of
solemn treaties that should have preserved them forever from any such
necessity, yet who, nevertheless, sustained and checked the brunt of the
attack of the great barbarism. Disabled at first and almost annihilated,
yet they are recovering themselves and gathering around their sublimely
heroic king.
It is raining, raining, and we are numb with cold, but we have arrived
at last, and in another moment I shall see him, the King, without
reproach and without fear. Were it not for these troops and all these
service motor cars, it would be impossible to believe that this remote
village was the General Headquarters. I have to leave the car, for the
road which leads to the royal residence is nothing more than a footpath.
Among the rough motor cars standing there, all stained with mud from the
roads, there is one car of superior design, having no armorial bearings
of any kind, nothing but two letters traced in chalk on the black door,
S.M. (_Sa Majeste_), for this is _his_ car. In this charming corner of
ancient Flanders, in an old abbey, surrounded by trees and tombs, here
is his dwelling. Out in the rain, on the path which borders on the
little sacred cemetery, an aide-de-camp comes to meet me, a man with the
charm and simplicity that no doubt likewise characterise his sovereign.
There are no guards at the entrance to the dwelling, and no ceremony is
observed. At the end of an unimposing corridor where I have just time to
remove my overcoat, in the embrasure of an opening door, the King
appears, erect, tall, slender, with regular features and a surprising
air of youth, with frank eyes, gentle and noble in expression,
stretching out his hand in kindly welcome.
In the course of my life other kings and emperors have been gracious
enough to receive me, but in spite of pomp, in spite of the splendour of
some of their palaces, I have never yet felt such reverence for
sovereign majesty as here, on the threshold of this little house, where
it is infinitely exalted by calamity and self-sacrifice; and when I
express this sentiment to King Albert he replies with a smile, "Oh, as
for my palace," and he completes his phrase with a negligent wave of the
hand, indicating his humble surroundings. It is indeed a simple room
that I have just entered, yet by the mere absence of all vulgarity,
still possessing distinction. A bookcase crowded with books occupies the
whole of one wall; in the background there is an open piano with a
music-book on the stand; in the middle a large table, covered with maps
and strategic plans; and the window, open in spite of the cold, looks
out on to a little old-world garden, like that of a parish priest,
almost completely enclosed, stripped of its leaves, melancholy, weeping,
as it were, the rains of winter.
After I have executed the simple mission entrusted to me by the
President of the Republic, the King graciously detains me a long time in
conversation. But if I felt reluctant to write even the beginning of
these notes, still more do I hesitate to touch upon this interview, even
with the utmost discretion, and then how colourless will it seem, all
that I shall venture to say! It is because in truth I know that he never
ceases to enjoin upon those around him, "Above all, see that people do
not talk about me," because I know and understand so well the horror he
professes for anything resembling an "interview." So then at first I
made up my mind to be silent, and yet when there is an opportunity of
making himself heard, who would not long to help to spread abroad, to
the utmost of his small ability, the renown of such a name?
Very striking in the first place is the sincere and exquisite modesty of
his heroic nature; it is almost as if he were unaware that he is worthy
of admiration. In his opinion he has less deserved the veneration which
France has devoted to him, and his popularity among us, than the least
of his soldiers, slain for our common defence. When I tell him that I
have seen even in the depths of the country, in peasants' cottages, the
portraits of the King and Queen of the Belgians in the place of honour,
with little flags, black, yellow and red, piously pinned around them, he
appears scarcely to believe me; his smile and his silence seem to
answer:
"Yet all that I did was so natural. Could a king worthy of the name have
acted in any other way?"
Now we talk about the Dardanelles, where in this hour serious issues
hang in the balance; he is pleased to question me about ambushes in
those parts, which I frequented for so long a time, and which have not
ceased to be very dear to me. But suddenly a colder gust blows in
through the window, still opening on to the forlorn little garden. With
what kindly thoughtfulness, then, he rises, as any ordinary officer
might have done, and himself closes the window near which I am seated.
And then we talk of war, of rifles, of artillery. His Majesty is well
posted in everything, like a general already broken in to his craft.
Strange destiny for a prince, who, in the beginning, did not seem
designated for the throne, and who, perhaps, would have preferred to go
on living his former somewhat retired life by the side of his beloved
princess. Then, when the unlooked-for crown was placed upon his youthful
brow, he might well have believed that he could hope for an era of
profound peace, in the midst of the most peaceful of all nations, but,
contrary to every expectation, he has known the most appallingly tragic
reign of all. Between one day and the next, without a moment's
weakness, without even a moment's hesitation, disdainful of compromises,
which for a time, at least, though to the detriment of the civilisation
of the world, might have preserved for a little space his towns and
palaces, he stood erect in the way of the Monster's onrush, a great
warrior king in the midst of an army of heroes.
To-day it is clear that he has no longer a doubt of victory, and his own
loyalty gives him complete confidence in the loyalty of the Allies, who
truly desire to restore life to his country of Belgium; nevertheless, he
insists that his soldiers shall co-operate with all their remaining
strength in the work of deliverance, and that they shall remain to the
end at the post of danger and honour. Let us salute him with the
profoundest reverence.
Another less noble, might have said to himself:
"I have amply paid my debt to the common cause; it was my troops who
built the first rampart against barbarism. My country, the first to be
trampled under the feet of these German brutes, is no more than a heap
of ruins. That suffices."
But no, he will have the name of Belgium inscribed upon a yet prouder
page, by the side of Serbia, in the golden book of history.
And that is the reason why I met on my way those inestimable troops,
alert and fresh, miraculously revived, who were on their way to the
front to continue the holy struggle.
Before him let us bow down to the very ground.