J'ACCUSE
Two years after : Shadows of the past : My vision : Public opinion and
the Foreign Legion : The political aspect of the Foreign Legion : The
moralist's point of view : The "Legion question" in a nutshell : A
question the civilised world should have answered long ago : Quousque
tandem...?
Two years have passed.
They were years of fighting and years of toil. Years in which I burnt
much midnight oil, and in which every tiny success meant worlds to me.
My personal attitude towards the Foreign Legion was a rather peculiar
one at first. For several months I forced myself never even to think of
the time when I was in the Legion. Those times should merely be to me a
dim shadow of the past.
I looked upon them as an ugly page that I should only too gladly have
torn out of the book of my life: since, however, I could not rid myself
of them in this way I avoided ever opening the book at this page....
But the past which we should like to forget has an unpleasant way of
forcing itself upon us, unbidden and against our will.
Often as I lay back in my arm-chair in an idle quarter of an hour,
scenes from my life in the Legion mingled dimly with the blue smoke of
my cigarette. An endless procession of légionnaires would pass before
me, a procession of men loaded like beasts of burden, their backs bent
almost double, panting and gasping as they struggled forward in the
sand: I could see their staring eyes, their rounded backs. I felt the
tortures they were undergoing, how they struggled forward till their
last ounce of strength was spent: even their groans were audible to me.
Every one of these men seemed to look at me with hatred. You sit there
in your arm-chair? In an atmosphere of culture? Amongst beautiful
things of art? You belong to us! Off to your place, légionnaire, on the
wing of the first row of fours in the eleventh company. Quick march,
légionnaire, or die! When I spent a golden coin on some amusement I
seemed to see the hands of the légionnaires, trembling claw-like hands,
grasping for my money and trying to rend it from me. Gold! Wealth
unheard of after the miserable coppers of the Legion! Give it to us,
said those fingers, give it to us! Have you forgotten our five
centimes, légionnaire?
My imagination worried me.
I gave a part of the story of my life price, and after much hesitation
wrote this book. I have only described the ordinary routine of life in
the regiment of foreigners as I myself experienced it. It is merely a
tiny part of what every légionnaire undergoes.
I wanted to show the légionnaire--how he lives, and how he must work. I
did not dream of being able to warn foolish young fellows about the
Legion. It is impossible to warn a fool. But I thought, and think
still, that a true and exact description of the French Foreign Legion
would perhaps help to put an end to an institution which is a disgrace
to civilised humanity, and which should be to the civilised nations of
to-day as unintelligible as the slave trade.... And above all I wanted
to get rid of those visions which troubled me.
In considering the Foreign Legion one must above all be careful not to
go to work with common-places, nor to start from general axioms. The
idea is so prevalent that the soldiers of the Foreign Legion are lost
and ruined men, even criminals--morally and practically useless at
best. A good-for-nothing lot of fellows who are no loss to anybody.
One is apt to dispose of the légionnaire in a few trite remarks. Men of
learning write from their arm-chairs to the papers about "the hirelings
who have sold themselves into slavery, thus helping to revive the
feudal system of the Middle Ages." If, however, the question were more
closely inquired into, I am sure that it would be found that these
rogues and vagabonds are not, in reality, quite so bad. True, I can
bring forward no positive proof of this. There are no statistics about
the Foreign Legion, and I am in no better position than any other human
being to bring forward authentic material. There are not even official
figures about the strength of the two regiments. I admit, willingly
enough, that a large percentage of the men in the Foreign Legion really
deserve the callous summing up that one is wont to apply to the whole
regiment. All that I have seen and heard in Africa, however, has
convinced me that the other and greater part of the men in the Foreign
Legion are anything but the lost souls one imagines them to be. They
come into the Legion as poor workmen. Their story is the sad one of the
vagabond workman who had to starve on the French high road, because he
could not speak the language. It is these men who have always formed
the heart of the Foreign Legion. It is the pangs of hunger that drives
men into the Foreign Legion--French and English, Germans and Italians,
Spaniards and Austrians, men of all countries, men of all races. Yes,
hunger is a most efficient recruiting sergeant for the Foreign Legion.
The hungry man who seeks a refuge in the Foreign Legion gets, it is
true, his daily bread; he is, all the same, disgracefully swindled. It
cannot be repeated often enough how hard the légionnaire has to work,
how miserable his existence is, how he gives his whole strength for a
wage that is not worth mentioning. We are so practical in our modern
ideas of life; every workman knows well enough the exact value of his
work in the current coin of the realm, and takes advantage of every
opportunity of getting a higher wage. And, in an age which is ever
improving the standard of living, and which has so absolutely changed
the ideas of the poorer classes, how is it possible that a business
concern like the Foreign Legion--it is really nothing but a business
concern, a commercial undertaking--can always get hundreds and
thousands of labourer-soldiers, for a wage compared with which the
wages of the tiniest village are riches?
The results are startling when one compares the Foreign Legion with the
world's two other mercenary armies, those of America and England, both
of which countries, by-the-by, take great care to keep up a certain
moral standard among their soldiers. These two armies, in sharp
contrast to the Foreign Legion, pay their soldiers exceptionally well.
The least that an American regular receives is thirteen dollars a
month; the English Tommy gets a shilling a day. And these are soldiers
and not workmen. They are mercenaries, like the légionnaire, but at any
rate they are well-paid mercenaries.
The miserable wages, together with the existing conditions of life in
the Legion, are enough to convince even a Frenchman that the existence
of the Foreign Legion is a sin against the very first principles of
humanity--and has been for eighty years. In the sand of Algeria, in the
swamps of Madagascar, in the fever-pested plains of Tonquin, in the
valleys of Mexico, there lie these men of every nation, these men who
have died in the Foreign Legion, who have sold their lives for their
rations and five centimes a day.
If one leaves the dead in peace and only considers the living, one
reaches the same conclusion: robbery, and robbery of the destitute at
that! A sin against every principle of humanity! Oh, thrice accursed
Legion: forcing inexperienced young fellows into its ranks, who would
never join did they know what lies before them; absolutely callous as
to the value of human life, forcing its soldiers to conditions of life
which must ruin their health for ever!
It is not for this alone that the Legion is answerable. It is also
answerable for the vices of the Legion, for it is the life in the
Legion that has brought the tiny seeds of these vices to full bloom.
* * * * *
About the political aspect of the Foreign Legion there can be no two
opinions.
The Foreign Legion is an antiquated, ridiculously out-of-date survival
of the feudal system of the Middle Ages, with all the disadvantages of
the mercenary system, but without the romantic halo which in days gone
by hung around the soldiers of fortune.
According to modern ideas, it is absolutely monstrous that one of the
most cultured nations of the world should have in its pay a corps
composed of men of all nationalities, and who are, as is generally
acknowledged, very often foreign deserters, who enlist to save
themselves from starvation. Their colours bear the unsatisfying motto,
"Valeur et Discipline." The inscription on the national flag, "Honneur
et Patrie"--"For Honour and our Country"--could hardly be given to
these "mixed pickles." But these two words, "Valeur" and "Discipline,"
are pregnant with meaning. Comparisons with the English and American
armies are not only of interest as far as the pay is concerned; there
is in all respects a vast difference between these two armies and the
Foreign Legion. Only men of British birth can join the British army.
The American army takes foreigners into its ranks, but only those who
possess the so-called first papers, _i.e._, have sworn before a
magistrate that they intend to become American citizens after the
prescribed five years. The American mercenary is looked upon as an
American citizen and has to take the oath of allegiance. The Foreign
Legion, on the other hand, knows no oath at all. The printed bit of
paper that the recruit for the Foreign Legion signs is merely a
contract, a statement of the conditions of service. This contract is
the only chain which fetters the légionnaire to the Legion--a contract
which, according to every one of our modern ideas of international law,
is null and void. To-day, in international law, contracts opposed to
public morality are much talked about, and what could be more immoral
in every sense of the word than this contract that the French Republic
makes with its recruits, this contract in which what is got out of a
man and what he is paid stand in such an unsatisfying relation to each
other.
As I have said before, there can be no two opinions about the Foreign
Legion. Every one with sound ideas of political economy must agree that
it is an unheard-of condition of affairs when a nation is allowed to
receive the deserters and criminals--I speak now of that other half of
the Foreign Legion--of the States surrounding it, indeed from all the
States in the world, with open arms, and to make use of them on
principle for a special military organisation. One cannot speak too
strongly about this transaction, which is a piece of military
blackguardism with something more than despicable about it. And not
only the feudalism of the Middle Ages survives in the Foreign Legion
but also the morals of those times, when a poor devil enlisted because
he did not know of anything better to do with his life: of those times
when a deserter was valued because he made a pair of arms and legs the
less in the opposing force. In the Foreign Legion's enlistment bureaux
a recruit gets a special welcome when he announces that he is a
deserter, and is then looked upon as a really valuable addition to the
corps. It is also a fact that France offers sanctuary to all criminals
who fly from justice. The Foreign Legion will only give up
murderers--every other kind of criminal is safe there. And France's
selfish reason for this is that she can thereby fill the ranks of a
regiment that is always fighting for France and which is always ready
to do the hardest work for her in the most unhealthy climates. The
average Frenchman has, during the Legion's eighty years of existence,
contented himself with attributing the successes of the Foreign Legion
to the French flag, and has always looked upon the Foreign Legion as a
profitable and patriotic institution. It is only quite of late that the
Foreign Legion has come to be looked upon in France as a problem.
To-day the Foreign Legion is not an institution that every Frenchman
considers quite in the natural order of things. Even the French
Ministry of War has busied itself with the "Legion problem." It could
not, however, quite make up its mind to give up the Legion. The
possibility of employing a soldier who receives five centimes a day,
and who can be made use of for all sorts of dangerous undertakings in
the worst of climates, is too great a temptation.
Perhaps the real reason for this tenacity is that France, who is so
proud of her military traditions, finds it hard to bring herself to
dissolve a corps which has been in existence for more than eighty years
and which has been led by many a famous general and marshal of France.
It has been suggested that it would be a good idea to change the method
of recruiting. Passports should be demanded to make sure that the
recruit had not got into trouble with the authorities of his own
country. Deserters from the armies of other countries should on no
condition be accepted.
There is a diversity of opinion about these suggestions in French
military circles. One party asserts that with the deserters the Foreign
Legion would lose the flower of its strength, the soldiers who have
been trained in other armies. The other side urges that if the pay were
raised and the time the men must serve in order to qualify for a
pension shortened, the adventurous life in the Foreign Legion and the
hope of promotion would always bring more than enough good stuff from
all nations for service under the Legion's flag. In these debates the
military point of view is the only one of importance and since,
considered from this point of view, the Legion has always borne itself
splendidly, things have been left as they were. All suggestions for a
change in the organisation of the Legion have naturally been made very
quietly. All the same the Legion has, of late, come very much before
the public in France.
There is no doubt that they are beginning to look at the Foreign Legion
a little critically in France. The number of those who doubt that the
country is right in keeping up this barbarous institution is growing
daily. Referring to the great mutiny of the soldiers of the Legion at
Saida, Jaurès wrote in the _Humanité_:
"The Foreign Legion will doubtless be a source of everlasting
difficulty to us; the idea of forming a body of troops for the French
army from foreign deserters is at any rate an unusual one."
This is a step in the right direction. They are beginning to talk about
the problem of the Foreign Legion. Its existence is no longer
considered absolutely natural. The question has been raised. If the
Foreign Legion did not exist, and some member of the French parliament
were to suggest the formation of a corps of foreign mercenaries,
preferably foreign deserters, the suggestion would doubtless be
received with indignation. The tactless politician would be sure to be
confronted with the somewhat obvious remark that it would be unworthy
of the dignity of France to gather a band of foreigners under the
tricolour to defend French soil. One would hear some very pretty
speeches on the subject. That sort of thing can be tolerated in the
Balkan States or in Venezuela or Honduras, but not in our proud France.
Some deputy or other would be certain to warn the nation--the warning
is a very obvious one--that other States could institute Foreign
Legions, filling their ranks with French deserters. Think of the
shudder that would pass through the land at the idea of English ships
manned by, or German colonies conquered by, French deserters.
... The Foreign Legion lives upon its past. The Frenchman is accustomed
to it and hardly notices what an anachronism it is.
The problem of the Legion is so easy. It can be divided into two
questions:
Is it fair to pay a man who works really hard a daily wage of five
centimes?
Is it fair to make use of a poor devil's misfortunes, or the fact that
he has got into trouble with the authorities of his native land, in
this way for national purposes?
The answer to these questions is not difficult.
In later years especially, the French Government has made a clean sweep
of many French institutions that seemed to be incompatible with the
fair fame of France. One can be quite sure that it will in course of
time be recognised that the Foreign Legion must be done away with.
One is only tempted to ask: How long will it last?
_Quousque tandem...?_
Printed by BALLANTYNE & CO. LIMITED
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London