punctilious, he fulfils here the duties of postmaster, money-changer,
censor of correspondence, headmaster, major-domo—and does it all
without irritability and without giving the impression that he is
lowering himself in any way. In his bold, firm, regular, almost heraldic
handwriting, he registers the arrival and departure of letters; he enters
in the account-book payments we make for haberdashery; he keeps memoranda
of the interminable series of money-orders. He works deliberately, making
neat rows of figures, using a ruler whenever he wishes to draw a line,
and taking great care not to ink his long white fingers or to make blots
on the large folios of ministerial paper. There is not a speck of dust
on his writing-table; everything is neatly laid out in squares, as in
a French garden. Behind him, on the top of the closed wash-hand stand,
a lemon, cut in two exactly equal halves, a loaf of ration bread, cut
with precision, and a glass of fresh water, combine to form a picture
as definite and sober as a scene of still life by Chardin. The casemate
is well-lighted, vast, and in keeping with its tenant. A narrow iron
bedstead, a trunk, a clothes-hanger upon which are seen a _Mütze_,
a long grey cape, and a sword; two deal tables standing end to end,
one for himself and the other for d’Arnoult, his secretary; a small
dressing-table, three chairs—this comprises all the furniture. In this
formal, cold, geometrical environment sits the huge man (much too large
for his table, so that his arms and legs are cramped), writing all day.
Humble work, well within the capacity of any honest “swivel-officer”
of the reserve. But Baron von Stengel, bending his long back to it,
infusing it with his air of refinement, stamps it with an almost hieratic
character. It is possible that he would prefer to be in command of a park
of artillery upon the Warthe or upon the Ypres canal. Perhaps he envies
his two sons, captains in the army of Lorraine, who have just announced
to him almost simultaneously the receipt of the iron cross. But this much
is certain, that it is not without sadness that he recalls the last war.
He thinks of the 1870 campaign, which, as _Oberleutnant_, he spent at
Ulm, employed, as to-day, in guarding prisoners. He thinks of his young
colleagues of those days, of the interminable conversations when they
were all intoxicated with the glorious news that streamed in, the news
of Wörth, Borny, Gravelotte, Metz, and Sedan. He recalls the ardency of
those years, and the cheerful noise of his steps as he walked beside the
Danube in the beautiful night-time. He remembers seeing in the river the
reflection of the cathedral spire, graceful and ornate, a silent witness
of the ancient German glories then renascent—victory, love.
He was an old man when the new call to arms came. Nevertheless he
offered his services to King Louis; though a septuagenarian, he begged
to be allowed to help. Hence he is at Fort Orff. To one who watches
him at work, censoring our letters, doing our little banking business,
fulfilling the thousand and one trifling duties of his office, it is
obvious that he is performing a rite, the great rite of patriotism.
Although hungry men are seldom just, I have never heard any of the
prisoners utter a single ill-natured word about the commandant. As he
walks with slow gait along the parapet, every one salutes him with
manifest goodwill. White-headed, wearing an ample grey cloak falling in
straight folds, he looks like a patriarch of ancient days visiting his
faithful tribe. He wields authority so naturally, and is so free from
hauteur, that no one dreams of murmuring. He has worked the miracle of
uniting in a sentiment of respect for his personality all the inhabitants
of this little France of Fort Orff, this miniature of great France, the
factious and ungovernable nation, the nation of eternal discontent. He
is so obviously straightforward and humane that the most savage of our
prisoners would protest if any one, suddenly seized by an evil whimsy,
should desire to make this good old man of the great century responsible
for our short commons.
The major in command at headquarters in Ingolstadt, on the other hand,
who must be a jingo of the most pronounced type, is prodigal of petty
vexations. He forbids tobacco, chocolate, and sugar, “articles of
luxury.” He forbids the foundation of a canteen; he forbids the receipt
of more than ten marks at a time, and the writing of more than one letter
every ten days; he forbids pen and ink; he forbids access to the escarp
and to the summit of the slopes, doubtless considering the view too
beautiful for prisoners of war. He issues orders that the sentinels shall
fire without challenge upon any who break his rules, and it was owing to
this that Georg, being taken for a Frenchman, was shot at one evening in
the gloaming. Every day a new _Verboten_ is issued.
Amid this maze of prohibitions, our life would be a torture but for Baron
von Stengel. Discreet and tactful as he is, those among us who come
into close contact with him know with how much disgust, with how much
suppressed annoyance, he receives these vexatious orders. He carries
them out, being too good a soldier to disobey. But, too good a soldier
to misuse soldiers, too much of a gentleman to treat as galley-slaves
combatants seamed with wounds, holy priests, red cross men who have
received their baptism of fire, he often carries out his orders in a way
which is tantamount to a generous evasion.
He is an adept in the art of humanizing his agents, the _Feldwebel_ and
the soldiers of the Bavarian guard. Unfortunately these are changed every
week, and every week therefore he has to begin this civilizing task anew.
The men come to us white hot from reading the newspapers, in savage
mood—“duty, duty.” For two days the fort is an inferno. Then everything
returns to order—not German order, but our own. Their zeal is mitigated
when they take note of the way in which the commandant treats us. Our
hail-fellow-well-met air, our good-humoured cheek, do the rest. The
soldiers are tamed. Soon they cease to guard us; they contemplate us, and
take part in our life. There they stand, with fixed bayonets, somewhat
nonplussed and puzzled, almost timid, abashed as it were, hardly knowing,
when we dig them in the ribs, whether we are fond of them or are making
fun of them. At bottom they feel themselves to be our inferiors, less
lively and less intelligent. They all have much the same idea as fat Max,
the canteen keeper, who secretly breaks the pumps whenever a fresh levy
is being made, in order to render himself more indispensable here than
at the front. In view of the activity of our comrades, their carvings in
wood and in stone, the tin rings they make, the horsehair watch-chains,
the stools, tables, and cupboards which they knock together out of
bits of planking filched from the workyards at Ingolstadt, this mighty
beer-drinker is unable to control his astonishment. He waves his great
arms, exclaiming:
“These Frenchmen, what workers! I’ve always maintained, _Herr Gott
Sakrament_, that every one of them has a devil in his inside.”
M. von Stengel is of much the same way of thinking as Max.
Little as he seems to notice, wishing, as he does, to avoid having to
allot punishment, hardly anything happens in the fort without his being
aware of it. Nothing licit or illicit escapes his keen gaze, and what
he does not see he divines. Nevertheless, with the roguish indulgence
of a grand seigneur, he is careful to avoid any display of anger. I
am confident that he derives a good deal of secret enjoyment from the
contemplation of the network of customs, subterfuges, and evasions, whose
threads are interwoven behind the iron grating of German regulations. He
watches with amusement the supple boldness with which prudent advances
are made, the care with which direct conflict with authority is avoided,
and the ingenuity with which the regulations are taken in the flank,
circumvented, or ignored. He admires the stratagems by means of which
this miniature France, prisoned in a foreign fortress, is enabled to
reintegrate the life of the homeland. He does not fail to recognize that
these breaches of discipline serve, even more clearly than the ingenuity
with which the breaches are effected, to manifest the hardihood of his
prisoners, and to prove their possession of an individuality at once
gentle and intractable.
This German, at any rate, does not regard the French as “monkeys.” He
is not misled by their superficial levity, their suppleness, their
apparent scepticism—shining armour with which they protect their ego,
a vivacious and rebellious ego, which resists everything, which always
gets even, is ever elastic, artful, or frank, as circumstances prescribe,
but immalleable, incapable of being passive, obstinately itself. The
commandant is impressed with the fact that the Frenchman is what he
is and remains what he is, jealous of his privacy, greatly prizing his
own humour, tastes, and ideas. It may be that M. von Stengel considers
that we are excessively individualized, that whilst we often seem to
treat grave matters as trifles, the least onslaught upon our intimate
personality arouses in us an excess of fury, a revolt which may go so
far as to compromise the collective interest. But it is certain that he
knows us and accepts us as we are. He imposes no constraint, and has no
desire to refashion us after the Teuton model. It is even possible that
he regards with secret approval the delicate compost of national merits
and peculiarities. In any case, in his relations with us he is extremely
careful to do everything he can to blunt the sharp, harassing, and
painful angles of Germanic discipline.
Nevertheless this man, so sensible, moderate, and well-bred, does not
possess a perfectly unified character. One recognizes in him both the
German and the natural man. The former enunciates cynical maxims to the
latter, insisting, for example, upon the value of war for war’s sake. The
latter listens, but shies at the idea. It is as if, while enjoying the
refined sweetness of a French morning, he should suddenly be disturbed by
the horrid bellowing of all the war-horns of the Huns. The dicta of this
brutal philosophy rack his ears. But, being good-mannered, he hearkens.
His brother seems to him a thick-skinned fellow, coarse-blooded, grim,
and savage-hearted. However, he makes no protest. His brother reiterates
his statements, repeats his massive assertions loudly and unceasingly,
and insists upon agreement. He has to pay for being well-mannered, for
hating scenes, for disliking to give pain. From very kindness of heart,
from love of peace, from very sensitiveness, he assumes a barbaric
mask. The good brother! It goes much against the grain, but he gives an
apparent assent.
It is thanks to a series of such sacrifices, invariably one-sided, that
the German and the natural man seem, in Baron von Stengel, to live on
harmonious terms.
His natural man is good and just. Making no parade of humanitarian
convictions, he practises humaneness.
It is touching to watch this grand old man, lofty of stature, with a
solid prognathous chin, irreproachably dressed, when he stops to speak to
a soldier suffering from despondency. “Fous êtes triste?” he asks in his
slow and broken French, gently pulling the man by the ear. The prisoner
does not misunderstand; he knows that though the major can read French
he is unable to speak it, and that in this laconic phrase he desires to
condense an entire friendly conversation.
A few days ago, having learned that a loaf of bread priced at thirty
pfennig had been sold at one mark fifty pfennig to a prisoner by a
soldier of the guard, he was greatly enraged, and in the presence of
Durupt, who was helping him to write up the register of money orders, he
exclaimed, “There is but one price for bread, and I shall proceed with
the utmost rigour against anyone, be he French or German, who asks a
higher price. It is disgraceful to rob prisoners in this way!” The joke
is that officially we are not supposed to buy anything at all.
The day before yesterday there was a fall of sleet. The men were
loitering up and down the corridors. In front of the _Kommandantur_ there
was a great clatter of hobnailed shoes, and the noise was reinforced
by light songs, laughter, and chatter. The commandant was reading our
eleven hundred letters. Two days earlier he had sent them to Ingolstadt.
Headquarters, cantankerous as usual, had returned them, under some
pretext, to be re-read. This was something calculated to put the gentlest
of men out of humour. Scrupulously obedient to orders, he was now for the
second time reading these poor papers, badly written in pencil, insipid,
and all exactly alike. On the other side of the door, the procession
of prisoners passed and repassed unceasingly. The clatter of nails on
the cement got on his nerves. “Oh, the noise, the noise!” he said, as
if speaking to himself. D’Arnoult was there and rose from his seat,
intending to ask the comrades to be a little quieter. The commandant
stopped him, saying, “No, monsieur d’Arnoult, do not go out. _Mein Zimmer
ist doch nur eine Kanzlei_—after all, my room is only an office!” And
once more he immersed himself in his reading.
Withal, in the major’s innermost being, the natural man invariably acts
and governs. The other, the German, merely utters professions of faith.
Out walking, just now, we had paused for a moment, dazzled by the beauty
of the evening. We were on the strip of greyish-white pasture which
arches along the edge of the pine wood, and looked like the woolly back
of a sheep. Before us, seemingly at our very feet, the Danubian plain,
with its gentle undulations, stretched away through the iridescent haze.
The sun had just set. A breeze was blowing from the west, chasing before
it golden mist-wreaths. The branches and faded foliage of the oaks, dry
and nipped by the frost, rustled in the chill wind; the pine needles,
interlaced with gossamer, reddened by many sunsets, whispered and
murmured. We were a silent company, Baron von Stengel, Major Langlois,
MM. Jeandidier, Cavaillé, Lœbre, Romant, Bouvat, my friend Laloux, and
myself. The vastness of the prospect, the silence of the fields, the
fading of the light, the shivering of the undergrowth in the twilight,
the strange sensation of being suddenly plunged into the heart of
winter—all these influences combined to keep us mute.
What a waste of time! I thought. Already three months in prison. Three
months lost beyond recall. And the baron had just said to me, “England
is intractable. I hardly think you will get away before next autumn.”
More than a year lived through for nothing, suffered for nothing. A whole
year cut out from the short span of our days. I was prey to a cold, hard
sadness. Then, my thoughts turned to you.… All at once a song rose from
the road. The recruits quartered at Hepperg were returning to quarters,
marching with that slow and heavy German pace which will never be a match
for our French step.
They were singing the famous
Nun ade, wir müssen Abschied nehmen.…
with which all the _Feldgrau_, before going to the front, have made the
quiet Bavarian taverns ring, sitting over their great tankards, each
holding the beloved one’s hand. I was familiar with the strains. The
little sergeant of whom I have previously written to you had made his men
sing it to me one evening in the guardroom, and had copied out the text
for me:
Now farewell. We must take leave. We must charge our muskets.
With stout hearts we shall give to the war and to the fields of
battle the finest days of our youth. Farewell, dear parents,
brothers, and sisters. Shake hands for the last time. If we
are never to meet again, let us hope for a reunion in a better
world.
Farewell, best beloved, you who know that our parting is harder
to bear than death. It may be that we shall never meet again.
Yet every day, when night falls, let us renew our hopes.
The shells are whistling through the air. The bayonets are
fixed. The flags are waving in the breeze. Our dread is
concealed beneath the smoke of the combat. As we fight we cry,
hurrah, hurrah!
We are in the thick of it, like good Bavarians.
“What are you thinking about, my dear enemy?” said von Stengel all at
once with a smile.—“_Herr Kommandant_,” I replied, in an access of dull
rage, “_dieser Krieg wird die grosse Schande Europas sein!_”[26]
Slowly, to suit the baron, we descended the incline, soft beneath our
feet, the turf torn, and littered with fragments of shell; here and there
grew handsome stone-pines with twisted trunks. Being unable to run, I was
shivering in my summer clothing. We took the road beside the hop-garden,
and as we walked the baron gave me his views upon the war.
In truth, all he did was to repeat the words of Harnack, Lujo Brentano,
Troeltsch, Willamovitz-Moellendorff, and the hundred representatives of
German Kultur. As I listened, I seemed to be re-reading the articles
which these writers were now publishing in the war editions of the
_Internationale Monatsschrift_:
“Germany has never desired anything but peace; William is the peace
emperor; Sir Edward Grey is the villain of the drama; English
commercialism led to the war; Germany was suddenly seized by the throat
and had to defend herself; she is engaged in a life and death struggle.…
“_Ueber welches Volk wird einst das Tribunal der Weltgeschichte den
Urteilsspruch ‘Schuldig’ fallen? Eins ist gewiss! Deutschland kann dem
Urteilsspruch mit reinem Gewissen entgegen sehen._”[27]
I had no interest in all this. If the major had been a man of my own age,
I should have bluntly begged him to spare me these phrases of the good
bourgeois who has just been reading the newspapers. I should have said to
him: “In actual fact, our respective countries are at war. Let us leave
it to our grandchildren, should they have a fancy for writing history, to
ascertain who is responsible for this butchery. But as far as I am myself
concerned, be good enough to consider me a man of sound intelligence,
and don’t attempt to befool me with your political myths. I agree that
these myths have their uses, and that they are necessary for the soldier.
To him one must lie perforce. Above all, in our democratic epoch, the
violent man does wisely to wear sheep’s clothing, and to give himself the
air of defending civilization and humanity, for otherwise the citizen
would never be willing to play the part of soldier. If needs must, the
citizen will allow himself to be killed for the sake of principles, or in
defence of hearth and home, but never for the interest of the Hapsburgs,
the Hohenzollerns, or a business corporation. Agreed, the aggressor must
lie.
“But we are not now on a public platform; we are not composing a
proclamation. Do not let us deceive ourselves, nor soil our minds with a
superfluous falsehood.”
But to this old man I said nothing of the sort. I listened patiently.
The wind bit my ears, and my body seemed a vast Siberia. As I walked, I
looked at the birches, each one of which was known to me individually.
Their delicate ramifications, now leafless, hung like horses’ manes. But
the youngest trees, those whose tresses were not yet grown, so that their
branches pointed directly upwards like the twigs of an ill-made besom,
still retained some sparse foliage. In the icy wind, the white of their
stems standing out against the greenish-black of the acacias in the ditch
had a somewhat funereal air.
“War,” said von Stengel, “is an essential condition of social life.
Without war, the human race would become anæmic, would slip back into
barbarism, ignorance, and hebetude. Even though man loves peace, he must
also be a great fighter before the Lord, _ein Streiter vor dem Herrn_.
Do not imagine that wars are the work of a few men; the ferment works
in the very heart of the race, and when this happens the maintenance of
peace becomes impossible. The friction is so great, the heat generated
is so intense, that the flames burst forth spontaneously. Then patience
is out of place, and it is necessary to unsheathe the sword. Blood, much
blood, must flow to appease the fierce angers and to restore men to their
customary calm.”
It was the German in Baron von Stengel, not the man, who spoke,
enunciating the doctrine that war is necessary, that war is a natural
function of social life.
“For the rest,” he added, humanizing to the best of his ability the myth
formulated by the German, for now the natural man was resuming sway,
“once war has broken out, it is the duty of us all to do our best to
diminish its horrors. Men differ widely, and yet, through contact with
upright and noble characters, even the worst of human beings, even those
of malignant and dark nature, come to learn the value of peace, of good
understanding, and acquire the faculty of enduring with equanimity.”
Thus talking, we reached the great iron gate, adorned with the Bavarian
lions. I rang. The gate was opened, the baron drew aside to allow his
“boarders” to pass in, and these in turn signalled to him to take
precedence.
The commandant major, Baron Stefan von Stengel, very erect, head held
high, passed through the gateway. The guard, fully armed, stood at
attention, lined up in two rows. Upon an order from the _Feldwebel_,
“_Hurrah für den Major_,” twenty recruits shouted with a single voice.
Night had fallen. All the windows of the fort, which had been invisible
as long as we were outside the walls, were now seen to be lighted up,
and the red of the bricks was manifest in the starlight. We crossed the
drawbridge. “Now that the snows have come,” said the commandant, pointing
to the ditch, “we could make a good skating-rink there.” He saluted, and
withdrew into his casemate.
* * * * *
As a matter of fact, I have not entirely lost my time here, since I have
succeeded in classifying adequately in the social hierarchy such a man as
Baron von Stengel, who is neither hero nor genius, who has no ambition
to display supernatural virtues, but who is simply a man with pleasant
manners, refined, well-bred, free from all stiffness, easy to get on
with, a truly civilized being.
You, my friends, have spoiled me. It is owing to you that I had always
remained ignorant how restricted is the genus of “decent folk.” The
war has changed my views in this respect. Hardened, simplified, freer
in relation to external conditions, as adaptable as any one could
wish—when the campaign is over I shall be somewhat less confiding than
of yore towards my kind. Now that I sample them in the mass, elbowing
them unceasingly morning, noon, and night throughout the entire day of
twenty-four hours, listening to them as they talk, chatter, grumble,
quarrel, and snore, looking on at them while they enjoy themselves,
complain, play, eat, bargain, pull out the personal stop, pass judgments,
take things at their ease; now that I no longer contemplate them through
the prism of my doctrines and of my leniency, but look at them as
they really are, all the scenery of civil life removed, all social
trappings stripped off—there are certain categories of mind which I
understand better than before. I understand better, for example, hermits,
misanthropes, jansenists, and all pessimists, pagan as well as Christian,
all those who can see nothing in man but the primitive beast, and those
who never cease talking of original sin. How greatly now do I prize
good manners, the veneer of culture, the mask of decency. These are but
externals, things which do not give expression to man’s intimate nature.
They even aim at veiling that nature. But precisely because they exercise
this occlusive and embellishing function, they seem to me august. The
sight of the real arouses an appetite for fiction, creates a necessity
for art and for dreams. Are these lies? Yes, they are lies, poor lies!
What matter? Must we live in hell by deliberate choice? It cannot be
asserted that such illusions make a paradise of our ill-conditioned and
sordid world; but at least they mitigate the stench to some extent,
neutralize its offensiveness, and render the bestial hustle a thought
less aggressive.
My nose is still uneasy with the memory of the carrion odour from the
battlefields of Moncourt, Lagarde, and Kerprich. It was here that I
learned the value of shroud, coffin, quicklime, and tomb. Now that I have
come to know men better, I know also that the trifling restraints and
delicate veils of conventional good manners are absolutely essential.
THE SLOPES ARE FORBIDDEN
_November 20, 1914._
Snow has been falling throughout the night. Risking a shot, for the new
orders from headquarters are still more stringent, I walked for a good
hour at dawn upon the northern ramparts. When the sun rose over the
village of Hepperg there was sketched in the opposite quarter, towards
France, in three strokes of the brush, the most striking of pastels:
in the foreground, the old gold of the oaks, flaming, sanguine, and
burnished: in the middle distance, the wide field of virgin snow; in the
background, the heavy and sombre line of the pines, interspersed with
larches, sparkling with hoar-frost.