traditions, education, and temperament; their habits of life are
fixed. They are in the full vigour of manhood. They are strong and
spirited. They are familiar with violence and struggle. Throw these
soldiers pell-mell into a cellar, where they hunger and are cut off
from news. Subject them to meddlesome regulations. Compel them, in this
wretchedness, to live always in close proximity, and far from everything
which they have hitherto known as life. Doubtless they will have their
good hours. At times, when their minds are filled with thoughts of those
they love and of their motherland, their words and their silences will
be no less pure and sweet than is a long summer twilight. Or when some
newspaper, concealed in a parcel from France, has brought them tidings
of victory and wafted to them all the hope of their free brothers, they
will experience a sublime unison of joy. But at other times.… No, I wish
to forget. After all, the heroes of the great epic are but men. Why
should we expect of them, during months and months, a patience and a
self-command of which many men in good society, men esteemed well-bred,
are incapable when a caller stays too long?
* * * * *
Everything has changed since Baron von Stengel’s departure. The new
commandant, M. Schwappach, of the department of streams and forests,
possesses all the virtues of the German bureaucrat. He is active,
precise, orderly, meticulous. He has also the infatuation of his caste,
for he believes that the world gravitates round it. He admires and
fears his chiefs, and he applies to the very letter every _Befehl_ from
headquarters. Everything is now forbidden. Daily the _Feldwebel_ reads
the orders to the sentries: the slopes are forbidden; without challenge,
they must fire upon any one who is seen there.
* * * * *
I have suffered greatly at being thus cut off from the view to be
obtained from the ramparts, and this has affected me hardly less than the
short commons. The number of sentries has been tripled. We are forbidden
to wear civilian clothing unless it has been dyed red. Headquarters has
even compelled the chasseurs alpins and the colonial infantrymen to paint
red stripes on their uniforms under the pretext that these were too much
like civilian clothing. It has become impossible to get the most trifling
supplement to the official rations. M. Schwappach had a _Landwehrmann_
court-martialled because he had sold some chocolate to the prisoners.
The guard is terrorized. The loaf which used to last three days must now
last five, so that our daily allowance of bread is 7½ oz. This would mean
sheer starvation if we received nothing from France. No more coffee, no
more roasted barley: roasted acorns merely. Those who get more parcels
than the others have a regular train of dependents—famished men. My own
dependents are chiefly soldiers from the invaded regions.
Having written a strongly worded letter which was sent back to me
from Ingolstadt (I am in extremely bad odour at headquarters), I am
threatened, should the offence be repeated, with being completely
deprived of the right to receive or send letters. I have already been
punished with three weeks of this measure.
I have had some very remarkable discussions with the commandant. These
people want us to love them. They demand, filled with indignation, our
reasons for not loving them. If we give them our reasons in plain terms,
and support our assertions with facts and dates, lo! ten days’ prison, on
bread and water!
M. von Stengel, where are you? Anyhow, we now know what German discipline
is. We know it in all its purity and all its splendour. There is no
longer any one to temper its severities.
THE RUSSIANS
_April 20, 1915._
The Russians whom we were dreading have arrived. For the last three
months the Germans have been threatening us with them as with the plague,
adding: “In the camps where the French and the Russians are together they
always come to blows.”
One morning the _Oberstabsarzt_ inoculated us against cholera. Every
one said: “They are coming!” The _Feldwebel_ did in fact go through the
casemates, allotting five to one, ten to another, and fifteen to some.
In the afternoon, groups were watching from the outer part of the slope
which commands the road from Ingolstadt. There was much grumbling. Some
were cursing the Germans for wishing to poison us with the deadly Asiatic
disease. Some, frightened by the inoculation, were already imagining
themselves black and rotten.
At six in the evening, an hour earlier than usual, the electric bell rang
for the evacuation of the courts. Immediately afterwards, the forty-nine
heads of rooms were summoned, were drawn up in line beyond the bridge,
and were told to wait.
The gentle April twilight had already enveloped the brow of the slopes,
and the lower red-brick front looking into the ditch lay hidden in the
gathering darkness as if in ambuscade. French prisoners were bunched
round the windows. With laughing faces they defied the commandant, stiff
and dapper, doing sentry-go on the glacis. Under his very nose they began
to hum the Russian national anthem. But the Russians did not come. The
great black gate, buttressed between the mossy walls of the counterscarp,
starred with anemone and colt’s-foot, remained obstinately shut.
Impatience grew. At length the outer sentry whistled, the _Hauptmann_
went forward, and the gate opened.
The distribution of the convoy was effected in the Prussian manner. Each
headman went to take delivery of his Russians outside, behind the gate,
and conducted the supplementary squad to his casemate. This took half an
hour. In Indian file, following their French corporal or sergeant, they
went along at a quick step, but noiselessly in their supple jack-boots;
they were muffled in huge grey overcoats, and their size was increased by
enormous fur caps. Night fell. The dead colour of their uniforms melted
away in the darkness. The silence was absolute. Pale Scythian faces,
flat-nosed Tartar faces, Asiatic types with wide cheek-bones, Samoyede
beards, downy and curled—all the Russias were passing. We looked on. When
they had crossed the bridge the fort swallowed them.
In the interior, to the scandal of our masters, French rule prevailed.
Notwithstanding the order confining us to our rooms, the “Frantsuz”
crowded to the thresholds to greet the “little fathers”—“Good-day,
Russkis!” they cried, regardless of the Boches; “_Germania kaput!_ The
Carpathians floup!” They made roguish gestures indicating freedom.
“What monkeys!” thought the Germans, as they looked on. The truth is that
no one understands so well as the French how to invent a language, to
supplement words by signs and onomatopœias. They have an excellent excuse
for neglecting the study of foreign languages! Does a good mime learn
foreign tongues?
The Russians got on little faster in the corridors of Fort Orff than in
the attack upon Lowicz, where their advance was obstructed by barbed
wire. Each door was an ambush; every Frenchman an obstacle. Cigars and
cakes rained upon them. And then the handshakings and the amicable
clappings on the shoulder. Détry, though he is as much afraid of lice as
of cholera, exchanged his képi for an imposing Siberian headdress made of
sheepskin, bristling, stinking, and alive!
The little fathers had had nothing to eat since the previous day.
The quartermaster served them out a morsel of cheese, but no bread.
“_Germania, niet hleb_” (“There is no bread in Germany!”), said the
Russians, “_Ja, nichts Brot!_” rejoined the French in their bad German;
“but France _Brot_, plenty _Brot_!” Thus communicating with their friends
in nigger talk, they emptied their haversacks before the hungry men.
The Germans laughed on the wrong side of their mouths. They had expected
war; what they saw was love. Until nine o’clock the turmoil was
incredible. Each room was treating its new recruits. The poorer rooms
offered crusts of white bread baked in Saintonge or Lower Brittany.
In the well-to-do quarters the men brewed chocolate and served it
with rusks. Since in my room, that of the interpreters, there were
no Russians, I went to No. 16, the casemate of Corporal Dumoulin, my
comrade-at-arms. Dinner was finished. Seated on their palliasses doubled
over, our allies were digesting the good things sent by French mothers.
Near the window, a hairdresser was already dealing with the great mops of
hair.
“You see,” said Dumoulin, “I want to smarten them up. But how pious and
ceremonious they are. Of course we divided our food with them. They all
kissed my hand. Then they took off their caps, said their prayers, and
fed. After that, they got up, said their prayers again, and kissed my
hand once more. But what have you got there?”
“I have no Russians, so I shall adopt yours. But unfortunately they have
already dined!”
“Don’t bother about that; they will dine ten times over this evening!”
It was my turn to be embraced. Gingerbread, Easter eggs, jam,
petit-beurre biscuits, dates, cigarettes—I was kissed between each
course. One of the Russians, a hairy corporal, a thick-set man, with
dog-like eyes, was not satisfied with my hand, but kissed me on the
lips. I suppose it is the custom of the country. Some of them overwhelmed
me with profound genuflexions as if I had been the white elephant.
Throughout the evening there was an intoxication of generosity. Thrifty
men at ordinary times, the French now gave all they had. Il Poverello
could not have done better. The huge round loaves kneaded in the family
kneading-trough and baked in the village oven, the apples and nuts of
the last harvest, old sausages spiced with garlic and thyme, everything,
even the “surprises” secretly prepared by the maman for her boy in
captivity—everything was handed over. Little Stéphanus of Saint-Denis,
who has lost his hearing through a wound in the head, and who, being an
orphan, would receive nothing from France were it not for you and Mme.
Weiss, had only his fifth of a loaf of potato bread. He gave it. The
comrades from the invaded regions, who have to live on the provisions of
their “adopted brothers,” were greatly distressed that they had nothing
to share out but their poverty.
But if charity was lively, gaiety was insane. The little fathers were
stupefied with astonishment. They looked upon us as legendary _bariny_
(seigneurs), as Crœsuses flowing with milk and honey, as magicians
proof against misfortune, able to make the desert, and even the prison
pavement, blossom like the rose. What a change for them! They had been
the serfs of the Boche sergeants in the Lechfeld camp, their backs were
still smarting from the canings administered to revenge the loss of
Przemysl, and from this they were suddenly transported to become guests
at the feast of the parable! Rich and poor, beggars and lords, all were
equal, all were friends, all were brothers at this primitive Christian
agape, which lacked nothing, not even good cigars. Such plenty and such
brotherhood turned their heads. Bewildered and mute, ignorant of our
language as we were ignorant of theirs, and having no other means of
showing us their gratitude, they kissed us in season and out, and they
prostrated themselves before us as before their own icons.
I have spoken to you about Graby, one of the two famous comic cyclists
known in Paris, and indeed throughout Europe, under the name of the
Brothers Abbins. His wound is healed. He is as lithe as ever, gay,
martial, a jolly fellow. “_Ein lustiger Gesell_,” the _Feldwebel_ calls
him, adding, “There’s a typical Frenchman for you!” In Dumoulin’s room
I am being melted almost to tears under the Russian kisses, when Graby
bursts open the door, and, quite out of breath, exclaims: “Riou, old
chap, my Slav poilus are making ready to dance. I invite you to the
party.” He drags me off. His casemate is at the other end of the fort. On
the way he explains that he has discovered a sort of interpreter, a Pole
who has been in New York, and who knows a few words of English. “You’ll
see, we’re going to have high jinks to-night!”
There are indeed high jinks. An assemblage of képis and fur caps
beneath a huge candelabra, improvised by the hosts, and ornamented with
aeroplanes and flags cut out of paper. A horrible menagerie odour fills
the room. The banquet is over. Tea is being handed round in old tins.
Graby, looking even more like a street arab than usual, is doing the
honours, assisted by big Ménard, erect, smart, as clean shaven as a
British guardsman, and with the suspicion of an English accent. Prompted
by Abbins, the Pole introduces me as a French writer familiar with
Russian authors.
“Friends!”
“Friends!”
“Comrades!”
“_Sayousniki!_”
“Bravo!”
“Hurrah!”
“Now,” says Graby, sketching a figure, “let us dance.”
A circle is formed. Two youths as lean as cats confront one another. At
first they make a feint of sparring. They seem as if engaged in a slow
and weary pyrrhic dance. The onlookers’ eyes sparkle; an indefinite
measure is beaten with the hands. This lasts for two minutes. Then
the rhythm becomes brisker, the partners draw themselves up to their
full height and keep their arms closely pressed to their sides; they
are motionless like fakirs. But with their heels they make a noise
which sounds like that of distant castanets, a muted crackling in an
ever-accelerating tempo. A sudden pause. The dancers squat on their
hams. There follows the famous step which we have beheld at the Russian
ballet, the strange dance whose savage rhythm is punctuated by the
clacking of boots on the boards. At the very end, the Russians give an
abrupt “Hurrah!” It is over. Graby congratulates his men by patting their
cheeks, by commendatory gurgles, by the “boo, boo, boo,” and other labial
interjections that mothers use to their nurslings.
More tea, more cigarettes. We ask for the Russian national anthem. You
know it. It seems to me as heavy as a convict’s fetters. To relieve my
ears I demand the _Marseillaise_. Boude sings the couplets and we take up
the chorus. The swing of it, the decision, the thrill, as of a victorious
charge, astonish the Russians. My neighbour the Pole weeps.
“You are crying?” I say to him in English.
“You can’t understand,” he makes answer. “That air represents liberty.
You possess it; you don’t know the value of it. We dream of it.” His
debased English was interspersed with Polish phrases which rang with a
sort of Latin sweetness. “Don’t you know that we are slaves?”
“This war will free you.”
“You think so? We have fought well enough! My comrades stood firm when
they were being mown down before Lowicz. Yes, we have fought fiercely for
the Czar, even while feeling that his victory would serve only to make
our chains heavier. Poor Poland! Poor Poland!”
The name of Poland attracts the attention of a big artilleryman with a
bull neck, a flat nose, a hard and suspicious expression.
“What are you saying about Poland?” he asks me in German.
“That this war will liberate the country. You have the Czar’s promise.”
* * * * *
His fixed look, fierce and defiant, his turned-up chin, his tanned and
robust visage, contrast with the noble passion of his words. Never before
have I witnessed real despair, that despair which hardens the features
and vulcanizes the soul, despair transformed into a motive for living.
This Pole is as tragic as one of Wyspianski’s heroes.
Around us the others are enjoying themselves like brothers reunited.
Graby is begging Ménard to sing the American _Row! Row! Row!_ I long to
take my companion out on to the slopes, and there, amid the silence, to
let him talk at length, to listen, and to make him feel that I share his
dreams, that France is the friend of every nation that yearns for freedom.
* * * * *
The Pole makes no accusations against France. She has deceived his
people, but he loves her just the same. He believes in her, despite her
faults, as the great champion of justice.
Ménard is singing. The French and the Russians are taking up in chorus
the refrain, “Row! Row! Row!” Elbows on knees, head in hands, expression
disdainful, my Pole says no more, but sits like a colossus, making the
best of his impotence.
The Russians have suddenly started a new air. A tenor sings the first
phrase in solo. A bass joins in. Then the other voices take up their
parts. It is beautiful, with a rough, serious, wild beauty. I ask the
title. _The Song of the War against Japan._ Then they give some love
songs. It seems to me that all voice the same music, a powerful and
melancholy, and yet simple music, with the sweet notes of infinite
submission. I think of a grand Gregorian chant encompassing all the
pleasures and all the wrongs of earth in an atmosphere of the eternal.
The strains have a bourdon of lamentation, like that of a woman spent
with suffering asking sympathy and consolation.
* * * * *
Next day the Bavarians of the guard could hardly believe their eyes.
In the courts, in the ditches, everywhere, among basins and heaps of
underclothing, quite a tribe of naked little fathers were glistening in
the sunshine. How thin they were! To what skeletons they had been reduced
by two months in Germany. Smiling, making awkward little gestures, each
one of them allowed himself to be manipulated by a Frenchman, who soaped
him all over, rubbed him down, pummelled him, dried him, and finally
dressed him as a French infantryman. “Now, then, we must wash your duds.
Come along.” And the French mamma led his great little Slav to the well,
helped him to pump some water, arranged him a bench. Then both set to
work and scrubbed.
In the evening, when the roll was called, the _Hauptmann_ exclaimed: “But
where on earth are the Russians?”
“There they are,” answered Junot, sergeant-major of No. 46.
“But what is the meaning of this masquerade?”
“Mon commandant, their clothes are drying on the slopes, and you see they
could not attend muster in a loin cloth.”
These first days were pleasant. It was good to make friends. To share
without thought of the morrow, to live without calculation, to act
solely as the heart dictated—it was like paradise. Yes, paradise within
prison walls. We were brothers. Even the veterans of Manchuria and the
Afghanistan campaigns, with all their tinsmith’s shop of commemorative
medals and their grizzled heads, even the sergeants with three stripes,
had become our little brothers. “You are hungry? Here is some white bread
from France; here is some home-made jam; here are some apples from my
orchard. Eat, Russki.” Or it would be: “You old zebra, what are you doing
that for, digging the lice out of the seams of your clothes with a knife?
You’re sowing them all over the place. That kind of grain sprouts. Look,
this is the way. Tic! Tic! Take your thumbs to it and press the beast
between the two nails. Kill, kill! It’s inhumane? Never mind. Kill away.
Have no compunction.” So the Russian “zebra” sets to work to crush his
live-stock. They now divest themselves of lice quite after the French
manner, and no longer swarm with vermin as when they arrived. But they
can still while away their long hours of leisure in parasitological
investigations and in slaughter.
* * * * *
Every evening the French and the Russians walk arm in arm on the slopes.
In less than no time a conventional language has sprung into being.
It does not lead very far. No matter. When the mimic vocabulary is
exhausted, the friends walk side by side in silence. But if a Bavarian
sentry passes, the conversation is resumed, the same things being
emphatically repeated; they clap one another on the back, they exchange
head-gear, képi for toque, fatigue-cap for its Russian equivalent.
After a few days the Russian buttons stamped with the two-headed eagle
had found their way on to our coats, while the French grenade buttons
were displayed upon the huge Russian earth-coloured cloaks. Tartar
feet were encased in French army shoes; while red trousers were tucked
into the supple boots of Ukraine leather. Early Christian communism
prevailed. Every one dressed as he fancied, mixing the uniform of the
two armies. For an entire week the height of the fashion in Nos. 44 and
46, aristocratic regions, was to walk out in moujiks’ blouses. Le Second,
Poiret’s pupil, had work after his own heart. Little Mitka’s blouse, a
brilliant grey-green, embroidered in black at the collar and wristbands,
was his great triumph.
Gradually the little fathers came to understand that they must not kiss
our hands, and that genuflexions were by no means to our taste. It
must be admitted that they found this repugnance somewhat troublesome,
the repugnance of men who make a cult of equality. They love direct
demonstrations. They are nearer to the days of the Iliad than to ’89,
fond of physical endearments like children and the early Greeks, and
a trifle fawning. But so winsomely! Besides, they had to show us
their gratitude. If instead of the forbidden gestures they made us an
oration, we raised our hands to heaven, saying: “_Nye ponimayu_—I don’t
understand!” What were they to do? Yesterday one of them, in despair,
threw himself upon the ground, kissing my footsteps in a transport of
delight. Impatiently I seized him, and dragged him to his feet rather
roughly. You should have seen him, awkward, speechless, and motionless.
His silence seemed to say: “Why do you forbid me to embrace you, to kiss
the dust beneath your feet? Do you not care for my gratitude? And yet
you are kindly. Or do you prefer our simple ‘thanks,’ our _spasiba_, to
which your French jokers invariably respond by a long word which I can’t
understand, saying, ‘Non, pas si bas! Plus haut!’ Do you really think
that a word has any _body_ in it if it be unaccompanied by action?”
It was thus that they reasoned within themselves, timid and embarrassed,
when we repelled their embraces. Then, struck with a sudden idea, they
took the brooms from our hands, they seized the shoes that we were
polishing, they ran to fetch water for us. In order to give body to their
_spasiba_, they did all our work for us. Soon it was impossible for the
Frenchmen to find any occupation for their hands. In the dark corridor
leading to the great well, where the prisoners have to wait in a long
queue for their turn, shouldering pitchers stamped with blue lozenges,
one now saw none but Russians; in the kitchens, when the potatoes were
being peeled, none but Russians; in the corner of the courts where the
laundrymen install buckets and tables, none but Russians. We had to take
severe measures, and to insist that France should take a hand in all the
hard work.
But, amid this fine zeal, the Moslem Tartars take their ease on their
palliasses, quiet and blissful. Let others perform all the arduous
tasks. Christians and Jews can scour the cement floors of the casemates,
shake the rugs, fold up the bedding, carry the _Kartoffelbrot_[32] from
the tumbrel to the storeroom. Impassive, crushing you by the glassy
immobility of their introspective gaze, indolent as mandarins (whom they
resemble in their yellow tint, their wide cheek-bones, and their fine,
shining moustaches), it seems as if the Prophet had furnished them with
an opiate against all the accidents of life. Nothing moves them. They
ask for nothing. They never share anything. They never pray. Do them a
service; give them something from your own narrow resources; they take
it all as a matter of course. Some of them have two or three wives.
Without a sign of tenderness, they show you the portraits of these wives,
fraternizing in a single photograph. Plenty, scarcity; cold, heat; a
concourse, solitude; war, exile—everything is alike to them. Life breaks
impotently against the bovine torpor of their fatalism.
But when the Christian Russians say their morning prayer, standing
bare-headed, multiplying triple signs of the cross, kissing the
Testament, and abasing themselves before the little painted icon in a
glass case fixed to the wall above their palliasse, it sometimes happens
that their inhuman eyes blaze. They utter a raucous cry: “Your Lord
Jesus Christ, he’s no good!” Thereupon the devotees break off their
Paternosters, and attack the scoffers with foot or with fist in order to
avenge the insult to their deity.