distance a flagrant beauty of their own, and it was hard to believe that
they stood for death, desolation, and the agony of men. Beyond the
voluminous smoke and darting tongues of fire, our field-glasses could
show us nothing. But we knew--for we had seen but yesterday--that behind
that haze there was being perpetrated a destruction as mournful and
capricious as that which in the vision upon the Mount of Olives overtook
Jerusalem. Where two were in the street one was even now being taken and
the other left; he who was upon the housetop would not come down to take
anything out of his house, neither would he who was in the field return
to take away his clothes. The great cathedral was crumbling to dust,
and saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs were being hurled from their
niches of stone, the Virgin alone standing unscathed upon her pedestal
contemplating the ruin and tribulation around her. And we knew that
while we gazed the roads from the doomed city to Locre and Poperinghe
were choked with a terror-stricken stream of fugitives, ancient men
hobbling upon sticks, aged women clutching copper pans, and stumbling
under the weight of feather-beds, while whimpering children fumbled
among their mothers' skirts. What convulsive eddies each of the shells,
whose trajectory we heard ever and anon in the skies overhead, were
making in that living stream were to us a subject of poignant
speculation.
But as I looked immediately around me I found it ever more difficult to
believe that such things were being done upon the earth. The carpenter
went on hammering, stopping but for a moment to shade his eyes with his
hand and gaze out over the plain, the peasants in the field continued to
hoe, a woman came out of a cottage with a child clinging to her skirts,
and said, "La guerre, quand finira-t-elle, M'sieu'?" From far above us
the song of the lark, now lost to sight in the aerial blue, floated down
upon the drowsy air.
XXV
THE DAY'S WORK
It was dinner hour in the Mess. There were some dozen of us all
told--the Camp Commandant, the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General, the
Assistant-Provost-Marshal, the Assistant-Director of Medical Services,
the Sanitary Colonel (which adjective has nothing to do with his
personal habits), the Judge-Advocate, two men of the Intelligence, a
_padre_, and myself. Most of us were known by our initials--our official
initials--for the use of them saves time and avoids pomposity. Our
duties were both extensive and peculiar, as will presently appear, for
we were in the habit of talking shop. There was, indeed, little else to
talk about. When you are billeted in a small town in Flanders with no
amusements and few amenities--neither theatres, nor sport, nor
books--and with little prospect of getting a move on, you can but
chronicle the small beer of your quotidian adventures. And these be
engaging enough at times.
As we sat down to the stew which our orderly had compounded with the
assistance of the ingenious Mr. Maconochie, the Camp Commandant sighed
heavily. "I am a kind of receptacle for the waste products of
everybody's mind," he exclaimed petulantly. "This morning I was rung up
on the telephone and asked if I would bury a dead horse for the Canadian
Division; I told them I hadn't a Prayer Book and it couldn't be done.
Then two nuns called and asked me to find a discreet soldier--_un soldat
discret_--to escort them to Hazebrouck; I told them to take my servant,
who is a married man with five children. Then an old lady sent round to
ask me to come and drown her cat's kittens; I said it was impossible, as
she hadn't complied with the Notification of Births Act."
The Mess listened to this plaintive recital in unsympathetic silence.
Perhaps they reflected that as the Camp Commandant is one of those to
whom much, in the way of perquisites of office, is given, from him much
may legitimately be expected. "Well, you may think yourself lucky you
haven't my job," said the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General at length.
"I'm getting rather fed up with casualty lists and strength returns. I'm
like the man who boasted that his chief literary recreation was reading
Bradshaw, except that I don't boast of it and it isn't a
recreation--it's damned hard work. I have to read the Army List for
about ten hours every day, for if I get an officer's initials wrong
there's the devil to pay. And I spent half an hour between the telephone
and the Army List to-day trying to find out who 'Teddy' was. The 102nd
Welsh sent him in with their returns of officers' casualties as having
died of heart failure on the 22nd inst."
"Well, but who is 'Teddy,' anyhow?" asked the Camp Commandant.
"He is the regimental goat," replied the D.A.A.G. "I suppose they
thought it amusing. When I tumbled to it I told their Brigade
Headquarters on the telephone that I quite understood their making him a
member of their mess, as they belonged to the same species."
"Wait until you've had to track down a case of typhoid in billets," said
the R.A.M.C. man who looks after infectious diseases. "I've been on the
trail of a typhoid epidemic at La Croix Farm, where a company of the
Downshires are billeted, and it made me sad. They had their filters with
them and they swore they hadn't touched a drop of impure water, and that
they treasured our regulations like the book of Leviticus. And yet the
trail of that typhoid was all over my spot chart, and the thing was
spreading like one of the seven plagues of Egypt. At last I tracked it
down to an Army cook; the rotter had had typhoid about five years ago
and simply poisoned everything he touched. He was what we call a
carrier."
"What did you do with him?" said the A.D.M.S.
"He won't do any more cooking; I've sent him home. The fellow's a
perfect leper, and ought to be interned like an alien enemy."
"Well, I'd rather have your job than mine even if prevention is more
honourable than cure," said he whom we know as "Smells," and who has a
nose like a fox-terrier's. "I am the _avant-garde_ of the Staff, and you
fellows can thank me that you are so merry and bright. If I didn't make
my sanitary reconnaissances with my chloride of lime and fatigue
parties, where would you all be?"
"We should all be home on sick-leave and very pleased to get it," said
the A.P.M. ungratefully.
"The _maire_ thinks I'm mad, of course," continued 'Smells,' "and I
can't make him understand that cesspools and open sewers in the street
are not conducive to health."
"I expect they think we're rather too fond of spreading broad our
phylacteries," said the Assistant Provost Marshal. "Now I'm a sort of
licensing authority, Brewster Sessions in fact, for this commune, and
the _estaminet_ proprietors think I'm a Temperance fanatic," he said,
as he put forth his hand for the whisky bottle. "One of them told me the
other day he preferred a German occupation to a British one, because the
Huns let him sell as much spirits to their men as he liked. And yet I'm
sure the little finger of a French provost-marshal is thicker than my
loins any day."
"Yes," said the Camp Commandant, "it's our melancholy duty to be
impertinent. I'm supposed to read all you fellows' letters before I
stamp them. I'd be rather glad if they were liable to be censored again
at the Base or somewhere else _en route_; it would relieve me of any
compunction about the first reading, the text and preamble of the
envelope would be good enough for me. You fellows write abominably."
"I'm something of a handwriting expert myself," said the A.P.M.,
ignoring the aspersion. "They have changed the colour of the passes
again this month, and so I'm engaged in a fresh study of the A.G.'s
signature; I believe he changes his style of handwriting with the colour
of the pass. I wonder what is the size of the A.G.'s bank balance," he
murmured dreamily; "I believe I could now forge his signature very
artistically."
"I wish some one would start a school of handwriting at G.H.Q.," said
the A.D.M.S. "I believe I receive more chits than any man on the
staff." "Chits," it should be explained, are the billets-doux of the
Army wherein officers send tender messages to one another and make
assignations.
"Did you hear about that chit the Camp Commandant at the Headquarters of
the ----th Corps sent to the A.Q.M.G.?" asked the A.P.M. "No? Well, the
A.Q.M.G. of the other Army wrote to Ferrers asking if they had made use
of any Ammonal and, if so, whether the results were satisfactory.
Ferrers sent it on to the Camp Commandant for report and the Camp
Commandant wrote back a chit saying plaintively, 'This is not
understood. For what purpose is Ammonal used--is it a drug or an
explosive?' Ferrers told him to ask the Medical Officer attached to
Corps headquarters, which he did. Thereupon he wrote back another chit
to Ferrers, saying that the M.O. had informed him that 'Ammonal' was a
compound drug extensively used in America in cases of abnormal neurotic
excitement, and that, so far as he knew, it was not a medical issue to
Corps H.Q. He therefore regretted that he was unable to report results,
but promised that if occasion should arise to administer it to any of
the Corps H.Q. _personnel_ he would faithfully observe the effects and
report the same. When the A.Q.M.G. read the reply he betrayed a quite
abnormal degree of neurotic excitement; in fact, he was quite nasty
about it."
"What the devil did he mean?" asked the A.D.M.S.
"Well, that points the moral of your remarks about handwriting," said
the A.P.M. encouragingly. "The Camp Commandant had written what looked
like an 'o' in place of an 'a.' Ammonol is a drug; ammonal is an
explosive."
"Well, I wish some one would teach the Huns how to write decently." The
speaker was Summersby of the Intelligence Corps. The Intelligence are a
corps of detectives and have to estimate the strength, the location, and
the composition of the enemy's forces. Everything is grist that comes to
their mill and they will perform surprising feats of induction. They can
reconstruct a German Army Corps out of a Landwehr man's bootlace, his
diary, his underclothing, or his shoulder-strap--but the greatest of
these is his diary. "I've been studying the diaries of prisoners until I
feel a Hun myself. They remind me of the diary I used to keep at school,
they are all about eating and drinking. The Hun is a glutton and a
wine-bibber. But I found something to-day--'Keine Gefangene' in an
officer's field note-book."
"Translate, my Hunnish friend," said the A.P.M.
"No prisoners," replied Summersby shortly.
"I hope you handed the swine over to the P.M.," said the Camp
Commandant.
"Well, no," said Summersby. "You see he had a plausible explanation--by
the way, what perfect English those German officers talk; I'll bet that
man has eaten our bread and salt some time. He said it was a Brigade
order to the men not to make the taking of prisoners a pretext for going
back to the rear in large parties but to leave them to the supports when
they came up. The curious thing is that that officer belongs to the
112th and we've our eye on the 112th. One of their men, a fellow named
Schmidt, who surrendered on the 19th of last month, said they'd had an
order to take no prisoners but kill them all. His regiment was the
112th," he added darkly.
"The filthy swine!" we cried in a chorus, and our talk grew sombre as we
exchanged reminiscences.
"What pleases me about you fellows," said Ponsonby, who had been
listening with a languid air, and who was formerly in the F.O. where he
composed florid speeches in elegant French for Hague Plenipotentiaries,
"is your habits of speech. In diplomacy we contrive to talk a lot
without saying anything, whereas Army men manage to talk little and say
a great deal. You've got four words in the Army which seem to be a
mighty present help in trouble at H.Q. Their sustaining properties are
remarkable and they seem to tide over very anxious moments. When you
are in a hole you say 'Damn all,' and when you are asked for
instructions you cry 'Carry on.' I suppose it's by sitting tight and
using those words with discrimination that you fellows arrive at
greatness and attain Brigadier rank. That seems to be the first thing a
third-grade staff-officer learns."
"The first thing a third-grade staff-officer learns is to speak
respectfully of his superiors," said the A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion
at Ponsonby, who caught it with a bow. Ponsonby is irrepressible and, in
spite of his supercilious civilian airs, much is forgiven him. He turned
to the D.A.A.G. and said, "Hooper, you've forgotten to say grace. For
what we have _not_ received"--he added, with a meaning glance at a
Stilton cheese which the A.A.G.'s wife has sent out from home and which
remained on the sideboard--"the Lord make us truly thankful." This was
an allusion to the D.A.A.G.'s sacerdotal functions. For the
Adjutant-General and his staff, who know the numbers of all the Field
Ambulances, can lay hands--but not in the apostolic sense--upon every
chaplain attached thereto; the A.G. is the Metropolitan of them all and
can admonish, deprive, and suspend.
The D.A.A.G. ignored the plaintive benediction. "I think we've fixed it
up with those Red Cross drivers," he said complacently. The A.G.'s
department had been wrestling with the disciplinary problem presented
by these birds of passage on the lines of communication. "We've decided
that they are Army followers under section 176, sub-section 10, of the
Army Act, and that you 'follow' the British Army from the moment you
accept a pass to H.Q. My chief called some of them together yesterday,
and being in a benevolent humour told them that they were now under
military law and might be sentenced to anything from seven days'
field-punishment to the punishment of death. This was _pour encourager
les autres_. They looked quite thoughtful."
"That's a nice point," commented Ponsonby pensively. "Should an Army
follower be hanged or is he entitled to be shot? I put it to you," he
added, turning to the Judge-Advocate. "I want counsel's opinion."
"I never give abstract opinions," retorted the man of law. "But the
safest course would be to hang him first and shoot him afterwards."
"Your counsel is as the counsel of Ahithophel," said Ponsonby. "I'll put
you another problem. Is a carrier-pigeon an Army follower? Because
Slingsby never has any appetite for dinner" (this was notoriously
untrue), "and I have a strong suspicion that he converts--that's a legal
expression for fraud, isn't it?--his carrier-pigeons into pigeon-pie.
What is the penalty for fraudulent conversion of an Army follower?"
Slingsby, who in virtue of his aquiline features is known as _Aquila
vulgaris_, has charge of the carrier-pigeons and takes large baskets of
them out to the Front every day; he is supposed to be training them by
an intimate use of pigeon-English not to settle when the shells explode.
Unfortunately his pigeons are usually posted as "missing," and go to
some bourne from which no pigeon has ever been known to return. Ponsonby
glances suspiciously at Slingsby's portly figure.
But the Judge-Advocate had stolen away to study a dossier of
"proceedings," and his departure was the signal for a general
dispersion. "Come and have a drink," said Ponsonby to the "I" man.
"Can't, you slacker," was the reply. "I've got to go and make up an 'I'
summary. 'Notes of an Air Reconnaissance. Distribution of the enemy's
forces. Copy of a German Divisional Circular. Notes on the German system
of signalling from their trenches.' You know the usual kind of thing.
Just now we're trying to discover how many guns they've got in the
batteries of their new formations. We've noticed that their 77-mm.
projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we suspect that two guns
have been withdrawn. But it may be only a blind."
As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our
respective offices a supply column rumbled over the _pavé_, each of the
seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a
fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their
motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the
aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of guns was clearly audible
from the north-east. The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, "It's Hill 60
again. My old regiment's up there. And to-morrow the casualty returns
will come in. Good God! will it never end?"
XXVI
FIAT JUSTITIA
PARQUET
du
Tribunal de Ière Instance
d'Ypres
At last I had found it. I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking
out the _procureur du roi_, and I had sought in vain. He was nowhere to
be found. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of
mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed
among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city
like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes
strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a
deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a
spectacle at once tragic and whimsical--the brass lectern still stood
upright in the nave confronting a congregation of overturned chairs as
with a gesture of reproof. The sight of those scrambling chairs all
huddled together and fallen headlong upon one another had something
oddly human about it; it suggested a panic of ghosts. Ypres is an
uncanny place.
We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops,
pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until
all the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before resuming our hunt
for the _procureur du roi_--who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to
Poperinghe--we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with
French officers, with whom a full-bosomed, broad-hipped Flemish girl
exchanged uncouth pleasantries, and it possessed a weird and uncomely
boy, who regarded A----, the Staff officer accompanying me, with a
hypnotic stare. He peered at him from under drooping eyelids, flanking a
nose without a bridge, and my companion didn't like it. "He is admiring
you," I remarked by way of consolation, as indeed he was. "What do you
call it?" said A---- petulantly to a R.A.M.C. officer who was lunching
with us. The latter looked at the boy with a clinical eye.
"Necrosis--syphilitic," he said dispassionately. "And he's handing us
the cakes!" A---- exclaimed with horror. "Fetch me an ounce of civet."
We declined the cakes, and, having paid our _addition_, hastily departed
to resume our quest of the _procureur_.
Eventually we found the legend set out above. It was a placard stuck on
the door of a private house. We entered and found ourselves in a kitchen
with a stone floor; japanned tin boxes, calf-bound volumes, and fat
registers, all stamped with the arms of Belgium, were grouped on the
shelves of the dresser. A courteous gentleman, well-groomed and
debonair, with waxed moustaches, greeted us. It was the _procureur du
roi_. With him was another civilian--the _juge d'instruction_. They
politely requested us to take a seat and to excuse a judicial
preoccupation. The _juge d'instruction_ was interrogating an inhabitant
of Poperinghe. The _procureur_ explained to me that the _prévenu_ (the
accused), who was not present but was within the precincts, was charged
with _calomnie_[27] under Section 444 of the _Code Pénal_. "But," I
exclaimed in astonishment, "are you still administering justice?"
"Pourquoi non?" he asked in mild surprise. It was true, he admitted,
that his office at Ypres had been destroyed by shell-fire, the _maison
d'arrêt_--in plain English, the prison--was open to the four winds of
heaven, and warders and gendarmes had been called up to the colours. But
justice must be done and the majesty of the King of the Belgians upheld.
The King's writ still ran, even though its currency might be limited to
the few square miles which were all that remained of Belgian territory
in Belgian hands. All this he explained to me with such gravity that I
felt further questions would be futile, if not impertinent. I therefore
held my tongue and determined to follow the proceedings closely, being
not a little curious to observe how the judgment would be enforced.
The witness took the oath to say the truth and nothing but the truth
("rien que la vérité"), concluding with the solemn invocation, "Ainsi
m'aide Dieu." The parties had elected to have the proceedings taken in
French.
"Your name?" said the judge, as he studied the procès-verbal prepared by
the _procureur_.
"Jules F----."
"Age?"
"Cinquante-cinq."
"Profession?"
"Cordonnier."
"Résidence?"
"Rue d'Ypres 32."
This preliminary catechism being completed, the prosecutor unfolded his
tale. He had been drinking the health of His Majesty the King of the
Belgians and confusion to his enemies in an _estaminet_ at the crowded
hour of 7 P.M. The accused had entered, and in the presence of many of
his neighbours had said to him, "Vous êtes un Bosche." "Un Bosche!"
repeated the witness indignantly. "It is a gross defamation." With
difficulty had he been restrained from the shedding of blood. But, being
a law-abiding, peaceful man and the father of a family, he volubly
explained, he had laid this information ("dénonciation") before the
_procureur du roi_.
The judge looked grave. But he duly noted down the testimony, after some
perfunctory cross-examination, and, it being read over to the witness,
the judge added "Lecture faite," and the persisting witness signed the
deposition with his own hand. The prosecutor having retired, two other
witnesses, whom he had vouched to warranty, came forward and testified
to the same effect. And they also signed their depositions and withdrew.
The magistrate ordered the usher to bring in the accused, who had been
summoned to appear by a _mandat d'amener_. He was a stout, dark,
convivial-looking soul, with a merry eye, not altogether convinced of
the enormity of his delict, and inclined at first to deprecate these
proceedings. But the dialectical skill of the magistrate soon tied him
into knots, and reduced him to a state of extreme penitence.
"Where were you on the 3rd of April at 7 P.M.?" began the magistrate,
making what gunners call a ranging shot. The accused appeared to have
been everywhere in Poperinghe except at the _estaminet_. He had been to
the butcher's, the baker's, and the candlestick-maker's.
"At what hour did you enter the Café à l'Harmonie?"
The accused tried to look as if he now heard of the Café "À l'Harmonie"
for the first time, but under the searching eye of the magistrate he
failed. He might, he conceded, have looked in there for a thirsty
moment.
"Do you know Jules F----?" the magistrate persisted. The accused
grudgingly admitted the existence of such a person. "Is he a German?"
asked the magistrate pointedly. The accused pondered. "Would you call
him a Bosche?" persisted the magistrate. "I never _meant_ to call him 'a
Bosche,'" the accused said in an unguarded moment. The magistrate
pounced on him. He had found the range. After that the result was a
foregone conclusion. The duel ended in the accused tearfully admitting
he thought he must have been drunk, and throwing himself on the mercy of
the magistrate.
"It is a grave offence," said the magistrate severely, as he
contemplated the lachrymose delinquent. "An _estaminet_ is a public
place within the meaning of Section 444 of the Code Pénal. Vous avez
méchamment imputé à une personne un fait précis qui est de nature à
porter atteinte à son honneur." "And calculated to provoke a breach of
the peace," he added. "It is punishable with a term of imprisonment not
exceeding one year." The face of the accused grew long. "Or a fine of
200 francs," he pursued. The lips of the accused quivered. "You may have
to go to a _maison de correction_," continued the magistrate pitilessly.
The accused wept.
I grew more and more interested. If this was a "correctional" offence,
the magistrate must in the ordinary course of things commit the prisoner
to a _chambre de conseil_, thereafter to take his trial before a
Tribunal Correctionnel. But chamber and tribunal were scattered to the
four corners of the earth.