"Were we to see Verdun?" This was the first problem. I had been warned
two days before that the bombardment was raging and that it was quite
possible that it would be unsafe to go further. But the news was
reassuring; Verdun was tranquil. "And Pétain?" One could not yet say.
Even as we spoke there was a stirring in the crowd, general saluting,
and I caught a glimpse of the commander-in-chief as he went quickly up
the staircase. For the rest we must wait. But not for very long; in a
few minutes there came the welcome word that General Pétain would see
us, would see the stray American correspondent.
Since I saw Pétain in the little Mairie at Souilly I have seen many
photographs of him, but none in any real measure give the true picture
of the defender of Verdun. He saw us in his office, the bare upstairs
room, two years ago the office of the Mayor of Souilly. Think of the
Selectmen's office in any New England village and the picture will be
accurate. A bare room, a desk, one chair, a telephone, nothing on the
walls but two maps, one of the military zone, one of the actual front
and positions of the Verdun fighting. A bleak room, barely heated by
the most primitive of stoves. From the single window one looked down on
the cheerless street along which lumbered the caravan of autos. On the
pegs against the wall hung the General's hat and coat, weather-stained,
faded, the clothes of a man who worked in all weathers. Of staff
officers, of uniforms, of color there was just nothing; of war there
was hardly a hint.
At the door the commander-in-chief met us, shook hands and murmured
clearly and slowly, with incisive distinctness, the formal words
of French greeting; he spoke no English. Instantly there was the
suggestion of Kitchener, not of Kitchener as you see him in flesh, but
in photographs, the same coldness, decision. The smile that accompanied
the words of welcome vanished and the face was utterly motionless,
expressionless. You saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, with every
appearance of physical strength, a clear blue eye, looking straight
forward and beyond.
My French companion, M. Le Roux, spoke with Pétain. He had just come
from Joffre and he told an interesting circumstance. Pétain listened.
He said now and then "yes" or "no." Nothing more. Watching him narrowly
you saw that occasionally his eyes twitched a little, the single sign
of fatigue that the long strain of weeks of responsibility had brought.
It was hard to believe, looking at this quiet, calm, silent man,
that you were in the presence of the soldier who had won the Battle
of Champagne, the man whom the war had surprised in the last of
his fifties, a Colonel, a teacher of war rather than a soldier, a
professor like Foch.
No one of Napoleon's marshals had commanded as many men as obeyed
this Frenchman, who was as lacking in the distinction of military
circumstances as our own Grant. Napoleon had won all his famous
victories with far fewer troops than were directed from the telephone
on the table yonder.
Every impression of modern war that comes to one actually in touch with
it is a destruction of illusion: this thing is a thing of mechanism
rather than of brilliance; perhaps Pétain has led a regiment, a
brigade, or a division to the charge. You knew instinctively in seeing
the man that you would go or come, as he said, but there was neither
dash nor fire, nothing of the suggestion of élan; rather there was the
suggestion of the commander of a great ocean liner, the man responsible
for the lives, this time of hundreds of thousands, not scores, for
the safety of France, not of a ship, but the man of machinery and the
master of the wisdom of the tides and the weather, not the Ney, or the
Murat, not the Napoleon of Arcola. The impression was of a strong man
whose life was a life beaten upon by storms; the man on the bridge,
to keep to the rather ridiculously inadequate figure, but not by any
chance the man on horseback.