The hostility—suspicion, even,—of the French people regarding England
was to Bertram terrible. They were very friendly to him, all those
people whom he visited in their huts or walked with over old
battlefields. Some of them were even emotional, as one old woman in an
_estaminet_ along the Arras-Doullens road with whom he had been billeted
for a time, and who flung her arms about him and kissed him on both
cheeks, and wept a little, and laughed, and cooked a chicken for him.
But when they spoke about England, it was with doubt, or resentment, or
anger; now and then with passion.
He couldn’t get to the root of their grievances. They talked vaguely of
England crossing the path of France in Syria. In what way? They didn’t
know, but said: “_On dit dans les journaux_—” It is said in the papers!
They believed, many of them, that the value of the franc was
deliberately made low by the artful jugglings of British financiers.
They were certain that “Loy-Zhorzhe” was pro-German for corrupt and
sinister motives, that British diplomacy was jealous of French victory,
and intrigued everywhere to secure a new balance of power in Europe, so
that French supremacy should be weighted down by the restoration of
Germany.
In any case, England desired to thwart France of the fruits of victory,
and was always manœuvring to let Germany off her debts, to prevent
France from seizing German industrial cities if Germany defaulted in her
payments.
It was idle for Bertram to argue that Lloyd George and the British
people were afraid that if Germany were pressed too hard, beyond her
power to pay, beyond human nature, she would seek to escape by force,
would nourish desires for revenge which would lead ultimately and
inevitably to another war. Germany would form an alliance with Russia,
or break into such revolutionary chaos that the peace and recovery of
Europe would be retarded for more than another generation.
He put these ideas to a French priest as they sat together in a little
wooden presbytery near the ruins of a church on the west side of St.
Quentin. They had met in a cemetery where British and French soldiers
lay buried side by side.
Bertram, standing bare-headed there by the grave of one of his own
comrades, was greeted by the priest, a tall, middle-aged man with a
bronzed, clean-shaven face, and the scar of some wound down his right
cheek.
“You are an English officer, perhaps?”
“Yes, _mon père_, in the old days.”
“Ah, you helped to fight for France! It was a good comradeship in those
days. I was a soldier also, a captain of artillery, with the
‘_Cent-Vingt_.’”
He invited Bertram to his simple _pot-au-feu_, with a cup of coffee
afterwards, and a _petit verre_.
It was over that cup of coffee that they argued about French and British
policy, and then that Bertram defended the British point of view.
“Why do your English Liberals hate France so much?” asked the priest. “I
cannot understand. It is to me incredible!”
Bertram denied that English Liberals hated France. He tried to explain,
in faulty French, the “Liberal” idea in England. It was a belief that
another frightful war could only be prevented by allowing Germany to
recover, and dealing with her so generously that she would not desire
vengeance. English Liberals believed that the whole philosophy of Europe
must be changed, and that people should rise beyond the old “Balance of
Power,” with secret or open alliances dividing Europe into groups. The
peoples of all nations wanted peace. It was only the old diplomacy that
prevented the fulfilment of their desire, and a general brotherhood of
European democracy.
The priest struck his fist on the table so that the coffee cups jumped.
“All that is illusion,” he said, and he almost shouted the words. “It is
hypocritical nonsense. Peace can only be secured by keeping Germany
crushed and weak. England is treacherous to France by making secret
overtures to Germany. It is a betrayal of the dead. An outrage to
France.”
Bertram lit his pipe, and smoked in silence for a moment, astonished and
distressed by the violent passion in this priest’s voice, by the flash
of fire in his eyes.
“_Mon père_,” he said, “you speak like a soldier, and not like a priest.
Surely you of all men should believe in the forgiveness of
enemies—wasn’t it ninety times nine?—and the blessings promised to the
peacemakers.”
“I spoke as a Frenchman as well as a priest,” was the answer. “I have
seen the flower of French youth swept down by the _sales Boches_. I have
seen the beauty of their mother, France, blasted, as in those fields
outside. I have seen our women outraged by the brutality of the enemy.
It is because of these things, and because I believe in the justice of
God that I demand the full punishment of an infamous people. I warn you,
sir, that if Great Britain endeavours to thwart that divine justice,
France will regard her also as an enemy.”
“The dead listen to us, _mon père_,” said Bertram, simply. “Outside this
window their bodies lie together. It is too soon for any Frenchman to
speak of England as an enemy.”
“It is too soon for England to behave as such,” said the priest.
For several hours they talked, this Frenchman and Englishman, these two
soldiers of the Great War, this priest and layman. At the end of that
time, Bertram knew that no words in any language or with any eloquence,
could ever reconcile their opposing views. The priest believed in “the
sword of France” as the means of peace in Europe. Bertram believed in
reconciliation, the progress of commonsense, the education of democracy,
the spirit of peace in the hearts of common folk.
“Illusion!” said the priest again. “Illusion! In the heart of man, and
especially in the heart of Germany, is hatred, evil, greed, brutality,
fear, rivalry. So it has been. So it will always be, despite the grace
of God, and the teaching of Jesus Christ. We have to guard against these
natural passions. We have to uphold justice by force. We must never be
weakened by a craven fear of war. Worse than war is cowardice or
dishonour. Worse than hatred is the betrayal of friendship. May England
be true to France!”
“May France remember England’s sacrifice!” said Bertram, “and our dead
that lie in her soil.”
The priest answered his farewell in a friendly way, gripping his hand
first, as a comrade, and then giving him a priest’s blessing. But when
Bertram trudged away from the presbytery to a wooden _estaminet_ a mile
away, he was enormously distressed in spirit. This priest, Jeanne, the
chambermaid, the young farmer near his old dug-out, a commercial
traveller from Paris, the Mayor of Arras, scores of friendly people he
met along the old roads of war and on the old battlefields, had talked
in the same strain, used the same kind of argument, lamented the
ill-will or the “treachery” of England; or if not of England, then of
“Loy-Zhorzhe,” who seemed to them not so much a human personality as an
evil power.
What hope was there for peace in Europe, if France pursued her policy of
force, to crush Germany and keep her weak? What chance for the “Comrades
of the Great War,” lounging about Labour Exchanges in London, marching
in processions of unemployed, with banners saying, “We Want Work”?
There would be no work until Great Britain could sell her goods in the
markets of Europe. Those markets could never buy if Germany were thrust
into such ruin as that of Austria. Germany, perhaps allied with Russia,
would struggle like a wild beast. The “sword of France” would not be
strong enough to keep her weak for ever. Then France would call to
England again. Would the roads have to be tramped again by battalions of
boys from England, Scotland, Ireland, going up to the fields of death?
This thought came to Bertram as he went up a road past the ruined
village of Barisis. The moon had risen in a pale sky, still blue, and
its light silvered the wooden crosses in a military graveyard. Row by
row they stood above the neatly ordered graves. For scores of miles, for
hundreds of miles, across France, the moon illumined cemeteries like
this, crowded with French and British dead.
“God, give us Peace!” said Bertram, aloud, as he bared his head in
salute to old comrades with whom he had trudged these roads.
An immense fear invaded his spirit, and a kind of shudder shook him, for
he seemed to hear again the march of youth advancing to another
Armageddon in these fields—the last youth of Europe.
He was glad to get into the warmth of the wooden _estaminet_. An
enormously fat Frenchman greeted him jovially.
“Monsieur is hungry, beyond doubt! My wife has cooked an excellent
chicken.”
The wife, a pretty, thin-faced woman, with merry black eyes, addressed
him as “_mon capitaine_” and spread a napkin as a cloth on a deal table.
She had been in St. Pol during all the war. Did he know St. Pol, not far
from Hesdin—? Yes? Then surely he must have known, among English
officers who had been friends of hers, _le capitaine_ Jenkins, _le
lieutenant_ O’Mally, _le commandant_ Stuart? She had _un très bon
souvenir_ of the English Army. Sometimes her husband was jealous when
she praised the English officers so much!
“Without cause, I’m sure!” said Bertram, with a smile.
The woman laughed, and her black eyes danced.
“In time of war there are many temptations!”
She teased her preposterously fat husband, and he looked annoyed, and
said, “_Tais-toi_, Yvonne!” She made a little face at him, behind his
back, and when Bertram went to his bedroom after dinner, she lighted his
way with a candle, there being no gas in the house.
“_Merci, et bonne nuit, madame!_” said Bertram, politely, taking the
candle from her, and putting it down on a wooden chair by the bedside.
She looked at him with a queer, wistful smile, and spoke in broken
English.
“I am not married in time of war. You understand? English officers like
me very much. Take my hand, try to give me kiss—what you say?—flirt!
My big, fat husband not like me talk of those days. But I like remember!
You will give me English kiss for old remembrance, eh?”
She held her face up, after glancing at the half closed door.
Bertram gave her a kiss. Why not? It was good to find some one who
remembered the British Army with pleasure and affection. She kissed him
six times in return, and then, with her finger to her lip, ran out of
the room, as a big voice shouted:
“Yvonne! _Qu’est-ce-que tu fais, toi?_”
That night Bertram dreamed that it was Joyce who kissed him.