I envy the soldiers who salute while charging their fallen enemy. They

have seen him coming. Their short duel ends either in the intoxication

of victory or the repose of death. Our long journeys are furtive steps

in a temple of phantoms. Those who want to slay us crawl in the heart

of liquid shadows. Those who defy us refuse an encounter, and entice us

into the snares of the sea.

* * * * *

Night lags on the Adriatic. Nothing seems to live except our dreams.

With elbows on the rail, eyes lost in the vastness, the officers of the

cruisers keep somber and silent. Near their guns, motionless as statues

sculptured out of shadow, the gunners watch in vain, and reflect on

the disappointments of yesterday. In the distance there is a splendid

thunderstorm. Forks of light leap from Italy to Austria; not a thunder

peal echoes, but the air is alternately vivid and dark. The lightning

comes and goes ceaselessly, like the winking of an electric giant.

Black and white, white and black, the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ glides through

a gleaming sea. Are there enemies about us? Is the sea safe? How can

our eyes tell, as they pass from an illumination whiter than the sun

into an opaqueness blacker than nothingness? Every electric shock

jangles the strings of our taut nerves. A reflection on the water takes

the form of a destroyer; the straight path of the lightning shoots like

a rocket of the enemy; the shadow has the thickness, the consistency,

and almost the odor of smoke from a hostile ship.

O demons of the atmosphere, how you play with the sailors! Over there,

towards the north, the watchers on the battleships have felt their

hearts expand and contract with each of your shining caprices. But even

greater is the disquietude of the cruisers who precede and protect the

squadrons. Yesterday Austria saw us. In a grand gesture she refused

us battle. To-night we feel it coming, we are sure of it. She has

despatched her atrocious submarines. They blockade the Adriatic and

watch for us. When shall we fall into their claws? In a minute, an

hour, a day? We are illuminated like specters by every flash, but they

are buried in the black waves. Both the cruisers and the battleships

who trust themselves to our vigilance are lost in an ocean of illusion.

Early in the morning an ensign translates a wireless from Malta. By

way of numberless cables this message brings news from the Pacific.

Under the massive shadows of the Cordilleras of the Andes, three

English cruisers were swallowed up in the Chilean twilight. They fought

against stronger vessels, but the German guns _a eu raison de leur

valeur_. Twelve years ago, from the height of the American peaks, I

had looked over the infinite expanse where this passage at arms took

place. A few years ago, during a cruise to China, I had visited these

same British vessels. I remember their appearance; faces that smiled

at me then are now, no doubt, sleeping over there on the threshold of

the _madrepores_; fingers which pressed mine are twisting the dark

sea-weed, the sailor’s shroud. I envy those ships. I envy the dead of

the battle of Coronel. A few weeks later, we shall know the details

of their glorious end, but from now on I shall envy them, for they

have fulfilled their destiny. It was not vainly that their torn flag

shone in the sun. They struck, they perished, their eyes have carried

with them into the deep the vision of battle; their death transmits a

heritage of vengeance to which all British sailors are the heirs.

Why does fate give us in the Adriatic a felon enemy that only runs

away? Certainly I hate the Germans; but at least you find them when

you look for them. Whereas to draw from the depths of the sea the

only adversaries that Austria sends against us we should need picks

and rakes. Our magazines are full, our engines are quivering, our guns

thrust out their jaws, but all that crawls in the Adriatic desert is

the submarine.

Silent lightning flashes, alternate shafts and shadows burn our

eyelids. The four hours of the watch pass. My eyes are fixed on the

blackness; my dreams encircle the earth every moment. A procession

of memories has accompanied the storm. Perfumes from Indo-China, the

theaters of Paris, negresses of Guadeloupe, Madagascar cyclones, idylls

of the West and tragedies of the East, tropic homesickness, and the

English countryside--the whole procession of the past glides through

my watch. Smiling, mystical, dim, it hastens to respond to my mood of

nervous fatigue. It leaps upon the bridge to companion my solitude.

About all my comrades, about the officers, who like me have become

hermits of the deep, there crowds in the same way the phantoms of

the past. We do not summon them. They run to us, form in line, yield

place to others; the train of our dreams is more mobile than the sea.

Meanwhile duty does not suffer. The round of memories never deflects

our eyes or our ears from the surface of the waters. When necessary,

we can scatter the memories with a single gesture, and do whatever is

needful.

In the freshness of the early dawn the breath of the breeze calms all

this fever. My mind pauses on the last rung of the ladder of memory.

There it rests, and at the end of my watch I find myself back again in

a garden of Malta. According to the calendar this episode dates only

eight days back, but it seems to me that our life has thrown it into

the remote past.

In the midst of the arid rocks of Malta there is a garden, enclosed

with high walls. The parterres of black soil, imported from Sicily, are

cut by alleys of gravel. On the terrace bloom the rarest flowers under

the sun. They are not European, they are choice specimens from America

and Asia. The corollas which grow in this garden come only from certain

Southern archipelagoes, but human skill has made them live in Malta.

Arbors shelter benches of ancient stone. Here and there arches of

perfume brush the dreamer’s head. Since it is a place of quiet and

sovereign beauty, human beings do not frequent it. Every evening,

before returning to the noisy streets of Malta, I spend a few solitary

hours in the company of the flowers. Only the gardeners disturb my

revery, but they early become acquainted with me. The third evening one

offered me the bouquet that still perfumes my cabin, and refused my

grateful reward.

That evening I was walking at the end of the garden, by a fountain with

a brim of stone and two basins of green water. In it the twilight

reflections dissolve. The fragrance that lingers there is enchanting.

On this little lake float two white swans. They know that their prison

will never be larger; the paddles of their feet are still; their

dazzling wings, rose-tinted in the setting sun, open like a sail to the

breaths of the breeze, and they glide very gently, bending their necks

as if to breathe in the exquisite sweetness of the evening.

A little dog, tawny and silken, ran around the fountain, barking at

the swans when they skirted the rim, at their disdain when they moved

towards the center of the pool. On a bench a woman dressed in mauve was

reading a book, turning the page slowly. The air held only the last

vestiges of light. When this woman raised her attentive eyes towards

the dog, she revealed a sorrowful face and eyes heavy with passion.

I am slightly disturbed by these neighbors, but I sit down and abandon

myself to the witchery of the colors and odors of the dying day. Sorrow

is solaced by an excess of sorrow, and the exile finds joy only in an

excess of exile. Solitary, between the past and the future, I am at

peace.

There in the fragrance of the garden, the sea, the war, the how and why

of things, all disappear. My thoughts float, without support, like the

exhalations of flowers which hasten to give out a sweet odor before

falling asleep. But the little tawny dog, excited by the play of the

swans, leaps towards the nearest ones, and falls into the water. He

keeps himself up, paddling round in the same place; he scratches at the

slippery rim of the fountain. Unable to climb out, he whines piteously.

I fish him out by his silky ears. He shakes himself, shakes water on my

shoes, and the lady in mauve rises to thank me.

Who ever remembers words spoken at twilight? She spoke the soft Italian

tongue, and I replied in kind. Why, as I came from the shores of Malta,

should I forget French in favor of the tongue of Dante and d’Annunzio?

The little tawny dog followed us. I learned that he is called Jimmino.

Deep eyes, a face which was not pretty but which I thought to be more

beautiful than beauty, was sometimes raised to mine. We walked along

together, both weary. Our words were vague, and yet each one found

its mark. I understood my own fatigue; but what was this woman’s with

the tragic face? We had not told each other our secrets, and yet it

seemed that for each other we had no more secrets. She was beautifully

dressed, in rare and simple material. Her jewels were real. Night had

enveloped us when we reached the gates of the town. You wish to know

what we said to each other on the way? I do not remember. Under an

electric light in the street, we pressed each other’s hands; her eyes

dominated her pale face, and I thought her fingers trembled. Who is

this passer-by whom perhaps I shall never see again, and will she take

her place in the company of the shadows who people the life of the

sailor? I do not even know her name.

On the bridge my successor in the watch comes to replace me.

“Speed, twelve knots,” I say to him. “Route, to the south. We have

passed the light at Bari. Range of the guns, fifteen hundred meters.

Deflection, forty-four and fifty-six. Light wind from southwest. Storm

continues on the whole horizon. Nothing in sight. A good watch to you!”

And I go down to my cabin. Perhaps after two hours of confession on

paper, I shall find oblivion for this chaos in which my dreams are

tossed. But I must sleep, for in six hours I stand watch again, and the

folly of the mind must not be allowed to weaken the body.

_3 November,

four o’clock in the afternoon._

Well, no! Sleep did not come this morning, and all these dreams came

near ending in a fatal nightmare.

After a few hours of unquiet rest, I had to rise, make a hasty toilet,

and swallow what food I could before resuming the lookout. In the

middle of the day I found myself on the bridge I had left in darkness a

few hours before. The sea was silvery in a bright sun. In a spreading

line the three cruisers continued their course towards the southern

end of the Adriatic. Behind us, almost invisible on the horizon, the

smoke of the “naval army” made a black smudge. On board, everyone not

on watch was taking a siesta, getting consolation in sleep for the

disappointments of the preceding day. But dozens of eyes were watching

this calmest of seas. Light mists, idle as the feathers of birds, moved

here and there on the blue sea. A few thousand meters away the _Ernest

Renan_ followed a parallel course.

Suddenly in the streaks of foam appeared something whiter. My glass at

once followed this wrinkle on the water; one would have said it was a

jet of steam, glistening in the sunlight. I hesitated a few moments.

Perhaps I had been deceived by the fin of a porpoise swimming at the

surface. But the memory of drills during peace-times set before my eyes

the wake of a periscope, and I hesitated no longer.

“On watch! To port! Range, eight hundred meters! Deflection, forty! The

three engines ahead full ahead! Close the port stanchions! Open fire!”

The cruiser leaps. Below, the men on watch close the port stanchions.

The volley of guns goes off, and the shells fall round that white

moving spot. They burst like balls of snow on a blue wall. All the men

wake from their siesta, the officers come on deck. At several meters

from our hull passes the flaky line of a launched torpedo. It has

missed us, but a big 194 shell, fired from one of our turrets, bursts

just above the periscope, which rises, sinks, rises and sinks again,

like a wounded animal which lifts itself and falls back. And then we

see nothing more. The blue water shows only its usual indolence. From

the _Ernest Renan_ comes to us a burst of hurrahs across the air;

they have seen the shell tear up the water, and have decided that the

explosion destroyed the submarine.

We move rapidly, so rapidly that in a very few moments the cruiser is

far away from the deadly spot. The guns turn and follow, ready to fire

again, but nothing more appears.

“Cease fire! Watch ended! Open the port stanchions! Return to course!

The three engines at sixty revolutions!”

In a few seconds the cruiser resumes its watch. It has just proved

that it cannot be caught napping, and everything falls back into what

appears to be somnolence, but a somnolence with eyes wide open. Have I

sunk an Austrian submarine? I shall never know. This deceitful enemy

that hides itself to strike, and hides itself to die! One at least will

not attack the precious battleships which follow us.

Towards the east a few minutes later the _Jules Ferry_, a cruiser

with four stacks, which has been reconnoitering on the other side of

the horizon, signals that a torpedo from an invisible submarine has

passed a few meters from its hull. So there were at least two of these

invisible enemies, and it was the cruisers that baffled their attempt.

The Commander-in-Chief can descend fearlessly the path which we have

just swept clear.

What does one feel on learning in the space of less than a minute that

a cruiser worth fifty millions and carrying a thousand men has been

dependent for life on the promptness of an order or the intelligence of

a maneuver? I know nothing about it, and all those who have known great

responsibility in this war will understand what I mean. A little later

on, it seems to me, one feels afraid of the peril that is now past. It

presents itself under terrifying colors which in the moment of action

one did not see at all. Courage is easy enough; you need only get out

of yourself, think of others, and everything becomes simple. Afterwards

you are much fatigued. After yesterday’s disillusionment, I doubted my

being able to sleep. To-day, after this danger, I am sure to escape

insomnia. The phantoms of the past will not knock at the door of my

memory, for I have lived through a great moment of my life. I may have

saved the _Waldeck-Rousseau_!

_Otranto Canal, 11 November._

Outside or near the shore, in a peaceful harbor or in a roadstead

whipped by the winds, a naval collier speaks the _Waldeck-Rousseau_.

For several hours coal by the hundreds of tons passes from the collier

to the ship. After so many days of watching and weariness, and of

stoking the fires, this is the rest which our crews taste. We coal

in front of Corfu or Paxo, or in some cove of Epirus. Each week our

insatiable furnaces demand a thousand tons of coal; each week we burn

them up in our futile promenades across the Adriatic sea.

From dawn to dusk our sailors fill sacks in the bottom of the collier’s

hold; their shovels and picks labor in the bosom of the black stuff;

windlasses raise the clumps of sacks, and cast them on the deck. There

other gangs take charge, lower the sacks by chutes into the bowels

of the _Waldeck_, dragging them by hand through the labyrinth of

passageways, and into the gaping jaws of the stores; at the edge of the

store-room two men with powerful muscles turn out with one stroke a

hundred kilos of coal which fall down into the darkness amid a cloud of

blinding dust. Crouched at the bottom of the store-room, other sailors

receive this dark avalanche, pouring minute after minute; they direct

it, pile it up in empty corners, and, stumbling on the piles, their

eyes burned by the tar, their mouths poisoned with soot, prepare the

way for the new torrents which are coming.

You would imagine yourself in a cavern of the infernal regions. Around

the cruiser and the collier a thick halo sullies the atmosphere.

Bound together by heavy hawsers, the two boats roll on the waves or

in the wind like two black swans. On the decks and broadsides you see

only dark forms which move with sluggish gestures; bare feet travel

furtively the carpet of coal spread over the steel; electric lights

under a black film throw a strange and somewhat sinister light; human

beings pass, loaded with heavy sacks, knees bowed, eyes and teeth

white in a perspiring negro mask; they pant and blow and suffer. Their

muscles are aching with this work fit only for horses, and beg for

mercy. Yet they sing. At the moment when the cloud is heaviest, the

odor most acrid, and the light most livid, a hoarse young voice rises

out of the gloom. It attempts the first verses of some gay song: “The

Young Girls of Rochelle!” “Queen Pomare!” “The Gray Lark!” Right and

left, high and low, invisible singers respond. The coalholes become

alive; behind the partitions of steel a smothered baritone joins its

raucous tones to those of a tenor armed with a pick. And in the immense

maze of the holds, the broadsides and corridors, flows a harmony, at

once sad and joyous, a memory of France in days of peace. There is no

conductor and no metronome, but the singing is in good time and tune.

The cruiser vibrates in unison with it.

When the song is ended, one hears for several minutes only indistinct

breathings and stampings. Sack by sack the tons of coal stock the

holds, and the monotonous rain accompanies the interminable labor.

For Nature begins to grow somber. The worst weather has not come yet,

but the sky suggests the melancholy of winter; the South Wind sometimes

gives place to the North Wind, and we have bitter hours. Then the

coalings are unspeakably dismal; our beautiful cruiser is clothed in

a dusty cloak which trails over her hull like a mourning mantle; the

smoke from the stacks mingles with the gusts of coaldust which the wind

and rain plaster over the guns, the cordage, and one’s own skin. Floods

of despair seem to descend from the clouds.

To chase away these evil impressions we go to talk with the Captain and

the officers of the collier. They come from Cardiff or from Newcastle,

are familiar with the ports of England and France, have seen our French

comrades and the British fleets; they bring us news of the vast world.

We listen to them eagerly. They too belong to the great fraternity of

navigators, and the tales they tell us are like the Odyssey we live. Up

there, far up, between Norway and Scotland, the English cruisers are

keeping indefatigable watch, and they are less fortunate than we. For

there the sea is sinister. Around England, without pause or respite,

in terrible storms, the Allied destroyers prowl everywhere. Covered

with spray, laboring through the fog, they contend with the sea without

meeting any other enemy; and the fleet of Admiral Jellicoe dances

attendance like our own “naval army!” Ignominious and cowardly, the

German enemy hides himself, just as here the Austrian burrows away.

The proud descendants of Nelson await a new Trafalgar, and to them the

prudence of the Germans opposes only hidden enemies, the submarines.

As for our French brothers, the destroyers and Atlantic cruisers,

they journey from Calais to Brest without adventure; convoyers of

transports, policemen of the waves--customs-officers of contraband,

they do not experience the excitements of the Adriatic hunts. Their

task, more obscure than ours, is also more ungrateful. And since the

happiness of man is measured by the unhappiness of others, we are happy

in the Adriatic in spite of our disillusion and our exile.

But the day passes. The Captain of the collier offers us the latest

papers, we give him the last wireless messages, and we must separate.

Whether or not the coaling is ended, the cruiser never stands still

during the night. We cast off the hawser, the screws turn; the crew,

black with coaldust, go to rest their weary limbs after the crushing

toil of the boilers, the engines, and the watch. And during the rest of

the night the cruiser makes a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles.

It matters not whether the sea is calm or disturbed, the sky clear

or rainy. Men and officers observe the same vigilance as they did

yesterday and will to-morrow; every boat that is sighted is chased,

stopped, visited; one takes no account of weariness or sleep. One goes

steadily on, always steadily on.

And if the thousand or twelve hundred tons necessary are not taken on

in a single day, we return next day to the collier. The rendezvous is

not at the same place, but in quite a distant roadstead or bay, for

fear that the enemy, forewarned, will send us a submarine while we are

practically helpless. In all haste we finish emptying the coal; the

holds are full to the jaws, the sailors take courage and forget their

weariness in a supreme effort. We fortify ourselves again for eight or

ten days, for the excitements of the Adriatic, the dangers of the sea

and the torpedoes.

Everything is impregnated with coal. There is no barrier or filter

against this microbe. Bathing in floods of water, brushing and scraping

does not chase it from its lairs. In our food our teeth encounter

crunching lumps; our hair is tarnished with a black cosmetic; and the

folds of our whitest linen conceal little hoards of soot. Our whitest

linen! Is there a world where they know the pleasure of immaculate

shirts? Of handkerchiefs pure as snow? When we set out, each one of us

took along only what was strictly necessary. Our boxes are few, and

in a day we soil more than in a week of peace. Where are the washes of

other days? where the polite laundresses of the ports, who washed the

linen and cambric in twenty-four hours? Our cruises last eight or nine

weeks.

How many times already I have washed in my basin two handkerchiefs and

a shirt so covered with coaldust that the white places spotted it! Like

all my comrades I have a sailor at my service. But he is a good gunner,

who only looks after me when his duties do not call him elsewhere.

Every day he has ten hours of lookout and three or four of preparation

of materials. Must he not sleep and eat? When he is free, I try to take

a few hours of broken rest on my bunk, and he respects my sleep. When

my cabin is empty, he is watching behind his gun. Each one of us washes

what he can. The soft water we use does not come from clear fountains,

but from the boiler tubes which distil the sea-water; it stands in

great metal casks, it is filled with rust and retains the color of it.

In vain we throw in soap and borax; the washed linen turns yellow as if

powdered with mustard, and it is never quite dry. The falling rains,

the smoke which sweeps the deck, do not permit hanging it outdoors. In

my cabin my gunner has stretched two strings between the port hole and

the moulding above my bunk, and up there the linen dries as well as it

can. Sometimes, while I sleep or work, an idle drop falls on my face

or my paper; other times the constant vibration of the cruiser throws

the linen to the coal-stained linoleum, and the whole thing has to be

done over again. In the “naval army,” as in the trenches, nothing is

clean but the wind.

As in the trenches, too, we try to kill time, which lags so terribly.

The study of the military map is misleading; we are accustomed, as each

communiqué is received by wireless, to stick flags on the Western and

Eastern fronts. The pins change every day by a quarter or a tenth of a

millimeter; they have made so many holes in the paper that one can no

longer read the names, and we have given up taking them out. Bundles

of papers arrive in each mail, are quickly read and thrown aside; they

feed neither our conversation nor our reveries. We brought no books

from France because we thought them superfluous in a short war, and

those we have ordered for these interminable cruises have not yet come.

Letters are quickly written when one has nothing much to say and the

censor forbids details.

What have we to do except play? Some spend their hours off in Patience;

it is all one to them whether the combinations come out or not. Others

bend over the chess-board, or become absorbed in bridge. But these are

unusual kinds of chess and bridge; no one ever has time to finish a

game. The service, the watch, meals, the time for sleeping, interrupt

you; you leave the chess game or the rubber where it is, and another

officer takes your place. A game commenced with certain partners ends

with a completely new set. Winning or losing does not matter; one has

time only to kill, and must think of nothing else.

_Adriatic Sea, 16 November._

For several weeks now the monotony of our vagabondage has been broken

by a pleasing distraction--divine service celebrated every Sunday. For

the duration of the war the Government has appointed on every admiral’s

ship and every hospital ship a volunteer chaplain. Ours arrived the

middle of October. His name is Mgr. Bolo.

Without regret he has left his care of feminine souls, his delightful

home in Touraine, and has sought the hard life of the sailors. After

a long voyage he appeared at some bay in the Ionian Isles where we

were coaling, and climbed the iron ladder of our ship in the thick of

the rain and soot. For several days, while he was bewildered by the

mazes of the cruiser, or breathless in his stifling cabin, he might

have wondered into what world he had got. But a serene soul dwelt in

his athletic body; he quickly got over his confusion, and in order to

preach better to the sailors, he wanted to learn their trade.

He is constantly asking questions; our jargon, the complicated

machinery, its mechanism and control, do not repel him. His talk is

enlivened with racy words; in him the sailors recognize a brother.

He is one of the crowd. Although his hands are accustomed to priestly

gestures, he takes part in the embarkations. Each time we put the gig

or long-boat in the water, he takes his place beside the coxswain and

tries to direct the crew. He soon learned the usual orders, how to

manage the sail and the oar, and how to make a difficult landing or

tack. In a few weeks he could safely be entrusted with the direction of

a ship’s boat in all the difficulties of current, wind and waves; he

directed it with confident voice and hand. Then we made him undergo the

same examination as the able seamen, and if it would please him to have

the title _in partibus_, we will deliver to him the certificate which

will make him a real priest-sailor.

During the cruises he tries to pierce to the soul of that mysterious

race, the sailors. For those who have preached to country and city

folk the task is not easy. The sailors, artless and at the same time

instructed by their travels, used to danger and to duty, do not take to

specious rhetoric or childish advice. Hyperbole and platitude displease

them equally. They have minds like the fishermen and workingmen whom

of old John the Baptist or Jesus persuaded. One must search their

heart rather than their reason, their imagination rather than their

intelligence. In this way the preaching may bring them some simple

truths, admonish their rather loose impulses, and give them resignation

for their fatiguing tasks.

Every Sunday religious service is held on board; it is a simple and

dignified ceremony. Around the portable altar, the flags make stained

windows; the arch of the church is replaced by the low whitewashed

ceiling between decks; to right and left the partitions of the cabins,

the white bodies of the stacks form the metallic walls of our temple;

variegated funnels, valves, well-polished faucets, throw out sparkling

reds and yellows; chairs for the officers, benches for the crew, cover

eight or ten meters of the space. Anyone who wishes attends. A bugle

call announces the Mass, and anyone not on duty may be present or may

excuse himself. While the priest recites, one hears the respiration of

the engines below, the snorting of the ventilators; overhead on deck

tramp the sailors of the watch; the great waves of the Adriatic slap

against the hull, and the quiver of the moving ship makes the altar

tremble. Now and then there is music, old liturgic airs and modern

themes.

The priest addresses the sailors. He does not need to teach them

heroism, to make fine phrases. The instinct of the sailors is surer.

They are convinced by eternal truths, discussed with sincerity. Our

Bretons, our Provençals, listen receptively to the gospel of the day.

When they hear simple words, like those the Galilean used two thousand

years ago, their lips are parted, their deep eyes become absorbed,

their souls grow better. But if they hear argument, they make an effort

to understand, they knit their brows, they discuss within their own

minds. They reflect what is good and clear and simple; one is sure to

touch them when one seeks their hearts.

The _Domino, salvam fac rempublicam_ is played. The priest passes

between the rows on his way to his cabin, and the congregation

disperses. Five minutes later, benches and flags have disappeared, the

place has recovered its solitude and its calm. The sailors before the

engines or behind the guns remember with pleasure what they have just

heard. Believers or not, they know that sincere words have been spoken

and yield themselves to their influence.

Thus, in early ages, in the clearings or the fields, the apostles

must have preached to rude peoples. They sowed the seed that ripened

throughout the centuries; their temples were no more splendid than this

steel vessel which spends every Sunday traversing the sea.

_Near Santa Maria de Leuca,

17 November._

We have on board an eye which never sleeps; it is the wireless. Its

apparatus is buried in the depths of the ship; a cabin hung with

mattresses isolates the operators from the noise of the engines, and

the general confusion. The telegraphers listen to messages from every

direction; the lowest murmurs of the electric voice do not escape their

ears.

The air vibrates continually. From stations far and near, from ships

sailing the Atlantic or nearer waters, the calls and messages find

their way; the air carries them instantaneously. The powerful poles of

the Eiffel Tower, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Constantinople, overcome the

fainter messages. They send out to any distance, with all their force,

the official news of the conflict. If someone else is speaking too

loud five hundred or a thousand kilometers away, they increase their

current, swell their voices, until these interlopers are silent.

There is a certain tacit agreement about their transmission. Germany

does not interrupt France; the Turk waits until Malta has finished;

Madrid, talking with Berlin, ceases when London speaks. For these

great stations, controlled by the Governments, send out only the more

important messages, those which the entire world ought to hear; they

wish neither to be confused nor to confuse others. Communiqués from the

front, events at sea, diplomatic or financial transactions, apologias

or recriminations, circulate in all languages. One can be sure the

papers will not publish them. If by chance the reader finds them in

his daily newspaper, it will be a week or two later, under some

disconnected, unrecognizable form.

The sailors, however, get all the news. While the censor limits the

rest of the world to meager and belated information, we know it all

already. We can rejoice or mourn in advance of the rejoicings and

grief of millions. Ireland announces a simple strategic movement of

the Russians, but Norddeich--the German station--echoes everywhere the

claim of a German victory, with an advance and the taking of thousands

of prisoners. Norddeich relates briefly some happening at sea, but

Eiffel makes her most powerful sparks crackle as she sends to Moscow,

to Terra Nueva, to the Soudan and the Red Sea, the news of a naval

disaster to some German ships. How soon and in what distorted form will

the public read this news? At every hour of day and night we receive

the messages, brutal and imperious.

We cannot be deceived. Even our enemies take no pains to prevaricate in

these messages to ambassadors, consuls, and their innumerable agents

who uphold German prestige throughout the world. It is of the utmost

importance for Germany that these men receive honest information with

which to make a case for their negotiations. There is nothing in

common between the rhapsodies of the papers or the Wolff Agency, and

its wireless information. At the most, in the case of defeats, it

carefully renders a vague account. But this vagueness makes us prick up

our ears, and in a few hours London or Paris confirms the English or

French victory.

Outside of chancelleries and Government offices there are no maps kept

up to date except those on ships of war. In the ward-room we argue over

the flags that are placed at the precise spot where they should be; our

predictions and our hopes are rarely deceived. And if secrecy did not

bind us to silence, we could tell our friends much news.

But underneath these important voices of the wireless are whispers

of many lesser tones, just as in the tropical forest the roaring of

the lions does not silence the sounds of insects and rodents; this

undertone of smaller voices is what gives the jungle its deep voice.

The thin voices of the ships that speak to us give the sea air a

mysterious animation. A great liner on its way from tropic seas

announces its passage by some frequented cape. A torpedo-boat on patrol

near Gibraltar tells Port Said of the ships it has sighted. This

torpedo-boat’s apparatus is not powerful enough to call the other end

of the Mediterranean; it signals Bizerta or Toulon, which answer it,

take its message, and send it like a ball rebounding on the stations

at Malta, on the masts of a French cruiser in the Ionian, on the wires

of a Russian ship in the Ægean Sea, until it finally reaches the

station at Port Said. A mail-boat gives information about its position;

a squadron asks for orders; a naval attaché or ambassador sends word

about espionage; the Resident General at Morocco is sending grain to

Montenegro; the patrols warn of a submarine in sight; colliers ask

us to tell them where they will find certain battleships: the whole

Mediterranean knocks at the wireless station of the Commander-in-Chief,

like a crowd of subalterns at the door of the officer who is giving out

orders.

And the Commander-in-Chief on his splendid battleship--a moving

office--decides, orders, directs; the sonorous rays shoot out from the

mast where floats his flag that represents France, and through space,

far and near, through the stations which relay them farther on, travels

their echo to the ear of the recipients.

There is no disorder, no discord, in these messages. Just as with

the players in a well directed orchestra, all the speakers speak

on the minute, at the very instant they should; watch in hand, the

telegraphers wait for their moment, and at the highest speed send

their dashes, short and long; at the end of their period whether they

have finished or not, they stop and wait, for immediately a distant

voice begins to play its tune, and would complain violently if someone

prevented its talking. The Mediterranean is divided into sectors, and

the time distributed between them, so that no one is allowed to speak

if the schedule requires him to be silent.

Offenders, moreover, are soon recognized. Just as the finger of a blind

man acquires surprising sensibility, the telegraphers come to know

the timber, sharpness of tone and musical richness of these babblers

they have never seen. For the initiated the electric radiations have

a personality like human talk. Two stations, two ships, have distinct

voices and deliveries. This one sputters, that one speaks slowly and

gravely; the sound of one resembles a match struck on sand paper,

another buzzes like a fly, another sings sharply like a mosquito. It

is a magic concert. In his padded cabin the receiver hears and makes

out the whisperings of the grasshopper, the scrapings of violins, the

rattle of beetles, the frying of boiling oil, all the sounds which the

fantastic electricity reproduces hundreds of miles away. It jumps,

stops, recommences; one would call it a symphony of goblins in a

boundless land. And yet the least of these vibrations is a messenger of

war, of life, or of death.

They are careful to use secret languages. There is not a word or phrase

in this continual interchange which anyone could interpret without the

keys upon which depends the safety of the ships. Nothing but cipher

circulates through the air. All the combinations which the human

mind could invent, all the ingenuities devised by specialists, have

been prepared beforehand. We improve on the arrangements of ciphers;

for fear that the enemy, after receiving pages and pages of ciphered

texts, will succeed in forcing the lock, the “naval army” does not long

maintain the same keys. It modifies them, turns them about, rubs them

down; and the officers in charge of the translation are like travelers

who change languages at every frontier.

* * * * *

Furthermore, everyone does not speak the same language; sometimes they

address one another without anyone’s being able to understand. From

Englishman to Englishman, Frenchman to Frenchman, minister to admiral,

admiral to cruiser, commander-in-chief to the least of his satellites,

ambassador to battleship, consulate to shore station--between these

leap dialogues in unknown patois. The curious can listen, but they

will learn nothing. As worthy descendants of the Gauls, whom Caesar

describes as stopping travelers en route to get news from them, we are

all eager to know the message of the ciphers which we read without our

codes’ being able to interpret them. Labor lost! Perhaps one of us has

patience, enough, or works long enough, to decipher a secret not meant

for him. He is happy. He acts important. He thinks he is very superior

to have known how to listen at the keyholes. But some fine day the

key whose secret he has learned becomes useless in his hand; it gives

him only words without order, nonsense. The two talkers have amused

themselves with changing the lock, and everything has to be done again.

The naval allies dread enemies with ears that are too wide open as much

as indiscreet friends with too long tongues. And it is a good thing

they do.

Besides, we have enough to do in translating the intelligible messages.

In addition to the lieutenant of the chief vessel of the patrol and the

chief of the watch and his second, there is a fourth officer who spends

his whole time looking over files of texts received by the wireless.

At his side are codes and dictionaries containing every word, phrase

or signal which he needs to know. He spends four hours translating the

numbers into French. English, Russians, French, Montenegrins, Serbs,

all have something important, something vital, to say. During the day

a hundred or even two hundred telegrams arrive, and are transcribed

in blankbooks; the sender, the destination, the number, the hour of

transmission, are all carefully noted. These are the archives of our

naval Odyssey.

A wireless is often addressed to the _Waldeck-Rousseau_. The station

that is calling sends out into space the name of our cruiser. We

respond. From shore and from the ships come unexpected instructions and

questions. In the dark night we transmit to the Commander-in-Chief

whatever message demands a reply. The Commander considers, weighs

carefully the words which he will send back; the officer in charge of

the translating writes it out clearly and concisely in cipher. And a

few minutes later the masts of the ship flash out their long and short

dashes into the midst of the darkness. It is the answer that we are

sending. The wires stretched between the masts become phosphorescent,

the sparks crackle drily, and instantaneously, at no matter what

distance, the one who is calling us hears the faint echo of our voice.

Thus pass the days, vibrant with this invisible business. Everyone

tells what he knows, listens to what he ought to hear, responds when he

is called. From the ocean to the Red Sea, all the wandering ships are

held together by these bands, and the magical electric current effaces

distance. But there are times when one is silent.

When, on the trail of adventure, the bold vessels go up the Adriatic

to the threshold of their enemy, their voices are as hidden as their

path is dark. However imperious the calls, they do not reply. All

about them, at Cattaro, at Lissa, in the islands and arsenals, the

telegraphic spies would hear their voices as they approached. Dark

and silent, they move without speaking. All chinks are stopped up in

the cabin where the men listen. All along the route, in these furtive

hours, they catch mysterious conversations. Some Austrian spy in Italy

or the Greek Islands has seen in the twilight the departure of the

French fleet towards the north. In a chimney, or cellar or well, this

spy has concealed a transmitting station of which the neutrals are

ignorant; he sends brief messages which sound like a whistle. We do

not understand the numbers, but we guess what they mean. “The French

are about to leave,” “they are leaving,” “they are in the Adriatic,”

“they are approaching Cattaro.” No French mouth is responsible for

this hostile voice; we know it by its singing timber like a flute

or a mosquito’s buzz. It is the Telefunken apparatus which produces

this sound, which one would recognize among a thousand. All night its

vibration follows us. Whence come these whispers in the darkness? By

what miracle, from moment to moment, do we hear these sonorous flashes

which talk about nothing but us? “The French are passing Brindisi;”

“they are passing Bari;” “they are turning towards the northeast;”

“about two o’clock they will be near Pelagosa.” In the distance vibrate

the responses, which become more and more distinct. It is Cattaro,

Pola, the Dalmatian Isles, awaiting us.

Yes, we move in a circle of sinister spirits, and these Germans have

prodigious ears. Their high shrill murmur, undecipherable yet very

clear, darts round us as we advance through the darkness. Perhaps

destroyers and submarines are lurking on our course. Those that have

missed us in our too rapid progress telegraph the next sentinel, and

he rushes toward us with his torpedo ready. Where is he? Behind or in

front? Gunners, do not sleep at your guns! Officers, bend over the

empty blackness! Cruiser, enveloped in shadow, move faster and ever

faster! These evil specters of the Adriatic are lying in wait for you;

the whistling of their ghostly lips prepares your destruction! But

do not be afraid. They will wear themselves out in the pursuit, and

to-morrow you will be at the post where France desires you.

But what cruiser, which battleship, is destined to receive the fatal

wound from these singing demons?

_West of Corfu, 26 November._

The naval struggle in which the Germans pretended to imitate the great

corsairs of France has ended with the destruction of the _Emden_ by an

Australian cruiser in the Bay of Bengal. The armed liners--the _Kaiser

Wilhelm_, _Cecilie_, _Cape Trafalgar_, and many others--have already

paid the penalty for their futile audacity. They thought they could

terrorize sailors and starve out nations; but in fact the resources of

life are going to flow more abundantly than ever into the markets of

the Allies.

The navy is the guardian of the granaries. We already knew it who

frequented the important routes in times of peace, but five months of

labor have proved to us that we never realized its full significance.

We have seen pass us, and have protected, innumerable freighters

loaded with grain for bread, with animals for meat, and steel for the

manufacture of shells. The warships have freed the routes which supply

our champions with food, and have closed up the routes of the enemy.

How many months longer will this enterprise take? The lips of the

future are sealed. But the cruisers and torpedo-boats, from Norway to

the Ægean Sea, do not shrink from their task. A nation at war requires

some of its defenders to labor in assuring a living to those who fight.

The deeds of sailors are not brilliant and showy; and men are not

grateful to them for their fatigue. What matter? If this obscure work

of the ships keeps the tears of famine from being added to the grief of

mourning, it will not have been without a glory of its own; the smiles

of happy little children will be our reward.

But I am forgetting the _Emden_ and the corsair liners. Like the sea my

imagination is somewhat capricious. These restless corsairs are of a

piece with the general parody which German Kultur offers us. What would

the Jean Barts and the Duquesnes say to the bandits that are spewed

forth from Kiel and Hamburg? In the great period of Dunkirk and Saint

Malo, pirates attacked magnificent galleys, sailing before the wind to

Spain and the Thames. Like the brave foxes they were, they reveled in

bold and clever combat. They were the prodigal sons of the sea. They

played an honorable game, and never took pride in mere blind massacre.

One can imagine how the terrors of the sea would have been increased if

a few years more of peace had permitted Germany to forge new weapons.

Of her liners and cruisers she has picked the most powerful and rapid,

and has said to them: “Kill, sink, and fun away!” Nothing is sacred to

the barbarians of Rheims and Louvain, neither cathedrals nor the routes

of the sea. What would not have been the horrors of this privateering

war if William II himself or one of his lieutenants had had control of

these maritime massacres? Before them the grisly imagination of the

Middle Ages would have paled. What crimes will the Germans not commit

when they realize that they are conquered?

Honor to the officers of the _Emden_! They have destroyed ships, but

they nobly refused to commit the crimes commanded by their master. They

generously spared the lives of the sailors who were at their mercy,

and blood does not dishonor the tale of their exploits. Doubtless the

praise of blood has disgraced them at Berlin, but the fraternity of

sailors does not condemn them.

England accepted the challenge. Over the vast expanse of ocean

she deployed her cruisers, launched them forth on the path of the

marauders, and ordered: “Suppress them!” No pardon, no weakness! The

Emperor at Berlin had revived the law of blood; so one took vengeance

on his satellites. They all disappeared.

The last victim, the _Emden_, suffered the doom which it had so often

inflicted. It had hunted down twenty harmless steamers, and was then

in pursuit of a British convoy. To-day, broken, lying on an Indian

reef, it serves as a reminder to wandering sailors. First they will

salute this heroic prow, which knew how to die and how to redeem its

enterprise from ignominy. Then they will give thanks to the fate that

had them born of another race than the German.

_Strait of Ithaca, 30 November._

The Commander-in-Chief has ordered the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ to leave

its Adriatic station--Otranto, Fano, Albania--for an anchorage in the

Ionian Isles at Arkudi.

We go a short distance out to sea before approaching the maze of

islands. To the north disappear Corfu, Paxo, and Anti-Paxo; to the

south rise Saint Maure and Cephalonia; the great wall of the Orient

covers the east; all the landmarks of our course are slowly displaced,

giving way to others.

The officers of the watch pore over the chart. This great white sheet

with its fine print indicates the contours, the data, the dangers,

the routes. To those who do not know how to read it, it is nonsense;

but its marks are our gospel. By its fine and intricate lines we can

foretell how easy our voyage will be and where the dangers lurk. We

sometimes think of the mariners of old who had no other guide than

Providence. Reading these charts we wonder whether these regions were

loved or feared, and whether, before risking his life there, the pilot

invoked Neptune or the Virgin of the Waves.

We to-day are not so uneasy. Sky and sea are smiling. There is

something treacherous in those blandishments of Nature, which recall

the delights of autumn and yet suggest the coming of winter frosts.

Their last tenderness is fragile.

Here we are in the strait of Dukato, between Saint Maure and

Cephalonia. It is a splendid boulevard. To the right, Ithaca, Ulysses’

native land, lies reddish brown under the sun; to the left, lie jewels

of rocks and liquid paths more delicate and beautiful than remote

trails in the depths of woods; before us a cluster of islands with

names from the musical language of the rhapsodists--Arkudi, Meganisi,

Astoko. And like a highly polished tapestry, the marvelous mountains

tower above the water, blue and crowned with light. The sea has the hue

of mother-of-pearl; the sky is pale, the islands are veiled in faint

color; the gods have composed these tints, outlines and places into a

perfect fairyland.

Space seems to have a divine soul, of unknown substance. The eyes are

ravished, the blood exhilarated. When Homer sang the return of Ulysses,

the Ionian gods gave him a flexible and sonorous language. That secret

the men of our times have lost, they must pause feebly on the threshold

of the inexpressible. Surely Ionia was the garden of the gods.

The cruiser, slender and swift, glides between these historic shores,

which have seen the barques of the Achæans, the triremes of Rome,

the Venetian galleys, the ships of the Crusaders and the feluccas

of Barbary. In our wake have passed generations of pilots, who came

from regions where the sea is evil, and who laughed with delight in

this sailors’ paradise. Why should they not all--poets or merchants,

pirates or soldiers--celebrate these delights and long to remain here?

Blundering through schoolbooks, I have hated the very name of Ithaca; I

have cursed Olympia--when it was assembled in a detestable book. Since

then I have seen all the most perfect skies; my eyes have exhausted

the miracle of light. And yet it is here that I place the cradle of

the gods. When the fancy came to them to descend to earth, where else

should they have lighted but on majestic islet, like Juno on a steep

bank made by Vulcan? Was it not in this fair atmosphere that Apollo

shook out his radiant locks?

And is it not this sea that gave birth to Venus? How happy he would

be who could catch the secret of the outline and color play on this

sea? Her fish are more beautiful in tint and form than the loveliest

animals. Her plants have a rich metallic luster, with lines and curves

that no land plants approach. The men who frequent her, the cities she

laves, are fortunate. All beauty comes from the sea; every vital germ

has floated in her depths. And the subtle intuition of the race of

Homer, who gave divine form to symbols, made the goddess of life and

beauty spring from the Ionian waves.

Aphrodite! Triumphant, naked, I see you emerging from the transparent

blue sea: you stretch your soft limbs under the caress of light. You

open your enchanted eyes upon an earth where men, harassed by the

ugliness of their souls and the futility of their labors, stretch

their hands madly toward your eternal beauty! You go to meet them. It

was here you made your first appearance on our earth. Blessed be the

Greeks, your sponsors, who chose this cradle for you!

And at this moment, when yonder on the field of murder the German

ruffians are trying to destroy everything that is beautiful, everything

to which you have given birth, I understand more clearly the patrimony

which the French are called upon to defend. O Aphrodite, you extend

across the ages your protection to France, your child. From this spot

have come that clear thought, that delicate feeling, that fertile

vision, which you loved in the people who nourished you. As a humble

defender of that beauty, born of the bridal of sea and sun, a Frenchman

thanks you for what you have given him, for all that which is now in

danger of destruction; he salutes you in passing, Ionian Aphrodite,

and wishes he could see the very circle of gold where the Greeks have

placed your birth.

Do not think it is the force of antique memory alone that has produced

this adoration of mine. From the bridge where I am carefully guiding

the cruiser through the windings Ulysses loved, I see on deck a

thousand sailors, silent and attentive. They have stopped talking and

laughing, and no longer turn their backs to the too familiar sea.

To-day a great silence hovers over these Bretons, these Flemings and

Provençals. In what naive way are they absorbing the beauty before

their eyes? They are not acquainted with the poetry and the prose which

have endowed me with this ancient heritage. There they are, however,

with wide eyes, lost in admiration. Beauty could not be celebrated

more significantly than in this stupor of theirs. Their souls, I

imagine, imprisoned in dark dungeons, unconsciously regret the speed

of our passage. Their emotions are profounder than mine; theirs rise

from depths where are no words to translate the mystery. When you do

not understand a thing, you discuss it; but you are silent when it is

revealed. All the sailors are silent. Beauty has just made itself one

of their souls’ memories.

_At sea off the Peloponnesus, 2 December._

After so many weeks of cruising, without contact with the world, we

had hoped to enjoy a few days of rest at Malta, a favor which the

Commander-in-Chief grants to weary ships. We cherished the illusion

that he had had us come so that he might deliver his communications to

us and send us quickly on our mission. But in the navy one must never

hope unless one wishes to be deceived. Hardly had we arrived at the

anchorage of Arkudi when the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ was charged with an

urgent mission on the other side of the Balkan peninsula, to Saloniki.

Regretfully she takes the southern route, winds around Greece and the

Peloponnesus, turns towards the north, and through the mazes of the

Ægean Sea seeks the road to Thessaly.

Our faces and eyes begin to show their weariness. It is not without

betraying the strain that the stokers before their furnaces, the

engineers before their pistons, the gunner lookouts before their guns,

have lived this interminable length of days and nights, alternating

between heavy labor and broken rest. The air between decks becomes

heavier and more stifling with each passing day; dust and heat lie over

everything, and one is as weary after a heavy sleep as at night on a

railroad train with all the windows closed.

Everyone wonders whether we shall ever have the pleasure of engaging

these Austrians or Turks, who hide in corners out of reach and send

only submarines against us. The submarines are there; they are

everywhere, they are nowhere. We stretch out our arms in the empty air;

we strain our eyes in looking for the hiding enemy; and suddenly into

the side of the vessel passes the wound that has no mercy. And it all

happens in silence, for the naval warfare of this age is dumb.

I should only be tedious if I told in detail all the vain pursuits of

our chases in the upper Adriatic, of patrols by night, of the sunrise,

the light, the dusk. The days stretch hand in hand in a gray undulating

vista across the water, at the end of which vanish the last hours we

passed in France.

The Commander-in-Chief has cheered our dejection. The mission which

takes us to Saloniki will take us later to Marseilles. That at least is

the hope contained in our instructions. And we will be allowed to take

a rest while we are in France. Everyone builds visions, calculates the

time, and persuades himself that the Christmas holidays will find him

again with his family. Already fathers seem to be caressing the fair

heads of their children before the fireplace, husbands and lovers are

trembling with a grave joy at the thought of this homeward voyage, a

simple enough episode in our vagabond career, but charged with emotion

because of the suffering of yesterday and the dangers of to-morrow.

No one, however, dares complete these castles in Spain; too many

miscalculations have marked our existence, as it is. As for me, who

for eleven years have passed no single Christmas Eve in France, can I

believe that a freak of war will grant me this happiness denied me by

peace?

While we wait, each turn of the screws takes us further from France.

Sparta, Cythera, the Cyclades, Corinth and the Piræus; these are the

names which the officer of the watch gives to the lands that in turn

come to salute us from the horizon. At the end of the map are marked

the Dardanelles and Constantinople, other boundaries of this world

war. Our cruiser has left the regions of danger in the Adriatic, and

advances as fast as possible towards the waspish Turk. We move among

beautiful scenery. Our eyes seek out a lighthouse on some island

of celebrated name; our lips pronounce the name of some cape which

the poets have made famous; we maneuver our engines and helm in an

archipelago of tabernacles: Cythera, the temple of Venus, and Delos,

the homeland of Apollo; Sparta, with austere countenance, and Athens,

the rose of antiquity. Why cannot the sailor enjoy this dry, pure

December weather? Under his feet the noble cruiser quivers. During his

lookout, he smokes a light fragrant cigaret, and his thoughts, fluid

like these pale curls of smoke, in happier times would have drifted

back to the legendary epochs of old. But no human evil darkens the

shining skies. For Austrian or Turk we must not cease to watch. I do

not dream of complaining of that, for undoubtedly these hours portend

violent homesickness for me.

_Gulf of Saloniki, 7 December._

According to the schedule of watches I am in charge of the entry into

the Gulf of Saloniki. From two to six o’clock in the morning I have

directed the ship in this funnel of water, without lighthouses, with

treacherous currents, at the end of which lies the much coveted city,

that apple of discord between the Eastern peoples.

A treacherous fog sleeps on the surface of the water and shrouds the

shores. Above it the moon dominates the heights and sheds its idle

sparkling rays on the snows of Mount Olympus, Pelion and Ossa. Between

the mists on land and the starry mantle of the sky, these peaks,

whitened by the snow and by the decay of their own glory, keep watch

in the deep silence. They are the only guide of the sailor lost in the

fog; the officer of the watch and the young midshipman who assists

him do not take their eyes off these tutelary presences. It is very

cold. Towards four o’clock a freezing wind blows from Thessaly, and

sharpens the edges of the snow to shining razors. My hands freeze on

the glasses, and my eyes shed tears under the north wind. But one must

forget such miseries.

A faint paleness lingers in the East, and spreads over the sky to our

right. Straight ahead appear low plains, dotted with fires. The dawn

comes, a moment full of difficulty and danger. My midshipman and I

steer the course among the shoals.

At the moment when the last tack opens before us the roadstead of

Saloniki, my successor comes to relieve me. The sunrise has taken

possession of our world; the marvel of an Eastern morning emerges

from the shadows of the night. I go quickly and drink a steaming cup

of coffee, and come on deck again, to admire as simple spectator the

panorama which I approached as pilot.

A stretch of frozen water, girdled with sands and marshes, reflects

an uncertain light. Our prow breaks a way through the film of ice and

broken splinters fall back on either side, like the crackling of frying

cakes. Towards the mouth of the Vardar, legions of birds are skating

and tumbling on this crust in which their claws can get no hold--the

tumult of their voices disturbs the peaceful morning: fluttering

moorhens, raucous herons, ducks in triangular flocks, wake and swarm

about; rose-colored flamingoes poise themselves, motionless and

pensive, on their needle-like legs, only a few meters from our course.

As our cruiser, sparkling with dew and glistening in the cold,

penetrates farther into the white fog, a town emerges from the

vagueness. It is still swathed in its morning gauze, its base is

plunged in the fog, but its minarets offer their heads to the tints of

the sunrise. One by one they show their slender outlines; soon they can

no longer be counted for they form a forest of columns over the city.

Surrounded by massive towers, the walls of the fortified castle on

the summit of the hill are bathed in light; and beyond, stretching to

the horizon, a desolate plain without trees or houses carries the eye

towards Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, or the steppes of Turkey.

Our anchor falls, and tears the parchment of ice. At length, after

so many miles and journeys, the cruiser halts. All Saloniki is

smiling under the kiss of the sun. Close to the water, as along all

the Mediterranean shores, the buildings on the quay show their black

commercial signs, gold façades of moving-picture palaces, and the

white stucco and marble of hotels and banks. The streets, like dark

tunnels through the mass of houses, rise from the harbor and plunge

into the tiers of Christian and Jewish walls, up to the heights of the

great amphitheater, where are massed the light blue Turkish cottages,

surrounded by cypresses and clusters of plane-trees.

An Orthodox basilica flaunts its humped dome; the synagogue,

geometrical and ugly, seems to hide in a confusion of terraces; a

Catholic church raises its cross on a stone abutment; and the fifty

minarets, with their slender swelling and tapering tops, point upward

toward Allah’s heaven. To the left, above the harbor, are tall smoking

chimneys of brick; these are the minarets of the new god, industry, who

has come at last to take his place among the sleepy Orientals.

Since we carry the flag of war in neutral waters, our cruiser must

act with great scrupulousness. Greece consents to observe toward our

mission a courteous hospitality, and we are careful not to abuse it.

Since the beginning of the war the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ is the first

belligerent vessel to anchor in this cosmopolitan roadstead. All the

East shudders. From the Serbian and Turkish storm clouds come bursts

of thunder. Envies, hatreds and hopes wait only the hour to explode;

Saloniki is a crossway where all currents collide. The presence of

French sailors on shore might excite unpleasant demonstrations; the

officers of the cruiser and the authorities of the city agree in

refusing permission to sailors and officers to land until new orders

arrive. This restriction does not include couriers, or negotiators,

who are protected by the diplomatic immunities.

And here we are, imprisoned only a few fathoms from shore. Weary with

walking the steel deck of the ship, we were rejoicing at the thought

of getting acquainted with softer ground. After the glittering sea our

eyes longed for the peaceful sights of the streets or the fields. We

abandon hope of these meager pleasures, and, like Tantaluses of the

sea, try to satisfy ourselves with the attractions in the roadstead.

From morning until evening, and up to nightfall, the harbor caiques

come out to the French ship, besieging her and trying to fasten to her.

But the same orders which forbid our visiting Saloniki in turn forbid

access to the ship. No cajolery softens the officials; they repulse the

most impudent attempts; and the rush of the barques is broken against

our armor-plate. These resemble the narrow caiques of Constantinople.

The people are curious as only the Easterners know how to be; they come

in little groups, not haphazard, but according to race, beliefs, or

opinions. The different groups correspond to the diversity of the city,

where under the same heaven the mosques, the temples, the basilicas and

the churches, adore so many different gods.

Large numbers of Greek soldiers with tanned faces come to observe us.

To free themselves from the menace of war, they have hired boats

together and come out to see what sailors look like who for four months

have followed this profession of fighting. Later in some village of

Bœotia or Locrida, they will relate to a rural audience the talk they

had with sailors from Cornouailles or Provence. But between these two

tribes of simple souls there is no common language to make intelligible

conversation. An animated pantomime--sounds, grimaces, smiles, which

everyone understands--has to serve. A finger is pointed towards the

Dardanelles or Constantinople; another indicates the Adriatic; some

comedian from Marseilles cries “Pan! Pan!” and a Theban gunner answers

“Boum! Boum!” Great shouts of laughter burst from them. Hearts, if not

lips, speak the same language.

Hearing this wild laughter, a crowd of Turks in black jacket and

spotless fez, come round us silently. Their caiques are polished and

painted green. Formerly these men were masters in Saloniki, but German

duplicity launched their country into an adventure which lost them

their fortunes. To them our flag is accursed. If some Turkish mine,

wandering from the Dardanelles, should rip open our hull before their

eyes, I swear they would raise to Allah strident cries of gratitude.

But they are helpless and morose.

Their spite is only increased by the attentions we get from the friends

of France. Some Englishmen, for instance, with their short pipes

between their teeth and their chests open under a soft shirt, row about

in pirogues; their bright eyes admire the cruiser as an instrument of

sport, and the sailors as men who play the game of death. Passing,

they rest their oars in front of the officers, and shout a “Hip! Hip!

Hurrah!” at once emotional and precise, just as they might hail some

cricket or football team.

Pretty Greek girls, with pure profiles and sly glances, add smiles,

showers of flowers, and the brilliance of their new gowns to the

enthusiasm of the men; as they leave, their gloved hands throw towards

the cruiser kisses which they think are unperceived; but our glasses

miss nothing.

Serbs with tragic faces, with sunken and burning eyes, come to get new

courage from contact with the French Navy. At this very moment their

country is prostrate before the Austrian. Our flag comes to tell them:

“Do not despair!” and they respond to our friendly salutations with

pale smiles.

Quite at their ease, some Russians push their way among the crowd of

barques. Whether their territory be invaded or not, whether their

troops advance or retreat in the varying fortunes of this war, the

Russians suffer neither extreme anguish nor extreme joy. They are quite

serene. A cloud effaces the sun, but does not extinguish it. A reverse

may annoy Russia, but she can wait; her victories will be the work of

time. With a grand viva on their white teeth they salute their comrades

of the great war, and then stay still, smiling.

These vivas excite ferocious glares in many an eye. Crouched on the

benches in the boats are old Ottomans of Bagdad, or Mecca, or Erzeroum,

who are telling over a shining chaplet of coral or nuts. These men

are incorrigible. From their half shut lids, between their full lips,

they dart towards the _Roumis_ looks of hatred and imprecations. They

glide at a distance of several meters from us, and do not stop their

boat. The glances we are exchanging with our friends are profound,

and charged with significance; the Mussulmans turn their eyes away to

pretend indifference, but their rage is betrayed in the movement of

their fingers which miss several beads at a time on their rosaries.

And what of these swarms of Germans, merchants, spies or fomenters

of trouble, who crowd into the boats and instal themselves under our

guns, to study the cruiser and the sailors? Here are these smiling

but shameless faces, their eyes hidden beneath round spectacles, with

which Germany blinds the world. Some of them, accustomed to this work,

photograph us, enumerate our guns, observe our system of surveillance

and protection. Before evening, telegrams in cipher will carry to

Berlin all this information. They do it without shame; their disdain

insults us with its impunity. Is not our territory invaded? Are not our

Russian Allies harassed in Poland? Did not the British fleet, only a

month ago, lose ships like ours off the coast of Chile? Have not our

Serbian friends been driven back by the Austrians. “Germany over all!”

We hear the arrogance they do not express. One of them dares to throw

on deck a newspaper written in French. Attracted by the language, a

sailor brings us the paper. But it comes from the press of the Wolff

Agency; quibbles, monstrous lies, written in a French that would make

negroes laugh, are dished up to the Levantines by the Teutons. We do

not even want to shrug our shoulders; that would make these Germans who

are watching us too happy. One among us rolls the sheet into a ball and

throws it into the water; our impassive glances pass over these Germans

encrusted along our hull. But under our uniforms our hearts beat a

little faster.

A new arrival distracts us from these unpleasant neighbors. The

children of the French school, conducted by French monks, bring us

their rosy faces. Instead of games in the schoolyard, they have been

rewarded with a view of the great ship, the ship which brings into

the harbor the majesty of the great unknown nation. The ancestry of

these children is diverse; their parents were born in Armenia, in

Syria, in Thrace or Macedonia, but the gentle hand of France has

already moulded their minds. They laugh with pleasure, their eyes

show animation and clearness, traits of French thought. They rise and

sit down again, curious to see everything, disappointed in not coming

aboard, boisterous and friendly. When they go back regretfully in the

twilight, they crane their young necks after us for a long time, and

suddenly their young voices chant a thin but touching “Marseillaise.”

Their voices are inharmonious, their feeling breaks the verses, but the

distance and the hour give to the sacred hymn an unbearable beauty.

Like a perfume from our native land it floats over the water, fades

away in the setting sun, and over there near the jetties becomes so

faint that we seem to be hearing across space the song of our soldiers

crouched in the trenches.

At that moment the sun disappears, and the cruiser makes its customary

evening salute. Two gun shots resound in the pure air; our brass band

plays the “Marseillaise;” the entire crew, hats off, turn towards the

flag, which slowly descends from the top of the mast, brushes the

bridge and guns in passing, and the soul of its native land comes to

rest softly on the steel deck. During the night hours this standard,

rolled up, preserves the love of France in its folds, and to-morrow,

unfurling them to the sun, it will make them float anew on the seas

we sail. Every evening and every morning in the wandering life of the

sailor, these religious moments bring together Nature and Country,

the two eternities; more religious even to-day in the presence of a

thousand witnesses who are deeply moved. Standing, uncovered, all

our comrades turn their gaze towards the tri-colored symbol, tinted

with the blood, the purity, the hope, of our native land. In fury our

enemies turn their heads away. The colored flag descends gracefully,

smiles at us, but sets the others at defiance.

The water, purple for an instant, darkens and freezes. Our steam

cutters disperse the boats, for the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ must be solitary

through the night. In this country where so many thieves prowl about,

vigilance must not be relaxed. The German boats do not want to go. We

jostle them, chase them, and soon the spies’ faces have been cleared

away from the approaches of the ship.

The night lights are lit in Saloniki; its quays are blazing, its slopes

are flaked with light; the highest mingle with the stars. Dark and

silent, the cruiser takes up her sentry duty; the roadstead is fast

asleep, and the cold gradually covers it with a new shroud. On board it

seems as if everything slept too, but the eyes of the lookouts never

close, and the flag of France can repose in peace.

_Pointe Kassandra, 10 December;

On the Fight in the Falklands._

What a fine revenge! The German squadron was sailing down the American

coast. In this vast ocean she thought she had realized the ambition of

the Kaiser: “The future of Germany is on the sea!” Admiral von Spee,

the herald of Teutonic glory, was unfurling in the harbors of Chile the

standard he said was invincible when a telegram from Berlin recalled

him, probably to the North Sea, in order to add the strength of his

cruisers to that of the fleet at Kiel.

The _Scharnhorst_, the _Gneisenau_, and two small cruisers began to

double Cape Horn. They cleared the spur of the American world. I myself

long ago went through the tempests and frosts which must have enveloped

the German squadron in these windy seas. She reached the Atlantic,

and turned towards the north. On the map of the world the Admiral’s

pencil had traced the routes leading to the Antilles, to the Azores, to

the United States, to Ireland, and the northern latitudes of Norway,

en route for the tunnel of the German _chenaux_. Protected by the

luck which had followed him from China and Tsing-Tao, he expected no

disaster.

In the South Atlantic the British leopard had placed his paws on the

Falkland Islands; he had been foresighted enough to store there immense

reserves of coal. The _Scharnhorst_, the _Gneisenau_, and their

companions, made for this valuable booty, which they counted on seizing

and stripping; for the place is as lost on the ocean as a helpless

vessel. The German sailors, as they approached, had all the pleasure of

playing a legitimate bad turn on their enemies.

But the wrath of Britain had launched on the sea great cruisers armed

with _fouet_. Their orders were to discover these malevolent beasts,

to chase and to scourge them to death. From the Mediterranean and from

the English coasts, their greyhounds started on the merciless hunt,

and swept the ocean as with a rake. Every time they put into port,

they filled their magazines, they listened eagerly to the news of the

world, and sailed ever farther south. When they learned that their game

had turned along the American coast, they prepared for the grand hunt,

assembled, and anchored in the Falkland Islands, in order to coal by

night and lose no instant.

How strange the fate of ships at sea! Twenty-four hours later, and the

coaling would have been done!

* * * * *

In the dawn of the next day, the lookouts on the Falklands saw

the columns of smoke from the enemy ships in the distance. They

came on like a cyclone. Admiral von Spee on his bridge was already

imagining the telegram which should announce to Berlin next night his

extraordinary prowess. But from the islands which they thought were

deserted, they suddenly saw emerge in the morning light the prows

of the great cruisers with their powerful guns. He counted them. He

recognized their strength. His signals ordered flight. But the English

pack had sniffed blood, and until evening it ran and killed.

I have just read the respectful words which, like an epitaph, the

London admiralty dedicates to their fallen enemies. Admiral von Spee

has nobly ended a stainless career. Far away in the midst of the beauty

of the Levantine, the officers of my cruiser at first rejoiced at the

victory. Then they saluted him, for one does not need to know all the

final details to respect an end so glorious as his.

The _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_ were cruisers of our own class,

enemies of our own design. Why did they not choose us, three ships with

our six smokestacks apiece? The fight would have been glorious, and the

glory to the French. Shall we never confront anything but a desert sea,

or invisible submarines?

_Mediterranean, 13 December._

Our mission is ended; we are going not to France but to Malta. The

Cassandras were right, and this twelfth Christmas holiday I shall

pass where.... Courage and patience! Our comrades in the trenches are

suffering in the slime and mud. We are commencing to freeze on a

sullen sea. Winter will be hard for all the sons of France.

For several days the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ has displayed the flag along

the Levantine coasts. It has proved the vigilance of our country and

her attention to the great cataclysms which are preparing in the East.

It has encouraged the neutrals and informed the Turk that his turn will

soon come. The cruiser has anchored nowhere. Her elegant outline passed

far from islands or coasts, and the people who observed the smoke from

her six stacks, could prophesy the future from the sight.

One morning we crossed the bay which is bordered by three

nations, Turkey at Gallipoli; Bulgaria at Dedeagatch; Greece at

Kavalla--respectively hostile, doubtful, friendly.

Gallipoli: a rugged mountainous peninsula, looking like Corsica.

Behind its heights winds the passage of the Dardanelles, the path to

Constantinople. For the moment this approach is forbidden us, and our

guns quiver in vain. France and England wait their hour; the punishment

of the Osmanlis will come later.

Dedeagatch: a seaport which Bulgaria conquered in the recent war. It

is a badly situated harbor on an unfavorable coast; it seems to be

surrounded by a desert; we can see immense freshly plastered barracks.

A prize of war, it is filled with armament; as a maritime station it

receives naval contraband for the Balkans. How many ships have we not

halted who gave this port among their stopping-places? Our suspicions

were rife; we saw that through this port the Turks were kept supplied.

But Bulgaria remained neutral, the ships’ papers had all the proper

endorsements, and we had to let them pass.

Kavalla, Thesos and Samothrace: Greek harbor and islands. At the first

the dissatisfied Bulgarians cast envious looks; they are inconsolable

at having lost it at the same time as Saloniki. It is one of the bones

of contention in an East which will never end its disputes. The name of

this city will be famous before the war is ended. It was in the bosom

of Samothrace that connoisseurs of sculpture found the statue which

is the pride of the Louvre. In Paris at the head of a staircase, the

perfection of her draped figure, with its graceful stride, delights the

crowds who come to see her. She symbolizes Victory. For having placed

her in the temple of her masterpieces, France deserves to add a jewel

to the crown of this same Victory. She will not fail to do so. Our

wistful thoughts pass to the violet rocks where the Victory slept under

the earth, waiting so many centuries until she should awake in a French

museum.

All these visions fade. Others succeed them, and each one brings a

new dream. On a heavenly evening, one of the last fine evenings of

the closing year, the cruiser passed Mount Athos, that jewel of the

Christian faith. Her slopes are like a splendid robe sown with gems.

The huts of hermits and solitaires cling to the sharp edges that the

vultures and the eagles love. The pious men, who pass their lives

preparing for eternal bliss, spend here their austere days, made

fragrant with prayer.

Lower down, the convents form a ragged girdle; soft colors, blue, rose

and faded green, give a religious tint to the walls; men, clothed in

black--to represent the mourning for earthly passions--pray there for

the sins of the world; they live on another planet, and the clamors of

the world die at the foot of their sanctuary.

Before these priests and seminarists our smoking cruiser passes like

a comet which comes from the unknown and goes into the infinite. The

priests of Mount Athos salute us; they send up rockets, pale in the

twilight; they set off firecrackers and Bengal lights, and perhaps

their united voices send us an affectionate welcome. But the maritime

comet passes; the noises reach it faintly, as the voices of men must

reach the celestial altitudes.

Around a little cape appear huge convents, with sparkling gold domes.

They are beautiful and desolate. The faith of the Eastern peoples has

raised these kremlins in the name of Christ, and the setting sun wraps

them in a fire more radiant than the kremlin of Moscow. Splendid

color bathes the mountain and its cluster of religious buildings. As

if to view the picture better, the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ draws away; it

moves between the sun, hung in a glory of rose-color, and Mount Athos,

shimmering under the caress of the light. With its cliffs shining and

its ravines filled with colors, it seems alive, and changes like a

poignant harmony of violins. Into the summit, the frosts of December

have driven a nail of snow, which catches the changing smiles of

the sun and reflects them, soft and tender, into space. In a few

moments the violet color takes possession of the sky; then it fades

imperceptibly, and the _Waldeck-Rousseau_, for this night of the

voyage, sails on in a religious atmosphere.

That man is to be pitied who is not moved by the enchantment of Nature,

or who does not know the great lessons of history. He is ignorant of

those pleasures that never fade. For fifteen days the Ionian Sea has

been surrendering to me its secret of our inheritance from the Greeks.

Mount Athos and this fair evening reveal to me another heritage, that

bequeathed by Jesus Christ.

Long ago from the deserts of Palestine a voice was lifted among the

Roman multitude. It brought back to earth those transcendant archangels

whom the children of Cain had banished. The archangels are named

Goodness and Justice. I will not pursue the story of their martyrdom

here on earth. Like harmless little animals at bay before ferocious

beasts, they have suffered; their hearts and bodies have bled; and the

wicked boast that they have driven them from the world.

But a nation was found to receive these two trembling angels in her

maternal hands. She revived them in her bosom; from their lovely touch

she got the courage to suffer, and as the first Christians threw

themselves to the torture rather than deny the Divine Master, so France

for more than a century, has been willing to die in behalf of her love

for Liberty and Justice.

In the month of August, 1914, with sword on high and bosom bare, she

defied anew the perpetrators of cruelty. Her people and her ministers

were not mistaken. Whether unbelievers or religious men, their gospel

and their justification are those of the Galilean. It is indeed from

His divine parables, and not from the decrees of the old Germanic god,

that France has gathered the flower which is planted in her crest.

White and incorruptible, this flower has closed its petals during the

weeks through which we are living; but the German foulness shall not

soil it, the shells shall not cut its stem, and the dawn is not distant

when its opened petals will shed over the world a sweet fragrance.

How beautiful France seems to me, and how much in love with her I feel

to-night! Frenchmen, realize your good fortune to have been nourished

by so charming a mother! In the womb of antiquity were formed two

priceless treasures: Greek beauty and Christian virtue. It is our

France who has saved them from death. No people, no territory, has

been willing to receive these heritages. Will all our blood suffice to

pay for this unhoped for splendor? Take care lest we weaken. Under my

eyes in the moonlight there glide past ancient lands and islands, my

memories cross the centuries, rest like arches upon the supports of

these legends, and form a bridge which leads far away to Jerusalem and

to Athens.

Jerusalem and Athens! The barbarous Turks and the ignorant Romans

have stripped the gilt from their glory. The sons of these two cities

did not know how to defend their patrimony, and two thousand years

of servitude, ruin and death, have delivered their helpless peoples

over to the pity of history. Let us take good care not to imitate

them. Ignorant and barbarian, the Germanic hordes menace us with their

claws. The gracious mind and exquisite body of France are receiving

the same affront as did her ancient sisters. But in this case the same

catastrophe will not follow the same weakness.

Let us forget the frivolous thought and discourse of our former days.

Beauty must be strong, and one can only smile when the fist is heavy.

Let us suffer; let us know how to wait. From her dying sons France

demands the right to shine resplendent. How much shall we not love

her at the moment when, holding her spear, she undoes her iron tunic,

and offering to the world a countenance flushed with feeling and eyes

profound with the agony of battle, says in a voice broken with emotion

and a smile brimming with pride: “I have consented to shed blood! Let

me henceforth sow flowers!”

_15 December, after the bombardment of

British harbors by German cruisers._

We too could acquire this glory of slaughtering women and children.

Who prevents us in the Adriatic? To-morrow, if the French sailors

were bandits, the world would learn that their guns had bombarded

unfortified towns and the Dalmatian Islands, and, protected by our

cruisers’ strength, had eluded the vigilance of Austria.

Where on earth did the Germans learn warfare! Does naval honor no

longer exist among them? I cannot believe it. There are tasks which a

sailor only accomplishes with rage in his heart, and those who fired

at Yarmouth, Grimsby and Scarborough would ask pardon of God for the

crime which their Emperor commanded. Only this man could have persuaded

sailors to destroy peaceful towns. The sound of those shells he sent

against a defenseless coast will whistle through history round his

accursed name.

You, commandant of the _Emden_, Admiral of the cruisers sunk in the

Falklands, captain of the armed liners, I can imagine you shuddering in

disgust. Far away from the orders of your master, you caused a spotless

standard to be feared on remote seas. Your conscience followed nobly

the rules of war. You conquered. You have been conquered. In the great

naval fraternity, no one thinks of uttering your names without taking

off his hat to you. Before your defeat I would have pressed your brave

hands, happy to touch fingers which no crime had sullied. But these

cruisers of the North Sea, reptiles which smell of putrefaction--let

them be tracked like stinking beasts--let them be executed like apaches

of the sea, let them even be assassinated, and all sailors of the

world, neutrals as well as belligerents, will think their punishment

too good for their crime.