Part 7

Though French troops entered the valleys of the Doller, the Thur, and the Largue on the 7th of August, 1914, the French administration of that little triangle of Alsace Reconquered, as I found it, was organized only in November of the same year. Its first form was purely military, the authorities responsible for the civil population being also in command of the military operations, the final word in all that concerned Alsace coming from the general in command of the Seventh Army, in whose sector it was. These were successively Generals de Maud’huy, Villaret, Debeney, and de Boissaudy. The little triangle was first divided into two territories only, that of the valley of the Largue, with Dannemarie as its capital, that of the valley of the Thur with Thann as capital. Masevaux at that time did not form a distinct territory, but was an annex, as it were, of Thann, as also was St.-Amarin.

The officers administering the territories were chosen mostly from the reserve—men whose former avocations had prepared them for the various rôles they were to fill in Alsace. They were members of the _Conseil d’Etat_, of the _Cour des Comptes_, magistrates, _Gardes des Forêts et des Eaux_, together with many others belonging to technical professions. The first _Capitaine Administrateur_ was Captain Heurtel, in civil life _Maître des Requêtes au Conseil d’Etat_. Though seriously wounded at the very beginning of the war, in December of 1914, he asked to be again sent to the front. He met his death at Verdun in 1916. His successor was Commandant Poulet, _Conseiller d’Etat_, who took up office on Christmas Day, 1914.

In July, 1917, the Mission was detached from the General Headquarters and placed under the Ministry of War. Its new name, expressive of enlarged activities, was changed to _Mission Militaire Administrative en Alsace_ (Military Administrative Mission in Alsace), the central office being transferred to Masevaux, which Fate had placed half-way between St.-Amarin at one end of the reconquered triangle and Dannemarie at the other.

Ever since, in and out of the building of the German _Kommandantur_, once the nave of the old Abbey, men clad in horizon-blue have been coming and going, busied about affairs after the French way, the ancient town of Masevaux entering into the unexpected enjoyment of what might be called an Indian summer. Nothing else has happened to it, so far as I can see, since the Revolution, when the Chapter was suppressed and the Goddess Reason briefly installed in the Abbey. And Masevaux loves and cherishes its brief glory as only lovely and transient things are loved and cherished.[12]

VIII

LUNCHEON AT BITSCHWILLER. THE MISSION IN RESIDENCE AT ST.-AMARIN. SAINT-ODILE

_November 5th._—Awakened early, early by the sound of heavy firing. Later, looking out of the square, I see the market in full swing. Against the inn of Les Lions d’Or, with its comfortable courtyard and two red wings, stands a wagon-load of hay with a pale-green cover thrown over it. Carts of cabbages and carrots, drawn by white oxen, are pulled up under the yellowing trees. The black of the clothes of the women making their purchases cuts in very hard. Blue-clad men come and go; several motors are standing before the door of the Administration. The shining, diffused light of the mist-hidden sun rounds every corner and fills up every space with a pleasant softness.

At eleven I start out with the commandant, Captain Sérin, and Lieutenant Laferrière to motor to Thann through a world of rust and green and gold-colored hills, under the whitest of heavens. So soft and shining is the beauty of the lovely earth, and so soon to pass into the winter, that I say to the commandant how like the transient beauty of a woman of forty-five are these delicate, hazy hills with their cashmere shawls still twisted about their shoulders, drawn up over their heads, dropping down to their green-valleyed feet. I mean the woman of forty-five who is still loved.

Again we stopped on the crest between the valleys of Masevaux and of Thann, and again we stopped and peered through the wire-and-pine screen, out toward Mulhouse and the Rhine and the Black Forest. The valley was blue and shining. Even the windows of the great, white building of the _Idioten-Anstalt_, where the Germans are bivouacked, were visible. Beyond were the high towers of their potassium-works. As those three men stood looking out over the rich plain I thought, “Always will I remember the officers of the Mission like that, standing on the heights, shading their eyes with their hands as they looked down into the land of Egypt, wherein the Lord was to lead them....”

New shell-holes were all about us, and there was a sharp, continual reverberation of cannon among the cashmere-shawled hills.

At Thann we stopped for a moment by the fountain near the church (in peace-times, the old statue of St.-Théobald that I saw at Sewen surmounts the charming column), the commandant having been saluted by a young American officer, leading by the hand a little girl of seven or eight, in Alsatian costume—huge black bow, black velvet bodice, full white skirts. He was quite simply a young man whose parents had gone to America, he himself had fought on the Mexican border, got his commission, and was proudly—oh, so proudly and so smilingly—walking his native streets of Thann with his little niece.

We are _en route_ to lunch with M. and Madame Galland, at Bitschwiller, who receive us as agreeable people of the world receive their guests in all quarters of the globe. They were of those who could have gone, yet remained, during the many bombardments of the town—_noblesse oblige_, and have been a blessing to the valley.

Madame Galland, with powdered hair, slender, delicate of feature and of form, dressing older than she is, might have looked out of a Latour pastel. M. Galland, too, is fine-featured, well groomed, agreeable, and there was a handsome daughter with a quietly sorrowful expression on her young face. It is a house from every one of whose many wide windows one saw gold leaves hanging on black branches, behind them warm, rust-colored hills, traced with pale-yellow larches and stamped with black patterns of pine. Within, the rooms were beautiful with blue-clad men. There was an agreeable and suave odor of kindness and unstintingness about the house, mingling with that of the ease of people of the world, and the surety of those in authority, altogether a _good_ house. Eight or ten officers besides ourselves sat down to the usual delicious and abundant Alsatian luncheon, the conversation intimate enough to have color, general enough not to exclude the stranger within the gates. And it ran after this way, beginning with accounts of that last day of July, 1914, when _Kriegsgefahrzustand_ had been proclaimed in the valley and they were completely cut off from the outer world, witnessing only the sinister passing and repassing of regiments of dragoons and detachments of artillery. M. Galland had procured all the flour and dried vegetables possible at Mulhouse to ration the population of Bitschwiller in case of need, and collected what money he could. The days passed in suspense, till the 6th of August, when they remarked much coming and going of troops; on the 7th the German cavalry was seen beating a hasty retreat.

A _Brigadier de Chasseurs_, mounted on a great black horse, is the first Frenchman they see, advancing alone, looking slowly about him, his revolver in his hands, fearing some snare. Then the _Pantalons Rouges_ pour into the valley, flowers at every bayonet and in every tunic, and the Gallands receive the first French general to enter Alsace since 1870, General Superbie, commanding the 41st Brigade. At two o’clock, after refreshments had been offered from every house, the regiment took the road to Mulhouse, where that same night many of them had their “rendezvous with death.”

The talk then fell on that mysterious thing called luck, and how the soldier must have it, be _chançard_, if he were to come through, and of generals who, like General Liautey, wouldn’t have under them any save notoriously lucky officers. And there was much heedless joking (with the Fates perhaps listening). I, who never say even within myself, “I _will_ do thus and so,” without adding “if God will,” remarked at last, propitiatingly, that “’twas somewhat difficult to tell _beforehand_ who was going to be lucky.”

“But for military purposes,” dryly remarked an officer who had not yet spoken, “one needs to be lucky only as long as the war lasts,” which being hideously true, we turned to the less elusive subject of the rich and easy living of the peasants in this part of the world since the war, and how they, even like unto those other tens of thousands of “war-workers,” will “miss” it. They had become accustomed to the troops, and there was the thrice blessed _popote_ in which they more or less shared. And when the Americans came things were still better in a still better world. For they were very free with their money (though no one could understand a word that they said), and then they went, and the French troops came again, and there was something very pleasant about their return. Though they didn’t have the money of the Americans, they could be conversed with and they would lend a hand in the garden, and were always joking with the children, and helped with the crops, and the virtues of the Americans, if not their money, were somewhat forgotten. They were, in places, even remembered as a nuisance, wanting everything cleared up, stupid bores about the dung-heap, “and will you believe it, Monsieur,” one of them said to Laferrière, “they even washed their dishes with _soap_, and you couldn’t give the dishwater to the pigs!”

After which I related Colonel Burnside’s “best short story,” also concerning the peasant point of view. When he was in Lorraine with his men, at the well-named watery (not watering) place called Demanges-aux-Eaux, a delegation of villagers waited on him, with the complaint that the Americans made so much noise at night that the _sheep_ couldn’t sleep!

And we finished luncheon gaily, to the rather distant sound of German guns, with the story of the wife of a (or probably the) French soap manufacturer in Tonquin who came to the Gallands’ for convalescence after “war-strain.” How she charmed them with her singing, especially of children’s songs, delighted them with the reserve and modesty of her conduct, and after two months turned out to have been once a well-known, café-chantant singer with the proverbial “past and many brilliant presents,” enjoying a glimpse of home-life in Alsace.

Coffee was poured by the handsome daughter, who with her firm yet delicate profile, and rich, dark hair drawn heavily back, looked like some model for a head on a bank-note or medallion. Her mother, saying to me, “_Vous êtes femme de cœur_” took me apart and told me her history.

And perhaps because so much had been buried in the great war of youthful love and hope, I may record a little of this story; its grief is typical in simplicity and purity of many countless thousands in this land of France.

For months she had been beloved by a handsome young _chasseur_ stationed with his regiment at Bitschwiller, one of many officers to frequent the hospitable house of the Gallands. His photograph on a table shows him tall, broad-shouldered, straight-eyed, kind-mouthed. On account of the uncertainties of his life he did not declare himself while there, but immediately afterward, doubtless because of some presentiment, he wrote to the mother telling of his love. This was found to be returned and they became fiancés.

A few weeks after he was killed in Flanders, in one of the Mont Kemmel combats, a ball striking him in the forehead as he leaped from a trench to lead a counter-attack.

He was one of ten sons. Six of his brothers had fallen, too. Awed, I asked concerning her who had borne them, but she had gone to her grave long before the World War; though I knew her not, thinking of the mother of the Maccabees, and many like her, I thanked God that those seven wounds had been spared a mother’s heart. Then we returned to the young girl’s story.

“But never to have looked into each other’s eyes and exchanged the glance of love,” I said, “it’s a shadowy and heavy grief for her youth to bear. Would it not have been better for them to have been united?”

The mother answered, after a pause, “There was no time.”

“But this can’t be the end for her; she’s only beginning life!” I said, and thought of the great, sorrowing hosts of these young widows of the heart alone, and of the vexed question in their families, as to whether it was better to become a widow or remain a maid.

“She said to me only the other day, ‘I have all that I need for my whole life.’”

“She will find that the heart is not like that,” I cried; “it doesn’t seem able to content itself even with the sweetest and holiest things of memory. It’s forever reaching out.”

For a moment we stood with clasped hands, looking out to the hills whence despair had so often come, and Madame Galland added, quite simply, “Fifty thousand sleep around about us.”

For one of the many-colored hills, pressing close to the broad windows of the salons, separated us from the Molkenrain and the sacramental Hartmannswillerkopf.

In the nearest, that rises without any perspective immediately from the house, is an old quarry, and it is there that since four years the workers in M. Galland’s factory are sheltered during the frequent bombardments of the town, for in what once was used for constructing spinning-machines eleven million shells have been turned out, all of which is quite well known to the enemy.

The pleasant odor of the house followed us to the motor and even as we rolled swiftly down the valley of the Thur, past Moosch, against whose hill, still like a picture tilted back, lies the military cemetery, cut out of the rust and gold-colored hill, with its black splashes of pines. Again peace to those who lie there.

Everywhere negro troops, sitting, standing, leaning, lying (a good deal of leaning and lying). An occasional forlorn-looking white officer. It is the same Fifteenth New York Infantry.

“I am told they were all, before they were drafted, lift-boys and newsboys and bootblacks and railway-car porters,” said one of the officers.

“You mustn’t class these last with the others. You don’t know the majesty and authority of the Pullman-car porter. He’s as final as the Germans think the Fourteen Points are,” I answered.

I had felt myself somewhat exotic when I arrived in Masevaux; but I’m blotted into the landscape, one with Alsace, compared to these sons of Ham, clad in khaki, who fill the blue-and-gold valley of the Thur.

Then we roll into the long street of the village of St.-Amarin, named after the saint to whom a saint friend said, upon seeing him about to make himself scarce at the approach of assassins, “_If you miss this opportunity for martyrdom, you may never get another!_” (It all depends on what you want and what your friends can do for you, and it isn’t a bit like politics.) But I’ll tell the story of St.-Amarin another time.

The town that bears his name is long and rambling. There is a pink church tower surmounted by a slate-roofed top, shaped something like a turban with a point like those on helmets, and there is the fountain bearing the date 1830, and on its column is perched the Gallic cock, and it is the pride of the long street and vies with the church square as a meeting-place.

But this is 1918 and the commandant, who loves St.-Amarin, as I can see by the gentle, almost affectionate way he looks about, shows me first the cinematograph, in a sort of club for soldiers. It has been a Mecca of warmth and comfort since three years for those coming down from frozen mountain-sides. Pictures by George Scott (good pictures) decorate it, and fancy is unbridled where the enemy is concerned.

The Crown Prince is represented in a _loge_ with a voluptuous actress twice his size, and, furthermore, the artist, not content with mere paint and canvas, has given him real wooden legs which dangle from the painted sides of the painted _loge_. The Prince of —— said to an officer showing him about, “And even so you have flattered my cousin.”

Franz Joseph, shrunken by years, is represented huddled up in another _loge_, with another actress, but it didn’t strike me as funny, nor did it recall in any way the tales of his very unspectacular friendship with the faithful Käthe Schratt.

A little way down the street is the pleasant officers’ club, with books and papers, deep chairs and long divans. I dwell a little on the comfort of it all, thinking what it has meant to half or entirely frozen men coming down from those relentless winter heights.

Then we go to the Bureaux de l’Administration across the way, which had been the headquarters of the “Mission Militaire d’Alsace” until it was transferred to Masevaux a year ago.

It, too, is in what was once the Oberforster’s house, only _its_ walls had been hung by the commandant with ancient souvenirs picked up in the valley; old engravings of Alsatian generals, Rapp, Kléber, and Lefèvre, Duke of Dantzig, this last vanquished husband of Madame Sans-Gêne as well as victorious general of France. And there are some old engravings of the portals of the church at Thann, and 1860 street scenes, with bombazined women and high-collared men. An enormous flag of Louis Philippe decorates one corner, and many horns and antlers of the Oberforster’s time hang in the entrance-hall. There is a busy, pleasant coming and going of men who like their work.

More officers are presented, and there is much joking about our Masevaux _popote_ and odious comparisons. We tell them proudly of the new coffee-pot, but the haughty chef of the St.-Amarin _popote_ answers that it was needed, and probably we had at last heard what people really thought about the coffee at the Masevaux mess. I am to lunch here on Thursday and see—or rather, _taste_!

And all love St.-Amarin and its wide valley, even those who now live at Masevaux.

Home by the Route Joffre with Sérin and Laferrière. A rising up over indigo mountains, blackening at their base, blotted against the strange white sky, white even now at sunset, then a drop into the dark valley of Masevaux, talking of politics, theirs and mine, things of wisdom and valiance done or undone. And the end in sight. Though Laferrière said: “I am not sure that they will feel so conquered. They will proudly record the dates of their great victories, and their historians will tell of their sweeping invasions; one must confess they have had great generals. They will doubtless reproach their statesmen with not having made better alliances, and decry their _gaffes_. But as for fighting, they will feel that men may fight one to two, one to three or to four or even five, but that no one can fight the world. _Tenez_, for Napoleon, after Waterloo, there was nothing more personally, but his victories remain among the great military glories of history.” On the crest as we started to drop into the valley, in that pale, pale sky above a blue, blue hill, something almost like words was written in delicate gold, in long looping characters, by the unseen, setting sun. I know not what they spelled, but I think it was Peace, lovely Peace....

Thinking my day fairly over, I had just taken off my things and lain me down when word was brought up that Captain Bernard was waiting for me. Put on my hat in total blackness, the electric light again out all over Masevaux, my candle snuffed, and in a darkness which conceals the whereabouts of the match-box, as well as minor accessories like gloves and veil, I depart to take tea at another large manufacturer’s, where I find more handsome girls of the coming generation. Delicious little bobbin-shaped doughnuts, called _shankelé_, are served with tea, and there was brought out a great tricolor flag whose staff was surmounted with the eagle of Napoleon III. It was of matchless, uncrushable silk, dipped in unfading dyes. After Sedan, like many and many another, it had been put in a long box and nailed against the beams in the attic, remaining so hidden until the visit of President Poincaré in the winter of 1915.

Then home through black and muddy streets, full of hurrying, stumbling forms. Later the cheerful _popote_.

And then before I went to sleep I read again the story of Saint-Odile according to Edouard Schuré, and it runs somewhat like this:[13]

At the end of the seventh century a powerful Frank of the Rhine Valley, Atalric, was named Duke of Alsace by Childeric II, one of the last of the Merovingian kings.

He was like many of his kind, fierce and implacable, worshiping neither pagan divinities nor the one God.

He dwelt in a great castle near the town of Obernay in the Vosges, and here one day he received the visit of an Irish monk and gave him shelter, according to the custom of the time.

Thinking to improve the opportunity, the duke said to him:

“Those who wear the priestly garb boast of miraculous powers. If that be true, demand of thy God that my wife Bereswinde, now with child, bear me a son and heir.”

At that the monk threw himself on his knees, remaining long in prayer in spite of Atalric’s impatience.

When at last the holy man arose, he said:

“No one can change the will of Heaven. Thy wife will bring forth a daughter, and thy life will be one long struggle with her. But in the end the dove will vanquish the lion.”

Atalric’s first thought was to have the unpleasant prophet well flogged, but he finally contented himself by chasing him from the castle to the accompaniment of his choicest maledictions.

When, a few days later, the gentle Bereswinde in fear and trembling (her lord having made no secret of what he expected) gave birth to a blind daughter, such a rage possessed Atalric that the dwellers in the castle thought their last hour had come. Bereswinde’s feelings are not recorded. The duke declared loudly that he did not intend to endure such dishonor, and that if the child were not promptly hidden he would with his own hands make away with it.

Fortunately Bereswinde had a sister who was abbess of the Convent of Baume-les-Dames in Burgundy. To her the child was sent, and the legend has it that Odile recovered her sight at the touch of the baptismal waters, thus symbolizing the opening of her eyes to spiritual light in the darkness of a barbarian age.

She was tenderly reared by the abbess, who, however, told her nothing of her princely birth, letting her think she was the child of parents killed in war, though, as she grew in years and beauty, she was treated as a princess; her charm and gentleness were so great that it was recorded that birds and even deer would eat from her hands as she wandered in the forest clearings. Often at night in her cell she had strange and beautiful visions. The most frequent was that of an angel of shining though severe visage, who would appear presenting her now with roses, now with lilies, the perfume enfolding her as if in some heavenly felicity. But once as day was about to break she had quite a different vision. It was that of a proud and beautiful adolescent who wore, as did the Frankish lords of the times, a gray tunic with a leathern girdle, while his golden hair fell freely about his shoulders. His long sword was suspended from a strap decorated with shining plaques of gold. The purple border of his tunic showed him indeed to be a prince, and in his mien there was both pride and gentleness.