Chapter 5

I recollect, too vaguely to make full use of it here, a beautiful scene from the heroic song, "Girart de Roussillon," I think it is, where one is shown a king's daughter, one night after a battle gazing across the battlefield where lay the innumerable warriors who had fallen in the fight. "She felt a desire," said the poet, "to embrace them all." And from the depths of my far-away memories this apparition of the daughter of a royal house arises before me as an image of our France to-day, weeping for the flower of our race so abundantly cut down.

My object in writing these lines is not to exhort my fellow-citizens to commemorate to-day our noble dead, according to immemorial custom, but to honor as a united people those who have sacrificed their lives for their country and to meditate upon the lesson that comes to us from their scattered burial places.

First, with the memory of our own, let us with all piety associate the memory of those brave ones who have shed their blood under all the Allies' standards, from the streams of the Yser to the banks of the Vistule; from the mountains of Frioul to the defiles of Morava, and on the vast seas.

Then, let us offer our choicest flowers of memory to the innocent victims of an atrocious cruelty, to the women, the child martyrs, to that young English nurse, guilty only of generosity, whose assassination aroused the indignation of the entire universe.

And our dead, our beloved dead! May a grateful country open wide enough its great heart to contain them all, the humblest as well as the most illustrious, the heroes fallen with glory to whom have been erected monuments of bronze and marble, who will live in history, and those simple ones who drew their last breath thinking of the green fields of home.

Blessed be all those whose blood has been shed for their country! Not in vain have they sacrificed their lives. At the glorious encounter at Artois, Champagne, and Argonne they repulsed the invader who could not advance one step farther on the ground made sacred by their fallen bodies. Some weep for them, all admire them, more than one envies them. Let us listen to them. They speak. Let us make every effort to hear them. Let us prostrate ourselves on this ground, torn up by shot and shell, where many of them sleep in their blood-dyed garments. Let us kneel in the cemetery at the foot of the flower-strewn graves of those who were brought back to their country, and there listen to the whispers, scarcely audible but powerful, which mingle through the night with the murmur of the breeze and the rustle of the falling leaves. Let us make every effort to understand their inspired words. They say:

BROTHERS, live, fight, accomplish our work. Win victory and peace for the sake of your dead. Drive out the intruder who has already retreated before us, and bring back your plows into the fields now saturated with our blood.

Thus speak our dead. And they say, further:

FRENCHMEN, love one another with brotherly love, and, in order that you may prevail against the enemy, put into common use your possessions and your ideas. Let the greatest and strongest among you serve the weak. Be as willing to give your money as your blood for your country. Be willing that perfect equality shall exist amongst you. You owe this to your dead. Because of our example, you owe us the assurance that by your self-sacrifice ours will be the triumph in this holiest of all causes. Brothers, in order to pay your debt to us you must conquer, and you must do still more: you must deserve to conquer.

Our dead demand that we shall live and fight as citizens of a free country; that we shall march resolutely through the hurricane of steel toward Peace, which shall arise like a beautiful aurora over Europe freed from the menace of her tyrants, and shall see reborn, though weak and timid, Justice and Humanity, for the time being crushed through the crime of Germany.

Thus are the French, detached from the vanities and progress of the age, drawn nearer to our dead and inspired by them.

Anatole France Translation by E. M. Pope.

The Transports

Poetical version of Sully Prud'homme's "Les Berceaux"

The long tide lifts each might boat Asleep and nodding on the dock, Of the little cradles they take no note Which the tender-hearted mothers rock.

But time brings round the Day of Good-Byes For it's women's fate to weep and endure, While curious men attempt the skies And follow wherever horizons lure.

Yet the mighty boats on that morning tide When they flee away from the dwindling lands Will feel the clutch of mother hands And the soul of the far-off cradleside.

[signed]Robert Hughes

La Prière Du Poilu

(Written in the Trenches, before Verdun, December, 1915)

Et alors, le poilu, levant la tête derrière son parapet, se mit, dans la nuit froide de décembre, à fixer une étoile qui brillait au ciel d'un feu étrange. Son cerveau commença à remeur de lointaines pensées; son coeur se fit plus léger, comme s'il voulait monter vers l'astre; ses lèvres frémirent doucement pour laisser passer une prière:

"O Etoile, murmura-t-il, je n'ai pas besoin de ta lueur, car je connais ma route! Elle a pu me paraitre sombre au début, quand mes yeux n'étaient point accoutumés à ses rudes contours; mais, depuis un an, elle est pour moi éblouissante de clarté. On a beau me l'allonger chaque jour, on n'arrivera pas à me l'obscurcir. On a beau y multiplier les ronces et les pierres, après lesquelles je laisse de ma chair et de mon sang, on n'arrivera pas à m'y arrêter. Je sais que j'irai jusqu'au bout. Je vois devant moi la victoire.... Mais, là-bas, derrière moi, il y a une foule qui parfois s'inquiète dans les ténèbres. Au moment où la vieille anné va tourner sur ses gonds vermoulus, elle repasse en son esprit agité les évènements qui la marquèrent. Elle songe aux peuplades barbares d'Orient que le Germain a entraînées derrière son char: Turcs et Bulgares, Kurdes et Malissores, et elle oublie les grandes nations qui s'enrôlèrent sous la bannière de la civilisation. Elle songe aux territoires que foule la lorde botte tudesque, et elle oublie les empires que nous détenons en gages: ici, l'ouest et l'est Africains, grands comme quatre fois toute l'Allemagne, avec leurs 5000 kilomètres de voies ferrées et leurs mines de diamants; là, ces îles d'Océanie et cette forteresse d'Asie: Kiao-Tchéou, que le kaiser avait proclamé la perle de ses colonies. Elle s'alarme de toutes les pailles que, dans sa course désordonnée, ramasse l'Allemagne et ne voit pas les poutres énormes qui soutiennent la France.... Nous autres, qui sommes la poutre, nous savons mieux, nous voyons mieux.

"O Etoile, apprends à ceux qui ne sont pas dans la tranchée la confiance!...

"Le passé est là qui enseigne l'avenir. Chaque fois qu'une armée quelconque, prise de la folie de l'espace, a voulu s'enfoncer dans les terres lointaines et abandonner le berceau où elle puisait sa force et ses vivres, elle est morte de langueur et d'épuisement, elle s'est éffritée comme la pierre qu'on arrache de l'assemblage solide des maisons, elle n'est pas plus revenue que ne reviennent les grains de poussière qu'emporte le vent.... Voici plus d'un siècle que des légions ont tenté la conquète de l'Egypte et ces légions étaient les plus magnifiques du monde. Elles avaient des chefs qui s'appelaient Desaix, Kléber et Bonaparte; mais elles n'avaient pas la maitrise de la mer et rien ne revint des sables brulants du désert. Voici un siècle aussi qu'une armée la plus formidable d'Europe, conduite par le plus fameux conquérant qu'ait connu l'univers, tenta de submerger l'immense empire russe; mais l'empire était trop grand pour la grande armée et rien ne revint des solitudes glacées de la steppe.... Puisse, de même, aller loin, toujours plus loin, l'armée allemande déjà décimée, haletante, épuisée! Puisse-t-elle pousser jusqu'au Tigre, jusqu'à l'Euphrate, jusqu'à l'Inde!...

"O Etoile, apprends à ceux qui ne sont pas dans la tranchée, l'Histoire!...

"Certes ces nuits d'hiver sont longues. Et tous tes scintillements, Etoile, ne valent pas le sourire de la femme aimée au logis. Cependant, tu as quelque chose de la femme, puisque tant d'hommes te suivent aveuglément: tu en as la grâce et l'éclat; et toi, au moins, nul couturier boche ne t'habilla jamais!... Tu possèdes même des vertus que ne possède pas toujours la femme: tu as la patience et le calme. Les nuages ont beau s'interposer entre tes adorateurs et toi, l'aurore a beau chaque matin éteindre tes feux, tu t'inclines devant la loi suprême de la nature et nulle révolte ne vint jamais de toi.... Tâche d'inspirer ta soumission à tes soeurs terrestres qui, dans les villes, attendent le retour des guerriers.

"O Etoile, apprends à celles qui ne sont pas dans les tranchées, la Discipline!...

"Que tous, que toutes sachent qu'il y a quelque chose au-dessus du Nombre, au-dessus de la Force, au-dessus même du Courage: et c'est la Persévérance.... Il y eut, une fois, un match de lutte qui restera à jamais célèbre dans l'histoire du sport: celui de Sam Mac Vea contre Joe Jeannette. Le premier, trapu, massif, tout en muscles: un colosse noir du plus beau noir. Le second, plus léger, plus harmonieux, tout en nerfs: un métis jaune du plus beau cuivre. Le combat fut épique: il se poursuivit pendant quarantedeux rounds et dura trois heures. Au troisième round, puis au septième, Sam Mac Vea jetait Joe Jeannette à terre et sa victoire ne paraissait plus faire de doute. Cependant, Joe Jeannette peu à peu revint à la vie, se cramponna, se défendit, vécut sur ses nerfs, puis attaqua à son tour. Au quarante-deuxième round, épaule contre épaule, haletants, ruisselants de sang, ils se portaient les derniers coups; mais le ressort de Sam Mac Vea était cassé et, devant l'assurance de son adversaire, il se sentit vaincu... Alors on vit le grand géant noir lever les bras et s'écrouler en disant: I GUESS I CAN NOT.... (Je crois que je ne peux pas...) Ainsi, bientôt peut-être, verrons-nous s'écrouler l'Allemagne, en avouant: "Je ne peux pas...."

"O Etoile, apprends à ceux qui ne sont pas dans la tranchée, la Boxe!..."

[signed]Stéphane Lauzanne

The Prayer of "Le Poilu"

Then "Le Poilu" standing, in the cold December night, behind the breastworks, fixed his gaze upon a star that was shining with a strange brilliance in the sky above. His mind was stirred with thoughts of far away things. His heart grew lighter, as though it yearned to reach the star; his lips trembled, and softly he breathed a prayer.

"O Star," he murmured, "I need not thy glimmering light, for I know my way. The road may have appeared dark at first when my eyes were unaccustomed to its sharp turns, but for a year it has been divinely illumined for me. Even if it grew longer each day, it will never seem dark again. Although torn by thorns and cut by stones, nothing can make me turn back. I know that I shall go on, steadfast to the end. I behold before me Victory.... But there,--behind me, is a multitude sorely troubled in the darkness.

"Now, as the old year revolves on its rusty hinges, those who wait at home live over in their troubled hearts the events which marked its passing. They think of the barbarous hordes of the Orient which the German has caught in his train; Turks and Bulgarians, Kurds and Malissores, and they overlook the great nations enrolled under the banner of civilization. They brood over lands ground under the iron heel of the Teuton and overlook the Empires that we hold; here, West and East Africa, four times as large as all Germany, with their thousands of miles of railroads and their diamond mines; there, the Islands of Oceania and the fortress of Asia: Kiao-Tcheou, which the Kaiser has proclaimed the pearl of his colonies. They are alarmed at the chaff that Germany gathers in her lawless course and they do not see the mighty girders that stay France. But we who are the girders, we know better, we see farther.

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches.... Confidence!

"By the light of the past we behold the future. Whenever an army, seized with the frenzy of conquest, has forced its way into a far land, abandoning the cradle whence it drew its life and strength, it has wasted away, it has perished from utter exhaustion. Like stones loosened from a solid wall, it has disintegrated. Like the grain of dust which the wind has blow away, it has vanished never to return.

"More than a century ago legions attempted the conquest of Egypt. They were the most magnificent in the world. Their chiefs bore the names of Desaix, Kleber and Bonaparte. But they had not the mastery of the seas, and returned not from the burning sands of the desert.... Think also of the time when the most formidable army of Europe, led by the greatest conqueror the world has ever known, tried to overwhelm the vast Russian Empire. But the empire was mightier than the Great Army, and it returned not from the glacial solitude of the steppes.... So let it go far, ever farther on, that German army already decimated, panting, exhausted; let it reach the Tigris, the Euphrates, even far off India! It will not return.

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches.... History!

"Truly the winter nights are long, and all the rays, O Star, are not worth the smile of the loved woman at the hearth. And yet, thou hast something of woman, since so many men follow thee blindly: thou hast her grace and splendor. [No German couturier will ever clothe you!] Thou hast even virtues that women do not possess, for thou art patient and calm. Clouds come between thy worshipers and thee, dawn each morning extinguishes thy light, yet dost thou bow before the supreme law of nature without a murmur. I pray thee inspire with submission thy sisters of the earth; teach them calmly and patiently to await the return of their warriors.

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches.... Discipline!

"Would that all men, that all women might know that there is something above Numbers, above Force, above even Courage, and that is PERSEVERANCE! A few years ago there was a boxing match between Sam Mac Vea and Joe Jeannette that will remain famous in the history of the sport. Mac Vea was a heavy weight, strong, all muscle: a veritable black giant. Joe Jeannette, light, well proportioned, all nerve: a mongrel of the best sort. The match was epic. It went on for forty-two rounds and lasted three hours. At the third round, and again in the seventh, Sam Mac Vea threw Joe Jeannette, and his victory seemed assured. But little by little Joe Jeannette revived, pulled himself together, defended himself, and through sheer nerve, began to attack. At the forty-second round, shoulder to shoulder, panting, dripping wet and covered with blood they struck the last blow. The resources of Sam Mac Vea were exhausted, and through the very assurance of his adversary he felt himself beaten.... Suddenly the great giant lifted his arms and gave way, saying: 'I guess I cannot.'...

"Thus shall we soon see Germany fall to the earth, saying brokenly, 'I cannot.'...

"O Star, teach those who are not in the trenches...to be game!"

Stéphane Lauzanne

Translation by Madame Carlo Polifème.

A Tribute to England

It may be said of this war, as the master mind of all the ages said of adversity, that "its uses are sweet," even though they be as a precious jewel shining in the head of an ugly and venomous toad. While the world-war has brutalized men, it has as a moral paradox added immeasurably to the sum of human nobility. Its epic grandeur is only beginning to reveal itself, and in it the human soul has reached the high water marker of courage and honor.

The war has enriched our language with many new expressions, but none more beautiful than that of "Somewhere in France." To all noble minds, while it sounds the abysmal depths of tragic suffering, it rises to the sublimest heights of heroic self-sacrifice.

The world has paid its tribute to the immortal valor of France, and no words could pay the debt of appreciation which civilization owes to this heroic nation; but has there been due recognition of the equal valor and the like spirit of self-sacrifice which has characterized Great Britain in this titanic struggle?

When the frontier of Belgium was crossed, England staked the existence of its great empire upon the issue of the uncertain struggle. It had, as figures go in this war, only a small army. If it had been niggardly in its effort to defend Belgium, and save France in her hour of supreme peril, England might have said, without violating any express obligation arising under the ENTENTE CORDIALE, that in giving its incomparable fleet it had rendered all the service that its political interests, according to former standards of expediency, justified; and it could have been plausibly suggested that the ordinary considerations of prudence and the instinct of self-preservation required it, in the face of the deadly assault by the greatest military power in the world, to reserve its little army for the defense of its own soil. England never hesitated, when the Belgian frontier was crossed, but moved with such extraordinary speed that within four days after its declaration of war its standing army was crossing the channel, and within a fortnight it had landed upon French soil the two army corps which constituted the backbone of her military power.

What follows will be remembered with admiration and gratitude by the English speaking races as long as they endure, for nothing in the history of that race is finer than the way in which the so called "contemptible little British Army," as the Kaiser somewhat prematurely called it--outnumbered four to one, and with an even greater disproportion in artillery--withstood the powerful legions of Von Kluck at Mons. Enveloped on both flanks they stood as a stone wall for three days against an assault of one of the mightiest armies in recorded history, and only retreated when ordered to do so by the high command of the Allied forces in order to conform to its strategic plans. The English were not defeated at Mons. It was a victory, both in a technical and moral sense.

The retreat from Mons to the Marne was one of terrible hardship and imminent danger. For nearly fourteen days, in obedience to orders, the British soldiers,--fighting terrific rear guard actions, which, in retarding the invaders, made possible the ultimate victory,--slowly retreated, never losing their morale, although suffering untold physical hardships and the greater agony of temporary defeats, which they could not at that time understand, and yet it is to their undying credit, in common with their brave comrades of the French Army, that when the moment came to cease the retreat and to turn upon a foe, which flushed with unprecedented victory still greatly outnumbered the retreating armies, the British soldier struck back with almost undiminished power. The "miracle of the Marne" is due to Tommy Atkins as well as to the French Poilu.

Even more wonderful was the defense of Ypres. There was a time in the first battle of Ypres when the British high command, denuded of shells, were allotting among their commands, then engaged in a life-and-death struggle, ammunition which had not yet left England. So terribly was the "first seven divisions" of glorious memory decimated in this first battle of Ypres, that at a critical time, the bakers, cobblers and grooms were put into the trenches to fill the gaps made by the slain soldiers in that great charnel house. The "thin red line" held back--not for days, but for weeks,--an immensely superior force, and the soldiers of England unflinchingly bared their breasts to the most destructive artillery-fire that the world at that time had ever known. They held their ground and saved the day, and the glory of the first and second battles of Ypres, which saved Calais, and possibly the war itself, will ever be that of the British Army.

Over four million Britons have volunteered in the war, and although very few of them had ever had an previous military experience, yet their stamina and unconquerable courage were such that the youth of the great Empire, on more than one occasion, when called upon, as on the Somme, to attack as well as defend, swept the famed Prussian guard out of seemingly impregnable positions, as for example at Contalmaison.

Will the world ever forget the children of the Mother Empire who came so freely and nobly from far distant Canada, who wrenched Vimy and Messines ridges from a powerful foe?

I hear still the tramp of marching thousands in the first days of the war, as they passed through the streets of Winchester en route to France via Southampton, singing with cheer and joy, "It is a long way to Tipperary." Alas! It is indeed a "long, long way," and many a gallant English boy has fallen in that way of glory.

To-day, from the Channel to the Vosges, there are hundreds of thousands of graves where British soldiers keep the ghostly bivouac of the dead. They gave their young lives on the soil of France to save France, and when the great result is finally accomplished, a grateful world will never forget that "fidelity even unto death" of the British soldier. Their place on Fame's eternal camping ground is sure.

What just man can fail to appreciate the work of the English sailor? It has been said by Lord Curzon, that never has an English mariner in this war refused to accept the arduous and most dangerous service of patrolling the great highways of the deep. No soldier can surpass in courage or fortitude the mine sweepers, who have braved the elemental forces of nature, and the most cruel forces of the Terror, which lurks under the seas.

The spirit of Nelson still inspires them, for every mariner of England has done his duty in this greatest crisis of the modern world.

And how can words pay due tribute to the work and sacrifices of the women and children of England? They have endured hardships with masculine strength, and have accepted irreparable sacrifices with infinite self-sacrifice.

When the three British cruisers were sunk early in the war by a single submarine, and many thousand British sailors perished, the news was conveyed to a seaport town in England, from which many of them had been recruited, by posting upon a screen the names of the pitifully few men who had survived that terrible disaster. Thousands of women, the wives and daughters of those who had perished, waited in the open square in the hope, in most cases in vain, to see the name of some one who was dear to them posted among the survivors; and yet when the last names of the rescued were finally posted, and thousands of English women, there assembled, realized that those who were nearest and dearest to them had perished beneath the waves, these women of England, instead of lamentations or tears, in the spirit of loftiest and most sacred patriotism united their voices and sang "Britannia Rules the Waves," and re-affirmed their belief that, notwithstanding all the powers of Hell, that "Britons never would be slaves."

Who shall then question England's right to a conspicuous place in this worldwide tournament of Fame? In all her past history, there has never been any page more glorious. Without her, as without France, civilization would have perished. To each nation be lasting honor!

The spirit of Shakespeare has animated his people, and that mighty spirit still says to them in his own flaming words---

"In God's name, cheerily on, courageous friends, To reap the harvest of perpetual peace By this one bloody trial of sharp war."

[signed]James M. Beck

Unity and Peace