Chapter 3
Five other words sufficed to explain everything:
"Civilians fired on our troops."
Not one village in flames, not one desecrated monument, not one organized killing, not one tortured city that does not fall under the scope of one or the other of those justifications, "War is war," or "Civilians fired on our troops."
Doctors, savants, officers, Bavarians, Saxons, and Prussians have adopted the double excuse with a marvelous unity: they advance it in a certain tone of voice. It is firmly embedded in what is left of their consciences as firmly as the iron cross is riveted on their necks.
Besides, it was all planned, wished for, arranged in advance. German frightfulness formed a part of the plan of campaign. It is enough to read the manual called "Kriegesgebrauch in Landkriege" (Military Usage in Landwarfare) to be very much edified. Every German officer has had this manual in his hands since the days of peace. It comprised his rules of warfare. It was a part of his war equipment, the same as his field glasses and his staff-officer's card. And here is what he reads on the very first page:
War carried on energetically can not be directed against the inhabitants and fortified places of the hostile state alone; it will endeavor, it ought to endeavor to _destroy equally all the enemy's intellectual and material resources_. Humanitarian considerations, that is, consideration for the persons of individuals and for the sake of propriety, can have no recognition unless the end and nature of the war allow it.
And, a little farther on, he reads there:
Profound study of the history of war will make the officer guard against exaggerated humanitarian concessions, will teach him that war can not take place without certain harshness, _that true humanity consists in proceeding without tenderness_.
Farther along in that book, he reads:
All the methods invented by the technic of modern warfare, the most perfected as well as the most dangerous, _those which kill the greatest number at once, are permitted_. These last are conducive to the quickest end of the war; they are, if you consider matters carefully, the most humane methods.... Prisoners may be killed in case of necessity if there is no other means of guarding them properly.... The presence of women, children, old men, the sick and the wounded in a beseiged city can hasten the place's fall; in consequence it would be very foolish of the beseiger to renounce this advantage.... They will force the inhabitants to furnish information concerning their army, military resources and secrets of their country. The majority of writers in all nations condemn this usage. _It will be used none the less_--very regretfully--for military reasons.
Finally, on the volume's last page, is found this extraordinary maxim:
"Any wrong that the war demands, however great it may be, is allowed."
Therefore the horrors which the Germans performed from the war's very beginning, which provoked an expression of great indignation from all the civilized world, were not perpetrated in a moment of orgy or madness. They have been perpetrated coldly, deliberately, intentionally.
Besides, not only the officers and the common soldiers have been taught to make war in this barbarous fashion. It has been taught to the entire German people. This precept proves the case. It emanates not from a soldier but from a poet, who is not addressing the military class but the civilians, the women, the children, and all Germany. It is the "Hymn of Hate" by the poet Heinrich Vierordt, which, before the war, was recited in even the German kindergartens:
Hate, Germany! Slit the throats of your millions of enemies. Raise a monument of their smoking corpses that will rise to the heavens!
Germany, arm yourself with brazen armor and pierce with your bayonet the heart of every enemy. Take no prisoners! Strike them dumb. Transform into deserts the lands that lie near you!
Hate, Germany! Victory will come from your anger. Shatter their skulls with blows from your ax and the butt of your musket. These brigands are timid beasts.... They are not men.... May your fist perform the judgment of God!
It is useless to say what this spirit has brought about. Germany has carried on the war with vigor, has armed herself with brazen armor! She has transformed neighboring lands into deserts! She has slit throats, laid waste fields, shattered skulls, she has destroyed all that lay in her path! She has tried to impress the terror she holds salutary upon the souls of inoffensive old men and women and children!
This is the first of all the reasons why it is necessary now to fight, and to fight to the death; because these men will understand the abominable nature of "frightfulness" only when they see that "frightfulness" does not pay; only when they see the uselessness of unchaining horror and of beginning another war. Let an assassin go at liberty and he will commence his killing all over again; send him to the electric chair and he will regret his crime.
* * * * *
Just as France and Paris were not long in understanding what war meant in Germany's mind, France and Paris were not long in accounting for the danger they had passed through on account of the German spy system, on account of the formidable web of espionage the German agents had woven around all France.
People felt that this German spy system was there, speculated about it and talked about it for years and years, but it was only in the first days of the war that they really appreciated how diabolical it was and how far it had penetrated into the heart of France.
What happened at Amiens at the beginning of September, 1914, is especially characteristic of this.
Amiens was occupied twice by the enemy. To use the expression of a military historian, it seemed as if "the French and the Germans were playing hide-and-seek around the town." As soon as the blue caps of the French appeared over the horizon, the yellow pointed helmets of the Germans disappeared, rapidly. German occupation meant the same thing it did everywhere else--exactions, brutalities, rape. Immediately after he had entered the Prefecture, the German governor levied a war contribution of one million francs. He also demanded that the citizens furnish his troops with wine, cigars, and tobacco; drew up a list of hostages; and arrested all the men between the ages of seventeen and twenty years. Within twenty-four hours they were led away under guard.
Nothing of all this surprised the brave Picard city. Proudly she submitted to her fate. But one thing moved her, or rather angered her, and that was the surety and speed with which the German authorities went directly to all the places they should occupy. They did not hesitate an instant about the street to follow or the door at which to knock. The arrest of the fifteen hundred young hostages occurred with an unheard-of rapidity. It seemed as if an invisible but exceedingly clever hand guided each step, regulated each movement of the invaders. Who could it be who directed, advised and commanded the Germans from behind a veil?
Doubtless the mystery would never have been solved if, during the second occupation, the citizens had not been warned that the next day they would have to keep their shades down and close all shutters because His Imperial Highness, Prince Eitel Friedrich, the Kaiser's son, would then make a formal entry into the capital of Picardy. The shutters were closed; automatically the streets were emptied.
Into a deserted city, to the sound of trumpet and drum, preceded by a staff gleaming with gold braid and mounted on spirited steeds, the German army entered in state. All the shades were drawn in the city. However, behind some of them drawn faces peered forth in sorrow or in anger. In a house on the principal street was a lady whose husband was at the front. Her father, an aged general who had fought bravely in the war of 1870, was with her. Through the drawn shades of her home she was watching the hated scene. And her glorious old father, however indignant he felt, was watching by her side.
When the parade was passing by, he made a sudden gesture and said:
"Look at that man on the horse, there, now!"
The man in question seemed to have a horse that pranced a little more than the others. He rolled around in his saddle a little more than the others. And the two onlookers had no trouble in recognizing this aide-de-camp of Prince Eitel's as one of the former directors of a language school that had had a branch at Amiens!
There is a sequel to the story ... for on the afternoon of that unhappy day Madame X and ten other society ladies of Amiens at different times heard a ring at their doors and saw that same individual, in full regalia, booted and spurred, enter their drawing rooms. He came to call on them, to pay his respects, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should be there in that costume. They all had to restrain the feeling of disgust and anger this spy aroused in their breasts. It was for the sake of the safety of their homes, for the lives that were dear to them, that they did this. And he, entirely unconscious in his vileness, was suave and polite, played the man about town, recalled one thing or another, mentioned dances and parties....
So we once more find justification for the famous definition of German contained in Schopenhauer's famous phrase: "The German is remarkable for the absolute lack of that feeling which the Latins call 'verecundia'--sense of shame."
The essence of this feeling which is found among the most savage peoples is entirely lacking in the Teutonic race. And once more we find an abominable ambush placed for French culture, good faith and generosity.
This is not an isolated incident. When the whole truth is known, there will be even more surprised indignation felt than there is at present. Inquiries will have to be made. It will be necessary to know why the enemy, in certain places, has rushed in as if he came out of a trap door. It will be necessary to know why, in certain ravaged districts, some houses have been entirely destroyed and others carefully spared. It will be necessary to know why tennis courts have been put in certain places and why certain masses of rhododendrons have been planted in certain parks....
For we know that the tennis courts have helped the Germans carry out their schemes, and that the flower beds have had a place in the machinery of war they were developing, which they kept alive until they were at our gates. A tennis match seems a mere nothing--something very innocent in the way of pleasure, far from being war-like. And then, one fine day the discovery is made that the tennis court has a foundation of reinforced concrete twenty centimeters thick, fit to support a house six stories high and, consequently, a heavy gun!
A clump of rhododendrons is very lovely, something very gracious, charming, most poetic. And one day the discovery is made that the clump conceals a platform set in concrete on which an entire battery can be aligned.
All that will have to be investigated. All that will have to be stopped.... And it makes another reason why it is necessary to fight today, to fight to the death. For these Germans will understand the inanity of their Machiavellian scheming and of their spy system only when they shall see these methods fall to pieces, when they shall see their system fail absolutely.
In conclusion we may say that France fights for two reasons. The first reason is because on the third of August at a quarter before seven o'clock war was declared on her; she was forced to fight; her territory was invaded, her cities burned to the ground; her fields ravaged; her citizens massacred. The second reason is because she does not want to have to fight in the future; she does not wish this horror to be reproduced a second time; she wishes, in the immortal words of Washington, "that plague of mankind, war, banished off the earth."
To accomplish this the engine that makes war must be destroyed. The engine that makes war is "made in Germany." War is the national industry of the Germans, it has been developed and made perfect in Germany, it is dear to all German hearts. They are proud of it and have faith in its power. The machine must not only be stopped; it must be broken and destroyed, thrown out as scrap iron to prevent the pieces from being reassembled, readjusted and put in running order once again.
That is why France is fighting, why the whole world ought to fight to the end, to death or until victory crowns its efforts.
II
HOW FRANCE IS FIGHTING
Two words, courage and tenacity, will serve the future historian in his description of how France fought, when the time shall have come for telling the entire story of the world war.
No one has ever doubted French courage throughout all the centuries of her tormented history; but skeptical remarks have been made in times past of the tenacity of the French people.
Ten epigrams do not describe this war; nor do three. But one alone serves this purpose--know how to endure. No more thoughtful words have ever been spoken than those of the Japanese, Marshall Nogi: "Victory is won by the nation that can suffer a quarter of an hour longer than its opponent."
During the four years of war, France has proven that she knew how to suffer and was able to suffer a quarter of an hour longer than her enemies.
They knew how to suffer, those soldiers of General Maunoury's army in the Battle of the Marne. And they turned the tide of battle in favor of French arms. They marched, fought and died for five days and five nights, in the passing of which some battalions marched forty-two kilometers and did not sleep for more than two hours at a time. The mobility of the fighting units was such that the commissary department was absolutely unable to supply them with rations. For three days many of them had no bread, no meat, nothing at all! They subsisted on crusts they had with them, or on the food they were able, by the fortunes of battle, to pick up in the villages where they happened to be. In spite of all this, whenever the order was given to charge, they charged the enemy with a sort of inspired madness.
"The fight has been a hard one," Marshall Joffre wrote in an order of the day that will be famous throughout eternity. "The casualties, the number of men worn out by the exhaustion due to lack of sleep--and sometimes of food--passed all imagining.... Comrades, the commander in chief has asked you to do more than your duty, and you have responded to this request by accomplishing the impossible." That is the finest word of praise that has been given fighting men since the world began.
* * * * *
They knew how to suffer, those other soldiers of the Battle of the Marne who were a part of General Foch's army at Fère-Champenoise. Five times they attacked the Château de Mondement, and five times they were driven back. Their officers were consulting as to the best thing to do; and the men surrounded the officers, begging them with tears in their eyes to lead them to the assault for the sixth time. For the sixth time the attack was sounded, and at the sixth assault Château de Mondement fell.
That officer at Verdun knew how to suffer. He will remain a figure for the legends of the future for, running to transmit an order, he received a bullet in the eyes which shattered his optic nerve. He was completely blinded. Nevertheless, he continued to advance, trying to grope his way through the night that had fallen upon him. He encountered something lying on the ground--a something that was a man just as badly wounded. The blind man besought him for help.
"How can I help you," said the wounded man, "a shell has broken both my legs."
"What difference does that make," shouted the blinded man, "I am going to carry you on my back. My legs will be yours, and your eyes will be mine."
And, one supporting the other, the blinded man and the lamed man carried on!
* * * * *
That officer knew how to suffer whom one of my brothers met on the battle field of Lorraine. An artillery officer, his arm was shattered, a few bits of flesh barely holding it fast to his shoulder. My brother, when he saw the man painfully dragging himself along, asked him whether or not he needed help.
"I don't need help," replied the wounded man, "but my battery down there does. It is retreating."
"If it is retreating, it can't be helped and it is a waste of time for me to get it ammunition...."
"No," begged the lieutenant, "get the munitions. We Colonials fight until the last man falls...."
He offered to guide my brother, mounted beside him on the artillery caisson, and stayed there all day. For after he had supplied his own battery, it was the battery next it, and then the one next to that, which he wanted to supply.... Finally, in the evening, at nightfall, they came to take him off in the ambulance. The major looked at his shattered arm, examined his frightful wound, and muttered:
"You are in a bad way. Couldn't you have come here sooner?"
The lieutenant replied humbly:
"Pardon me, I lost a lot of time on the way."
* * * * *
Those men I saw for months fighting and dying to the south of Verdun, at the Butte des Eparges, knew how to suffer.
The Butte des Eparges dominates the great plain of the Woevre, and from the very beginning it has been the theater of a frightful and long drawn out battle of the kind one seldom sees in this war. The Germans have been entrenched on the left side of the Butte, the French on the right. And day and night for four years there has been an incessant battle over its summit of grenades, bombs and shells; a terrible hand-to-hand fight in which neither one of the contestants yields an inch of ground. A brook of blood runs its interrupted course on each slope. On the south slope it is red with German blood; with French blood on the north.
The two slopes of the Butte have been so raked by firing that they have not a single tree, bush, or blades of grass on them; they stand out sinister and frightful in their nakedness, seeming to cry out to the men of the plain:
"See, all of you, the scourge of God has passed over this place."
They are dented, furrowed and blown into crevasses by the explosions of mines; they are sown over with the enormous funnels in which the fighters take shelter; they are covered with an incessant smoke from the projectiles that plow them up.
As for the summit, it is a no man's land, that belongs to the dead men whose bodies cover it. The summit stopped being a battle field to become a charnel house. The number of men who have fallen there will never be known. The most fantastic figures come from the lips of those who come down ... 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 ... it will never be known. But what is known is that the dead are always there. They form a parapet above which the living fight on. These dead rot in the sunshine and in the rain. In accordance with the wind's being from the east or the west, the frightful odor of all this rotten flesh strikes the Germans or the French. They lie there, an indistinguishable mass on the ground, and the men are unlucky who watch by night in the listening posts or the trenches. They think they are stumbling against a stone, and it is a skull their feet are touching; they think they are picking up the branch of a tree, and they have hold of the arm of a corpse.
However, in the shadow of this human charnel house, at the edge of this bloody sewer, some little French soldiers come and go, eat and sleep for months at a time. The dreadfulness of the sights, the stench in the air, the tragic presence of death has not gripped their souls, their courage or their nerves. They are no less confident and merry than the others and, in the evening, when the setting sun adds the purple of its shadows to the red of all the blood that has been shed on the Butte, they sing from the depths of their charnel house sweet love songs.... This is the most regally beautiful sight I have seen in this war; it is the most splendidly moving example I know of what personal sacrifice for one's country's sake can do.
One day, in a rest village in the neighborhood, I met a soldier from one of the battalions which was encamped in the charnel house. He was a boy twenty years old, who hurried along with a flower in his buttonhole, whistling a tune.... He was so joyful that I asked him:
"You seem as happy as you can be."
"I have leave, Sir," he answered, "and in a week I shall go to the country to see my mother. But, for the present, I have to go and take the trench at Eparges...."
As he mentioned the name of the accursed Butte, I could not repress a movement. He saw it and said:
"Sir, I am glad to go there."
And he told me his name and the number of his company. Then he hurried away.
It chanced that precisely one week later I met one of his officers. I asked him about the merry fellow.
"That man? He was killed the day before yesterday at Eparges."
And my comrade added in a low voice:
"He was shot down at my side, struck with a bullet square in the chest. The death agony set in at once. As I was trying to do something for him, passing my hand gently across his forehead, I said to him:
"Courage, my boy, courage."
He murmured the reply:
"Oh, I'm glad to die."
Glad ... the same phrase, the same words I had heard a week ago, which can be heard everywhere on the French front--and they are glad to go into all the trenches and into all the charnel houses, and it is with a happy heart that they rest in peace.
* * * * *
But France has not only fought with all her courage, with all her soul, with all her tenacity. She has fought with all her living strength, with her men, her women, even her children.
What can I say which has not already been said about the men? When I think of my own men, when I think of all the men floundering and fighting in this mud, I can find no other means of expression than the words that have already served the Commander in Chief of the French Army, General Pétain, on the evening of his great victory at the Chemin des Dames. In receiving the American newspapermen, he said to them:
"Do not speak of us, the generals and the officers. Speak only of the men. We have done nothing; the men have done everything. Our men are wonderful; we, their leaders, can only kneel at their feet."
* * * * *
The women have been no less wonderful. And I want to write a few words about them.
The women who are at the front have fought like the men. Can you imagine a more beautiful deed of arms than that of a young girl, twenty years old, named Marcelle Semer, whose heroic story a French Cabinet Minister, M. Klotz, told recently at one of the Matinées Nationales at the Sorbonne.