Part 10

To his policy was given the name of "Spots of Oil." It happily expressed the system, which consisted in planting small posts in a region and advancing them gradually towards the interior, so that the radius was continually extended. He made instructors, agriculturists and mechanics of his white non-commissioned officers in these military posts. Both teachers and taught delighted in the arrangement, and the work proceeded rapidly. He was repeating in Asia the methods he had carried out so successfully in the Soudan. Against the pirates he acted with great energy, rounding them up with mobile columns until they were forced to yield. Upon the northern frontier leading into China he planted a triple line of block-houses linked by telephone, heliograph and pigeon post. To this day the installation remains, attesting the soundness of the defence against Chinese bands. And his friendship and understanding with Marshal Sou, the mandarin who represented the Son of Heaven as governor of Kang Tsei, was largely instrumental in stamping out piracy. The wily Oriental learned to esteem the high intelligence and energy of his white neighbour. With the capture of De Tham, the most formidable pirate, the activity of these hordes ceased, and in four years Gallieni had established peace. His doctrine had again prevailed: Draw the sword as little as possible; fight energetically when you have to fight, but whenever the occasion offers, discuss, negotiate, inspire sympathy; and, above all, civilise.

But Gallieni's chief work was done in Madagascar; it was the coping-stone of his colonial edifice. Civil administration had broken down in the island. Notwithstanding a costly expedition, French influence was practically confined to the capital, Antananarivo, and revolt had broken out behind the advancing columns. The island, indeed, was seething with insurrection, and the new Resident, or Governor as he was soon to be, discovered that the Hovas were partially responsible for this state of things. Though they were given special privileges by the French--again in defiance of ethnology--they were unworthy of them. Gallieni, acting as he had done in Tonking, treated them as he did the other sections of the population. Fearing to alarm local sentiment, he called a halt in some reforms inaugurated by his predecessor and retarded the liberation of slaves, for which both masters and servants were unprepared. He began gradually to institute reforms, and to carry out the pacification of the island. He colonised with brains, in fact. Occasionally, he had to use force and show that he intended that French suzerainty should be a reality and not a mere shadow, such as Queen Ranavalona apparently regarded it. Two Ministers paid the penalty of their conspiracy before the Queen was invited to depart and take up her residence in Algeria as the permanent guest of the Republic. These measures received the belated approval of Parliament, though it had hesitated to take the initiative.

Having got the government of the island into his hands, Gallieni proceeded to apply his system in all its completeness. His most successful experiment was the division of the island into districts, each in charge of a commandant. To these commandants he sent recommendations worthy to rank with the best efforts of Roman Proconsuls. They were penetrated with good sense, enlightenment and precision. "When you root out a nest of pirates, think of the market you must plant on the morrow," was one of his instructions. Another was: "Every advance made must be with a view to the permanent occupation of the country." Both admirably expressed his policy. He believed in markets and schools, in roads and bridges, as instruments of domination.

His fashion of securing collaboration was also crowned with success. With great care he selected his lieutenants, and then allowed them a free hand. He refused to burden his mind with details, and left himself free to reflect upon and discuss the larger issues. Thus, he summoned an authority on horse-breeding, and gave him _carte blanche_, within certain financial limits, to establish a stud-farm and provide the island with cavalry. "Give me your report in two years' time," he said; "meantime, do the best you can." At the appointed hour the report was forthcoming, and the Governor proceeded to act upon it. It was typical of his _modus operandi_. This faith in his _entourage_, after having tested capacity and fidelity, was justified by its results.

His governorship of the island lasted nine years, and its effects were so satisfactory that it seemed as if a miracle had happened. Then, at his own request, he was nominated inspector of troops in Western and Eastern Africa, in the Antilles and Pacific. Thus his colonial career was rounded out, and his title confirmed of "the great French coloniser." In each of his posts, whether in the Soudan, in Tonking, or Madagascar, he had shown capacity and resourcefulness, an earnest and intelligent enthusiasm which had triumphed over obstacles, because science was joined to energy and knowledge to practical principles. Thus the empire he founded was not built upon sand, but upon the bed-rock of native welfare and material advancement. His success in dealing with natives arose as much from his sympathy as from his determination to study the character and antecedents of his _administres_ with the care with which the physician studies the details of the case upon which he is engaged. Thus success came not as something due to fortune or caprice, but as a definite and calculated result.

Home again after more than thirty years of distinguished colonial service, Gallieni, now a General of Division, was given the 13th Army Corps at Clermont Ferrand, and later the 14th Army Corps at Lyons, carrying with it the eventual command of the army in the Alps. In 1908 he was called to the Superior Council of War. A year or two before the Great War, which was to give him his crowning position of responsibility at the Ministry in the Rue St. Dominique, he took part in the grand manoeuvres in Touraine, and succeeded not only in out-manoeuvring "the enemy," but positively in capturing the General-in-Chief and his staff. Paris laughed long over the episode; the victorious General was anticipating his laurels in actual war.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE HERO OF THE OURCQ*

Four-and-forty years he had waited for that tragic moment: the crossing of the frontier by the Germans for the second time. Through long years of monotonous preparation he had been buoyed up by the thought of serving his country in his country's greatest need. And now the opportunity had come--almost too late, for his normal career had finished two years before. But the old soldier in him arose and refused to be comforted by a country gentleman's occupations, which had filled his retirement. There was great work afoot; he must offer his sword to France. To his friends it did not seem that Michel Joseph Maunoury had greatly changed since the time when he was a spruce artillery captain, and student of the Staff College. Hair, moustache, and goatee beard had changed to white, of course, but the figure remained as slim and alert as in the old days when he galloped each morning in the Bois. Whatever the weather, he appeared in the _allees_, sitting his horse like a Centaur, and getting himself fit for the great day which he saw by his prophetic vision could not be very far off. He was haunted by the idea of _la revanche_, and was too honest to conceal it. The word was not popular with politicians. No public man dared utter it, save Deroulede and his League of Patriots thundering against national apathy and supineness in their orations of July 14. General Bailloud, who afterwards distinguished himself in Sarrail's retreat through Macedonia, was punished for saying to his Army Corps at Nancy that the time would come when they would win back the Lost Provinces.

That Maunoury continually thought of these things is clear from the General Order that he issued to the Sixth Army on September 10 after the battle of the Marne. It is dated from his Headquarters at Claye, near Meaux: "The Sixth Army has just sustained, during five entire days, without any intermission or slackening, a struggle against a numerous adversary whose moral has been exalted by success. The struggle has been severe; the losses under fire, the fatigue due to want of sleep and, sometimes, want of food, have surpassed imagination. You have supported all with a valour, a firmness and endurance that words are powerless to glorify as they deserve. Comrades, the General-in-Chief asked you in the name of the _patrie_ to do more than your duty; you have responded beyond what seemed to be possible. Thanks to you, victory has crowned our standards. Now that you know its glorious satisfaction, you will allow it no longer to escape you. As for myself if I have done anything worthy, I have been recompensed by the greatest honour which could have befallen me in my long career, that of commanding men like you. It is with a lively emotion that I thank you for what you have done, for the revenge for 1870, towards which all my energies and all my efforts have been directed for forty-four years, is due to your efforts."

The document is a real profession of faith. It bespeaks the man and his mission, his courage, his modesty, his patriotism, his long-suffering in the Cause. The Order was wrongly attributed to Joffre, because he had added some phrases at the end to express appreciation of the part played by the Sixth Army in keeping engaged a notable portion of the German forces on the Ourcq Front; but none who knew Maunoury and his intimate opinions could question its authenticity. When he signed the Order he wore for the first time (though he had possessed it since 1911) the modest little bronze medal, with its green and black ribbon, which commemorates 1870. Thus were linked in his mind the two dates--1870 and 1914--the one disaster and the other its vindication. Maunoury had every reason to remember 1870. He was an officer-cadet at the time, studying at the engineering and artillery school at Metz, the forerunner of Fontainebleau. When war broke out he was appointed to a battery, and arrived in Paris with it on the very day, September 14, when the Republic was proclaimed. He had no idea, as he marched through the streets with his men, that the Empire had fallen to a new form of government. But he was to see the popular temper even more sharply represented than that. At the gates of Paris was fought the battle of Champigny, and there Maunoury lost his fellow-officers and remained alone with a remnant of his battery. Then the rising tide of the Commune caught him in Paris, unwarned of the retirement of the Regular Army to Versailles. He and his men only escaped from the mob by disguising themselves in _mufti_ and walking singly through the gates.

Happily, he was spared the horrors of a second siege--that of Paris in the hands of the Commune. The first had left poignant memories never to be effaced. Yet his vocation was so firmly fixed that he was not to be turned from it even by this discouraging commencement. The possibility of avenging national humiliation braced his energies and kept him continually at work preparing for the inevitable day through more than two score years. He became one of the most authoritative teachers of the army. At St. Cyr, which he had attended as student, he became professor, and when Fontainebleau started its artillery course, it was he who directed it for the benefit of subalterns. Whilst he was professing artillery at St. Cyr, a great controversy raged on the subject. It was clear that France had been out-classed by Germany in field-guns; it was one of the causes of her defeat. The guns were more powerful, more accurately aimed, and more quickly served. The Germans had learnt the art of shooting, which the French had neglected. Though the De Reffye cannon was much better than its predecessor--a muzzle-loader, firing an eight-pound shell, which broke only at two distances--it was still far behind the German arm. The young war professor pronounced strongly in favour of power. The field-gun, above all, must be all-powerful, he said; mobility could come afterwards. The rival camp protested that mobility should come first; you could mass your light and handy guns and obtain the power required. But Maunoury unveiled what he considered to be the sophistry of this argument. The result of all this heat was the 75 mm., a model field-gun, which wrought wonders for France in the Great War. But its efficiency was not unconnected with an excellent shell.

Though he had studied deeply the lessons of 1870, Maunoury was not cast down by them, but rather stimulated to greater effort. Immediately after the war he wrote to his family a letter which shows his faith in his country's renaissance. "The frightful catastrophe leaves France mutilated, but she is not stricken to death. All can be repaired if she really wishes it." That was the language of a soldier and optimist, but it interpreted exactly the spirit of his countrymen and, above all, the capacity of their eventual leaders. He was well placed to form such an opinion, for, as General of Division, he became Director of the War School, and upon its benches sat the future commanders of French armies. Napoleon in his time made use of the material to his hand, often untrained scientifically--the soldier of fortune, of practical experience--but he held always that the best officer came from the Schools. And this generalisation is true to-day, truer than ever, because of the new character of war. Maunoury set himself against mere specialisation, and, though he became an expert, as we have seen, he enlarged his scope by studying tactics and then applied them in the field, by commanding first the Fourteenth Army Corps at Marseilles, and secondly the famous Twentieth Corps at Nancy, which looked directly in the face of the foe. As colonel he had commanded artillery at Vincennes.

He seemed to have written "finis" to the more active part of his career when he became Governor of Paris, but even in this post of pure routine in peace time, he invented methods of reform. He objected to the slackness that prevailed, and circularised against the slovenliness of soldiers' dress in the streets, and even on the parade-ground. He tried to revive officers' interest in the morning ride in the Bois. Paris was amused and at the same time satisfied with a circular issued during the winter of 1911-12, which expressed surprise that the Governor met so few officers on wet and cold mornings in the Bois. Between the lines you could read his contempt for softness. Even in his most strenuous student days he had always kept himself fit by constant physical exercise. At the Cavalry School at Saumur, he was noted for his good riding; in the Bois his elegant, upright figure was a reproach against the carelessness of some officers.

He objected to _laissez-aller_ in any branch of the army. Discipline was as important as guns and ammunition, he thought. Nor did he mean mere respect for established things or strict obedience to superiors. He meant that discipline of the mind which accepted principles and policies--the unity of military doctrine; he meant a constant training of officers in grand manoeuvres, that each might be accustomed to responsibility in the common scheme. Only by incessant practice could one attain perfection. And behind the discipline there must be patriotism. His example and enthusiasm infected the Paris garrison; in two years he had achieved marvels. And then the night parades, inaugurated by M. Millerand in concert with the Governor, aroused civilian enthusiasm for the army. Once more the streets of Paris resounded with the cry: "Vive l'armee." Under the old _regime_ it had become almost seditious as a sentiment, but now the whole street hummed and sang the _Sambre et Meuse_, and marched in rhythm with the beating drums and shrieking fifes. Even _blases_ Parisians in the cafes and restaurants stood on their feet as the tattoo passed and the red-coated orchestras broke into a rapturous _Marseillaise_, with accompanying cheers. The _fond_ of Paris is always patriotic whatever the surface currents.

When war fell out of a blue sky, Maunoury was tending his roses in his garden in the quiet village of Mer, near Blois. A few months before, his neighbours had asked him to stand for Parliament in the interest of the Three-Years Law; but he declined. Perhaps his near view of politics, as Commandant of the Guard of the Senate, had not conduced to a respect for them. In any case, he preferred his open-air life and his country pursuits to the feverish atmosphere of political Paris. When he went to the Luxembourg, where is situated the Senate, it was to attend a course on arboriculture--not to pay court to politicians. These he has kept always at a distance. It needed a war to wrest him from his gardening and agriculture, tastes the stronger for being hereditary. His family was long settled in the Loir-et-Cher, and one of his uncles had allowed Pasteur to experiment upon his flocks when investigating cattle-diseases.

The old ardour returned at the call of duty. First came depot work, important even if lacking glory, and then the command of an army at Verdun for the eastern offensive. Alas! it was unsuccessful, and Maunoury's, with the other French Armies, was soon in retreat towards the south. But the watchful eye of Joffre remarked an attempt on the part of Von Kluck, commanding the First German Army, to envelop the left wing (the English Army) of the Allies. He sent Maunoury to support the wing. The troops detrained at Montdidier, to the south of Amiens. They arrived by divisions, and were flung, one after the other, into the battle-line--a difficult and dangerous process under fire. Von Kluck disregarded the army forming in front of his right, as if it did not exist, and concentrated his attention on the English force, which he wished to crush. Maunoury's orders were to fall back on Paris to form the siege garrison. When the order reached him, he ejaculated, "Heaven forbid! Anything but that." His memory went back to 1870, and there was revived the old anguish at the misfortunes of his country. None the less, he refused to lose heart, and kept a bold front to the enemy, retiring in splendid order after holding each line as long as possible.

Gallieni had seen the enemy's move from north to east and noted its strategic consequences. He communicated his impressions to the Commander-in-Chief, and Maunoury's army, hastily reconstituted and now composed of 100,000 men, was thrust again into an offensive against the flank-guard of Reservists which was protecting Von Kluck's columns as they glided past Paris. The assemblage of that army and its rapid transport to the strategic points constitutes one of the romances of the war.

The Sixth Army was composed of divers elements, most of which had suffered greatly from the fighting in the east and north. The cavalry, too, was fatigued by its long march from Charleroi. One of its important bodies was General Lamaize's corps, formed of two divisions of reserves, which had lost heavily in Lorraine. They had fought also at Amiens, whither they had been transported by train, and then they marched on foot to Dammartin, to the north of Meaux, which was one of the points of concentration. To these divisions was added a brigade of Moroccan infantry. The second considerable element was the Seventh Army Corps, which had battled, also, in the east before reaching the Amiens district. One of its divisions was commanded by General de Villaret, who later was to be wounded with Maunoury at Soissons. Two divisions, which had fought at Cambrai in French Flanders, and had been much cut up; a division from Algeria which had just arrived in Paris; the Fourth Army Corps from Lorraine where it had lost many men; a cavalry brigade and the First Corps of Cavalry, consisting of three divisions; a brigade of Marine Fusiliers, two-and-a-half battalions of Zouaves and a brigade of Spahis (native cavalry from Algeria) were also joined to the force under Maunoury. The fixed garrison of Paris consisted of four divisions of Territorials, who were also employed in outpost work along the line of contact.

The army was ordered to act in co-operation with the English, who had assembled in the Coulommiers district; but, unfortunately, there seems not to have been quite the co-operation needed between the two forces, though Maunoury detached a division to the help of the ally. The Sixth Army began the attack on the afternoon of September 5. In moving to their positions, the troops found the enemy's reserves strongly occupying villages to the left of Meaux. The General-in-chief's dispositions were not entirely realized, and some critics blame what they call the hesitancy of the English in assuming a vigorous offensive. In any case the Operations, after severe fighting, were generally crowned with success, and a great part of the credit of the battle of the Marne is due to the resourcefulness and skill of Maunoury. An incident in the battle was the arrival of reinforcements in 1,100 taxicabs, mobilised by General Gallieni, in order to transport the Seventh Infantry Division to the left wing of the Sixth Army. The infantry arrived with great promptitude by this means, and was able at dawn on the morrow to enter into action. Having distinguished himself in the defence of Paris, Maunoury was given the command of an army at Soissons. There he was wounded during the Spring of 1915, whilst making an inspection of the trenches with General de Villaret, who was also injured by the same bullet. General Maunoury's right eye was lost and the left affected. It meant that he could no longer hold his command at the Front, and this fine old soldier, who had done so much for the French Army, again became Governor of Paris, after an interval of three years. Some have blamed him for exposing himself in the first-line trenches only thirty metres from the enemy, but his principle always had been that the Commander-in-Chief should share danger with his troops. It is characteristic of him that he did not shrink from all the consequences of such a theory. There was something a little touching in the circumstances that in the twilight of his own life, after a brilliant day, he came to watch over Paris--_la ville lumiere_--plunged into the deep shadows of a precautionary darkness. And then when his own light faded into a perpetual obscurity, he retired once again into the peace--alas! the disabled peace--of private life, a sad but glorious end for an old soldier.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*THE MILITARY POWER OF ENGLAND*