Part 13

It is true, certainly, that trench warfare has inflicted a great loss of the picturesque, of glittering movements, of kaleidoscopic effects which turned and twisted into wonderful pictures; the picture to-day is replaced by a melancholy waste of earth scored and humped into mounds.

Within was life, and no end to labour, for there were trenches, always more trenches to be dug as the line swayed or curved in new forms, yielding to pressure or being broken by it. And in the trenches themselves there was a perpetual search for improvement, and the longer the troops stayed there, the more highly organised became their abodes. If there was not an abundance of hot water there was generally enough of cold, and gas on every floor; alas! too much of it. There were wooden floors and wooden walls and pictures, and even sculpture adorned them. In these subterranean passages dwelt our men in a kind of heroic enjoyment Of a battle without issue, of a sort of deadly ding-dong, only varied by the blackening of the sky with the monstrous smoke of projectiles that count a man a mere atom in their whirlwind path--fearful engines that lay waste the country, that reduce villages to a hopeless jumble of stones and bent iron and splintered wood, with derisive-looking chimneys floating in a troubled sea, like derelicts in the track of a tornado.

It was clear that in this squatting war all traditions had crumbled hopelessly and wilted away. The monstrous engines belched fire and destruction. From the caverns themselves, deeply cut in the once fertile fields, issued a storm of shot and shell from machine-guns, from mortars of an old-fashioned type, from cannon of the newest type--every imaginable engine of destruction, down to the old hand-grenade, again in usage from a distant past--a past so ancient that Scott reminds us in _Rob Roy_ that "in those days this description of soldiers" (_i.e._ the Grenadiers) "actually carried that destructive species of firework from which they derive their name." Thus every device known to man's inventive and destructive brain was directed into a new and diabolical channel, and from time to time the vast engines employed emitted a rending noise as if the earth were spitting flame and its rocky ribs had shattered into quivering fragments--a volcano in its most fearful mood, sending forth a mad jumble of rocks and a living stream of lava devastating and devouring.

A gaunt and desolate country haunted by the melancholy crows, resounding with clacking detonations of fusillades and a hoarse bass of heavy cannon, is the place of invisible war. One rubs shoulders with it without being aware of it. One comes suddenly upon it in all innocence. A journalistic friend, at the beginning of the war, dashed into its area all unknowing that he had come on top of it. To his unpractised eye the lines were no more clearly marked than the Equator or the North Pole. And, of course, every effort is made to conceal the battle-field. Beet-root grows riotously on battlements, guns hide behind trees and are covered with branches, so that the airman, peering from his height, sees nothing but the flicker of leaves. The line hides itself as soon as it fights, and without loss of time prepares against a possible retreat. That is the method of it. Should it be driven back, there are strong positions in the rear for the rallying, for the defence _a outrance_, and for the counter-attack. Fronts have two or three lines of shelter trenches, deep enough to cover a man and generally a yard in width. These trenches are proportioned to the effectives employed. They contain redoubts and blockhouses where guns are placed; they are linked by zigzag paths, and, as a last resort, with a trench of cement, a veritable fortress where are cannon as well as machine-guns. These covered over and fortified trenches nearly always contain rest chambers and magazines for rifles and the different sorts of ammunition required.

The lesson of this trench warfare, therefore, is that if a combatant retires before it is too late he has every chance to survive to fight another day; and he has all the more chance of a new offensive, or at least of maintaining a strong defensive, if he retires in the direction of his resources, or what is called his line of operation, whence he receives his munitions, food and material of war. He retires from the battle, therefore, at the psychological moment when he sees he is likely to be overwhelmed, and reconstitutes himself in the rear. The opening phases of 1914 gave us two parallel retreats: from the Belgian frontier to the Seine by the Allies, and from the Marne to the Aisne by the Germans. The campaign in Poland also showed a similar disposition, and the Russians reformed their line and beat the Germans after they retreated before them. Therefore a mere retreat may be, literally, little more than a strategic movement in the rear. It does not mean, certainly, that all is lost or that the position of the retreating force is one of utter hopelessness.

After the opening phases of the war, the subterranean character of the fighting was maintained, until such big offensives as Verdun re-evoked the old-time battle, when the Kaiser watched the operations from an eminence, and on a front of twenty miles scenes of the old onslaught were re-enacted. But in this case the initiative was left to the Germans. To them also the greater part of the losses, for whilst they manoeuvred in the open and hurled masses of their grey-green warriors upon the French trenches, the defenders enfiladed the masses and mowed them down with the gigantic scythes that their science had forged since the war began.

A curious feature of the fighting in the Great War was the element of fatigue. We have met with it everywhere. It follows closely the course of the war; it is seen in every phase. At Charleroi and Mons and those terrific fights that marked the beginning of the war, the retreating armies of England and France escaped because of the exhaustion of the Germans. If cavalry had harried their rearguards and mobile cannon had cannonaded their flanks the retreat might have been turned into a rout. For the French, largely composed of reservists, were within an ace of demoralisation. And again the Allies, as conquerors, showed extreme fatigue in the battle of the Marne, when the victory might have been more decisive had it been followed up by unwearied troops, or, again, by masses of cavalry.

The cavalry, indeed, of both combatants proved singularly ineffectual, and, as I have just pointed out, failed as a means of attack or to pursue retreating armies; and an interesting feature was the dismounting of the cavalry and its employment as infantry in the trenches. Cavalrymen were divorced from their horses and given infantry guns; and their equipment and appearance approached very nearly that of the foot-soldier. The Cuirassiers, for instance, took off their picturesque manes and removed the top pieces of their helmets, and thus very nearly imitated the _bourguinet_, or low, mediaeval-looking helmet of the French infantry. Even reconnaissance, the old duty of the cavalry, has been undertaken by the aeroplane; and the horse-soldier, indeed, has little place in modern warfare. Some experts, however, hold that a new role has emerged from the war which the cavalry is qualified to fill. It consists in their employment in large forces flanked by mobile cannon and cyclists, whereby their offensive radius is greatly extended.

In these few pages I have endeavoured to sketch the varied phases of a war that opened with the glittering pageant of the time of Napoleon and merged into the dreary and sombre monotony of trench warfare. The "heroic" days of battle were over, but a new heroism arose. Men fought no longer to triumph as men among men; they were content to go forward, nameless and unrecognised: "to march heroically" (in the words of the French writer), to become, not men among men, but--

"des morts parmi les morts."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*MILITARY COMMAND AND THE REVOLUTION*

"On nous fait une guerre ennuyeuse!" How often was the plaint heard in France, where this war of "wait and see," this terrible game of patience, racked the nerves not only of the soldiers in the trenches, but of the multitudes who scanned the morning news in the hope of some startling manoeuvre and stunning victory which should end the hideous nightmare of trench warfare. Had Napoleon and his like passed, then, for ever? Could France never produce his peer? A man who would rise above all difficulties; who would drag guns over the snows in hollowed-out tree-trunks; who would arrive where no man had arrived; who would achieve the impossible? Times, it is true, had changed, but sound opinion urged the recognised fact that there is only one kind of strategy, just as there is only one geometry. The geometric truth of to-day is the geometric truth of a thousand years ago; it never changes. Thus, strategy is always strategy though the circumstances may change, and the cafe critic was a little inclined to blame the military command for the dreary monotony of the conduct of the war.

Historians such as Dupuis and Aulard, the eminent professor at the Sorbonne recalled Convention days, when youthful Generals were selected through the intervention of commissioners from the Government, who visited the armies, interrogated everybody and discovered talent. Sometimes they did not discover it, but only thought they did. The unhappy man, perhaps only just promoted from non-commissioned ranks, was dragged from his obscurity and placed, often against his own will, in command of an army and told to get victories or take the consequences. Good patriots were not allowed to refuse such signal honour as serving the country in a position of responsibility; and, placed between the devil of their own incompetence and the deep sea of the guillotine (for if they failed they would be hailed, certainly, before the tribunal and treated as traitors), they occasionally managed in sheer desperation to win; but more often they miserably failed, and joined the number of the suspected in the Conventional prisons.

Not only were these unfortunate people appointed, willy-nilly, to the command of armies whenever they attracted the eye of the representatives, but, once arrived at the perilous summit of their power, they were watched and their conduct noted as if they were the most disreputable of mortals. And their judges were not only the Convention, but the secret committees and clubs which flourished at that moment. Nevertheless, the results of this terrible system were astonishing. The most celebrated of the representatives was Carnot, who was in every way an exceptional man. On the eve of the battle of Wattignies, in October 1793, he obliged Jourdan, the General-in-Chief, to effect a frontal attack, which failed. Thereupon a council was held, and the two men were seen to differ materially in their views. Carnot, with characteristic impetuosity, offered to assume responsibility for his opinion and even to see to the execution of his plan. On the morrow, Carnot, who kept Jourdan under close observation, noted a column falling back before the pressure of the enemy. Instantly he seized a rifle, placed himself at the head of the retreating force and led them back into action. Thanks largely to his energy, the battle was won.

Saint Just was a man of similar type. In the operations on the Sambre, which were unfortunate, for a time, for the Revolutionaries, Saint Just and Le Bas pushed the armies to combat, it has been said, like a pack of dogs, without observing any rule of war. There is a memorable scene related by Dupuis. Saint Just convoked the Generals to a midnight council. "You are convoked," he said, "to do something great--worthy of the Republic. To-morrow there must be a siege or a battle; decide!" On Kleber smiling satirically, Saint Just rushed out into the darkness of the garden and remained there, hatless, for two hours, though the rain was falling in torrents. However, from all this confusion and tyrannous intervention and diversity of counsel emerged the victory of Fleurus, in the neighbourhood of Mons and Charleroi, which speaks so closely nowadays to our hearts. The Revolutionaries crossed and recrossed the river many times before they succeeded finally in overcoming the Austrians. And this victory marked the end of the peril of invasion, which was the excuse of the presence of the representatives with the armies. Washington said that an army must be led with absolute despotism to ensure victory; the armies of the Revolution certainly merited success from that point of view rather than by the talent of terrorised chiefs--men whose previous career was often that of a sous officier, and totally unfitted them for positions of authority. Balland, who commanded a division at Wattignies, was a drummer in a company of grenadiers, and, according to a contemporary historian, "cleaned our boots and ran our errands."

Yet some of outstanding character and talents profited by this system, which advanced a man like Napoleon to dazzling heights. The terror and confusion of the time gave him the chance he needed to soar. Whilst weaker men drowned in the storm, he rose triumphantly above it. And his first chance came through his connection with Saliceti, one of the representatives, who was a fellow Corsican and had taken part with Napoleon in struggles in the island against the dictatorship of Paoli. They met on the Riviera, where Napoleon, a simple captain, was transporting war stores. Toulon was being besieged; Napoleon, in the ardour of his temperament, proposed a plan to Saliceti and his colleague, Augustin Robespierre, the brother of the dictator, who happened to be there, insisted on conferring on him the rank of Brigadier-General, with command over the artillery in the army of Italy. Without these influences, Napoleon would have had to wait long for his preferment. Robespierre was particularly struck by Napoleon, whom he regarded as of transcending merit and, moreover, a sound and perfervid Republican!

Though Napoleon was accompanied, as the others had been, by the commissioners of the Convention in his campaign in Italy, they were men of an ordinary type, and he knew how to get the better of them. Moreover, he was extremely astute in his dealings with his possible accusers, and played a definite political role. He became, then, the favourite of Barras, the most influential of the Directorate, and finally, thanks to Barras and Carnot, obtained command of the Italian Army, which was the height of his ambition. Here he was able to give the measure of his military genius. His ardour and audacity were equal to every situation, and his popularity rose to such heights with the masses dazzled by his victories, and he inspired such confidence amongst the Convention itself, that he conquered his independence of action. Under the former tyrannous rule of the Convention the strategist was a mere puppet in the hands of the Government; Napoleon was not long in restoring all the old power to the General and giving to strategy its full amplitude, for he was able, as he rose to be Consul Life Consul, and finally Emperor--all in four years--to control the political destinies of France, and thus add to the military arm the civil power, and make the former serve the ends of his foreign and internal policy.

It is well to remember that Napoleon owed much of his advancement--his promotion at the age of twenty-seven to the rank of Commander-in-Chief--to his clever utilisation of the social disorder which followed the Revolution, and he obtained that liberty of which he had need to beat the enemy, as Colonel Dupuis points out, by his adroit relations with the Government. His personal prestige soon placed him above those who had given him the power. Finally, strong in his immense successes he threw off the remaining shackles and conquered the right to act as he thought best. He himself became the Executive. He was in the enviable situation of a man who gives orders to himself.

This page of the past is sufficient answer to the clamour for the heroic methods of the Revolution. French people have only to look back to recognise the danger of allowing ambition to realise itself either in the army or in politics--still worse when the two are united. A later instance, and one even more terrifying than that of Napoleon I, was that of Napoleon III; for, though his Empire similarly ended in disaster, brought about by foreign intervention, in the one case it represented the paling of a star of surpassing effulgence, whereas in the other it was the mere pricking of a bubble, if "historic," reputation. But in each event it brought humiliation and the foot of the invader on the soil. Joffre, therefore, a democratic and constitutional commander--the antithesis of Napoleon--is the only type of general really acceptable to the French Republic; and though the thoughtless individual may sigh for the breathless succession of events of Napoleonic days, there is hardly a Frenchman who would be prepared to accept the consequences of a return of the Napoleonic system; and Joffre, working for war that he may accomplish peace, eschewing inspiration and "strokes of genius," steadily developing in quietude and reflection the details of a preconceived plan, is an ideal figure in a country as profoundly democratic as France, where a chief modelled on the Prussian type or given to vain display and the "panache" would inevitably cause a reaction unfortunate in the interests of national defence. Never again will the French, having learned in the bitter school of experience, place power in the hands of a man who, by his masterly temperament, raises in their minds the fears of a dictator. _Non bis in idem_.

But not until the second year of the war was Joffre given that supreme command and that independence of action so essential to success. Only in 1916 was it recognised that there must be a co-ordination of effort in the different fields; that the Allies could not act separately without relation to each other and hope thereby to advance the common cause; they must carry out a certain preconceived plan and carry it out with a common energy, subserving all questions of persons and national prestige to the unique end of winning the war. The English Army, after the retirement of Marshal French, was placed directly under the orders of Joffre; thereafter it had its exact place in the common movement and represented a certain intimate part of the general machine. England thereby showed her loyalty and her conception of the necessities of the hour in bending to the principle of French dominance. It was inevitable, for the French were the chief combatants on the Western Front; their army was necessarily the more numerous and they were defending their own hearths and homes; the war to them was in reality a war of liberation. After, then, the general objects of the Allies were defined, it was seen that there must be unity of command. I remember how urgently a celebrated French General spoke to me on this subject after the war had lasted a year. "For the sake of our common action," he said, "do insist in England on the necessity of oneness in the command. Otherwise, the problem is impossible." And when that principle was at last acknowledged, and England merged her military fortunes more deeply with those of France, sacrificing also some of her independence in the field, the Allies were approaching the German homogeneity, where the Kaiser conducted the mixed orchestra and called the tune. Whatever the music was like, the general effect was certainly better than if there had been two or more chiefs and as many tunes.

But although Revolutionary times were no more, when generals of twenty-three gained such triumphs as when Rocroi was won by Conde, yet the fierce spirit of the Revolution remained. In that sombre hour France triumphed because she had the fierce determination to win; because she was ruthless with old-established reputations unless they responded to the exigencies of the hour; and also because, having her back against the wall, she realised that it was literally a case of "conquer or die." So in the war of to-day, the military command was aided by the popular clamour which speeded up the machine. When Charles Humbert, Senator of the Meuse, and certainly one of the organisers of victory, claimed almost daily in _Le Journal_, which he directs with such vigour, "more cannon and more munitions," he was but repeating, at a distance of one hundred and twenty years, the cry of Carnot and Lindet, who were rather disdainfully called "the Workers" by their colleagues of the Convention. But the harvest of the Revolution that the Generalissimo reaps most richly is that extraordinary and unsuspected virtue which our Allies have shown, that bull-dog tenacity and resistance which, blending with the natural _allegresse_ of the French, made them irresistible in battle where the conditions were at all equal. In the last resort, the quality of the fighter prevails; every observer has recognised that fact. The guns may thunder and deal out death and destruction, but the machine which finally counts is the white arm, "Rosalie," as the bayonet is named in the familiar speech of the "poilu." This fact accounts for the superiority of the French on the field of battle; for the final word is to the common soldier, to that astonishing peasant and tiller of the land, who constitutes the greater part of the armies of the Republic. He fights, as I have said earlier in this book, not because he must, but because he feels he is privileged to defend his fields against the invader. Ever present to his mind, as he meets the Hun, are the depredations and deeds of horror of this civilised savage, and his arm is nerved by the determination to save his own village and his own kith and kin, if possible, from his devastations. The personal feeling enforces the personal element in battle; and, after all, a Holy Cause is the best sort of armour in which to engage in battle and the deadliest weapon to wield against those who have sinned against all the laws of humanity.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES*

The spirit of the trenches is the spirit of France. Never did mirror more faithfully reflect the personal traits than those endless trenches across France the splendid valour of the race. In no preceding war in history has courage been so abounding. Trench warfare created a spirit of intimacy as well as a spirit of adventure. Men of differing stations, of utterly opposed traditions, of antagonistic education, were thrown together in a narrow, self-contained comradeship, and the result was a firm and singular fusion. They partook of the same risks, they experienced the same emotions, whether standing shoulder to shoulder in the trenches, or racing, side by side, in some rush attack, storming villages, or retiring, it might be, beneath the pressure of an overwhelming cannonade. And out of this comradeship grew a conventual feeling. Though isolated from the ordinary world, they were yet of it, for family ties triumphed over even so radical a difference in experience and mode of life. The rigours and segregation of the camp-life could not separate from kith and kin.