Part 1

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THE DIARY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE

SOME REVIEWS OF THE FRENCH EDITION

EMILE FAGUET in _Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires_, March 5, 1916:—

I had the honour … three years ago to write the Preface to M. Gaston Riou’s first book, _Aux écoutes de la France qui vient_. It was full of fire, impetus, and passion; it was a heart-beat. I was not always of the same opinion as the author, but I never failed to share his sentiments. I felt in him at once a brother in patriotism and a brother in love of truth and justice. I greeted him affectionately and contradicted him tenderly. You all know the success of the work. The public learned and has remembered a new proper name. M. Gaston Riou now presents us with a very different book, but one painfully entrancing, as its title implies, _Journal d’un simple soldat, guerre—captivité, 1914-1915_.… M. Riou now shows himself to be an extraordinarily delicate and lively painter of real life, a charming painter of landscape, a vivacious narrator, a thoughtful, conscientious, and penetrating psychologist alike in respect of individuals and of nations. At once artist and thinker, the artist never does injustice to the thinker, while the thinker always gives the artist free play.

_Chicago Daily News_, May 1916:—

Out of the mass of books, good, bad, and indifferent, which have been written about the great war, there is one, _Journal d’un simple soldat_, by Gaston Riou, which stands out as a work that will live and pass down to future generations as a masterpiece.

Rev. FATHER MÉNAGE, O.P., in _La Revue des Jeunes_, Feb. 25, 1916:—

The author of these pages is a man of energy and self-command. But he is something more. What gives the work a distinctive character is the profundity of its psychologic sense.

_Daily Chronicle_, March 24, 1916:—

It has grown out of the war, but it is more than a war book because it has thought, feeling, knowledge, and English readers of French will appreciate its great charm of style.

A. BILLY in _Paris Midi_, Feb. 9, 1916:—

These pages are the diary of the man who, among all the French prisoners, was perhaps best fitted to understand Germany from within.

_La Tribuna_, Feb. 20, 1916:—

Though not a novel, it is as engrossing as a novel.

DANIEL LESUEUR in _La Renaissance_, March 18, 1916:—

Every one should read this record of imprisonment, whose realism—simple, trivial, and at times almost repulsive—is irradiated with a beauty which no work of romantic fiction can ever equal.

MARCEL ROUFF in _Mercure de France_, April 1, 1916:—

The book will gain by being read and re-read after the war, when the coming of peace will have restored to us that independence of mind which is necessary for the adequate appreciation of works of art.

PAUL BOURGET in _Echo de Paris_, April 28, 1916:—

I consider the _Journal d’un simple soldat_, one of the best examples of the literature of war impressions which has characterized the conflict now in progress.… The book is as impassioned as a novel and as living as history.

THE DIARY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE

WAR—IMPRISONMENT 1914-1915

BY GASTON RIOU

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.

_First published in 1916_

(_All rights reserved_)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

_Gaston Riou was born on January 7, 1883. He is a native of the Cévennes, the region from which are derived three of the most distinguished among modern French psychologists, Melchior de Vogüé, Auguste Sabatier, and Paul Bourget. The Cévenole family from which he springs played an active part in the wars of religion. On the mother’s side he is related to Jacques de Vaucanson, the leading French mechanical engineer of the eighteenth century, and also to Majal Désubas, the last Huguenot martyr, executed at Montpellier in 1747. Thus by family tradition he is liberal, nonconformist, and republican._

_Propagandist by temperament, he devoted himself at an early age to the study of Christian origins. In 1905, at the Sorbonne, he wrote a thesis upon the ~De unitate~ of St. Cyprian. His first published writings dealt with the modernist movement of Loisy, Murri, and Tyrrell, and they attracted considerable attention in Italy and in Germany. The ardour which inspired them was very different from the ~rabies theologica~. The young author, though Calvinist by conviction, adopted an attitude remote from partisanship, his view being, “Whatever is Christian, is ours.” He insisted upon the need for a new synthesis, embracing at once the ancient faith and the actual conditions and the social life and thought of our day. He contended that the non-Roman churches scattered throughout the world might well constitute the embryo of a new Catholicism. But above all, in this writer simultaneously republican and Christian believer, was manifest the earnest desire to reconcile the France of ’89 with the Christian ideal and the longing to witness and to assist in the renovation of his country. Writing of him at this period, M. Emile Faguet, a noted French critic, declared: “His ardour, his fire, his impetus, the rush of his blood, are all instinct with the passion of patriotism.”_

_In the year 1913 this admixture of religious uneasiness and nationalist hope found expression in a volume entitled ~Aux écoutes de la France qui vient~, which from the first attracted widespread attention. Above all, this work embodies faith in France, and the leaders among the younger men of the country rallied round him who had ventured to proclaim this faith. M. Jean Finot, editor of the ~Revue des Revues~, bestowed upon Gaston Riou the title of ~princeps juventutis~. Since then, with the coming of the war, all France has regarded the ~Ecoutes~ as a work of prophecy. We read in it the phrase: “Silently and studiously an élite is in process of formation. The members of this élite are united, as it were, in heroic friendship, for they are all animated by a single passion, the desire to renovate their country, and they are all inspired by the same faith, simple and strong. When others despaired, they did not despair. They are confident that a splendid morrow, worthy of the finest epochs of our history, is now germinating in the furrows of our motherland.”_

_Nor was it in France alone that ~Aux écoutes de la France qui vient~ attracted attention. In Germany, Karl Lamprecht, the great pangermanist historian, devoted two lectures to it at the royal court of Dresden. In ~Zukunft~ Maximilian Harden exclaimed: “The publication of such a work suffices to prove that je-m’enfichisme [the Gallio spirit] is dead in France, and that young France is turning away from the scepticism of the masters of French literature.”_

_Riou collaborated with Bergson, Henri Poincaré, and Charles Gide in the publication of a historical study, ~Le matérialisme actuel~, an attempt to summarize the tendencies of contemporary thought. Of this volume a critic declared: “For France it celebrates the close of the age of negativism, and heralds the opening of an epoch of lyrical effort, of affirmation, and of activity.”_

_When war broke out, Gaston Riou had just returned from a journey in England, Scotland, and Wales. He went to the front among the first, took part in the fighting in Lorraine, and was mentioned in dispatches. He was wounded in the battle of Dieuze, was taken prisoner, and passed eleven months in a Bavarian fortress. This was not his first visit to Germany. A year earlier he had been sent there on an official mission, and he is personally acquainted with many Germans of note._

_The fruit of his imprisonment is ~Journal d’un simple soldat~, which we are now publishing as ~The Diary of a French Private~. In its native land the success of the book has been extraordinary, and the sternest of French critics have with one voice declared it to be a permanent addition to literature. Paul Bourget, Emile Faguet, Camille Mauclair, and Maurice Donnay all speak of it as a masterpiece._

TO GUGLIELMO FERRERO

WE. Had we laid their hearts bare, we should have found there, not so much war, as justice and humanity.

MICHELET.

THEY. I begin by seizing what I want; there are plenty of pedants in my realm who can prove my right to it.

FREDERICK II.

CONTENTS

PAGE

REMINISCENCES OF A PREVIOUS JOURNEY 11

FEVER AND LOW SPIRITS 59

DINNER 66

FONTAINEBLEAU 71

AN OLD CAMPAIGNER 73

I HAVE A TABLE 79

WE KILL THEIR HOPES 85

SUNDAY 98

THE VICTORY OF THE MARNE 103

A BREAKFAST 117

THE FIRST LETTER 123

STILL SHORT COMMONS 130

I HAVE A PALLIASSE 145

THE REVOLT OF THE HUNGRY 151

A CHANCE CATERER 175

OUR GAOLER 196

THE SLOPES ARE FORBIDDEN 214

A BLACK MOOD 220

A FRANCONIAN QUARTERMASTER 226

DAWN 250

HE GOES AWAY 255

DISAPPOINTMENT 265

OH, DEAR! 267

THE RUSSIANS 271

VASSILI 289

THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR 291

CROSSING SWITZERLAND 312

THE DIARY OF A FRENCH PRIVATE

REMINISCENCES OF A PREVIOUS JOURNEY

_September 2, 1914._

Here I am a prisoner.

What a journey! I am bitter at soul; it makes me sick to think of it. Across Rhenish Prussia, the Palatinate, the grand duchy of Baden, Würtemberg, and Bavaria, for three days and three nights, at every station, and even as we pass through the countryside, groups of peasants and gloomy crowds of citizens hurl execrations at us, stamp, and shake their fists, making signs that they would like to cut our throats and tear out our eyes. From the streets of country towns, lost amid the sweltering plains, troops of children assemble, waving flags. They form up in line beside the track. When the train comes in, moving slowly like a funeral convoy, they beg for our képis; they vociferate in their own language, “Paris _kaput_! Death to the French!” The sight of the red cross armlet produces paroxysms of fury. “Death,” they scream, “death to the red cross men! These are they who finish off our wounded!” The shouting becomes strident, terrible, mad. Sometimes they try to take the train by storm, and are stopped only by the bayonets of the German soldiers on guard in each compartment, who growl out threats.

The women are even more horrible than the men. The murderous glance, the clawed fingers, working and tearing as if in the dream of a tigress, the nostrils dilated and twitching, the lips cyanosed, grimacing hatred—never before have I seen such faces of damned souls, such Medusa heads. Who could believe that women should appear so horrible!… When the train stops for any time, richly dressed matrons parade beside it, offering our guards mugs of beer, cigars and cigarettes, bread-and-butter and jam, steaming sausages. Sick with hunger and fatigue, we look on at this prodigality. “Above all,” they say, “give nothing to these French! Let them starve!” We are offered water.

Everywhere, at the stations, from the steeples, the factories, the inns, huge flags are waving. Chime answers chime across the rivers. The big cathedral bells make the hills re-echo. All Germany is holiday-making, drunk with blood, thrilling with the prospect of victory.

Is this the Germany I knew last year?

I had travelled through the country in the company of Marcel Chabrières, as if on a pilgrimage. We passed through Heidelberg, my peaceful Heidelberg, so lovable in the shade of its august ruin and of its oak-crowned and vine-clad hill; Marburg, the quiet little town with its professors and its workmen, resting more quietly at the foot of the margrave’s castle than even the bones of St. Elisabeth of Hungary beneath the pavement of the church; Dresden, that fine seat of artistic and courtly life; Munich, the Teuton Florence, blooming like a flower; Weimar, more sacred than all the others, where the neighbouring houses of Schiller and Goethe mourn discreetly the memories of the golden century, the lyrical and generous youth of Germany!… We were charmed with these laughing cities of the spirit. I can still picture them in the limpid air of last spring, I recall their dainty aspect, and the cheerful welcome they accorded us; I see their waters reflecting the blue skies and the bright clouds. When I but think of them, in this damp crypt of exile, gusts of liberty, youth, and ecstasy agitate my heart.

We had strolled through the docks of Cologne and of Hamburg; we had visited Elberfeld, Barmen, Hagen, and Essen, the smoky iron-towns of Westphalia. Near the great forges of M. Krupp von Bohlen we had admired the fairylike village of Margaritendorf, where brutal modern industry would seem to have pledged itself to put its slaves to sleep every evening in an idyllic retreat. From the window of the train, on the journey from Hamburg to Berlin, passing through a country of pines and lean fields, we had a glimpse of Friedrichsruhe, the lordly domain where sleeps the “honest broker” who made the empire, “awaiting the resurrection of the just.”

After the gentle sweetness of the ancient university towns, we were intoxicated with the energies of this new world, this world of pride and of money, of sweat and of lucre. Even in ugly Berlin, the parvenu town, we paid our respects to the titanic effort of a nation in the full vigour of life, ambitious, stubborn, determined to dazzle the world, to take the place of Athens, of Rome, of Paris, convinced of its destiny to rule the universe.

* * * * *

But every one talked to me of peace.

Since I was upon an official mission, I was able to converse with the men in whom young Germany recognizes its masters. They all spoke with one voice. They declared that their race had an ecumenical mission. Patriotic, active, prolific, it was inevitably destined to control Europe. “But for this,” they added, “we need peace.”

“Why, then, are you armed?”

“We have no natural frontiers; our plains lie open to the invader both from the east and from the west. English merchants are jealous of our successes; France obstinately refuses to grasp the proffered hand of friendship; Russia is becoming panslavist. Caught in such a vice, how can we ensure peace in any other way than by arming for defence? But we have no need of war. In twenty years we shall be eighty millions, and we shall be rich. Do you imagine that it will then be necessary for us to unsheathe the sword in order to play our proper part in the world?”

This was the language employed to me by liberals. It was the language of M. Simon and M. Wolf, editors or owners of the two leading journals in Germany; of Max Weber of Heidelberg, the keenest intelligence I have ever known; of Troeltsch, the distinguished sociologist; of Windelband, the successor of Kant and of Fichte; of Vossler of Munich, the Romance philologist, rival of such men as Ferdinand Bruneau and Joseph Bédier; of Liebermann, the celebrated Berlin painter, who has supplemented the labours of Paul Cassirer in order to introduce the work of our impressionists into Prussia; of Lichtwark, the director of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg; of Naumann, the editor of _Hilfe_, who supplies ideas to men of the left wing in politics; above all, of a man more influential than any I have yet named, Carl Lamprecht, the Saxon, whose gigantic history of modern Germany has taken the form of an epic in honour of William II.

* * * * *

Young men, who across the Rhine are “liberals,”[1] talked in just the same way.

I shall long remember the night we passed at Frankfort in the company of M. Moritz von Bethmann, cousin of the Chancellor. How ardent was his confidence! He was far from being a malcontent. He had no desire for any kind of “restoration”; and still less did he wish, in the name of a Frederick Barbarossa or of a Frederick the Great, to anathematize the present. He accepted it joyously, delighted to be living in it, eager to carry his full share of duties and hopes. But his lightness of heart was neither studied nor ostentatious.

I recall very precisely his reply to the charge of materialism which, on the spur of the moment, I levelled against new Germany. His rejoinder was spirited and instantaneous.

“Do you really believe,” he said, “that we are going to rest satisfied for a long time in the boastful materialism that ensued upon the victory? You dare to say this, at the very moment when Kant and Fichte are once more being restored to honour; when, just like you, we are discovering the ‘buried temple,’ internal values, faith! Allow me to assure you that the young men of Germany are at this moment more exacting in matters of spiritual nourishment than your young men of the Agathon type and the group that runs the _Action française_. Our minds cannot give themselves up to a stupid or politic adoration of that which our intelligence, fully conscious of its work, has destroyed. Though it may cost us more suffering than you, we demand that our hearts and our minds shall preserve full freedom of judgment, and we know how to await their decision. We are not prepared, under pretext of spiritual nostalgia, to accept outworn formulas which would compel us to shun and to disavow the social order we owe to science, history, commerce, and democracy. We shall not give ourselves up to the cult of any religions which, however venerable they may be, are surcharged with fossilized rubbish and proud of their state of petrifaction, which would have no understanding of our scruples, and would be absolutely unfitted to fecundate our real life!

“I do not know if the renascence in France takes the form of swearing by the middle ages, or by the seventeenth century, or by Bonald and de Maistre, and of invoking maledictions on the work of ’89.[2]… The German renascence, if this be so, is at the antipodes of yours. But do not imagine that we are iconoclasts. As much as any others, we like to come to terms with tradition. But we insist that tradition shall not hinder our freedom of movement, that it shall either make us live or let us live. Is that vaingloriousness? When we claim the privilege of living, of thinking, and of creating, no less freely than did the men who founded the tradition of the middle ages, or than those who founded the tradition of the seventeenth century, are we not within our strict rights, and is not the exercise of these rights a positive duty? We may be wrong, but we believe that a new world is in course of construction. The work that has to be done is of greater value in our eyes than the work that is finished, however venerable and august the latter.

“I am a close student of your new political literature. Will you permit me to say that I discover therein a carping and regretful tone? It seems to me that its chief effort is devoted to blackening and decrying the regime you have chosen, to undermining confidence in it. Our efforts take the opposite direction. We are all for construction, adaptation, glorification, lyric enthusiasm. We accept our national mission. We accept our present life. We desire that our energies should continue to increase, to coalesce, to become intertwined. You will see; when the right moment comes they will secure for us a hegemony, and beyond question it will be the most humane and the most pacific of hegemonies.”

Our conversation was a lengthy one. All the conventional barriers had been cast down. Every one gave utterance to his own truth, as if speaking to himself alone, in that species of lucid exaltation which sometimes results from a prolonged vigil. And the strange thing was that in proportion as behind the verbal agreements we sensed ever more strongly the depths of unexpressed antagonisms, we felt each for the other an increasing esteem. The hours passed. All the lamps in the Frankfurter Hof had been extinguished, except our own, which continued to burn in the great reading-room, its yellow light piercing the smoke-wreaths from our cigars, and exhibiting the virile and yet refined features of the young banker. We passed out into the open. The porter was asleep. The streets were deserted. After this great duel between our respective national dreams, the cold of the night was agreeable. Through the ancient street where the young Goethe, locked up by his father in the corner room, had watched Gretchen going by, we gained the banks of the Main. The first streaks of dawn were already illuminating the broad surface of the river, peopled with motionless vessels.

This was a year ago. Now the war has come between our dreams.

* * * * *

I remember this as if it were yesterday.

At Leipzig, again, I see a small and cheap room, an eyrie in the Inselstrasse, among the great printing houses. It was attractive none the less, almost touching in its simplicity, the ugly little place, with an empty cup of coffee on the edge of a deal table laden with papers, and, fixed to the wall, two shelves for books. It was a cell, showing that its tenant was a man devoid of all vanities, a stranger to the amenities of our century. Here, one fine morning, after I had rung the bell five or six times, I was welcomed by M. Wilhelm Baum, editor of _Die Akademische Rundschau_ and president of the “Free Students.”

Mlle. Marianne Lamprecht had drawn my attention to this young man as a sort of _princeps juventutis_. Her father thought highly of him and assisted him in his undertakings. The society of which he was the leader had ramifications throughout lettered and scientific Germany. All its members were serious workers; its mere existence had overwhelmed with ridicule the reputation of the old aristocratic “corps,” those little courts of idlers, where the gilded youth of the fatherland, under the pretence of study, spends all its days in drinking, duelling, and drabbing.

The appearance of M. Wilhelm Baum surprised me. Over his night-shirt he had hastily donned a short and seedy jacket; his hair was untidy; he was a small man of awkward aspect. The cinders from the stove, scattered here and there, scrunched under our feet. My eye was caught by the teaspoon, still wet, among the manuscripts. The man was in keeping with his surroundings. Yet, when I had seated myself on an ancient sofa with broken springs, my second glance at this “prince” aroused sympathetic feelings. A secret flame illumined the blue eyes, the ascetic brow, and the sickly countenance, revealing, in this shy youth of twenty-five, a strong and lofty soul.

He, likewise, confided to me his hopes.