Part 13

Now farewell. We must take leave. We must charge our muskets. With stout hearts we shall give to the war and to the fields of battle the finest days of our youth. Farewell, dear parents, brothers, and sisters. Shake hands for the last time. If we are never to meet again, let us hope for a reunion in a better world.

Farewell, best beloved, you who know that our parting is harder to bear than death. It may be that we shall never meet again. Yet every day, when night falls, let us renew our hopes.

The shells are whistling through the air. The bayonets are fixed. The flags are waving in the breeze. Our dread is concealed beneath the smoke of the combat. As we fight we cry, hurrah, hurrah!

We are in the thick of it, like good Bavarians.

“What are you thinking about, my dear enemy?” said von Stengel all at once with a smile.—“_Herr Kommandant_,” I replied, in an access of dull rage, “_dieser Krieg wird die grosse Schande Europas sein!_”[26]

Slowly, to suit the baron, we descended the incline, soft beneath our feet, the turf torn, and littered with fragments of shell; here and there grew handsome stone-pines with twisted trunks. Being unable to run, I was shivering in my summer clothing. We took the road beside the hop-garden, and as we walked the baron gave me his views upon the war.

In truth, all he did was to repeat the words of Harnack, Lujo Brentano, Troeltsch, Willamovitz-Moellendorff, and the hundred representatives of German Kultur. As I listened, I seemed to be re-reading the articles which these writers were now publishing in the war editions of the _Internationale Monatsschrift_:

“Germany has never desired anything but peace; William is the peace emperor; Sir Edward Grey is the villain of the drama; English commercialism led to the war; Germany was suddenly seized by the throat and had to defend herself; she is engaged in a life and death struggle.…

“_Ueber welches Volk wird einst das Tribunal der Weltgeschichte den Urteilsspruch ‘Schuldig’ fallen? Eins ist gewiss! Deutschland kann dem Urteilsspruch mit reinem Gewissen entgegen sehen._”[27]

I had no interest in all this. If the major had been a man of my own age, I should have bluntly begged him to spare me these phrases of the good bourgeois who has just been reading the newspapers. I should have said to him: “In actual fact, our respective countries are at war. Let us leave it to our grandchildren, should they have a fancy for writing history, to ascertain who is responsible for this butchery. But as far as I am myself concerned, be good enough to consider me a man of sound intelligence, and don’t attempt to befool me with your political myths. I agree that these myths have their uses, and that they are necessary for the soldier. To him one must lie perforce. Above all, in our democratic epoch, the violent man does wisely to wear sheep’s clothing, and to give himself the air of defending civilization and humanity, for otherwise the citizen would never be willing to play the part of soldier. If needs must, the citizen will allow himself to be killed for the sake of principles, or in defence of hearth and home, but never for the interest of the Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, or a business corporation. Agreed, the aggressor must lie.

“But we are not now on a public platform; we are not composing a proclamation. Do not let us deceive ourselves, nor soil our minds with a superfluous falsehood.”

But to this old man I said nothing of the sort. I listened patiently. The wind bit my ears, and my body seemed a vast Siberia. As I walked, I looked at the birches, each one of which was known to me individually. Their delicate ramifications, now leafless, hung like horses’ manes. But the youngest trees, those whose tresses were not yet grown, so that their branches pointed directly upwards like the twigs of an ill-made besom, still retained some sparse foliage. In the icy wind, the white of their stems standing out against the greenish-black of the acacias in the ditch had a somewhat funereal air.

“War,” said von Stengel, “is an essential condition of social life. Without war, the human race would become anæmic, would slip back into barbarism, ignorance, and hebetude. Even though man loves peace, he must also be a great fighter before the Lord, _ein Streiter vor dem Herrn_. Do not imagine that wars are the work of a few men; the ferment works in the very heart of the race, and when this happens the maintenance of peace becomes impossible. The friction is so great, the heat generated is so intense, that the flames burst forth spontaneously. Then patience is out of place, and it is necessary to unsheathe the sword. Blood, much blood, must flow to appease the fierce angers and to restore men to their customary calm.”

It was the German in Baron von Stengel, not the man, who spoke, enunciating the doctrine that war is necessary, that war is a natural function of social life.

“For the rest,” he added, humanizing to the best of his ability the myth formulated by the German, for now the natural man was resuming sway, “once war has broken out, it is the duty of us all to do our best to diminish its horrors. Men differ widely, and yet, through contact with upright and noble characters, even the worst of human beings, even those of malignant and dark nature, come to learn the value of peace, of good understanding, and acquire the faculty of enduring with equanimity.”

Thus talking, we reached the great iron gate, adorned with the Bavarian lions. I rang. The gate was opened, the baron drew aside to allow his “boarders” to pass in, and these in turn signalled to him to take precedence.

The commandant major, Baron Stefan von Stengel, very erect, head held high, passed through the gateway. The guard, fully armed, stood at attention, lined up in two rows. Upon an order from the _Feldwebel_, “_Hurrah für den Major_,” twenty recruits shouted with a single voice. Night had fallen. All the windows of the fort, which had been invisible as long as we were outside the walls, were now seen to be lighted up, and the red of the bricks was manifest in the starlight. We crossed the drawbridge. “Now that the snows have come,” said the commandant, pointing to the ditch, “we could make a good skating-rink there.” He saluted, and withdrew into his casemate.

* * * * *

As a matter of fact, I have not entirely lost my time here, since I have succeeded in classifying adequately in the social hierarchy such a man as Baron von Stengel, who is neither hero nor genius, who has no ambition to display supernatural virtues, but who is simply a man with pleasant manners, refined, well-bred, free from all stiffness, easy to get on with, a truly civilized being.

You, my friends, have spoiled me. It is owing to you that I had always remained ignorant how restricted is the genus of “decent folk.” The war has changed my views in this respect. Hardened, simplified, freer in relation to external conditions, as adaptable as any one could wish—when the campaign is over I shall be somewhat less confiding than of yore towards my kind. Now that I sample them in the mass, elbowing them unceasingly morning, noon, and night throughout the entire day of twenty-four hours, listening to them as they talk, chatter, grumble, quarrel, and snore, looking on at them while they enjoy themselves, complain, play, eat, bargain, pull out the personal stop, pass judgments, take things at their ease; now that I no longer contemplate them through the prism of my doctrines and of my leniency, but look at them as they really are, all the scenery of civil life removed, all social trappings stripped off—there are certain categories of mind which I understand better than before. I understand better, for example, hermits, misanthropes, jansenists, and all pessimists, pagan as well as Christian, all those who can see nothing in man but the primitive beast, and those who never cease talking of original sin. How greatly now do I prize good manners, the veneer of culture, the mask of decency. These are but externals, things which do not give expression to man’s intimate nature. They even aim at veiling that nature. But precisely because they exercise this occlusive and embellishing function, they seem to me august. The sight of the real arouses an appetite for fiction, creates a necessity for art and for dreams. Are these lies? Yes, they are lies, poor lies! What matter? Must we live in hell by deliberate choice? It cannot be asserted that such illusions make a paradise of our ill-conditioned and sordid world; but at least they mitigate the stench to some extent, neutralize its offensiveness, and render the bestial hustle a thought less aggressive.

My nose is still uneasy with the memory of the carrion odour from the battlefields of Moncourt, Lagarde, and Kerprich. It was here that I learned the value of shroud, coffin, quicklime, and tomb. Now that I have come to know men better, I know also that the trifling restraints and delicate veils of conventional good manners are absolutely essential.

THE SLOPES ARE FORBIDDEN

_November 20, 1914._

Snow has been falling throughout the night. Risking a shot, for the new orders from headquarters are still more stringent, I walked for a good hour at dawn upon the northern ramparts. When the sun rose over the village of Hepperg there was sketched in the opposite quarter, towards France, in three strokes of the brush, the most striking of pastels: in the foreground, the old gold of the oaks, flaming, sanguine, and burnished: in the middle distance, the wide field of virgin snow; in the background, the heavy and sombre line of the pines, interspersed with larches, sparkling with hoar-frost.

Solitude amid inanimate things, in the morning, restores me to the tranquil possession of myself, induces a peaceful, strong, and simple happiness which neither the society of my fellows, nor meditation, nor prayer can ever furnish. At one time this calm, as of Eden, used to terrify me. It seemed to me impious. When, as a youth, I loitered among the wild oak-groves which form scattered oases amid the limestone mazes of Païolive in Vivarais, it seemed to me that their shade was stifling my faith, that the seated giants of white stone, amid which the Ardèche has hollowed its precipitous channel, were swallowing my Christian dogmas, and that my Eliacin-like fervours were evaporating into the torrid sky, passing upward with the furnace breath which rises in summer from this formidable landscape.

Since then, however, I have learned to feel no doubt regarding the primacy of man vis-à-vis the grandeur of inanimate things.

No, my delight in natural scenery is by no means pantheistic. I believe too firmly in the hierarchy of creation, and I am too strongly imbued with the Christian conception that man is a person, as it were a son of God, an absolute individuality, inviolable, raised above life and death, to be able to lose my sense of personal identity in the contemplation of rocks, fields, and woodlands. It is simply that I love fresh air and open spaces; I love the lineaments of nature, which are more beautiful than the doings of men; I love the society of the meadows and of the trees, a society which is less importunate and talkative than that of my fellows, and which never fails to restore me to myself. Perhaps, moreover, I tend instinctively to idolize colour and light, seeing that God has concentrated in my eyes, above all, the power of sensuous appreciation.

This morning I was interested in watching the gambols of an ermine which had just captured a small black mammal. Supple, slim, and snake-like, it sat up from time to time to look around. It was hard to distinguish, despite its black tail-tip, from the surrounding snow, though this had a bluish tint in contrast with the ermine’s fur, in which there were subtle shades of green. I stood motionless on the footpath, wrapped in the soft cloak which Mme. Paul Weiss has just sent me. The little beast advanced fearlessly towards me, joyously shaking the prey that it carried in its jaws. Did it take me for a tree?

I move my barberry switch. The ermine stops. Sitting up, it looks at me for a long time. How pretty it is, slender and graceful! I think of Musette, a black English greyhound, with perfect points, which won the first prize at Lyons, and was the delight of my eyes for three years. Dear Musette! We were always together. The first time we were parted she died. Madeleine, my favourite little sister, was charged with giving me the news. She wrote me a letter of eight pages. I still recall her great childish handwriting. Her kind heart had inspired the most touching precautions, and suggested the use of angelic phraseology. “We have buried her,” she wrote in conclusion, “in that corner of the garden you are so fond of, beneath the oleanders.”

I continue to look at the ermine, but the animal is doubtless ready for breakfast. Evading the danger, it descends the slope, gains the traverse, and runs restlessly to and fro. I trouble it. Most probably I am between it and its earth. I go.

As I make my way on to the escarp I meet Noverraz, the Parisian, the hero of the look-out episode. He is taking a constitutional in the snow. His waxen skin, pinched by the cold, has red patches on it. His ears and the tip of his nose are scarlet.

“Where have you been?” he inquires.

“Beyond the slopes. I must have walked quite a league this morning. It was glorious!”

“Take care, old chap, if you value a whole skin.”

“Bah!”

“My dear fellow, this is what happened to me on Thursday morning. It must have been about half-past eight. I am taking a walk with my chums of casemate 23. There is a regular London fog. All at once, at the bottom of the west court, we hear the jabber of Boche. I imagine that it is the disciplinary company breaking stones, as usual, in front of the battery. Durand, however, clambers up the slope. After peering over the edge, he makes signs to us to join him. On the road that runs by the ditch are two sections, standing at ease in columns of fours. Their officer is on horseback, wearing a huge grey cloak. He is making a speech to his men. My attention is riveted by the word _Frankreich_. I scramble a little higher. Stretched at full length, my head just above the edge, among the grass, I listen with all my ears: ‘Get this firmly fixed in your minds,’ says the captain, ‘for we must not fail to learn all we can from these French rascals [_diese Lumpen von Franzosen_]. Let me repeat: they climb into the trees; they install their machine guns among the branches; they wait there in absolute silence. The German scouts have examined the ground only. Our men pass by. Then comes a sound like thunder! We are mowed down from behind by a rain of bullets. Such are the tricks of these monkeys! Well, let us meet ruse by ruse, stratagem by stratagem. Listen carefully. You are at the front. You dig your trench, the admirable German trench. You settle yourself there comfortably. You are invulnerable. Thence, quite at your ease and without danger, you can fire at the French lines. Is this all? No. In advance of your real trench, eighty or a hundred yards away, you hastily dig another trench. You fill it with dummies. It is quite easy—any old rags of clothing will do. These pigs of Frenchmen [_diese Sauleute_, _dieses Schweinvolk_] can fire at this as long as they please. Then, when the assault comes, when they rush into this hole thinking that they’ve got you, you have an admirable target, at short range, and you can quietly exterminate them.’

“Such are the officer’s words. At this moment one of his men asks a question, and I take the opportunity of changing my position, so that I am exposed down to the waist. The captain catches sight of me. After glaring at me for a moment, he demands a rifle, shoulders it, and fires. Nothing happens; the breech is empty. We do not budge. The captain is furious. ‘Give me a cartridge!’ He loads the rifle and shoulders it once more. My comrades and I are about to take cover behind the slope when the shot is fired. It must be a blank cartridge, for we hear no whistle of a bullet. The Boches burst out laughing. Corporal Durand, standing erect with folded arms, gazes at them mockingly. He intends to stay there. ‘My good man,’ I exclaim, ‘hurry up and get down!’ The captain is asking for another cartridge. ‘This time,’ I say, ‘it will probably be a bullet!’

“There you have it. This is exactly what happened. I did not lose a word or a gesture. You had better be careful. With your mania for ranging the outer regions of the fort, you will get your skin perforated one fine morning.”

A BLACK MOOD

_November 27, 1914._

A prey to depression, we are smoking in the “Salle du Jeu de Paume.” Laloux and Badoy, otherwise known as Badozus, are playing an interminable game of chess; d’Arnoult is reading Victor Hugo’s _Histoire d’un crime_; Noverraz is dozing over Balzac’s _Chouans_; Sergeant Scherrer, tall and thin, with cold eye and Mephistophelian head, is playing draughts with Massé, a non-commissioned officer of artillery. Seated upon the drawers of the drug cupboard, they are crowded round the solitary lamp. The table is of deal, oblong in shape, one that can be used as an operating-table. Their heads are in shadow. Elbow to elbow and forehead to forehead, the six men are silent. The circle of light is hazy with blue whorls rising from their pipes.

Standing in the embrasure of the window, I am smoking my own Bavarian pipe. There is not a sound in the room, nor in the passages, nor on the bridge close to our windows. Depression must reign supreme throughout the casemates, depression which paralyses mind and body.

How intense is the tedium, uncertainty, and anxiety! No letter for a whole fortnight. Yet she must be writing to me. And Léonce, my dear young brother. I wonder if it is as cold in the trenches at Ypres as it is in Bavaria. Shrapnel, bullets, sudden death. Shall I ever see him again? Is he still alive? Manech, the amiable corporal of No. 13, forty-two of whose Breton relatives have been engaged on the land front or at sea, has already lost six of them. The fighting priest, Gautin, has learned that the body of his brother lies rotting on the banks of the Marne. Sergeant Boullanger is mourning his father. Since we have begun to receive letters, almost every one is in mourning. Can it be that my own melancholy is a presentiment? When will it end, this sinister interlude in the book of peace, our book, our true book, the book of humanity?

Noverraz has fallen asleep over the _Chouans_; d’Arnoult, “le Chasseur,” has closed _Histoire d’un crime_. He stretches and yawns. The others, huddled together, move their pieces without saying a word.

It is cold. All our thoughts ooze despondency. This brute of a major at headquarters who, meanly, by way of reprisal, has been detaining our letters at Ingolstadt for the last fortnight! Why cannot I throw off my troubles? This evening I am like a child, like a neglected schoolboy who has ceased to hear from his mother.

France, Paris, a blazing wood-fire in my study; Douchka and Katia asleep on the hearthrug. She is there!

No, I am in Bavaria. I am a prisoner. I am at Fort Orff, at the edge of the Swabian forest, among gloomy villages where I know no one, where they believe that we are slaughtering their sons with dum-dum bullets, and that we were the aggressors. A Franconian blackguard is the man who feeds me. Then there is a little good-for-nothing schoolmaster from Hof, a pedant stuffed with German idealism, who appeals to honour and humanity in season and out of season, who, having caught _flagrante delicto_ a weaver of watch-chains snatching a few hairs from a horse’s tail, gives him three days’ close arrest, saying gravely, “A most inhumane act”—and it is this whipper-snapper, this round-shouldered and short-sighted impotent beast, who is my _Feldwebel_, “my superior officer”! He is a mean creature. Knowing that I am on good terms with von Stengel, he begged Dutrex to present me. Dutrex did so, saying: “_Hier ist unser Schriftsteller_ [This is our author]”—“I am much honoured, monsieur; I have read an article on you in the _Nürnberger Zeitung_.” He bowed and scraped again and again. He stood there, his ugly little moustache bristling with smiles, looking as great a booby as if he had been before the commandant. The quartermaster is a bad lot, but the _Feldwebel_ is grotesque. And I am dependent upon the caprices of such men! I am a thing in the hands of these contemptible fellows, these hypocrites, who loudly voice their patriotism and boast of the German virtues, while they are shamming rheumatism and heart-weakness to avoid being sent to the fighting-line. Sometimes I am seized with a longing to spit out my contempt in their very faces. Before Baron von Stengel one feels like a man; a noble master ennobles those subject to his orders. But before these subordinates all human nobility withers, wretched instruments who treat us as instruments in turn. Empowered to dominate and to humiliate us, to abuse us as much as they please, their favours are even worse than their severities; it is the brutal landowner in Latium amusing himself with a Græculus; it is the _Donaubauer_, the fat Danubian peasant, caressing his dog. I prefer their hatred.

* * * * *

The good Badoy, with his huge round head, his snub nose, his little curly beard, his large fatherly eyes, bends forward over the board, humps his back, and clenches his fists between his short legs, saying:

“When will it come to an end?”

“Which, the game or the imprisonment?” asks Laloux quietly, as he takes Badoy’s queen.

“How can you ask?” Then, as if speaking to himself: “Oh! my wife and my three little ones, when shall I see them again? Still no letters! It’s terrible.”

From my corner in the window I contemplate the circle of smoke and of light, and I look at these six men packed together, chilly and sad. I dare not open my lips. My depression is turning to gall. I am not far, this evening, from understanding certain scenes in the casemates which had astonished me, when taciturn men became suddenly exasperated, and, for a single word, hurled themselves on one another, fighting like horses without oats in a stable. Poor caged beasts! The others, at least, those in Flanders and in France, have room to move. They have an object for action. After the stagnation of the trenches they can assuage their anger in the fury of the assault. But as for us, heavy with wrath, we are confined within thick walls; we can but swing our frozen and idle arms; we are cut off from all news; we are the prey of dreams and of hunger. Outside the screened window, the ditch, the counterscarp, and the grating; outside the grating, a Bavarian bayonet marches to and fro.

What can account for this state of nerves which I am unable to control? The hour for the arrival of the postman has passed. I have been waiting all day. It has passed. There is nothing. I ought to be able to find a reason. Why am I outwardly so hard and inwardly near to weeping? Suddenly there come great silent waves of memory. I hear her singing. She is dressed in green. The dark perfume of her golden hair enwraps me. The melody of César Franck’s _Procession_ rises athwart my fever; it is broad, sweet, richer and more peaceful than a field of ripe wheat upon a warm evening. It sings within me; it assumes the cadence of my breathing. I am stifling. I live, I love, and I am loved; and yet I am thrust out from life as if I were in the tomb.