Vagabonds of the sea

VAGABONDS OF THE SEA
The Campaign of a French Cruiser
BY RENÉ MILAN
Translated by RANDOLPH BOURNE
New York E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1919 By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America
VAGABONDS OF THE SEA
From Paris to Toulon, end of July, 1914.
FROM the corridor I watch through the windows the swift receding of Paris. In this express-train, the last to run according to the normal schedule, are numerous naval officers en route for Toulon. Some have broken their brief vacations; almost all are returning on leaves of absence from their studies. The call of our country sends us towards the sea, that field of battle which we have chosen. To the French Navy belongs the “honor” of the Mediterranean, and our fleet is at its summit of preparedness. We know that the decisive duel will be fought in the fields of Flanders or on the slopes of the Vosges. But our effort will not be useless. We have only one fear—that we shall arrive too late, and miss that battle which our imaginations have pictured without actually believing.
Dijon, Lyons, Valence, Marseilles. I have just left a Paris full of excitement, where life is of so poignant a sweetness that the people are eager to defend the happiness they possess in such abundance. I am traveling through our smiling France. How many times, as I have passed from one seaport to another, on my way from a Chinese to an Atlantic cruise, have I not understood the envy which is directed towards her! How could our neighbors help casting towards this delightful land the glances of beasts of prey! Now they have spread out their claws, and hurled at her a cry of war. France has drawn herself erect. Everywhere squads of sentinels are guarding the roadways, the crossings, the stations, all the nerve-centers of mobilization. Into the eyes of the French people these last few days has come a magnificent expression; a new visage, which our race has put on as if for a fête, gives a family likeness to all its members. The foster-mother of children like these is no moribund being such as the Germans think they will succeed in doing away with. She has just felt again the vivid sense of her duty, and the heirs of her wonderful past draw from her strength attitudes so natural that they are not even astonished at them. This astonishment they leave to the rest of the world.