XL
The hostility—suspicion, even,—of the French people regarding England was to Bertram terrible. They were very friendly to him, all those people whom he visited in their huts or walked with over old battlefields. Some of them were even emotional, as one old woman in an estaminet along the Arras-Doullens road with whom he had been billeted for a time, and who flung her arms about him and kissed him on both cheeks, and wept a little, and laughed, and cooked a chicken for him. But when they spoke about England, it was with doubt, or resentment, or anger; now and then with passion.
He couldn’t get to the root of their grievances. They talked vaguely of England crossing the path of France in Syria. In what way? They didn’t know, but said: “On dit dans les journaux—” It is said in the papers!
They believed, many of them, that the value of the franc was deliberately made low by the artful jugglings of British financiers. They were certain that “Loy-Zhorzhe” was pro-German for corrupt and sinister motives, that British diplomacy was jealous of French victory, and intrigued everywhere to secure a new balance of power in Europe, so that French supremacy should be weighted down by the restoration of Germany.
In any case, England desired to thwart France of the fruits of victory, and was always manœuvring to let Germany off her debts, to prevent France from seizing German industrial cities if Germany defaulted in her payments.
It was idle for Bertram to argue that Lloyd George and the British people were afraid that if Germany were pressed too hard, beyond her power to pay, beyond human nature, she would seek to escape by force, would nourish desires for revenge which would lead ultimately and inevitably to another war. Germany would form an alliance with Russia, or break into such revolutionary chaos that the peace and recovery of Europe would be retarded for more than another generation.
He put these ideas to a French priest as they sat together in a little wooden presbytery near the ruins of a church on the west side of St. Quentin. They had met in a cemetery where British and French soldiers lay buried side by side.
Bertram, standing bare-headed there by the grave of one of his own comrades, was greeted by the priest, a tall, middle-aged man with a bronzed, clean-shaven face, and the scar of some wound down his right cheek.
“You are an English officer, perhaps?”
“Yes, mon père, in the old days.”
“Ah, you helped to fight for France! It was a good comradeship in those days. I was a soldier also, a captain of artillery, with the ‘Cent-Vingt.’ ”
He invited Bertram to his simple pot-au-feu, with a cup of coffee afterwards, and a petit verre.
It was over that cup of coffee that they argued about French and British policy, and then that Bertram defended the British point of view.
“Why do your English Liberals hate France so much?” asked the priest. “I cannot understand. It is to me incredible!”
Bertram denied that English Liberals hated France. He tried to explain, in faulty French, the “Liberal” idea in England. It was a belief that another frightful war could only be prevented by allowing Germany to recover, and dealing with her so generously that she would not desire vengeance. English Liberals believed that the whole philosophy of Europe must be changed, and that people should rise beyond the old “Balance of Power,” with secret or open alliances dividing Europe into groups. The peoples of all nations wanted peace. It was only the old diplomacy that prevented the fulfilment of their desire, and a general brotherhood of European democracy.
The priest struck his fist on the table so that the coffee cups jumped.
“All that is illusion,” he said, and he almost shouted the words. “It is hypocritical nonsense. Peace can only be secured by keeping Germany crushed and weak. England is treacherous to France by making secret overtures to Germany. It is a betrayal of the dead. An outrage to France.”
Bertram lit his pipe, and smoked in silence for a moment, astonished and distressed by the violent passion in this priest’s voice, by the flash of fire in his eyes.
“Mon père,” he said, “you speak like a soldier, and not like a priest. Surely you of all men should believe in the forgiveness of enemies—wasn’t it ninety times nine?—and the blessings promised to the peacemakers.”
“I spoke as a Frenchman as well as a priest,” was the answer. “I have seen the flower of French youth swept down by the sales Boches. I have seen the beauty of their mother, France, blasted, as in those fields outside. I have seen our women outraged by the brutality of the enemy. It is because of these things, and because I believe in the justice of God that I demand the full punishment of an infamous people. I warn you, sir, that if Great Britain endeavours to thwart that divine justice, France will regard her also as an enemy.”
“The dead listen to us, mon père,” said Bertram, simply. “Outside this window their bodies lie together. It is too soon for any Frenchman to speak of England as an enemy.”
“It is too soon for England to behave as such,” said the priest.
For several hours they talked, this Frenchman and Englishman, these two soldiers of the Great War, this priest and layman. At the end of that time, Bertram knew that no words in any language or with any eloquence, could ever reconcile their opposing views. The priest believed in “the sword of France” as the means of peace in Europe. Bertram believed in reconciliation, the progress of commonsense, the education of democracy, the spirit of peace in the hearts of common folk.
“Illusion!” said the priest again. “Illusion! In the heart of man, and especially in the heart of Germany, is hatred, evil, greed, brutality, fear, rivalry. So it has been. So it will always be, despite the grace of God, and the teaching of Jesus Christ. We have to guard against these natural passions. We have to uphold justice by force. We must never be weakened by a craven fear of war. Worse than war is cowardice or dishonour. Worse than hatred is the betrayal of friendship. May England be true to France!”
“May France remember England’s sacrifice!” said Bertram, “and our dead that lie in her soil.”
The priest answered his farewell in a friendly way, gripping his hand first, as a comrade, and then giving him a priest’s blessing. But when Bertram trudged away from the presbytery to a wooden estaminet a mile away, he was enormously distressed in spirit. This priest, Jeanne, the chambermaid, the young farmer near his old dug-out, a commercial traveller from Paris, the Mayor of Arras, scores of friendly people he met along the old roads of war and on the old battlefields, had talked in the same strain, used the same kind of argument, lamented the ill-will or the “treachery” of England; or if not of England, then of “Loy-Zhorzhe,” who seemed to them not so much a human personality as an evil power.
What hope was there for peace in Europe, if France pursued her policy of force, to crush Germany and keep her weak? What chance for the “Comrades of the Great War,” lounging about Labour Exchanges in London, marching in processions of unemployed, with banners saying, “We Want Work”?
There would be no work until Great Britain could sell her goods in the markets of Europe. Those markets could never buy if Germany were thrust into such ruin as that of Austria. Germany, perhaps allied with Russia, would struggle like a wild beast. The “sword of France” would not be strong enough to keep her weak for ever. Then France would call to England again. Would the roads have to be tramped again by battalions of boys from England, Scotland, Ireland, going up to the fields of death?
This thought came to Bertram as he went up a road past the ruined village of Barisis. The moon had risen in a pale sky, still blue, and its light silvered the wooden crosses in a military graveyard. Row by row they stood above the neatly ordered graves. For scores of miles, for hundreds of miles, across France, the moon illumined cemeteries like this, crowded with French and British dead.
“God, give us Peace!” said Bertram, aloud, as he bared his head in salute to old comrades with whom he had trudged these roads.
An immense fear invaded his spirit, and a kind of shudder shook him, for he seemed to hear again the march of youth advancing to another Armageddon in these fields—the last youth of Europe.
He was glad to get into the warmth of the wooden estaminet. An enormously fat Frenchman greeted him jovially.
“Monsieur is hungry, beyond doubt! My wife has cooked an excellent chicken.”
The wife, a pretty, thin-faced woman, with merry black eyes, addressed him as “mon capitaine” and spread a napkin as a cloth on a deal table.
She had been in St. Pol during all the war. Did he know St. Pol, not far from Hesdin—? Yes? Then surely he must have known, among English officers who had been friends of hers, le capitaine Jenkins, le lieutenant O’Mally, le commandant Stuart? She had un très bon souvenir of the English Army. Sometimes her husband was jealous when she praised the English officers so much!
“Without cause, I’m sure!” said Bertram, with a smile.
The woman laughed, and her black eyes danced.
“In time of war there are many temptations!”
She teased her preposterously fat husband, and he looked annoyed, and said, “Tais-toi, Yvonne!” She made a little face at him, behind his back, and when Bertram went to his bedroom after dinner, she lighted his way with a candle, there being no gas in the house.
“Merci, et bonne nuit, madame!” said Bertram, politely, taking the candle from her, and putting it down on a wooden chair by the bedside.
She looked at him with a queer, wistful smile, and spoke in broken English.
“I am not married in time of war. You understand? English officers like me very much. Take my hand, try to give me kiss—what you say?—flirt! My big, fat husband not like me talk of those days. But I like remember! You will give me English kiss for old remembrance, eh?”
She held her face up, after glancing at the half closed door.
Bertram gave her a kiss. Why not? It was good to find some one who remembered the British Army with pleasure and affection. She kissed him six times in return, and then, with her finger to her lip, ran out of the room, as a big voice shouted:
“Yvonne! Qu’est-ce-que tu fais, toi?”
That night Bertram dreamed that it was Joyce who kissed him.