What he could not know, however, was the exact intentions of the Germans: whether they were going to attack the Home Army and simultaneously enter the city, or whether they would relinquish occupation until they had made certain of the destruction of the Allies. To meet the alternative he employed his habitual energy and resource; he was prepared for the two events. Even after the battle he took unlimited precautions, accumulating vast stocks of fodder and cattle in the Bois de Boulogne, until the famous playing-ground looked like a western cattle-ranch; he took, also, a careful census of the city, so that food might be apportioned to the population. As a military precaution he continued to construct trenches and defences of all sorts. Why did he pursue this mole-like activity of throwing up earth, since the danger was past? Galliéni had a double purpose: to reassure Parisians against the return of the Germans and to train the young soldier in the art of modern war. And so he built endless lines of trenches, until the country round Paris from Beauvais in the north to Fontainebleau in the south was scored and ribbed with excavations. In their depths he hid monstrous black cannon, ready to belch flame and disappear again into their pits. He left nothing to chance.

A year after his appointment to the Governorship, he rose to the higher plane of Minister of War. The Viviani Cabinet had quietly given way to the Briand Administration, and, with that thoroughness of which the French are capable in great crises, they began to reconstruct their military organisation. His new post gave Galliéni a vast rôle, in which his lively temper and insatiable capacity for work found full employment. His part in the battle of the Marne had become known, and enhanced his reputation. It was realised that he had acted with immense decision. Thus he became newly popular with the Parisians, and his singular features—the eyes gleaming behind the glasses as if they were unsleeping in vigilance—were reproduced everywhere. His popularity threatened to rival that of Joffre, except that Joffre appealed more subtly and invariably to the army. The new Minister, however, was more Parisian than the Generalissimo, more distinctly Latin—Parisian, also, in a certain truculence more affected than real, for Galliéni is a tender-hearted man, a little diffident outside the strict orbit of his duty. He was particularly strenuous in his dealings with the embusqué. That furtive creature, who shelters behind the flag, was brought forth from his snug post in the rear. Several hundreds found employment at the Ministry of War; thousands more were scattered up and down the country in dépôts, in stores and factories, in headquarters of commanders. Galliéni routed them out mercilessly, and sent one hundred and fifty thousand of them to their regiments. From his own ministry in the Rue St. Dominique, one chilly November morning, there emerged a melancholy column of five hundred military clerks, who wended their way to the grey lines of the trenches, abominably wet and dismal, in contrast with those comfortable Ministerial quarters. The Minister's implacability pleased both Paris and the country. Both were ready to do their duty, but needed to be told that there was perfect equality in everything and no preferential treatment. Galliéni struck pitilessly at abuses. A Territorial officer who drove his superior's car was punished as firmly as a médecin major who showed undue favour to certain of his patients and retarded their return to the Front. At times, no doubt, the Minister was guilty of exaggeration; but even this was typically French and was better than inactivity. In calling up auxiliaries (men exempted from military service because of physical defects) he overlooked the economic needs of the country; but these matters were soon put right.

He proved the foe of red tape and routine. He opened windows in his Ministry, which had been closed for years, and let in fresh air. He broke down the methods of the Circumlocution Office, doing away with useless labour, installing typewriters and feminine secretaries, the wives and daughters of those who had fallen in the field, and thus relieving many men for purely military duties. "Simpler methods," he cried to all who would hear; "I want results"; and, of course, he obtained them. Then he suppressed recommendations. To Parliament, a little dubious and jealous of its privileges, he explained that, whilst open to proper representations from every soldier, he could not listen to interested recommendations. He re-established the sovereign power of discipline, but at the same time constituted himself a court for the correction of abuse of authority. In the Chamber he conquered sympathies, though obviously uncomfortable in the atmosphere. I saw him the day after his maiden speech as Minister and congratulated him on his success. "Ah, if you only knew how much this sort of thing costs me," he said, "you would not talk of my success," and he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture half-humorous, half-ironical. The soldier pleased in the tribune because of his directness and vibrant patriotism; but when Socialists interrupted him it was plain that he chafed at the restrictions of time and place which prevented him from making suitable reply! On one occasion he was about to leave the House because of the behaviour of the Socialists, and was induced with difficulty by M. Viviani to return to his place on the Front Bench. Unconsciously he had repeated the protest of General Pau a few years before. It was unfortunate that it was not more effective, for the opposition of the Socialists arose over a question of regulating the hours of cafés in Marseilles—palpitating subject in time of a national war! The Minister was happiest when dealing with the incorporation of the 1917 class—lads of eighteen who were going to the Front. The Senate before whom he spoke appreciated his patriotic quality, and the fact that, though a disciplinarian and an energetic commander, he yet kept in his heart the sense of sacrifice of young lives given to the country.

In every department Galliéni laboured to promote efficiency and to perfect the great machine in his hands. By some he was reproached for living voluntarily in the great white light of publicity, but Galliéni knew that unless he had the public emphatically on his side his reforms could be crushed by politics. When once he had established his right to freedom of action, then no political cabal, thinking of its influence at the polls, could pull him down. It was for this reason that he took the public into his confidence, so that it might know that the best was being done that could be done. If Galliéni showed no mercy to the shirker, it was because he wished to encourage the peasant in the trenches and the mechanic in the factory by the thought that there was justice for all and favouritism for none. Much of his work was accomplished without the least blare of trumpets or the smallest paragraph in the Press. He reorganised the medical service of the army in the sense of bringing hospitals into line with authority, and suppressed the laisser-aller of the amateur and philanthropic institution.

Though not in the ordinary sense a social figure—indeed, he is the despair of hostesses—Galliéni has social graces and an artistic side to his character wanting from the more burly figure of General Joffre. Though he keeps his counsel in all professional matters, he is not naturally silent; he has a dozen interests, not exclusively military, and touches life at all points. As a young man, following his studies in the military school, he consorted with a literary set in the Latin Quarter, and the friends of his youth were Ernest Daudet and Jean Richepin. He reads and speaks several languages, believing that one should go direct to one's authorities, and his conversation is informed with study, reflection and travel. He is the type of the modern soldier: savant, philosopher and metaphysician. A wide experience and intellectual tastes have given him toleration, but he has none for incapacity and dereliction of duty. Though accused of overweening ambition, he is ambitious only to serve the country. "For an old man like myself, death on the battlefield would be a recompense," he said on a recent occasion. "I should die in defending Paris with the enthusiasm of a young lieutenant." This is the spirit which flamed from the historic poster on the walls of Paris at the moment when the Government departed to Bordeaux: "I have received a mandate to defend Paris, and I intend to fulfil it to the end...."

It was patriotism which induced him to accept the heavy succession of the Ministry of War from M. Millerand. Years before he had been offered the post, but declined it "because it meant presence in the Chamber." But the war changed everything; it was impossible to urge personal reasons when the country was at stake. But he knows so little of political labels that he makes his friends laugh in confusing one kind of Republican with another. To him they are all the same, provided they have the national interests at heart. For this reason he was equally friendly with men of such divergent tendencies as Gambetta, Jules Simon, Waldeck-Rousseau and Albert de Mun. It is because of his many-sided appeal that he inspires collaborators with peculiar devotion. Two qualities outstand: his perennial youth, represented by a figure which might be that of a young cavalry officer, though he has passed the age limit, and a scientific precision of thought which means that in everything he is clear, precise, and piercing, like a sword-blade.

Illness caused him, unfortunately, to relinquish his post at the Ministry of War in the spring of 1916, after a few months of strenuous work, but his influence remains as that of a good patriot inexorable in his country's service.

CHAPTER XI

GALLIÉNI AND HIS COLONIAL EXPERIENCE

If General Galliéni allowed his mind to take a retrospective turn in the intervals of his intensive work at the Ministry of War, there must have opened to him a dazzling prospect of colonial enterprise and adventure. And in the picture would appear a gallery of celebrities, brown, black and yellow, as well as white. The man who made the profoundest impression on his character was certainly Faidherbe, type of the serious Frenchman, whose spectacles added to the natural gravity of his face. His work as pioneer had ceased before Galliéni's had commenced, but his influence remained, powerful for good, and vitalising in its effect on the young mind. He realised that when you beat back barbarism you must attach the native to the flag and give him new objects for devotion. Before the War of 1870, he was engaged in conquering the Niger Basin. Galliéni was destined to complete that work. Like his master, as he called Faidherbe, he was inspired by the great English explorers, Mungo Park and Livingstone. The latter was discovering Lake Ngami when Galliéni was born.