I have said that people at home were not always sure that the French would be equal to the enormous strain put upon them by the tragic events of the invasion, by the systematised savagery of a relentless foe. Perhaps they had dipped into history and become inspired by that wonderful picture that Alfred de Musset draws in La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle. A generation pale, nervous and feverish was born during the wars of the Empire. "Conceived between two battles, raised in the colleges to the roll of drums, thousands of children looked about them with sombre eyes and shrinking, quivering muscles. From time to time their fathers, stained with blood, appeared, raised them on their chests shining with decorations, and then, placing them on the ground, remounted their horses.
"There was only one man living then in Europe: the rest filled their lungs with the air that he had breathed. Each year France gave three hundred thousand young men to this man; it was the tax paid to Cæsar, and if he had not had that mob behind him, he would not have been able to carry out his plans. Never were there so many nights without sleep as in the time of this man; never has one seen so many desolated mothers, never such silence, the hush around the shadow of death. And yet there was never so much joy, so much life, so much war-like music in hearts. Never was there such pure sunlight as that which dried up all this blood. It was the air of this sky without a cloud, where shone so much glory, where so much steel glittered, that the children were then breathing. They knew well that they were destined to the hecatombs, but they believed Murat to be invulnerable, and one had seen the Emperor pass immune through such a hail of bullets that one doubted whether he could die. Death was so fine then, so great, so magnificent in its smoky purple.... The cradles of France were shields and coffins also. There were no longer any old men, but corpses and demi-gods. Nevertheless, France, widow of Cæsar, felt suddenly her wound. She began to fail and slept with so heavy a sleep that her old kings, believing her dead, wrapped her in a white shroud. The old, grey-haired army returned, worn out with fatigue, and the fires on the hearths of deserted châteaux sadly rekindled."
The war is over; the children no longer see sabres and cuirasses; Cæsar is dead, the portraits of Wellington and Blücher hang in the Consulates. Anxious children sit on the ruins of the world, the children that were born at the breast of war, for the war. They had dreamed during fifteen years of the snows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids. Every one was tired, used up, exhausted. The light of life had gone out. The children, when they spoke of glory, were urged to become priests, priests when one spoke of ambition, love and hope; and, whilst life outside was so pale and shabby, the internal life of society took on an aspect silent and sombre. The habits of students and artists were affected; they became addicted to wine and women. And then De Musset speaks of the influence that Goethe and Byron—the two finest geniuses of the century according to Napoleon—exercised over Europe. "Can't you put a little honey in the fine vases you make?" he asks of Goethe; and of Byron he questions, "Have you no well-beloved near your dear Adriatic?" and adds that though perhaps he, personally, has suffered more than the English poet, he believes yet in hope and blesses God. It is the reign of despair. "The ills of the century come from two causes," he says: "the people who have experienced the Revolution and Waterloo carry two wounds in their hearts. All that was, is no more; all that will be, is not yet. Do not look elsewhere for the secret of our ills."
Could he have foreseen the terrific experience through which France was to pass a hundred years from Waterloo, how his tone would have altered into deep commiseration. And yet it is interesting to compare this picture of the years following the Napoleonic wars and the exhaustion which then revealed itself—the utter hopelessness of every one—with the condition to-day when, with the first pale beams of the sun of peace, France is thinking of the future, already discounting the profit that will be obtained by her victorious and long-suffering arms. What great repose has she not merited? What great reward of peace and plenty? This generation has fought, has given its life with unheard-of prodigality that the new generation may not have to fight. It has purchased freedom at the terrible price of blood—freedom from the slavery of Germany. No. De Musset's picture is no longer true, but it is doubtless this portrait of a puny, bloodless, spiritless France which impressed itself, all the more vividly because of the splendour of the word-painting, upon the foreign observer, and it was perhaps these students of French history who moulded English opinion. De Musset's powerful description was photographed upon the brain, and few realised that the conditions of which he spoke were transitory, and that France had emerged triumphant from her darkest hour when the pulse of her being was but a thread. The France of to-day is not bowed down with despair, but is buoyed with invincible hope. Hope in the morrow, hope in the recreative genius of her people—of their marvellous powers of recuperation. It is pleasant, it is comforting, to note the contrast, to observe the salutary change the century has brought; the France of De Musset shuddered, demoralised, over the cold embers of conflict—a conflict gigantic as it then seemed, but small in face of the sacrifices of the Great War. Even the agonies of Napoleon's invasion of Russia cannot compare with the hecatomb, the awful onslaught that Joffre had to meet and defeat. Glory to the "poilu," to his courage and constancy. He has saved France; he has gained for her the sweet and fruitful repose of a century wherein her inventive industry and creative genius may be revived; wherein she may excel in the arts, in the most splendid works of peace; wherein she may prove to be the torch-bearer of advanced civilisation, the pioneer—only a prudent and alert pioneer—no longer the dupe to illusions, of that beatific time when there shall be no more war.
Nor in this picture of fighting France must one forget the wife and daughter of the "poilu"; their work has been splendid. In no direction has the national spirit been more finely emphasised. I recall a visit to a typical factory in the east of France, some twenty miles behind the lines, where the workers were women. I was struck by their positive fanaticism. Upon the walls hung mottoes, just as in pious English homes one sees texts of Scripture. One in particular caught the eye by its terse and vivid eloquence: "Bad work may kill your brother!" And I can well believe that there was no bad work in that factory. There was no question of wages; they were never discussed; no one thought of them; they were of no importance. Wages, disputes, strikes! when the men were fighting a life and death struggle a few miles away, and when you could hear plainly the hoarse rattle of the guns when the wind lay in the right direction? Impossible! Instead of striking, women worked themselves to death and often were carried fainting from their tasks after a twelve and fifteen hours' day. And what an example the masters set of untiring devotion. Addressing the Creusot workers in the twenty-first month of the war, M. Albert Thomas, head of the Ministry of Munitions, spoke of chiefs who had kept to their duties for eighteen hours at a stretch. For them, at least, there were no restorative week-ends and pleasant breaks in public fetes—nothing but a continuous, back-aching and brain-wearying round. First to realise the shortage of the shells, some six months before the English, the French displayed astounding energy in remedying the defect. Their ant-like industry and powers of organisation, rivalling even the vast enterprises of America, attracted a world-wide admiration as great as for their heroism in the field. And if it awakened an equal homage, its presence was even less suspected than those martial qualities for which, after all, history gives credit and the brilliant proof though we had forgotten it in this talk of perpetual peace, in an atmosphere of material prosperity and a super-civilisation bordering on decadence.
These things are faintly reflected in my pages together with some appreciation of the English. Sometimes it is a little pale, that praise for the gallant ally: the cause of it I have shown already in a rudderless Governmental policy and a Press starved into undue reticence by the Censor. The harm of it was seen in querulous articles from Boulevard pens. "France has borne the brunt, France has bled, let others now do their share." That was during Verdun, when the trumpets had blown the fame of France over the wide earth and there was no note resonating for England—in spite of her casualty list. Had the chroniclers, then, forgotten the glorious stand of the English in the Great Retreat, how they had saved the French army from being crumpled up by Von Kluck's furious attacks on the left wing, and how they had shown unparalleled resistance against overwhelming odds? No; the French have not forgotten, it is engraved eternally in their hearts. Those who seem to forget adopt a political pose; yet it is necessary to reassert the facts, not to diminish the "poilu," but rather that we may "realise" him the more, that we may regard him as a brother for whom we have laboured and fought, for whom we have shed our blood. England, by her early heroism in the war, contributed to the full development and glory of the French soldier. It is not the least of our satisfactions that we have helped to build the proud monument whereon is emblazoned the imperishable record of his victories. Thus may we cry with greater fervour, "Vive la France! vive son armée!" If we know that army and know its chiefs, we shall be the readier to protest our faith.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I [THE AWAKENING]
II [THE THREE-YEARS LAW]
III [DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL ARMY]
IV [JOFFRE—HIS ORIGIN AND RECORD]
V [PREPARATION]
VI [JOFFRE IN ACTION]
VII [THE SECOND IN COMMAND]
VIII [THE ORGANISATION OF MUNITIONS]
IX [FRENCH DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP]
X [GALLIÉNI AND HIS POPULARITY]
XI [GALLIÉNI AND HIS COLONIAL EXPERIENCE]
XII [THE HERO OF THE OURCQ]
XIII [THE MILITARY POWER OF ENGLAND]
XIV [SOME TYPES OF COMMANDERS]
XV [CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIGHTING]
XVI [MILITARY COMMAND AND THE REVOLUTION]
XVII [THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES]
XVIII [TRENCH JOURNALS AND THEIR READERS]
XIX [THE AIRMAN IN WAR]
XX [THE "POILU'S" HOSPITAL]