Joffre and His Army

by Charles Dawbarn

It is well to remember that Napoleon owed much of his advancement—his promotion at the age of twenty-seven to the rank of Commander-in-Chief—to his clever utilisation of the social disorder which followed the Revolution, and he obtained that liberty of which he had need to beat the enemy, as Colonel Dupuis points out, by his adroit relations with the Government. His personal prestige soon placed him above those who had given him the power. Finally, strong in his immense successes he threw off the remaining shackles and conquered the right to act as he thought best. He himself became the Executive. He was in the enviable situation of a man who gives orders to himself.

This page of the past is sufficient answer to the clamour for the heroic methods of the Revolution. French people have only to look back to recognise the danger of allowing ambition to realise itself either in the army or in politics—still worse when the two are united. A later instance, and one even more terrifying than that of Napoleon I, was that of Napoleon III; for, though his Empire similarly ended in disaster, brought about by foreign intervention, in the one case it represented the paling of a star of surpassing effulgence, whereas in the other it was the mere pricking of a bubble, if "historic," reputation. But in each event it brought humiliation and the foot of the invader on the soil. Joffre, therefore, a democratic and constitutional commander—the antithesis of Napoleon—is the only type of general really acceptable to the French Republic; and though the thoughtless individual may sigh for the breathless succession of events of Napoleonic days, there is hardly a Frenchman who would be prepared to accept the consequences of a return of the Napoleonic system; and Joffre, working for war that he may accomplish peace, eschewing inspiration and "strokes of genius," steadily developing in quietude and reflection the details of a preconceived plan, is an ideal figure in a country as profoundly democratic as France, where a chief modelled on the Prussian type or given to vain display and the "panache" would inevitably cause a reaction unfortunate in the interests of national defence. Never again will the French, having learned in the bitter school of experience, place power in the hands of a man who, by his masterly temperament, raises in their minds the fears of a dictator. Non bis in idem.

But not until the second year of the war was Joffre given that supreme command and that independence of action so essential to success. Only in 1916 was it recognised that there must be a co-ordination of effort in the different fields; that the Allies could not act separately without relation to each other and hope thereby to advance the common cause; they must carry out a certain preconceived plan and carry it out with a common energy, subserving all questions of persons and national prestige to the unique end of winning the war. The English Army, after the retirement of Marshal French, was placed directly under the orders of Joffre; thereafter it had its exact place in the common movement and represented a certain intimate part of the general machine. England thereby showed her loyalty and her conception of the necessities of the hour in bending to the principle of French dominance. It was inevitable, for the French were the chief combatants on the Western Front; their army was necessarily the more numerous and they were defending their own hearths and homes; the war to them was in reality a war of liberation. After, then, the general objects of the Allies were defined, it was seen that there must be unity of command. I remember how urgently a celebrated French General spoke to me on this subject after the war had lasted a year. "For the sake of our common action," he said, "do insist in England on the necessity of oneness in the command. Otherwise, the problem is impossible." And when that principle was at last acknowledged, and England merged her military fortunes more deeply with those of France, sacrificing also some of her independence in the field, the Allies were approaching the German homogeneity, where the Kaiser conducted the mixed orchestra and called the tune. Whatever the music was like, the general effect was certainly better than if there had been two or more chiefs and as many tunes.

But although Revolutionary times were no more, when generals of twenty-three gained such triumphs as when Rocroi was won by Condé, yet the fierce spirit of the Revolution remained. In that sombre hour France triumphed because she had the fierce determination to win; because she was ruthless with old-established reputations unless they responded to the exigencies of the hour; and also because, having her back against the wall, she realised that it was literally a case of "conquer or die." So in the war of to-day, the military command was aided by the popular clamour which speeded up the machine. When Charles Humbert, Senator of the Meuse, and certainly one of the organisers of victory, claimed almost daily in Le Journal, which he directs with such vigour, "more cannon and more munitions," he was but repeating, at a distance of one hundred and twenty years, the cry of Carnot and Lindet, who were rather disdainfully called "the Workers" by their colleagues of the Convention. But the harvest of the Revolution that the Generalissimo reaps most richly is that extraordinary and unsuspected virtue which our Allies have shown, that bull-dog tenacity and resistance which, blending with the natural allégresse of the French, made them irresistible in battle where the conditions were at all equal. In the last resort, the quality of the fighter prevails; every observer has recognised that fact. The guns may thunder and deal out death and destruction, but the machine which finally counts is the white arm, "Rosalie," as the bayonet is named in the familiar speech of the "poilu." This fact accounts for the superiority of the French on the field of battle; for the final word is to the common soldier, to that astonishing peasant and tiller of the land, who constitutes the greater part of the armies of the Republic. He fights, as I have said earlier in this book, not because he must, but because he feels he is privileged to defend his fields against the invader. Ever present to his mind, as he meets the Hun, are the depredations and deeds of horror of this civilised savage, and his arm is nerved by the determination to save his own village and his own kith and kin, if possible, from his devastations. The personal feeling enforces the personal element in battle; and, after all, a Holy Cause is the best sort of armour in which to engage in battle and the deadliest weapon to wield against those who have sinned against all the laws of humanity.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES

The spirit of the trenches is the spirit of France. Never did mirror more faithfully reflect the personal traits than those endless trenches across France the splendid valour of the race. In no preceding war in history has courage been so abounding. Trench warfare created a spirit of intimacy as well as a spirit of adventure. Men of differing stations, of utterly opposed traditions, of antagonistic education, were thrown together in a narrow, self-contained comradeship, and the result was a firm and singular fusion. They partook of the same risks, they experienced the same emotions, whether standing shoulder to shoulder in the trenches, or racing, side by side, in some rush attack, storming villages, or retiring, it might be, beneath the pressure of an overwhelming cannonade. And out of this comradeship grew a conventual feeling. Though isolated from the ordinary world, they were yet of it, for family ties triumphed over even so radical a difference in experience and mode of life. The rigours and segregation of the camp-life could not separate from kith and kin.

Some have compared their existence with the cloistered life. True, they took no vows of celibacy, nor was continence the necessary attribute of their association, but they had sworn to serve in a deathless constancy. They slept and lived hard, exposed to inclemency; passed days in a narrow semi-darkness, and at night slept in the roughest shelters or in grottoes deep in the ground. Yet there was an essential difference in their state and that of those bound to the Church, for their thoughts were of earth rather than of Heaven—of some distant spot whereon stood a little white house surrounded with trees, with green fields beyond, where cattle grazed, children played, and geese cackled. Tender memories accompanied their vigils, and such human sentiments removed them from the category of the saints, who are not supposed to listen to the heart, and from the old professional class of soldier, the grognards of Napoleon's day. For between waiting France and fighting France there passed hourly a warm current of correspondence, ascending and descending, informed with honest passion, homely and kindly virtues, which softened and humanised the soldier's solitude and heartened the civilian. It was the "poilu" who, going to the war, comforted those who remained behind, and the strange thing was that pessimism more readily took root in security, far from the lines, than at the Front itself. And the soldier's courage was as much seen in his letters as in his conduct in the field—wonderful tribute to its depth and sincerity. For there were moments in the interminable war to try the nerves of the hardened campaigner, much more those of the young man but lately broken to its severities.

Yet there was never a tremor in the living wall encircling la patrie, no touch of despair in the letters that Dupont pencilled home in the intervals of bombardment. His natural gaiety found an expression there, as well as his courage and his calm. Letters from only sons, out of reach for the first time of maternal solicitude, manifested an almost disconcerting enjoyment of danger and the independent life. And those women who had feared hitherto for the health of their darlings now seemed to rejoice in new proofs of their courage and contempt of death. Lads, apparently the most deeply wedded to the soft and unheroic existence of towns, found an unexpected satisfaction in the strenuous routine of camps. The influence of the milieu, the daily contact with the hard practices and risks of the métier, riveted armour about the soul and bound the brows with brass. Men, whose habit in civil life led none to suspect the martial temperament, proved lions in the fight. And I knew a timid soul, a little delicate, much given to study and reflection who, after a few months' actual experience of the trenches, became utterly changed. No longer apologising for existence as in the old days, he bore himself proudly in the field, and performed acts of exceptional bravery. Of his civilian friends he asked with strange calm: "Do you know how many Boches I've killed since the war began?" And in the surprised silence which followed, he gave a tally, which was staggeringly significant.

Apart from the professional pride which dictated an air of gaiety, when a visitor arrived, the occupant of the trench did not in his off moments assume the mien of the troubadour. On the contrary, he looked grave and serious, and often austere. It was remarkable that when he went to Paris for a few days' relief from the monotony of danger, he found little enjoyment in the old-time pleasures. And those who had been distinguished for a high thoughtlessness, for an abandonment to the Red Gods, proved hardy and virile warriors in the new life, with a speed that astonished all who had not realised the French adaptability. Frivolous in the days before the war, they now adopted an attitude of disapproval and even of positive disgust towards some outward symptoms of the "light heart."