And now comes the statute of March 21, 1905, which purported to promote homogeneity of the reserves and to suppress exemptions so favourable to the fils à papa. But its primary object was to reduce the period of service to two years. It was a Revolutionary measure, daring and insensate in its contempt for the danger involved by an obvious reduction in the effectives. This danger was to be conjured in various ways: by employing "auxiliaries" (or the medically unfit) in clerical work; by suppressing exemptions, and limiting furloughs, and by giving special advantages to re-engaged men.
One of the main objections to the change was that it prejudicially affected the staff of army instructors, who were exposed to a dangerous fluctuation. Just when greater intensity in the training was needed, the quality and quantity of the instructors declined. It was the exact opposite of the condition created by earlier legislation, which rendered the corps of drill sergeants practically inaccessible to new blood. The Bill offered special inducements to sous-officiers to remain with the colours, and gave to likely young men in the ranks an opportunity to rise—the class, who, under the earlier laws, would have benefited by the voluntariat. These previous efforts at army-making had created masses of imperfectly trained reserves. The soutiens de famille (supports of widows and poor families) represented, for instance, 60,000, which made 600,000 in a decade. Each man in this vast army had had only a year's training, which, though adequate in some cases, was inadequate in the mass. The two-years law sought to remedy this by requiring a minimum of two years from every one. Another important provision allowed grants to be paid to poor families deprived of their sons, which shows that Parliament was solicitous for the weakest in the community, even in such a matter as the national defence.
Finally, there was the law of 1913, passed by M. Barthou, the then Premier, in the teeth of great opposition, and as a reply to the formidable preparations of Germany. This we must leave to the next chapter. Suffice it to say here that the Act provided for a three-years service in the Active Army, eleven years in the First Class Reserve, seven years in the Territorial Army, and seven in the Reserve of the Territorial. Thus the citizen could be mobilised up to the age of forty-eight. After that, he was no longer liable to be called up.
CHAPTER IV
JOFFRE, HIS ORIGIN AND RECORD
There is this satisfactory about a Frenchman—that rarely he disdains his origin. He is not the sort of man who spurns the ladder by which he mounted; rather does he contemplate with pleasure every rung of the way. Joffre, in that sense, is typically French. He rejoices in the modest origin which has given him the privilege of building his own fortune. But his pride and his independence come, I think, from his racial attributes. They are indigenous to the soil, to that fruitful soil of the Roussillon, the old province of France which came under the French crown in the reign of Louis XIV, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and as a result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Known to-day as the Eastern Pyrenees, and become one of the regular departments of France, it has preserved much of its old Spanish character. It has maintained a particular flavour, like the wine which grows in its smiling vineyards and the peaches that stretch for twenty kilometres, a vast and fertile garden, round Perpignan. The local capital is peculiarly Southern: sunny, wide-spaced, prosperous, embowered in handsome planes. The inhabitants wear the easy grace and captivating manner of people who, under a blue sky, do not find life too hard. Joffre's town of Rivesaltes is close by, connected by tram and rail. It is less agreeable of aspect than Perpignan, there is less pride in appearances; indeed, it is thoroughly Spanish in style, even if French in the temper of its politics. The inhabitants speak Catalan like their brethren on the further side of the Pyrenees, where newspapers are produced in the tongue, but their sympathies are as wholly French as those of their famous townsman. And what a cult of him there is! Every café and most of the shops have a portrait of him on the large scale, as if a small reproduction would not suffice for his reputation. The album of a local tobacconist is a gallery of the great man in various stages of his development. Old inhabitants contribute anecdotes more or less authentic of his studious yet sturdy youth, of his kindness and modesty, of his astonishing simplicity.
"Yes, he came here years ago and played manille with his father and his father's friends, and he would not allow his old acquaintances to change their manner of speaking to him; they were to say 'thee' and 'thou' as in the old days. His father's bit of land had become flooded. 'You must cut trenches to drain off the water,' he said to Joffre père, 'I know something about that; it is my métier.'..." When war broke out, the inhabitants had no doubt about anything. The country was safe. What was an invasion when Joffre was in command?
The future Generalissimo was a flaxen-haired boy, with a light complexion and a firm, straightforward and kindly expression. There was certainly little of the Southerner either in his face or in the square-cut vigorous figure, but he had the independence of the Catalan in his character. Though an excellent comrade and full of fun, he did not like to be interfered with in his work, and was ready to fight his tormentors to secure quiet. Later, the kind blue eyes, wide set beneath the bushy eyebrows, grew steel-like in their expression when an acquaintance tried to take advantage of his amiability to advance a protégé. Joffre has a horror of the recommendation. "Let the young man make his own way as I have made mine," he would say; "that is the only sound method." All his life he has been opposed to patronage; it annoys him, he feels it to be unfair—a mean advantage. When he was appointed Chief-of-Staff, and eventually Commander-in-Chief, in 1911, he received visitors only once a fortnight at his office in the Invalides, because he wished to avoid, as much as possible, bores and protectors of interesting young men. Merit is the only channel which he recognises for advancement. The knowledge of his utter impartiality has robbed his decisions, often sternly disciplinary, of all personal sting. The army felt that in him they had a final court of appeal, pure and fearless.
Boyhood's days at Rivesaltes were unaccompanied by a luxury, which might have dulled the edge of fine ambitions. The little house in the narrow Rue des Grangers where he was born, remains the symbol of his simplicity. The humble bedroom, flanked by dining-room and kitchen, where he first saw the light, the store-room above served by an outside pulley for the raising of winter's stores—all this speaks of a laborious and thrifty life such as the peasantry live hereabouts. The future General was one of eleven children of a working cooper. According to Joffre's sister, the family, of Spanish origin and called Gouffre, is of noble descent; but its fortune had dwindled when Grandfather Joffre, leaving his native country for political reasons, started as a tradesman at Rivesaltes. He left no particular heritage to his son Joseph, the offspring of middle age, whom he seems utterly to have neglected. Joseph was little more than a working man with a patch of vineyard close to the town. But for a friendly uncle, struck by his intelligence, Joseph Jacques César Joffre—our Joffre—would not have enjoyed the education which was his at the lycée at Perpignan and at the Polytechnique in Paris.
It was to his stay in that admirable school for civil and military engineers that he owes the groundwork upon which he has so successfully built. It gave him an immense advantage at the start. Though he passed into the school with the high number of fourteen and became, because of it, a sergeant in his dormitory, charged with keeping order amongst older lads—rather trying to his silent and unassertive character—he did not consistently show the brilliancy that was expected of him. On leaving, his number had fallen to thirty-five, which did not entitle him to high civil employment under Government. Whether as a consequence of it, or because of a pronounced vocation, he joined the Corps of Engineers as lieutenant. Already he had had a taste of the life, sufficiently discouraging, one would think, in the War of 1870, which broke in upon his school career. He served for some months as a junior subaltern in a fort round Paris. Even at that age, he was known for his silent seriousness, and the memory of the national defeat seemed to have sunk deeply into his soul. It made him a patriot, eager to work for France and for her re-establishment. That, more than anything else, fired his ambition, for he was not one to crouch at the feet of chance, waiting, as an arriviste waits, for his own advancement. Not until the moment of his Soudan expedition, in early middle life, did he expand to the full limit of his capacity, and then the call of country and the consciousness of duty done for France were responsible. Before that, he had not shown, I think, any great desire to progress beyond the common mark. But when he saw that he could be useful to his time and generation, a holy zeal possessed him to press on to the great achievement. And his tranquil courage and perseverance were rewarded to an extent that seemed incredible in his early years. But, even so, he would not regard his position as head of the army with complacency or self-satisfaction. "The war found me," he said to a lifelong friend; "I did not seek it." That is the note of the man.