The old lady led us out of the house. There was one more thing she wished to show us. The sunset light was still in the tree-tops, but her eyes were dim; she thought that night had already gathered. Holding her lamp above her head, she pointed to a statue in a niche above the doorway. It had been placed there by order of the King of France after Joan was dead. But it wasn't so much the statue that she wanted us to look at; it was the mutilations that were upon it. She was filled with a great trembling of indignation. "Yes, gaze your fill upon it, Messieurs," she said; "it was les Boches did that. They were here in 1870. To others she may be a saint, but to them—Bah!" and she spat, "a woman is less than a woman always."
When we turned to go she was still cursing les Boches beneath her breath, tremblingly holding up the lamp above her head that she might forget nothing of their defilement. The old dog rattled his chain as we passed; he knew us now and did not trouble to come out. The dead leaves whispered beneath our tread.
At the gate we halted. I turned to my American soldier. "How long before you go into the line?"
He was carrying the little French girl in his arms. As he glanced up to answer, his face caught the sunset. "Soon now. The sooner, the better. She ...," and I knew he meant no living woman. "This place ... I don't know how to express it. But everything here makes you want to fight,—makes you ashamed of standing idle. If she could do that—well, I guess that I...."
He made no attempt to fill his eloquent silences; and so I left. As the car gathered speed, plunging into the pastoral solitudes, I looked back. The last sight I had of Domrémy was a grey little garden, made sacred by the centuries, and an American soldier standing with a French child in his arms, her golden hair lying thickly against his neck.
On the surface the American is unemotionally practical, but at heart he is a dreamer, first, last and always. If the Americans have merited any criticism in France, it is owing to the vastness of their plans; the tremendous dream of their preparations postpones the beginning of the reality. Their mistake, if they have made a mistake, is an error of generosity. They are building with a view to flinging millions into the line when thousands a little earlier would be of superlative advantage. They had the choice of dribbling their men over in small contingents or of waiting till they could put a fighting-force into the field so overwhelming in equipment and numbers that its weight would be decisive. They were urged to learn wisdom from England's example and not to waste their strength by putting men into the trenches in a hurry before they were properly trained. England was compelled to adopt this chivalrous folly by the crying need of France. It looked in the Spring of 1917, before Russia had broken down or the pressure on the Italian front had become so menacing, as though the Allies could afford to ask America to conduct her war on the lines of big business. America jumped at the chance—big business being the task to which her national genius was best suited. If her Allies could hold on long enough, she would build her fleet and appear with an army of millions that would bring the war to a rapid end. Her rôle was to be that of the toreador in the European bull-fight.
But big business takes time and usually loses money at the start. In the light of recent developments, we would rather have the bird-in-the-hand of 300,000 Americans actually fighting than the promise of a host a year from now. People at home in America realised this in January. They were so afraid that their Allies might feel disappointed. They were so keen to achieve tangible results in the war that they grew impatient with the long delay. They weren't interested in seeing other nations going over the top—the same nations who had been over so many times; they wanted to see their sons and brothers at once given the opportunity to share the wounds and the danger. Their attitude was Spartan and splendid; they demanded a curtailment of their respite that they might find themselves afloat on the crimson tide. The cry of the civilians in America was identical with that of their men in France. "Let them take off our khaki or else hurry us into the trenches. We want to get started. This waiting makes us tired."
And the civilians in America had earned a right to make their demand. Industrially, financially, philanthropically, from every point of view they had sacrificed and played the game, both by the Allies and their army. When they, as civilians, had been so willing to wear the stigmata of sacrifice, they were jealous lest their fighting men should be baulked of their chance of making those sacrifices appear worth while.
There have been many accusations in the States with regard to the supposed breakdown of their military organization in France—accusations inspired by generosity towards the Allies. From what I have seen, and I have been given liberal opportunities to see everything, I do not think that those accusations are justified. As a combatant of another nation, I have my standards of comparison by which to judge and I frankly state that I was amazed with the progress that had been made. It is a progress based on a huge scale and therefore less impressive to the layman than if the scale had been less ambitious. What I saw were the foundations of an organisation which can be expanded to handle a fighting-machine which staggers the imagination. What the layman expects to see are Hun trophies and Americans coming out of the line on stretchers. He will see all that, if he waits long enough, for the American military hospitals in France are being erected to accommodate 200,000 wounded.
Unfounded optimisms, which under no possible circumstances could ever have been realised, are responsible for the disappointment felt in America. Inasmuch as these optimisms were widely accepted in England and France, civilian America's disappointment will be shared by the Allies, unless some hint of the truth is told as to what may be expected and what great preparations are under construction. It was generally believed that by the spring of 1918 America would have half a million men in the trenches and as many more behind the lines, training to become reinforcements. People who spoke this way could never have seen a hundred thousand men or have stopped to consider what transport would be required to maintain them at a distance of more than three thousand miles from their base. It was also believed that by the April of 1918, one year after the declaring of war, America would have manufactured ten thousand planes, standardised all their parts, trained the requisite number of observers and pilots, and would have them flying over the Hun lines. Such beliefs were pure moonshine, incapable of accomplishment; but there are facts to be told which are highly honourable.