Nor should it be forgotten that the generations who raised the great cathedrals believed profoundly in themselves as God’s specially loved instruments, his own selected knights-errant. “We are a race that exists to advance in the world the affairs of God,” said the old Gallic patrician to Clovis the Frank, and soon a Frankish parchment ran, “Vivat Christus qui diligit Francos.” When men feel like that they are compelled to express it grandly. When as pagans they feel it, the expression is a cataclysmic war of conquest. When they feel it as Christians, they build cathedrals. The generations whom St. Bernard purified, whom Suger trained, whom St. Louis inspired, founded their church on a firm rock, a living rock, lighted it unto a precious stone, prepared it as a bride adorned for her husband, and ever since sanctity has abided therein; kings have brought hither their honors and glory, and the glory and honor of the people have adorned the walls.
FRANCE
Because for once the sword broke in her hand,
The words she spoke seemed perished for a space;
All wrong was brazen, and in every land
The tyrants walked abroad with naked face.
The waters turned to blood, as rose the Star
Of evil fate, denying all release.
The rulers smote the feeble, crying, “War!”
The usurers robbed the naked, crying, “Peace!”
And her own feet were caught in nets of gold,
And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm,
And little men climbed her high seats and sold
Her honor to the vulture and the worm.
And she seemed broken and they thought her dead,
The Over-Man, so brave against the weak.
Has your last word of sophistry been said,
O cult of slaves? Then it is hers to speak.
Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes,
As slow mists parted over Valmy fell,
And once again her hands in high surprise
Take hold upon the battlements of Hell.
—Cecil Chesterton (who died a soldier of the World War).
Regretfully one turns to other interests after spending years in trying to draw closer to the spirit of the Middle Ages—years that have coincided with the apocalyptic struggle that has desolated the classic region of the national art, laying low, one after another, the churches of the first fugitive hour. And watching the giant battle, it has grown clearer how indissoluble is the solidarity of modern Frenchmen with their achieving grandfathers. A nation’s bulwark is the unbroken solidarity of Past with Present. And only when la race lumineuse, compounded of Celt, Gaul, Latin, and Frank, denies that solidarity will it be conquered.
The peasant-soldier of 1914, starting for the front, who replied with grave dignity to his well-wisher, “Whichever way it turns, I am ready,”[387] would have met death like a paladin at Roncevaux, in 778, holding up his gauntlet to God, his suzerain, certain of the justice of Him who from the grave raised Blessed Lazarus, and Daniel saved from lions.
The young tradesman of 1915 who wrote from the trenches to one who loved him: “I look on this struggle less as a war against an enemy than as a crusade to reinstate God in his place in France,” was true to his race apostolique that sets the church bells ringing. At Clermont, in 1095, he pressed forward with the cry: “The cross! The cross! God wills it!” The priest-soldier offering sacrifice at an improvised altar within hearing of the guns, his spurs fretting his sacerdotal gown, is Turpin, guarding well the Cross and France.
The stricken lad, flung back, diseased from the prisons beyond the Rhine, weak, broken, in tatters, who cried with vibrant voice, as he and his comrades crossed the Swiss frontier, and friendly strangers gathered round: “La tête haute! C’est nous la France!” conquered Jerusalem with Godfrey de Bouillon in the olden days, and related his prowess in a legend-medallion window at Chartres.