I found reproduced in this lamentable exodus certain spectacles which I had witnessed years before, but under vastly different circumstances. Yes! I had seen things just like this, but on a far-away continent where the fugitives were not men of my own race. I had seen cities taken by assault and whole populations fleeing in terror. I had seen houses in flames and corpses rotting in the fields. I had seen all the drama and horror of an invasion and had looked on with infinite pity. However, nothing in all that had touched me as did the present. Those flights had not taken place in my own country. They were not my compatriots who had been harried like so many animals, and driven from their homes like frightened beasts, to be tracked in the forests or hunted across the plains. They were, nevertheless, poor, unfortunate humans. Even in their panic and distress they were still a little grotesque, owing to their strange manners and costumes. Their natural abjection had in it nothing of similarity to the fierce grief of these Europeans, surprised in a time of peace and in no way prepared to endure submission.
Once when I saw an exhausted old man fall at the roadside, near our fort, and heard him beg his companions to abandon him that they might make better speed, I recalled a scene indelibly graved on my memory. It was in China. We were moving toward Pekin in August, 1900. We pushed back before us the Boxer insurgents, whom we, with the Japanese and the Russians, had routed at Pei-Tsang. One evening when hunger tortured us, some companions and myself started out in search of food. We reached a farm isolated in the midst of a rice-swamp, and we entered, just as armed men, conquerors, may enter anywhere. There was not a soul in the numerous buildings of the extensive plantation—or so it seemed at first. Finally, I went alone into one of the houses, and there came face to face with a very old woman, shrivelled and bent, with straggling wisps of hair, grimacing and repulsive. She instantly thought that her last hour had come. I had no bad intentions, but she could read my white face no better than I could have read her yellow countenance had our positions been reversed. She was overcome with fear, and her fright caused such facial contortions that I had a feeling of deepest pity for her. I tried without success to reassure her. Each of my gestures seemed to her a threat of death. She crouched before me, supplicating with most piteous cries and lamentations, until I, finding no gestures that would explain what I wanted, left the room. She followed me as I withdrew, bending to kiss each footprint as if to express her gratitude for the sparing of her life.
At that time I had thought of what my own grandmother would feel were she suddenly confronted by a German soldier in her own home in France. My imagination had formed such a vivid picture that I remembered it fourteen years later when the real scene passed before my eyes.
Ah! Free men of a free country! Men whose homes are safe from invasion, men who need not dread the conflagration leaping nearer and nearer, or the lust of your neighbor—fortunate men, imagine these villages suddenly abandoned; these families in flight; these old men stumbling on the stones of the road; these young girls saving their honor; these children subjected to the hardships and dangers of such an ordeal!
Search your mind for a picture which may aid you to visualize such a spectacle. For no pen, no brush, not even a cinematograph could depict that terrified mob, that throng pushing on in the rain and the wind; the flight of a people before another people, the flight of the weak and innocent before the strong and guilty.
III
THE MARNE
AS the result of tenacity and strenuous effort, our work of defense progressed. We had been able to build a smooth, sloping bank all around the fort, to place entanglements before the principal entrance, and to arrange such cannon as we had at our disposal. We put iron-bars in front of the windows to break the impact of shells, and baskets filled with sand at passage entrances. We had sufficient provision to last a month. We built a country oven that we might bake bread and not be reduced by famine.
We were tired, but confident, the enemy might come now. Each of us knew the spot he should occupy on the rampart, and we had not the least doubt of our power of resistance. The commander redoubled the exercises and drills, and each day notices were posted near the guard-house saying that we must hold the fort unto death, that surrender was absolutely forbidden. As for the men, we were equally determined to offer resistance to the end.
In the meantime, we came to know each other better day by day, and genuine sympathies grew into solid friendships. In addition to my two friends of the first hour, I found myself associated with some excellent comrades. There was Yo, a splendid young Norman, strong as a giant, a carpenter by trade. He was persistently good-natured, and knew a thousand amusing stories. He had an anecdote or witticism ready for all occasions. Then there was Amelus, whom we dubbed “Angelus.” With his little, close-set eyes, small features, narrow shoulders, he was as nearly as possible the physical type of a Paris gamin. He possessed also the gamin’s quick repartee and unalterable good humor.
This man, who was killed later, deserves special mention. He was an anti-militarist. That is to say, before the war he constantly asserted, as a point of honor, in season and out of season, his hatred of the whole military business; and detested, without clearly knowing why, every one who wore an army uniform. When I first met him, the war had not yet changed his habit. He indulged freely in vituperation of the officers, from the highest to the lowest; but this veneer covered a truly patriotic spirit, for whenever an officer asked a service he instantly offered himself. He volunteered for every rough job, and although he was not strong nor of robust health, he managed to accomplish the hardest kinds of labor, and would have died of the effort swearing that he “wished to know nothing about it, and no one need expect anything of him.”