My Second Year of the War

by Frederick Palmer

The Germans could not give up their idea that both the French and the English must be dying races. The German staff had been well enough informed to realize that they must first destroy the French Army as the continental army most worthy of their steel and, at the same time, they could not convince themselves that France was other than weak. She loved her flesh-pots too well; her families would yield and pay rather than sacrifice only sons.

At any time since October, 1914, the French could have had a separate peace; but the answer of the Frenchman, aside from his bounden faith to the other Allies, was that he would have no peace that was given—only a peace that was yielded. France would win by the strength of her manhood or she would die. When the war was over a Frenchman could look a German in the face and say, "I have won this peace by the force of my blows;" or else the war would go on to extermination.

At intervals in the long, long months of sacrifice France was very depressed; for the French are more inclined than the English to be up and down in their emotions. They have their bad and their good days. Yet, when they were bluest over reports of the retreat from the Marne or losses at Verdun they had no thought of making terms. Depression merely meant that they would all have to succumb without winning. Thus, after the weary stalling and resistance of the blows at Verdun, never making any real progress in driving the enemy out of France, ever dreaming of the day when they should see the Germans' backs, France had waited for the movement that came on the Somme.

The people were always talking of this offensive. They had heard that it was under way. Yet, how were they to know the truth? The newspapers gave vague hints; gossip carried others, more concrete, sometimes correct but usually incorrect; and all that the women and the old men and the children at home could do was to keep on with the work. And this they did; it is instinct. Then one morning news was flashed over France that the British and the French had taken over twenty thousand prisoners. The tables were turned at last! France was on the march!

"Do you see why we love France?" said my friend T——, who was with me that day, as with a turn of the road we had a glimpse of the valley of the Somme. He swung his hand toward the waving fields of grain, the villages and plots of woods, as the train flew along the metals between rows of stately shade trees. "It is France. It is bred in our bones. We are fighting for that—just what you see!"

"But wouldn't you take some of Germany if you could?" I asked.

"No. We want none of Germany and we want no Germans. Let them do as they please with what is their own. They are brave; they fight well; but we will not let them stay in France."

Look into the faces of the French soldiers and look into the faces of Germans and you have two breeds as different as ever lived neighbor in the world. It would seem impossible that there could be anything but a truce between them and either preserve its own characteristics of civilization. The privilege of each to survive through all the centuries has been by force of arms and, after the Marne and Verdun, the Somme put the seal on the French privilege to survive. If there be any hope of true internationalism among the continental peoples I think that it can rely on the Frenchman, who only wants to make the most of his own without encroaching on anybody's else property and is disinterested in human incubation for the purpose of overwhelming his neighbors. True internationalism will spring from the provincialism that holds fast to its own home and does not interfere with the worship by other countries of their gods.

All this may seem rambling, but to a spectator of war indulging in a little philosophy it goes to the kernel of the meaning of victory to the French and to my own happiness in seeing the French win. Sometimes the Frenchman seems the most soldierly of men; again, a superficial observer might wonder if the French Army had any real discipline. And there, again, you have French temperament; the old civilization that has defined itself in democracy. For the French are the most democratic of all peoples, not excluding ourselves. That is not saying that they are the freest of all peoples, because no people on earth are freer than the English or the American.

An Englishman is always on the lookout lest someone should interfere with his individual rights as he conceives them. He is the least gregarious of all Europeans in one sense and the French the most gregarious, which is a factor contributing to French democracy. It is his gregariousness that makes the Frenchman polite and his politeness which permits of democracy. An officer may talk with a private soldier and the private may talk back because of French politeness and equality, which yield fellowship at one moment and the next slip back into the bonds of discipline which, by consent of public opinion, have tightened until they are as strict as in Napoleon's day. Gregariousness was supreme on this day of victory; democracy triumphant. Democracy had proved itself again as had English freedom against Prussian system. Vitality is another French possession and this means industry. The German also is industrious, but more from discipline and training than from a philosophy of life. French vitality is inborn, electrically installed by the sunshine of France.