How could one believe those official communiqués which kept saying that the position of the French armies was favourable and then admitted that von Kluck had advanced another twenty miles? The heart of Paris stopped beating. Paris held its breath. Perhaps the reason there was no panic was that Parisians had been prepared for the worst.
What silence! The old men and women in the streets moved as under a spell, which was the sense of their own helplessness. But few people were abroad, and those going on errands apparently. The absence of traffic and pedestrians heightened the sepulchral appearance to superficial observation. At the windows of flats, inside the little shops, and on by-streets, you saw waiting faces, every one with the weight of national grief become personal. Was Paris alive? Yes, if Paris is human and not bricks and stone. Every Parisian was living a century in a week. So, too, was one who loved France. In the prospect of its loss he realised the value of all that France stands for, her genius, her democracy, her spirit.
One recalled how German officers had said that the next war would be the end of France. An indemnity which would crush out her power of recovery would be imposed on her. Her northern ports would be taken. France, the most homogeneous of nations, would be divided into separate nationalities—even this the Germans had planned. Those who read their Shakespeare in the language they learned in childhood had no doubt of England’s coming out of the war secure; but if we thought which foreign civilisation brought us the most in our lives, it was that of France.
What would the world be without French civilisation? To think of France dead was to think of cells in your own brain that had gone lifeless; of something irreparably extinguished to every man to whom civilisation means more than material power of destruction. The sense of what might be lost appealed to you at every turn in scenes once merely characteristic of a whole, each with an appeal of its own now; in the types of people who, by their conduct in this hour of trial, showed that Spartan hearts might beat in Paris—the Spartan hearts of the mass of every-day, work-a-day Parisians.
Those waiting at home calmly with their thoughts, in a France of apprehension, knew that their fate was out of their hands in the hands of their youth. The tide of battle wavering from Meaux to Verdun might engulf them; it might recede; but Paris would resist to the last. That was something. She would resist in a manner worthy of Paris; and one could live on very little food. Their fathers had. Every day that Paris held out would be a day lost to the Germans and a day gained for Joffre and Sir John French to bring up reserves.
The street lamps should not reveal to Zeppelins or Taubes the location of precious monuments. You might walk the length of the Champs Élysées without meeting a vehicle or more than two or three pedestrians. The avenue was all your own; you might appreciate it as an avenue for itself; and every building and even the skyline of the streets you might appreciate, free of any association except the thought of the results of man’s planning and building. Silent, deserted Paris by moonlight, without street lamps—few had ever seen that. Millionaire tourists with retinues of servants following them in automobiles may never know this effect; nor the Parisienne who paid a thousand francs to send her pet dog to Marseilles.
The moonlight threw the Arc de Triomphe in exaggerated spectral relief, sprinkled the leaves of the long rows of trees, glistened on the upsweep of the broad pavements, gleamed on the Seine. Paris was majestic, as scornful of Prussian eagles as the Parthenon of Roman eagles. A column of soldiery marching in triumph under the Arch might possess as a policeman possesses; but not by arms could they gain the quality that made Paris, any more than the Roman legionary became a Greek scholar by doing sentry go in front of the Parthenon. Every Parisian felt anew how dear Paris was to him; how worthy of some great sacrifice!
If New York were in danger of falling to an enemy, the splendid length of Fifth Avenue and the majesty of the sky-scrapers of lower Broadway and the bay and the rivers would become vivid to you in a way they never had before; or Washington, or San Francisco, or Boston—or your own town. The thing that is a commonplace, when you are about to lose it takes on a cherished value.
To-morrow the German guns might be thundering in front of the fortifications. The communiqués from Joffre became less frequent and more laconic. Their wording was like some trembling, fateful needle of a barometer, pausing, reacting a little, but going down, down, down, indicator of the heart-pressure of Paris, shrivelling the flesh, tightening the nerves. Already Paris was in siege, in one sense. Her exits were guarded against all who were not in uniform and going to fight; to all who had no purpose except to see what was passing where two hundred miles resounded with strife. It was enough to see Paris itself awaiting the siege; fighting one was yet to see to repletion.
The situation must be very bad or the Government would not have gone to Bordeaux. Alors, one must trust the army and the army must trust Joffre. There is no trust like that of a democracy when it gives its heart to a cause; the trust of the mass in the strength of the mass which sweeps away the middleman of intrigue.