PARIS, August 15.
n Nancy we met Miss Polk and Miss Ethel Crocker of California, who are associated with Princess Poniatowska (also a Californian and sister of Mrs. William Crocker, but who has lived in France for many years) in a projected work of reconstruction. It is her aim to raise a large amount of money in her native State and rebuild a certain number of the wrecked towns and villages in the war zone. This is a truly great idea, and will redound to the glory of California, which, with the entire West, lags far behind New York and other Eastern States in practical sympathy for the sufferers of this war; but all the same I hope they will let the ruins alone and build the new towns beside them. In the first place, these ruins should be a source of revenue to France from tourists after the war is over, amounting to many millions of francs (Arras by moonlight is said to be the most beautiful sight on earth), and, in the second place, a certain type of smug American, who, without experience or imagination, has refused to believe in the attendant horrors of war, should be encouraged to visit these deliberately wrecked towns and hear at first hand far worse stories than even Lord Bryce has printed. This is the type that always asks; “Now, did you ever meet anybody who really has seen these things, or did somebody hear it from somebody else?” &c. Well, let these self-righteous citizens, who have grown fat on the European war, take a motor trip through the ruined district a year hence and spend an hour or two with the survivors.
It is, of course, legitimate to bombard any town during a battle, if care is taken to spare great monuments, but not deliberately to set fire to it, house by house, when retreating in fury after having missed victory by a hair. When traveling through stark fire ruins of whole towns like Sermaize and Gerbéviller, to say nothing of countless villages, and cities half destroyed, like Révigny and certain sections of Nancy, it was natural to remember the prophetic words of Heine about his own country: “Christianity has in a certain degree softened this brutal martial ardor of the Germans, but it has not been able to destroy it, and when the Cross, that talisman which keeps it enchained is broken, then the ferocity of the ancient combatants will break forth anew. Then—and, alas, this day also will come—the old war gods will arise from their mythical tombs and wipe the dust of centuries from their eyes. Thor will rise and with his gigantic hammer will demolish the Gothic cathedrals.”
They would not let me go to Arras, as, although deserted, it is under constant bombardment, while Nancy these days only gets an occasional attention from the big guns, and nobody minds taubes. So far, therefore, although Sermaize and the others are impressive and shocking enough, the most interesting and beautiful ruin I saw, in spite of its sadness, was the little town of Gerbéviller, between Nancy and Remiramont. Situated on a steep hillside, its irregular streets leaving the ridge to dip and rise again, and two years ago one of the prettiest and most thriving of the smaller towns of Lorraine, it is now a mass of broken walls against the sky, already mellowed by time and creepers.
The automobile was obliged to make its way slowly between the débris that lined either side of the narrow streets, and I noticed that families had set up housekeeping once more in the cellars, and even opened shops. Before the war it had a population of about 2,000 (although, as is often the case, large enough for double the number of actual inhabitants). All the men who were not mobilized or did not take flight at the approach of the enemy were shot upon that terrible retreat; but I saw a few smoking philosophically in the shade of the walls before their shops. The business here as elsewhere, however, is carried on mainly by the women. One old woman seemed to be doing well with post cards, although, as outsiders are few, no doubt her main support is derived from the soldiers on march. Here lives the heroic Soeur Julie, decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor, for saving her hospice in the face of Prussian fury. But her story must be told elsewhere. About eight hundred people have returned to Gerbéviller (it was a relief to hear that most of the young girls escaped before the invasion) and are living either in the cellars or the few houses surrounding the hospital saved by Soeur Julie. There is ample room in all directions for their new homes without sacrificing one of the most picturesque and significant ruins of the war.
I think it was at Sermaize that after driving through a number of streets as completely wrecked as Gerbéviller, we came suddenly upon a terrace of houses quite intact. We inquired the meaning of this odd forebearance and learned that these mansions had been the property of Germans, who had been warned before the outbreak of the war and fled. Naturally their homes were spared by their loyal countrymen. Germany not only knew who owned every square inch of ground in France, but where every work of art great and small was installed. One woman who lived in an unpretentious flat in Paris showed me her one rare possession, an ancient silver censer, which was on the German list when they advanced upon Paris. If the French Army surrendered and they spared the city, they purposed to loot it, and their spies had been for years locating every object worth seizing.
Even before the German case became utterly hopeless it seems to me they must have felt very sad at times while looking back over the past and recalling the many objects of desire they just failed to grasp. Outside of Nancy one may see a high hill where one fine morning in September, 1914, the German Emperor and his Staff sat their horses, clad in long white mantles and glittering helmets, a truly superb sight, waiting for the news that the French Army was in full retreat and the hour had come for their triumphal entry through the historic gates of Nancy. But General Castlenau, as all the world knows, reversed this theatrical dénouement, and they made off in hot haste for Strasburg.
We slept at Remiramont the second night, after a moist trip through the Vosges, a mildly pretty range of mountains, so far as we were permitted to penetrate. They are formidable enough closer to the front. Before the American ambulance men conquered them with their little Fords, the wounded were carried out on mule back and generally died. Remiramont is a headquarters for supplies, and we saw a number of officers but few poilus. Major C., knowing that I wanted to go to Thann, a town in that little strip of Alsace retaken in the first days of the war, spent the morning at the military headquarters, where he had friends (he is one of five American officers in France by order of the United States Government), waiting for the return of the General. As it was raining the rest of us spent the time gossiping in the little hotel parlor or strolling under the arcades of the principal streets. When Major C. returned and said that the General, refusing to take the responsibility, had telephoned to the Grand Quartier Générale I knew it was all up. They had said positively that I could not go to any town under constant bombardment, and a military mind once made up is like a steel mask with the key lost.
There is but one way by which a woman can get into any of these bombarded towns, Rheims, Thann, Verdun. After she is in the war zone, if she happens to know one of the Generals there, knows him quite well, so that he feels a certain degree of friendship for her, and if he happens to be in a very good humor, and if the bombardment at that moment happens to be weak or non-existent, as it was when I was at Châlons and Bar-le-Duc, then he will put her in an automobile and whizz her through the famous target. She will hardly have time to experience the expected thrill before she is out again, but at least she can say she has been there.