As I reached Basle and saw the spires of the Cathedral rising above the Rhine, it seemed to me that the great convulsion, which was then rocking all Europe with seismic violence, was the greatest since that of the French Revolution and might have as lasting results as the great schism of the sixteenth century.
I was not fated to see the tomb, for when I reached my hotel the facilities of civilization had broken down so abruptly that if I did not wish to be interned in Switzerland I must leave early on the following morning for Paris. Transportation had almost entirely collapsed, communication was difficult, and credit itself was so strained that “mine host” of the Three Kings was disposed to look askance even at gold.
Our journey took us to France by way of Delle. Twenty-four hours after we passed that frontier town, German soldiers entered and blew out the brains of a French custom-house officer, thus the first victim in the greatest war that the world has ever known.
As we journeyed from Basle to Paris on that last day of July the fair fields of France never looked more beautiful. In the gleaming summer sun they made a new “field of the cloth of gold,” and the hayricks looked like the aureate tents of a mighty army. It was harvest time, but already the laborers had deserted their fields which, although “white unto the harvest,” seemed bereft of the tillers. Some had left the bounty of nature to join in the harvest of death. From the high pasture lands of the Alps the herdsmen at the ringing of the village church bells had left their herds and before night had fallen were on their way to the front.
At Belfort the station was crowded with French troops and an elderly French couple came into our compartment. The eyes of the wife were red with weeping, while the man sank into his seat and with his head upon his breast gazed moodily into vacancy. They had just parted with their son, who had joined the colors. I stood for a time with this French gentleman in the corridor of the train, but as he could not speak English or German and I could not speak French, it was impossible for us to communicate the intense and tragical thoughts that were passing through our minds. Suddenly he pointed to the smiling harvest fields, by which we passed so swiftly, and said “Perdu! perdu!” This word of tragical import could have been applied to all civilization as well.
The night of our arrival in Paris I fully expected to see a half a million Frenchmen parading the streets and enthusiastically cheering for war and crying, as in 1870, “à Berlin!” I was to witness an extraordinary transformation of a great nation. An unusual silence brooded over the city. A few hundred people paraded the chief avenues, crying “down with war!”, while a separate crowd of equal size sang the national hymn. With these exceptions there was no cheering or enthusiasm, such as I would have expected from my preconceived idea of French excitability. Men spoke in undertones, with a quiet but subdued intensity of feeling rather than with frenzied enthusiasm.
With a devotion that was extraordinary and a pathetically brave submission to a possible fate, they seemed to be sternly resolved to die to the last man, if necessary, in defense of their noble nation. Although I subsequently saw in the thrilling days of mobilization many thousands of soldiers pass through the railroad stations on their way to the front, I never heard the rumble of a drum or saw the waving of regimental colors.
No sacrifice seemed to be too great, whether it was asked of man, woman, or child. The spirit of materialism for the time being vanished. The newspapers shrunk to a single sheet and all commercial advertisements disappeared. Theaters, art galleries, museums, libraries, closed their doors. Upon some streets nearly every shop was closed, with the simple but eloquent placard “Gone to join the colors.” The French people neither exulted, boasted, nor complained. The only querulous element was a small minority of the large body of American tourists, so suddenly caught in a terrific storm of human passions, who seemed to feel that this Red Sea of blood should part until they could walk dry-shod to the shore of safety.
In Germany similar scenes were enacted and a like spirit of courage and self-sacrifice was shown.