He will grasp another man’s opportunity, tie a double knot in it, and have it safely stowed away, before the bungler misses it. He discounts the future, beats the other man to it and arrives with both feet when not expected—just before the other is quite ready. Endowed with foresight, farsight, secondsight and hindsight, he sees all about and far away in front. Every isolated movement is noticed. He connects it up with some future possible development, eventuality or danger.
Men of other nations may have delusions about German organization and system, but the French officer has none. He has beaten Fritz, time after time. He knows he can do it again; and, if there is any one thing he especially delights in, it is to throw a wrench into that ponderous, martial machinery and break Kultur’s plans. Germans are lost with no rule to follow, and their head-piece won’t work. They are at the mercy of the man who makes precedents, but who does not bother to follow them.
Many a soldier has an aversion to saluting officers—it looks like servility. We do it with pleasure in France, as a token of respect. The French officers at the front do not insist upon it, and often shake hands after the return salute. Mon Capitaine is the father of his company, the soldiers are mes enfants (my children). They go to the captain when they have a grievance, not as a favor, but because it is their right; and he grants their request—or gives them four days in prison, as the case demands, with a smile. Soldiers accept his decision without question. The French officer does not mistake snobbishness for gentility or braggadocio for bravery. In the attack, he takes the lead. In the trench warfare he shares dangers and discomforts with his men.
It is a great honor to be an active French officer. He is there because his achievements forced him upward. He has climbed over obstacles, and been promoted on account of merit, not through influence. He holds the front, while the inefficient, the aged, or crippled, are relegated to the rear.
The soldier pays with his hide for the civilian’s comforts. The civilian, in turn, apes the soldier, presents a military bearing, in khaki coat, with swagger stick, a camera, a haversack and Joiners’ decorations. While the citizen works (or shirks) to sustain the soldier, he is either using his strength on the front, or building it up in the hospital.
An enthusiastic, spirited volunteer[volunteer], gradually becomes a silent, sober, calculating veteran. His days have been troubled. His nights knew no peace. Recognizing discipline as the first principle of organization, that it is necessary to have individual obedience, for a group to act harmoniously, he submits. On the front, he finds—himself.
Half a dozen men are taking comfort in the shelter of a dugout. The next instant, five are one hundred feet in air, snuffed out, torn into atoms. But one is left, staring, mouth open. The others, swift arrivals at Kingdom Come, went so quickly into the great Beyond, they never knew or felt the shock.
So with the rum ration low and the water high, the morning bright in sunlight, surroundings dark with death, one’s thoughts spring from the mind. Words fill the mouth. One grasps his pencil to catch burning impressions that flood his brain. He might as well try to tell his grandmother how to raise babies as to think straight! He reaches out and connects up, apparently isolated, strings of thought. He links a chain of circumstance bearing on destruction’s delirious delusions that now rocks the foundations of the world, which reacts on and affects every civilization, person, and individual on earth.
He looks at things from an angle different from that of the civilian. He has a new conception of life. He is not the same person he was before the war. No longer does he smell the flowers, eat the fruit, or dwell in the home of civilization. He has lived, like a beast, in a hole in the ground, and slept in a seeping dugout with the rats and the lice. He has seen his companion go over the top, killed off, like germs, changed from a human comrade into a clod. He has lived long between two earthen walls, the blue sky above, a comrade on each side, with Fritz across the way.
It was a narrow prospect. His point of view was limited; but he knew, that while apparently alone, he and his comrades were links in that strong, continuous chain of men who keep back the enemies of Freedom. Behind that chain are others, bracing, reinforcing,—artillery, infantry, aviators, reserves, money, provisions and ammunition, flocking to his aid from America, from Great Britain, from the uttermost parts.