"Seventy thousand Russians have just landed at Antwerp. The English are shelling Hamburg. Our Northern army is advancing, yes, it is...; deliverance will come from the North."
Ah, the secret of making legends is not lost! Popular imagination invents hundreds of them. But nowadays they cannot live long. Books and newspapers cut their wings as soon as they are hatched, and the poor things flutter an instant, and then die. But imagine a corner of a country like ours, perfectly isolated from the rest of the world for some ten years, and deprived of all news, all writings; suppose the peasants should be questioned long after upon the events of the present war, from their statements you might compose the most beautiful epic poem ever heard. As in the good old time, its title would be, "The Gestes of the French by the Grace of God."
Frenchmen, my brothers, I know you were splendid. You fought like lions, like the heroes that you are. Your glorious feats are too numerous to be counted. It was our despair not to know them. But, in revenge, we invented feats for you, fresh ones every day. Once, for instance, the French, masters of the stone-quarries of Paissy, made good use of a secret passage, and leaping unexpectedly from out of the ground, flick, flack, flick, spread death and dismay among the Germans; then, like jacks-in-the-box, they disappeared as if by magic. Struck with consternation, the Germans would have thought themselves dreaming had not too many proofs testified to the reality of the brief apparition. And what do you think of the chasseurs à pied who, behind a hedge at Malva, planted a forest of poles with a cap on the top of every one, and then, when the enemy with loud cries were in the very act of rushing upon this trap, shot them down to the very last man?
And don't let us forget the Africans. Ten negroes from Senegal—you understand, ten—sprang out of their trenches on a night as black as ink—of course we did not know whether negroes were or were not in the trenches—noiselessly crept along the ground through brushwood and darkness, and shouting their war-cry bounded forward into the village of Chamouille. Panic-stricken, the German soldiers fled, while the officers—seventeen in number—not one more, not one less—let the Africans cut their throats like so many lambs. The ten negroes lay down once more, flat on their faces, and crawling along on their hands and knees, went back to their trenches without a tassel missing from their caps, without a rent dishonouring their large breeches. These anecdotes were our daily bread. Innumerable were the villages taken by surprise, the convoys seized, the batteries triumphantly brought in. We were always breathless; every one of us lent a half-sceptical ear to everything that was said, and tried to detect a little truth among all this fiction. Who invented or transformed the news? It was difficult to know. Many a time Mr. Nobody-knows-who had confided it to Mrs. So-and-So, who told it to Mr. Everybody. But generally the information came from the best sources. If M. H., the Mayor of Laon, had really said all that was ascribed to him, he had done nothing else but commit the secrets of our army to the office-porter or the fruiterer over the way. On the other hand, it is hard to conceive how many secrets our countrymen extracted from their German guests. Speaking of the officers to whom they gave hospitality they assumed a mysterious air, and hinted that, walking delicately, they had elicited from them avowals as mortifying for their pride as encouraging for us.
But there was another origin, quite modern, for the news no one wanted to take upon himself. It was no difficult riddle. The news came from Heaven. Aviators dropped it. Letters had been picked up here and there, said rumour; some of them were evidently home-made, and were but laughed at—this one, for instance: "Friends, take courage; reinforcements are coming." A touching contrivance of some ingenious liar to cheer up his neighbours!
Other messages, written in a kind of official style, were so precise that they seemed worthy of attention; and one of them, known throughout the country as the message of Magny, was for a long time looked upon as authentic by the most competent judges. Oh, we were very credulous, and you laugh at us, all of you, who read the papers every morning at your breakfast. We were so cruelly crushed by the invaders, so uneasy at hearing nothing, so eager for news which might have been bones for our anxiety to gnaw that we greedily snatched at all the falsehoods we came across, and found our mouths a minute after full of sand.
Was there no means of encouraging us? Floods of sentimental ink were wasted elsewhere upon our fate, but the smallest drop spilt in the Vernandois or the Laonnois would have done us more good.
We had not deserved thus to be forsaken, for we were admirable. I maintain, laying aside all useless modesty, I maintain that we were admirable. Our persons and properties had been given up as hostages. A line was chalked out on the map; it was the part to be sacrificed. In this part we were shut up, bodies and souls, with no possibility of shaking ourselves free. We not only suffered it to be so; we agreed to the bargain; we resigned ourselves to hunger, misfortune, oppression. We submitted to see our houses plundered, our forests levelled with the ground, our lands destroyed, so that the rest of the country might be safe, the metropolis undamaged, that France herself might be free to recover her power and to prepare her vengeance. Exposed to violence, requisitions, even to reprisals, we did not give way; we wished for victory, never for peace; we thought of France, not of ourselves. But what unbearable pangs did we bear! We laboured under "the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick," as the Bible says. Sometimes we seemed to think the burden too heavy for our strength and impossible to be borne any longer. What became of us when, in the last days of October, the Germans arrogantly announced that they had won a victory at Soissons, that they had broken through, and that they were going on to Paris...? "Parisse!... Parisse!..."
We were heart-broken by it, sunk in desolation, and when thereupon came the welcome message of Magny, full of excellent things, although scandalously false, should we not have believed it true? Rather than not to have believed it, we should have framed and hung a copy in every house!
The message of Magny made its appearance on All Saints' Day. On coming back from the cemetery we watched the shelling of a French aeroplane, which laughed at its assailant, and the smoke of the shells was like small round balls gilt by the sun. The cannon rolled furiously in the direction of Noyon, and we thought: "If they have passed, it is not over there."