I sometimes think that God’s final day of judgment will not be so very different. The Edict will go out from Heaven. Life will stop. Humanity suddenly arrested on the edge of time will look over the precipice of Eternity—will pause—will shudder—then, why should it not act? Why not revolt as it did in 1914 against the menace of universal destruction? Was it not just like that?
Death was let loose on the earth. And men refusing to die, gave their lives so that man might live.
The obliteration of life! Something else took its place. All the usual things of life disappeared, human relationships, amusements, ambitions, business, hope, comfort. The people vanished. No familiar faces anywhere. Armies took their place. Men were changed into soldiers, all alike. Women were turned into nurses. Their personalities fell from them, they appeared again, a mass of workers, colourless, uniform, with white set faces in professional clothes.
Our world, Philibert’s and mine suddenly fell to pieces; all the men servants left, most of the women, called to their houses to send their men to the war. Philibert found himself one morning a private in an auxiliary service of the army; he too disappeared. The enemy was marching on Paris; Ludovic telephoned me to say that I had best leave for Bordeaux. I packed off Jinny to Nice with her grandmother. A woman whose work in the slums I had been interested in for some years, was taking an équipe of nurses to the front. I went with her. Philibert’s secretary had orders to pack up all the valuables in the house. I forgot them. I forgot everything.
We went as you know to Alsace—were taken prisoners—sent back again.
On regaining Paris, I turned the house that I had hated into a hospital. Most of its treasures had already been packed up and sent away to a place of safety. The empty salons were turned into wards, my boudoir into an operating room. I enjoyed filling the place with rows of white iron beds and glass topped tables and basins and pails and bottles and bandages. It had been a hateful house, it made a good hospital. When it was in running order, I left again for the front.
I enjoyed the War. It set me free. I reverted to type, became a savage, enjoyed myself. In a wooden hut, on a sea of quaking mud under a cracking sky, I lived an immense life. I was a giant—I was colossal—I dwelt in chaos and was calm. With death let loose on the earth, I felt life pouring through me, beating in me; I exulted. Danger, a roaring noise, cold, fatigue, hunger, these my rations, agreed with me. I was a giantess with chilblains, and a chronic backache; I was a link in an immense machine, an atom, a speck in an innumerable host of atoms like myself, automatons, humble ugly minute things doomed to die, immortal spirits, human beings, my brothers.
I observed that my little tin trunk contained everything needful for life; soap, warm clothes, rubber boots, a brush and comb. I wanted nothing; I was content to go for days without a bath. The beef and white beans of the soldier was sufficient. I ate it ravenously.
I worked and was happy. I lifted battered men in my arms, soothed their pain, washed their bodies, scrubbed their feet; poor ugly swollen feet tramping to death in grotesque boots, socks rotting away in them. I enjoyed scrubbing them. I had, for the business, pails of hot water, scrubbing brushes, the kind one uses for floors, and slabs of yellow soap. For some months, it was my job to wash the wounded who came in from the trenches. Many of them were peasants, old bearded men who talked patois, in soft guttural voices and called me sister. Their great coats were covered with mud and blood, they crawled with vermin. I loved them. They had given their lives, they had given up their homes, their deep ploughed fields, their children, their cattle. They did not complain. Their stubborn souls looked out at me kindly from weary eyes, sunk under shaggy brows, and loving them, my brothers, I loved France, the France I had not, before, known.