Towards the Goal

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Five days the battle swayed backwards and forwards across this scene, especially following the lines of the little streams flowing eastwards to the Ourcq, the Thérouanne, the Gergogne, the Grivette. "From village to village," says Colonel Buchan, "amid the smoke of burning haystacks and farmsteads, the French bayonet attack was pressed home."

"Terrible days of life-and-death fighting! [writes a Meaux resident, Madame Koussel-Lepine] battles of Chambry, Barcy, Puisieux, Acy-en-Multien, the 6th, 7th, and 8th of September—fierce days to which the graves among the crops bear witness. Four hundred volunteers sent to attack a farm, from which only seven come back! Ambuscades, barricades in the streets, loopholes cut in the cemetery walls, trenches hastily dug and filled with dead, night fighting, often hand to hand, surprises, the sudden flash of bayonets, a rain of iron, a rain of fire, mills and houses burning like torches—fields red with the dead and with the flaming corn fruit of the fields, and flower of the race!—the sacrifice consummated, the cup drunk to the lees."

Moving and eloquent words! They gain for me a double significance as I look back from them to the little scene we saw at Barcy under the snow—a halt of some French infantry, in front of the ruined church. The "salut an drapeau" was going on, that simple, daily rite which, like a secular mass, is the outward and visible sign to the French soldier of his country and what he owes her. This passion of French patriotism—what a marvellous force, what a regenerating force it has shown itself in this war! It springs, too, from the heart of a race which has the Latin gift of expression. Listen to this last entry in the journal of Captain Robert Dubarle, the evening before his death in action:

"This attack to-morrow, besides the inevitable emotion it rouses in one's thoughts, stirs in me a kind of joyous impatience, and the pride of doing my duty—which is to fight gladly, and die victorious. To the last breath of our lives, to the last child of our mothers, to the last stone of our dwellings, all is thine, my country! Make no hurry. Choose thine own time for striking. If thou needest months, we will fight for months; if thou needest years, we will fight for years—the children of to-day shall be the soldiers of to-morrow.

"Already, perhaps, my last hour is hastening towards me. Accept the gift I make thee of my strength, my hopes, my joys and my sorrows, of all my being, filled with the passion of thee. Pardon thy children their errors of past days. Cover them with thy glory—put them to sleep in thy flag. Rise, victorious and renewed, upon their graves. Let our holocaust save thee—Patrie, Patrie!"

An utterance which for tragic sincerity and passion may well compare with the letter of an English officer I printed at the end of England's Effort.

On they go, into the snow and the mist, the small sturdy soldiers, bound northwards for those great and victorious attacks on the Craonne plateau, and the Chemin des Dames, which were to follow so close on our own British victory on the Vimy Ridge. They pass the two ladies in the motor car, looking at us with friendly, laughing eyes, and disappear into the storm.

Then we move on to the northern edge of the battle-field, and at Rosoy we turn south towards Meaux, passing Vareddes to our left. The weather clears a little, and from the high ground we are able to see Meaux to the west, lying beside its great river, than which our children's children will greet no more famous name. The Marne winds, steely grey, through the white landscape, and we run down to it quickly. Soon we are making our way on foot through the dripping streets of Meaux to the old bridge, which the British broke down—one of three—on their retreat—so soon to end! Then, a few minutes in the lovely cathedral—its beauty was a great surprise to me!—a greeting to the tomb of Bossuet—ah! what a Discours he would have written on the Battle of the Marne!—and a rapid journey of some twenty-five miles back to Paris.

But there is still a story left to tell—the story of Vareddes.

"Vareddes"—says a local historian of the battle—"is now a very quiet place. There is no movement in the streets and little life in the houses, where some of the injuries of war have been repaired." But there is no spot in the wide battle-field where there burns a more passionate hatred of a barbarous enemy. "Push open this window, enter this house, talk with any person whatever whom you may happen to meet, and they will tell you of the torture of old men, carried off as hostages and murdered in cold blood, or of the agonies of fear deliberately inflicted on old and frail women, through a whole night."