Towards the Goal

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

By June 1915, 150 "Friends" had rebuilt more than 400 houses, and rehoused more than seven hundred persons. They had provided ploughs and other agricultural gear, seeds for the harvest fields and for the gardens, poultry for the farmyards. And from that day to this, the adorable work has gone on. "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye love one another."

* * * * *

It is difficult to tear oneself away from themes like this, when the story one has still to tell is the story of Gerbéviller. At Vitrimont the great dream of Christianity—the City of God on earth—seems still reasonable.

At Hérémenil, and Gerbéviller, we are within sight and hearing of deeds that befoul the human name, and make one despair of a world in which they can happen.

At luncheon in a charming house of old Lorraine, with an intellectual and spiritual atmosphere that reminded me of a book that was one of the abiding joys of my younger days—the Récit d'une Soeur—we heard from the lips of some of those present an account of the arrival at Lunéville of the fugitives from Gerbéviller, after the entry of the Bavarians into the town. Women and children and old men, literally mad with terror, had escaped from the burning town, and found their way over the thirteen kilomètres that separate Gerbéviller from Lunéville. No intelligible account could be got from them; they had seen things that shatter the nerves and brain of the weak and old; they were scarcely human in their extremity of fear. And when, an hour later, we ourselves reached Gerbéviller, the terror which had inspired that frenzied flight became, as we listened to Soeur Julie, a tangible presence haunting the ruined town.

Gerbéviller and Soeur Julie are great names in France to-day. Gerbéviller, with Nomény, Badonviller, and Sermaize, stand in France for what is most famous in German infamy; Soeur Julie, the "chère soeur" of so many narratives, for that form of courage and whole-hearted devotion which is specially dear to the French, because it has in it a touch of panache, of audacity! It is not too meek; it gets its own back when it can, and likes to punish the sinner as well as to forgive him. Sister Julie of the Order of St. Charles of Nancy, Madame Rigard, in civil parlance, had been for years when the war broke out the head of a modest cottage hospital in the small country town of Gerbéviller. The town was prosperous and pretty; its gardens ran down to the Mortagne flowing at its feet, and it owned a country house in a park, full of treasures new and old—tapestries, pictures, books—as Lorraine likes to have such things about her.

But unfortunately, it occupied one of the central points of the fighting in the campaign of Lorraine, after the defeat of General Castelnau's Army at Morhange on August 20th, 1914. The exultant and victorious Germans pushed on rapidly after that action. Lunéville was occupied, and the fighting spread to the districts south and west of that town. The campaign, however, lasted only three weeks, and was determined by the decisive French victory of September 8th on the Grand Couronné. By September 12th Nancy was safe; Lunéville and Gerbéviller had been retaken; and the German line had been driven back to where we saw it from the hill of Léomont. But in that three weeks a hell of cruelty, in addition to all the normal sufferings of war, had been let loose on the villages of Lorraine; on Nomény to the north of Nancy, on Badonviller, Baccarat, and Gerbéviller to the south. The Bavarian troops, whose record is among the worst in the war, got terribly out of hand, especially when the tide turned against them; and if there is one criminal who, if he is still living, will deserve and, I hope, get an impartial trial some day before an international tribunal, it will be the Bavarian General, General Clauss.

Here is the first-hand testimony of M. Mirman, the Prefét of the Department. At Gerbeviller, he writes, the ruin and slaughter of the town and its inhabitants had nothing to do with legitimate war:

"We are here in presence of an inexpiable crime. The crime was signed. Such signatures are soon rubbed out. I saw that of the murderer—and I bear my testimony.

"The bandits who were at work here were assassins: I have seen the bodies of their victims, and taken the evidence on the spot. They shot down the inhabitants like rabbits, killing them haphazard in the streets, on their doorsteps, almost at arm's length. Of these victims it is still difficult to ascertain the exact number; it will be more than fifty. Most of the victims had been buried when I first entered the town; here and there, however, in a garden, at the entrance to a cellar the corpses of women still awaited burial. In a field just outside the town, I saw on the ground, their hands tied, some with their eyes bandaged—fifteen old men—murdered. They were in three groups of five. The men of each group had evidently clung to each other before death. The clenched hand of one of them still held an old pipe. They were all old men—with white hair. Some days had elapsed since their murder; but their aspect in death was still venerable; their quiet closed eyes seemed to appeal to heaven. A staff officer of the Second Army who was with me photographed the scene; with other pièces de conviction; the photograph is in the hands of the Governmental Commission charged with investigating the crimes of the Germans during this war."