Bertram sat with him on a hummock of earth, shared some sandwiches with him, and tried, in simple phrases, with an emotion that he felt, to assure this peasant who had been a poilu of France, that England had a soul above shop-keeping, that her share in the war had been not only enormous in sacrifice, but heroic in ideal.
The man listened to him with patience, but also with amusement.
“Monsieur is an idealist! After experience of war?” That was strange. He himself was a realist. Nations, like individuals, would fight for self-interest, to save their skins, their land, their women. They would fight to get revenge, to kill people they hated, because of pride, and more because of injury, to capture their trade, or their territory. It was natural. It had always been like that. It would never change.
Bertram saw in this young farmer the type of French manhood, the very soul of France. Through centuries of history, men like this, on this soil, had fought for their land and their women, for conquests, for pride in France. They had been invaded, harassed, and ravaged. They had lived always between the plough and the sword, first one, then the other, turn and turn about. Peace was only an interlude, either when France was weak, in defence, or when France was strong, in aggression, in contraction or expansion, as an Empire or Republic.
The French mother rocking her babe in the cradle knew in her heart that one day this man-child would march away to battle. It was in the songs she sang to send it to sleep. The boy knew that when manhood came he would leave home for the barracks, to learn soldiering as he had learnt farming. So it had been in the time of the Valois, in the reign of Henri IV., before Burgundy was France, before the Revolution, all through the Napoleonic era, ever afterwards, till 1918, with brief spells for recovery, the binding of wounds, the growing of another generation of boys. “C’etait toujours comme ça. Ça ne changera jamais.” It was always like that. It would never change.
Bertram glanced sideways at the man; thirty-five, perhaps, with a strong, hard profile, ruddy skin, fair moustache. A Frank of northern stock. Teutonic rather than Latin, though, perhaps, with a strain of Latin blood. The typical poilu of Picardy, Normandy, Artois.
“France cannot afford another war,” Bertram said; “it would bleed her to death. Must there always be conflict? Why not make friends with the Germans?”
The young farmer laughed loudly, and spat.
“Friends with the Boches? Does one make friends with a hungry tiger? If one can’t kill it at once, one digs a ditch round one’s house and keeps one’s gun ready. So I have heard! There’s still another way to treat a tiger. Cut its claws and cage it. That is our way with Germany now.”
“If the tiger escapes and grows its claws?”