"Come, he is better than he was this morning," says the major, and in a low voice meant for the nurse's ear, he continues, "This man too, nurse, I am beginning to think that we shall save. But you must not leave him alone for one moment on any account."
Oh, what unnecessary advice, for she has not the smallest intention of leaving him alone, this white-gowned nurse, whose eyes have already black rings around them, the result of a watch of forty-eight hours without a break. Not one of them will be left alone, oh no! To be sure of this, it is sufficient to glance at all those young doctors and all those nurses, somewhat exhausted, it is true, but so attentive and brave, who will never let them out of their sight.
And, thank heaven, nearly all of them will be saved.[2] As soon as they are well enough to be moved they will be taken far away from this Gehenna at the Front, where the Kaiser's shells delight to hurl themselves upon the dying. They will be put more comfortably to bed in quiet field hospitals, where indeed they will suffer greatly for a week, a fortnight, a month, but whence they will emerge without excessive delay, better advised, more prudent, in haste to return once more to the battle.
It may be said that the scheme of gas attacks has failed, like that other scheme of attacks in great savage onrushes. The result was not what the Gorgon's head had expected, and yet with what accurate calculation the time for these attacks has been selected, always at the most favourable moment. It is well knows that the Germans, past masters of the art of spying, and always informed of everything, never hesitate to choose for their attacks of whatever kind, days of relief, hours when newcomers in the trenches opposite to them are still in the disorder of their arrival. So on the evening on which the last crime was committed six hundred of our men had just taken up their advanced position after a long and tiring march. Suddenly in the midst of a volley of shells which surprised them in their first sleep, they could distinguish, here and there, little cautious sibilant sounds, as if made stealthily by sirens. This was the death-bearing gas which was diffusing itself around them, spreading out its thick, gloomy, grey clouds. At the same time their signal lights suddenly ceased to throw out through that mist more than a little dim illumination. Then distracted, already suffocating, they remembered too late those masks which had been given them, and in which in any case they had no faith. They were awkward in putting them on; some of them, feeling the scorching of their bronchia, urged by an irresistible impulse of self-preservation, even yielded to a desire to run, and it was these who were most terribly affected, for, breathing deeply in the effort of running, they inhaled vast quantities of chlorine gas. But another time they will not let themselves be caught in this way, neither these nor any others of our soldiers. Wearing masks hermetically closed, they will station themselves immovably around piles of wood, prepared beforehand, whence sudden flames will arise, neutralising the poisons in the air, and the upshot of it all will be hardly more than an uncomfortable hour, unpleasant while it lasts, but almost always without fatal result. It is true that in those accursed dens which are their laboratories, Germany's learned men, convinced now that the neutral nations will acquiesce in anything, are making every effort to discover worse poisons still for us, but until they have found them, as on so many other occasions, the Gorgon gaze will have missed its mark. So much is certain. We, alas! have as yet found no means of returning them a sufficiently cruel equivalent; we have no defence other than the protective mask, which, however, is being perfected day by day. And, after all, in the eyes of neutral nations, if they still have eyes to see, it is perhaps more dignified to make use of nothing else. At the same time, how very different our position would be if we succeeded in asphyxiating them too, these plunderers, assassins, aggressors, who broke into our country like burglars, and who, despairing of ever bursting through our lines, attempt to smoke us out ignominiously in our own home, in our own dear country of France, as they might smoke out rabbits in their burrows, rats in their holes. No language of man had ever anticipated such transcendent acts of infamy which would revolt the most degraded cannibals, and so there are no names for such acts. Our poor victims of their gas, panting for breath in their cots, how ardently I wish that I could exhibit them to all the world, to their fathers, sons, and brothers, to excite in them a paroxysm of sacred indignation and thirst for vengeance. Yes, exhibit them everywhere, to let everyone hear the death-rattle, even those neutral nations who are so impassive; to convict of obtuseness or of crime all those obstinate Pacifists, and to sound throughout the world the alarm against the barbarians who are in eruption all over Europe.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Of six hundred who were gassed that night, more than five hundred are out of danger.