Over the Front in an Aeroplane, and Scenes Inside the French and Flemish Trenches

by Ralph Pulitzer

But, on the contrary, the reunion seemed to give mutual encouragement. The soldier braced up the "home folks'" confidence and pride in the army, and the home folks stimulated the soldier's confidence and pride in himself. Thus the experiment has turned out a great success.

The politicians and their fermentations are, in France, the bugbears of the army officers. This feeling of aversion and contempt extends, so far as I could make out, down through the rank and file. They feel that when a nation is at death-grips with its enemy even the most beautiful of democratic theories should be safely locked away with other luxuries; that the politicians should confine their activities to voting the funds necessary for the successful prosecution of the war, and should leave the conduct of the war severely alone.

But in France even those politicians who hanker after a finger in the military pie are unanimous for seeing the war through to a decisive victory. They may play politics about whether the Government should or should not have been removed from Paris to Bordeaux last September; they may squabble over whether General Sarrail is the persecuted military genius of the war or an incompetent officer whose removal from Verdun should never have been sugar-coated by his appointment to Gallipoli; they may intrigue to oust Millerand from the War Ministry and try to get together on Briand for his place; they may stick loyally to Joffre because an old man who is fond of fishing is not likely to become an old man on horseback.

But, whether tirading against the evils of a bureaucracy or perorating against the iniquities of the censorship, you will find the politicians of France, Royalists, Clericals, Conservatives, Radicals and Socialists with all their subtle subdivisions, having proved their patriotism by the greatest sacrifice of which a politician is capable—having for nigh on ten months kept silent!—earnestly and honestly working for their country. They are striving, not for the quick peace of compromise which would relegate the silent, efficient soldiers to their subordinate powers and would restore to themselves all the prestige of full-throated eloquence, but for the deferred and definitive peace of victory, with all the continuance of second-fiddling to which such a postponement subjects them.

It is indeed fortunate for the alliance that France—Army, Government and People—is united in the determination to fight this war through to its logical conclusion. For France is apt to be the nation which pays the piper. England is physically safe behind her fleets, Russia proper is physically safe behind her distances, for the German invasion is not apt to go far beyond her alien provinces of Courland and Poland.

But France is not at sword's length, but at dagger's point, with her enemy—one little slip by any one, from an absent-minded General down to a sleeping sentinel, and she may become not a defeated, but a conquered nation.

And this you can see in the faces of the French to-day. Not anger, not bitterness, not sadness; neither excitement nor despondency is in their faces, but a look of hushed and solemn suspense. It is a nation with straining ears, with straining eyes, with bated breath, waiting, waiting.

After leaving the hush of France, England appears at a disadvantage largely undeserved. Compared with the atmosphere of strain in Paris, the atmosphere of London seems one of relaxation. Contrasted with the breathless struggle for self-preservation in France, the British attitude toward the war seems almost dilettante.

This is unquestionably due in part to the fact that in England a very literal-minded race is shipping its soldiers to fight in merely geographical localities for seemingly abstract principles. The trouble is that England has the Channel and France has the imagination. It is obvious how markedly stronger the combination would be if Britain were fighting an invader and France were fighting for a sentiment.

The superficial impression of holiday soldiering that one gets in England is emphasized by the British hatred of the dramatic and the British worship of sport. The British go on laughing, dining, play-going, dancing, supping; in fact, frivolling, because they think it would be melodramatic to forswear these pursuits because of the war. They go on cricketing, racing, fishing, shooting, hunting, because they go on eating, drinking, sleeping and bathing. These are part of the bodily functions of the Briton.