Round about Bar-le-Duc

by Susanne R. Day

Or are the French the victims of their own history? Did not the Revolution sow the seeds of deep distrust between aristocracy and bourgeoisie and, more than that, sow an even deeper distrust between bourgeois and bourgeois? During the Reign of Terror the man who dined with you to-night all too often betrayed you on the morrow, neighbour feared neighbour, and with terrible justification, the home became a fortress round which ran a moat of silence and reserve, the family circle became the family horizon, people learned to live to themselves, to mind their own business and let the devil or who would mind that of their neighbours.

When England was blossoming in a springtime of altruism, when great-minded men and women were learning that the burden of the poor, the sick, the suffering was their burden to be shouldered and carried and passed from hand to hand, France was still maimed and battered by blows from which she has scarcely yet recovered.

Even to-day French women tell me of the isolation of their upbringing. "Our father discouraged intercourse with the families about us."

But that narrow individualism—or, more properly, tribalism—is, I think, dying out, and the present war bids fair to give it its death-stroke.

Behind the Revolution lay no fine feudal instinct, no traditions save those of bitter hatred and of resentment on the one hand, of contempt and oppression on the other. Not, it will be acknowledged, the best material out of which to reconstitute a broken world. And so what might be called collective sympathy was a feeble plant, struggling pitifully in unfavourable soil. The great upper class which has made England so peculiarly what she is scarcely existed in France. The old aristocracy passed away, the new sprang from the Napoleonic knapsack; Demos in a gilt frame, a Demos who had much to forget and infinitely more to learn.

Some philanthropic societies, of course, existed before the war, but, so far as my knowledge of them goes, they were run by the State or by its delegates, the iron hand of officialdom closed down upon them, they made little if any claim upon the heart of the people. Perhaps in a nation of such indomitable independence no more was necessary, but what was necessary—if I may dare to say so—was large-hearted sympathy and understanding between class and class—a common meeting-ground, in fact.

So, at least, I read the problem, and offer you my solution for what it is worth, uncomfortably aware that wiser heads than mine may laugh me out of court and sentence me to eternal derision.

One thing, at least, I do not wish, and that is to bring in a verdict of general inhumanity and hard-heartedness against the French nation. A certain imperceptiveness, lack of intuition, of insight, of the sympathetic imagination—call it what you will—is, perhaps, theirs in a measure; but, on the other hand, the individual responds quickly, even emotionally, to an appeal to his softer side. Only he has not acquired the habit of exposing his soft side to view and asking the needy to lean upon it! Nor has he acquired the habit of going forth to look for people ready to lean. He accepts the status quo. But prove to him that it needs altering, and he is with you heart and hand. His is an attitude of mind, not of heart. When the heart is touched the mind becomes its staunchest ally. The feeding of the refugees done on lavish scale, the installation of a hostel for the relatives of men dying in hospital are instances of what I mean. For months, years, poor women, wives and mothers coming to take their last farewell of those who gave their lives for France, had no welcome in Bar. All too often they were unable to find a bed, they wandered the streets when the hospitals were closed against them, they slept in the station. Then a Médicin-Chef, with a big heart and reforming mind, suggested that the refugee dormitories in the market should be converted into a hostel. No sooner suggested than done. The "Maison des Parents" sprang into life, a tiny charge was made for le gîte et la table, voluntary helpers served the meals, organised, catered, kept the accounts. France only needs to be shown the way. One day she will seek it out for herself. Every day she is finding new roads. And this I am sure every one who has worked as our Society has done will endorse, no appeal has ever been made in vain to those who, like our friends in Bar-le-Duc and elsewhere, gave with unstinting generosity and without self-advertisement.

II

Think, too, of the hospitals. The call of the wounded was answered magnificently. Remember that before the war French hospitals were very much where ours were in the days of Mrs. Gamp, and before Florence Nightingale carried her lamp through their dark and noisome places. It is said that the nursing used to be done by nuns for the most part, a fact of which the Government took no cognisance when it drove the religious orders from the country, and when they went away it fell into the hands of riff-raff. Women of no character, imported by students as worthless as themselves, masqueraded as ministering angels, and it is safe to assume that they neither ministered nor were angelic. Gentlewomen, even the petit bourgeoisie, drew their skirts aside from such creatures. The woman of good birth and education who became a nurse, not only violated her code by earning her living, but cut her social cables and drifted out upon an almost uncharted sea. Only the few who were brave enough to attempt it trained (if my authorities are reliable) in England, and no doubt it was owing in large measure to them that a movement for re-organising the hospitals was set on foot. But before the project could mature the church bells, ringing out their call to arms, rang out a call to French women too, and gathered them into the nursing profession.