"At this the other soldier said, 'Don't pay any attention to him, Madame, he always goes on so…but he'll stick it out just the same. We all will. That's the nature of the Frenchman, Madame. He must have his grievance. He must grumble and grumble but when it's necessary, he goes forward just the same…Only he has to talk such a lot before!'
"'Oh, yes, we'll HOLD them, fast enough!' agreed the first one. 'We'll never let them get past us!' (This type of declaring poilu is much given to contradicting himself flatly!) 'But never, never, NEVER an offensive again, from the French…you SEE, Madame—Never again an offensive from the French! They've done their share! They've done more than their share. Never an offensive. We'll hold till the Americans get here, but not more!'
"We were pulling into the station at Meaux by this time, and as the train stood there waiting, I heard a sound that brought my heart up into my mouth…the sound of a lot of young men's voices singing an American College song! Everybody sprang to the windows and there was a group of American boys, in their nice new uniforms, singing at the tops of their voices, and putting their heads together like a college glee-club. Their clear young voices completely filled that great smoky station and rang out with the most indescribably confident inspiriting effect! 'Good God!' cried the dingy, battered soldier at my elbow, 'how little they know what they are going into!' The soldier from Bourgogne said nothing, but looked very stern and sad. The contrast between those two men, one so rebellious, the other so grimly enduring, both so shabby and war-worn, and those splendidly fresh boys outside, seemed to me the most utterly symbolic episode imaginable. There was America—there was France.
"It changed the current of the talk. After that we talked all together, the two bourgeois joining in…sober talk enough, of probabilities and hopes and fears.
"As I walked home at one o'clock in the morning through the silent black streets of Paris, turning over and over what that poor disinherited slum-dweller had said as we parted, quite as earnestly and simply as he had poured out all his disgust and revolt, 'Good-bye, Ma'ame, I never met an American before. I hope I'll meet many more. You tell the Americans the FRENCH WILL SEE IT THROUGH…if a new offensive is necessary…we'll do it! It's the only chance anybody has to have a world fit to live in!'"
When she had finished her story, Dorothy Canfield concluded something like this: "That's what they all come back to, after their fit of utter horror at their life is over. It does them good, apparently, to talk it all out to a patient listener. They always, always end by saying that even what they are living through is better than a world commanded by the Germans…what a perfectly amazing distrust that nation has accumulated against itself!"
They are sick of war; war weary and sad. Yet they will fight on. The will to fight is outside the individual will; yet it is not the will of the leaders, nor is it the will of the many combined in a common will. For the many are tired unto death of war. But for all that they will fight on without flinching. It is the national will—the will deeper than the will of leaders, stronger than the molten will of the many in one purpose. It is the tradition of centuries; it is the unexpressed purpose, perhaps unconscious habit of an old, old people, united far down in the roots of them; not so much by race, for the Franks are of many breeds; not so much by industrial or geographical ties or even political unity, though it approaches that; but bound most surely by the sense of national tradition. A people is fighting. From a thousand villages with their primeval temples, with their lovely cathedrals grown out of the hearts of the race buried in the shadow of their spires, from the shining rivers that flow through green pastures, from soft hills rich in folk tales of heroes, come the millions; and from Paris, ever radiant in her venerable youth, come other millions who make this fighting soul of the nation. What if it grumbles as it fights; it will still fight on. Of course it is sick of war; but it will not stop. It is a spirit that is fighting in France, the spirit of a brave people.
We have in France a few hundred thousand men and will soon have a million and more who are offering their lives in Service. But the whole French nation is giving thus. And it is without hate. One finds instead of hatred in France a feeling of deep disgust for the German and all his works. The spirit of the French is not vicious. It is beautiful. When the war ceases that may subside, may retire to the under consciousness of the people. But it will not depart. It also will remain eternally a part of the salvage of this war.
By the time the transgression of our car had been sufficiently atoned for, dusk was falling. And Henry broke away from the gothic arches of the trees and made for a tavern. He had learned that one must take food in France where he can find it, and ten minutes later we came upon him in front of the inn, talking in a slow loud voice to what was either the inn-keeper's daughter or his pretty young wife thus: "I said," Henry paused and nodded his head and beat the thing in with his hand; "we want some supper—de jurnay—toot sweet!" She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders very prettily and said she could not "say pa." And Henry laughed and went on, still enunciating each word distinctly. "Ah, don't tell us you can't 'Say pa': say 'wee wee.'" And again he told her "toot sweet." That was the only part of the French language that Henry was entirely sure of—that and "comb be-ah!" But we could not get it through her head. So we loaded ourselves into the car and headed back for St. Dizier, where at least they understood Henry's gestures, and we could get food!
Our next journey took us to the greatest training camp in the allied part of the world. It is not the largest camp, of course. It accommodates less than twenty thousand soldiers. But it is what might be called the post graduate college of all training camps. Here ten thousand men come every week from other training camps all over the earth, and are given intensive training. For six days, eighteen and twenty hours a day, these soldiers, trained by many months' labour on other fields, are given the Ph.D. in battle lore, and are turned out the seventh day after a Saturday night lecture on hate, and shot straight up to the front. In all France there is no more grisly place for the weak-stomached man than this training camp—not even the front line trenches will kick up his gorge more sedulously. Yet at first sight the place looks innocent enough. One sees a great basin hollowed among the hills, and in the ten thousand acre plain one sees horse-men galloping, soldiers running, great trucks and tanks lumbering over the field; men digging, men throwing hand-grenades, men clambering over trench walls, stumbling over crater holes, men doing all the innumerable things that are learned by those who carry on the handicraft of war.