Paris, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 2

by William Walton

The great question of the army, of its relations with the civil authority and of the apparent hopelessness of any attempt to reconcile its maintenance and effectiveness with the democratic evolution of the age,—never a more burning question in France than at the present day,—scarcely admits of any of these pleasantries. But seldom have the amenities of discussion more completely disappeared than in the polemics now raging over the trial for treason of an officer of the general staff. One of the more recent of these dispassionate studies of the military problem appears in an article by M. Sully-Prudhomme in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and the failure of his attempt to solve the antinomy is striking. "To say, with Renan," he prefaces, "that 'war is essentially a thing of the ancien régime,' is to say that it is not of the essence of the new one; and as formerly war would be considered as destitute of any cause in the case where there were no enemies, that is equivalent to supposing that to-day no people have enemies. Such an assertion assuredly does not express Renan's meaning. He intended to say, doubtless, that in our day the use of force to decide international conflicts is in contradiction with the moral principles professed by civilized nations; in other terms, that, logically, they should never have enemies.

"Would to God that it were so! Unfortunately, we know only too well that in reality this is not so. Therefore, no people, having a due regard for their preservation and their independence, can reasonably diminish their military forces, nor even risk diminishing them, unless other peoples do as much. For any one who has informed himself in this respect as to the dispositions of the greater number of them, this simple remark will suffice to condemn in any one of them any attempt at individual reform in its military laws in any manner tending to compromise its security in the midst of the others."

But he finds, very naturally, that all the qualities of the military spirit, and those conducive to military power, are becoming "more and more incompatible with the inclinations of the individual, and contrary to the expansion of his intellectual and impassioned life." None of the methods proposed to diminish this incompatibility—civilizing war by an attempt to reduce its horrors, modifying the rigors of discipline, specializing and restricting the military service—are available; the last two, indeed, are directly at variance with the necessities of the actual situation. For the acceptance thus rendered necessary of this survival of the past, this persistence of war and all its consequences, he finds that the intelligence may recognize the fact that to place itself under the direction of those more competent is not necessarily to abdicate, that an unprejudiced examination will demonstrate the necessity of military obedience. For the soul, for the spiritual qualities, he finds nothing in the progress of modern ideas "to aid in the perfecting of the instruments and the apprenticeship of death." The blind fanaticism of the Mohammedans, the unquestioning faith of the early Christians, which faced extinction even with joy, have been replaced among modern men by sceptical, questioning, and even material philosophies which "offer us really nothing which is worthy a sincere faith in a dream, in a survival eternal and heavenly." So true is this, that, were he able, by enlightening him, to detach a Breton conscript from his blind faith which enables him to die bravely for the honor of the country, he would not do so, he would "prefer to betray philosophy." "A ridiculous compromise, perhaps, but certainly less disastrous than a defeat. This is one of the ironical inconsequences to which war condemns us, and for which it alone is responsible. Whilst waiting for its suppression, let us resign ourselves to submit to it, and let us endeavor to make the best of its violences; it imposes upon us at least the cultivation of the virile virtues, the esteem of a labor which does not enrich, and which places us in a position to interrogate very closely, willingly or unwillingly, the profundity of the tomb."

Another writer, who concerns himself more exclusively with military matters, M. Abel Veuglaire, arrives at an equally depressing conclusion. He, too, finds nothing to quite replace the old-time qualities which fed the military spirit. The soldier of the last century, under the rod of his corporal, did not rebel because he had been made an artificial being, brutalized, deprived of all those sentiments which, if they could excite enthusiasm, could also produce discouragement. In him, the desire for wine and pillage, the eagerness for quarrel, the sentiment of a point of honor, were carefully substituted for the family affections and the consciousness of moral duties. The promise of plunder and the fear of the gallows, a certain pride in his corps or his regiment, a certain esprit cocardier, made of him a soldier. But the moral worth of the modern recruit is derived from his family or from his school. "Very scarce, indeed, are those whom the regiment transforms. Scarcer still are those whom it will transform in the future. We are dupes of an illusion. We see the young men leave the military service very different from what they were when they entered it. We exclaim that the discipline is wholesome, that the air of the barracks is vivifying, that the regiment is a school of moral tendencies at the same time that it is a sanitary establishment. Ah, no!... I do not believe, in fact, that the moral qualities, that the civic virtues, are acquired in the caserne. If they exist in a condition more or less latent in the recruit when he arrives, they may be developed in him through the care of the officers, as, moreover, they run the risk of shrivelling up if their cultivation is neglected. But the result of this tardy education is always sufficiently meagre. The evil natures, the vicious characters, accentuate their defects, instead of attenuating them, under the compression of discipline. It is not strong enough to master the souls rebellious at the bottom. It chastises misconduct; it has no authority over thought.... Therefore, it would be logical to diminish the duration of the military service strictly to the minimum necessary to learn the trade."

And in summing up, after describing the "moral degradation" of the old soldiers, he concludes: "Imagine what, in our modern society, can be a soldier who re-enlists. He is a man who definitely bids adieu to family affections, who desires simply a small, tranquil existence, regular, well secured. This man is most decidedly a mediocre. Perhaps he may render some service to the bleus; but he cannot be offered to them as a model nor as a guide."

It is to be said, however, that not all the pictures drawn of this life in the caserne are as gloomy as these. On this subject there is indeed abundant information. Notwithstanding the respectable number of exceptions provided by the more or less merciful various laws of conscription,—the eldest of a family of orphans, the only brother of six sisters, the eldest of a family of seven children, the elder of two brothers drawn at one time or the younger brother of one actually doing service,—the experience of the class of the bleus, as the raw recruits are called, is sufficiently common among French citizens of very varying classes of society. Naturally, the gentlemen find this very democratic experience more trying than do the peasants and the bumpkins. Every visitor to Paris who has passed the inoffensive looking and very youthful infantry sentinels on duty, or seen their comrades crowding in the open windows of the great, bare barracks, has experienced some desire to know something of the interior life of these great military warehouses. Our illustrations may serve to suggest many of the more picturesque and, so to speak, domestic of these minor incidents, and one of the most cheerful of the scribes who have participated in them, M. Henri de Noussanne, can give us further information. His experience lay in the daily life of an infantry soldier, but the general lines are the same for all arms of the service.

Unfortunately, to begin with, as there is always a possibility of war with the return of the swallows, the usage has been established of summoning to the colors the neophytes in the month of November. The rigors of the wintry season are thus added to those inherent in the rudiments of military discipline. Consequently, and as the State provides her budding warriors with but one handkerchief, two pairs of gloves, and no stockings, M. de Noussanne earnestly counsels the mothers and sisters to furnish these young men with thick underclothing and warm woollen stockings. Behold them finally enrolled in "the grand class, the real class, the most sympathetic of classes, that of the bleus," parading the streets, escorted by parents and relatives in tears and by joyous and unsympathetic urchins! At the sight of the great caserne which yawns to swallow them, their respect for authority becomes definite and concrete; otherwise, their ideas are like their marching, much bewildered. Once entered, the anciens take them in hand, tutoying them fraternally: "Thou, thou art my bleu.... Don't be afraid.... No one will mistouffle thee.... I will fix thy affairs." They even show them maternally how best to tuck themselves in their narrow beds; and the regulations no longer permit hazing of any kind. So that the first night is apt to be one of the repose that follows various and conflicting emotions.

The réveil sounds at six o'clock. The great operation of shedding citizens' garments and assuming the uniform is at hand, and is one of the most amusing in the life of the caserne. The captain of the company oversees it with the utmost care. "He has to verify everything, see everything. In the exact terms of the regulations, he is the father of the company. His rôle is of capital importance. No detail of the instruction, of the tenue, of the discipline, should escape him. Two hundred men are confided to his care, for whom he is responsible to the colonel and the chef de bataillon, who, to reward or to punish, govern themselves by his notes. At every moment he is called upon to dispense justice, for in a family of two hundred members the conflicts are frequent. He can inflict only two weeks in the salle de police, or a week in prison, but his decrees are brought to the knowledge of the superior authority, which takes upon itself to increase their severity.