Passed by the censor

by Wythe Williams

So, as I have said, I sat with my fellow journalists on the terrasse of the Café Napolitain that fateful afternoon—and waited. That is why we were there—to wait. Several times we thought our waiting was rewarded, and we strained our ears. For we were waiting to hear the guns—the guns of the German attack. Through that entire afternoon, not one of us, singly or in partnership, would have offered ten cents for the city of Paris. We felt in our souls that it was doomed. It was an afternoon to have lived—even though nothing happened.

Toward nightfall we learned that the German forces had suddenly diverted their march to the southeast. We sat on our terrasse and wondered. That night every auto-taxi in the city was conveying a portion of General Maunoury's army out of the north gates, to fall on the enemy's right flank. The next morning, bright and early, those of us who were astir, heard very faintly—so faintly we could scarcely believe, but we heard nevertheless, the opening guns of the battle of the Marne.

I know only one journalist who actually saw the battle of the Marne. I know several who said they saw it, but I did not believe them, and I know better than to believe them now. Of course there are French journalists who took a military part in the battle, but they have not yet had opportunity to chronicle their impressions—those of them who live. This one journalist saw the battle as a prisoner with his own army; he was lugged along with them clear to the Aisne.

The week following the German retreat to the Aisne, I was permitted to visit the field of glory. It was only after skilful maneuvres and great difficulties that I secured a military pass. And then my pass was canceled after I had been out of Paris only three days—and I was sent back under a military escort. But I saw the battlefield before the hand of the restorer reached it.

The trees still lay where they fell, cut down by shells. Broken cannon and aeroplanes were in the ditches and in the fields. Unused German ammunition and food supplies were strewn about, showing where the enemy had been forced to a hasty retreat. Sentries guarded every cross roads. The dead, numbering thousands, lay unburied and dotted the plain as far as the eye could see. It was still the field of glory. It was still wet with blood.

We who took that trip were thrilled by all the silent evidence of the mighty struggle that had taken place there only a few days—only a few hours before. It was easy for us to picture the mammoth combat, the battle of the millions, across that wonderful, beautifully undulating plain. The war was terrible—true. But it was glorious. The men who died there were heroes. Our emotions were almost too much for us. And in the very near distance the artillery still thundered both night and day.

On the third of February, 1915, five months from the time I sat on the terrasse of the Café Napolitain waiting to hear the guns, I travel for a second time over the battlefield of the Marne.

This time I do not have a military pass. It is no longer necessary. The valley of the Marne is no longer in the zone of operations. I go out openly in an automobile. There are no sentries to block the way. The road is perfectly safe; so safe that I take my wife with me to show her some of the devastations of war. She is probably the first of the visitors to pass across that famous battlefield, perhaps soon to be overrun by thousands.

Our car climbs the steep hill beyond Meaux, which is the extreme edge of the battlefield, about ten in the morning; and during the day circuits about half the area of the fighting, a distance of about seventy-five miles—or a hundred miles.

The "Field of Five Thousand Dead" is what the majority of the tourists will probably call the battlefield of the Marne, because of the tragic toll of life taken on that one particular rolling bit of meadow.