"Yes—if France had a Napoleon to-day ..." was his reply.
He was a newcomer to Paris.
"Tell me about the Commander-in-Chief," he asked me. "Who is Joffre, anyway?"
I told him what everybody knew, which was almost nothing.
GENERAL JOFFRE LUNCHING JUST BEHIND THE FIGHTING LINE IN CHAMPAGNE
Now let me shift the picture from the tomb of Napoleon on a sunny morning in August. It is a bleak day on the undulating plains of Champagne—a few kilometers to the rear of the battle-lines, where the French had been steadily gaining ground for several weeks. Only the week before they brilliantly stormed the hills where the Germans had entrenched after the battle of the Marne, and they captured every position.
A fine drizzle had been falling since early morning, making the ground soggy and slippery. Along the roads the crowds of peasants and inhabitants of near-by villages are sloshing toward the great open plain. But all the roads are barred by sentries and they are turned back. No civilian eyes except those of a half dozen newspapermen may see what is to happen there. Yes, something is to happen there—something impressive—something soul-stirring—but there are to be no cheering spectators, no heraldry and no pomp.
It is to be a military pageant, without the crowd. It is a change from the ante-bellum military show at Longchamps on the fourteenth of July, when the tricolor waved everywhere, when the President of the Republic and the generals of the army in brilliant uniforms reviewed the troops of France, and all the great world was there to see.
This is to be a review of the troops who took the hills back there a little way, sweeping on and up to victory while a murderous German fire poured into them, dropping them by thousands. Through that clump of trees sticking up in the mud, are little crosses marking the graves of the dead.