Towards the Goal Part 6
But apart from active fighting, take such a common experience as what is called "a long reconnaissance." Pilot and observer receive their orders to reconnoitre "thoroughly" a certain area. It may be winter, and the cold at the height of many thousand feet may be formidable indeed. No matter. The thing is done, and, after hours in the freezing air, the machine makes for home; through a winter evening, perhaps, as we saw the two splendid biplanes, near the northern section of the line, sailing far above our heads into the sunset, that first day of our journey. The reconnaissance is over, and here is the first-hand testimony of one who has taken part in many, as to what it means in endurance and fatigue:
"Both pilot and observer are stiff with the cold. In winter it is often necessary to help them out of the machine and attend to the chilled parts of the body to avoid frost-bite. Their faces are drawn with the continual strain. They are deaf from the roar of the engine. Their eyes are bloodshot, and their whole bodies are racked with every imaginable ache. For the next few hours they are good for nothing but rest, though sleep is generally hard to get. But before turning in the observer must make his report and hand it in to the proper quarter."
So much for the nights which are rather for observation than fighting, though fighting constantly attends them. But the set battles in the air, squadron with squadron, man with man, the bombers in the centre, the fighting machines surrounding and protecting them, are becoming more wonderful, more daring, more complicated every month. "You'll see"--I recall once more the words of our Flight-Commander, spoken amid the noise and movement of a score of practising machines, five weeks before the battle of Arras--"when the great move begins _we shall get the mastery again, as we did on the Somme._"
Ask the gunners in the batteries of the April advance, as they work below the signalling planes; ask the infantry whom the gunners so marvellously protect, as to the truth of the prophecy!
"Our casualties are _really_ light," writes an officer in reference to some of the hot fighting of the past month. Thanks, apparently, to the ever-growing precision of our artillery methods; which again depend on aeroplane and balloon information. So it is that the flying forms in the upper air become for the soldier below so many symbols of help and protection. He is restless when they are not there. And let us remember that aeroplanes were first used for artillery observation, not three years ago, in the battle of Aisne, after the victory of the Marne.
But the night in the quiet village wears away. To-morrow we shall be flying through the pleasant land of France, bound for Paris and Lorraine. For I am turning now to a new task. On our own line I have been trying to describe, for those who care to listen, the crowding impressions left on a woman-witness by the huge development in the last twelve months of the British military effort in France. But now, as I go forward into this beautiful country, which I have loved next to my own all my life, there are new purposes in my mind, and three memorable words in my ears:
"_Reparation--Rest.i.tution--Guarantees!_"
No. 7
_May 10th_, 1917.
DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--We are then, for a time, to put France, and not the British line, in the forefront of these later letters. For when I went out on this task, as I think you know, I had two objects in mind--intimately connected. The first was to carry on that general story of the British effort, which I began last year under your inspiration, down to the opening of this year's campaign. And the second was to try and make more people in this country, and more people in America, realise--as acutely and poignantly as I could--what it is we are really fighting for; what is the character of the enemy we are up against; what are the sufferings, outrages, and devastations which have been inflicted on France, in particular, by the wanton cruelty and ambition of Germany; for which she herself must be made to suffer and pay, if civilisation and freedom are to endure.
With this second intention, I was to have combined, by the courtesy of the French Headquarters, a visit to certain central portions of the French line, including Soissons, Reims, and Verdun. But by the time I reached France the great operations that have since marked the Soissons-Reims front were in active preparation; roads and motor-cars were absorbed by the movements of troops and stores; Reims and Verdun were under renewed bombardment; and visits to this section of the French line were entirely held up. The French authorities, understanding that I chiefly wished to see for myself some of the wrecked and ruined villages and towns dealt with in the French official reports, suggested, first Senlis and the battle-fields of the Ourcq, and then Nancy, the ruined villages of Lorraine, and that portion of their eastern frontier line where, simultaneously with the Battle of the Marne, General Castelnau directed from the plateau of Amance and the Grand Couronne that strong defence of Nancy which protected--and still protects--the French right, and has baulked all the German attempts to turn it.
Meanwhile, in the early days of March, the German retreat, south of the Somme and in front of the French line, was not yet verified; and the worst devastation of the war--the most wanton crime, perhaps, that Germany has so far committed--was not yet accomplished. I had left France before it was fully known, and could only realise, by hot sympathy from a distance, the pa.s.sionate thrill of fury and wild grief which swept through France when the news began to come in from the evacuated districts. British correspondents with the advancing armies of the Allies have seen deeds of barbarism which British eyes and hearts will never forget, and have sent the news of them through the world. The destruction of Coucy and Ham, the ruin and plunder of the villages, the shameless loot everywhere, the hideous ill-treatment of the country folk, the deportation of boys and girls, the ma.s.sacre of the fruit trees--these things have gone deep into the very soul of France, burning away--except in the minds of a few incorrigible fanatics--whatever foolish "pacificism" was there, and steeling the mind and will of the nation afresh to that victory which can alone bring expiation, punishment, and a peace worth the name. But, everywhere, the ruins with which northern, central, and eastern France are covered, whether they were caused by the ordinary processes of war or not, are equally part of the guilt of Germany. In the country which I saw last year on the Belgian border, from the great phantom of Ypres down to Festubert, the ravage is mainly the ravage of war. Incessant bombardment from the fighting lines has crumbled village after village into dust, or gashed the small historic towns and the stately country houses. There is no deliberate use of torch and petrol, as in the towns farther south and east. Ypres, however, was deliberately sh.e.l.led into fragments day after day; and Arras is only a degree less carefully ruined. And whatever the military pretext may be, the root question remains--"Why are the Germans _in France at all_?" What brought them there but their own determination, in the words of the Secret Report of 1913 printed in the French Yellow book, to "strengthen and extend _Deutschtum_ (Germanism) throughout the entire world"? Every injury that poor France in self-defence, or the Allies at her side, are forced to inflict on the villages and towns which express and are interwoven with the history and genius of the French, is really a German crime. There is no forgiveness for what Germany has done--none! She has tried to murder a people; and but for the splendid gifts of that people, she would have achieved her end.
Perhaps the tragedy of what is to be seen and heard at Senlis, on the battle-grounds of the Ourcq, and in the villages of Lorraine, was heightened for me by the beauty of the long drive south from the neighbourhood of G.H.Q.--some hundred and forty miles. It was a cold but clear March day. We had but parted from snow a little while, and we were soon to find it again. But on this day, austerely bright, the land of France unrolled before us its long succession of valley and upland, upland and valley. Here, no trace of the invader; generally speaking no signs of the armies; for our route lay, on an average, some forty miles behind the line. All was peace, solitude even; for the few women, old men, and boys on the land scarcely told in the landscape. But every mile was rich in the signs and suggestion of an old and most human civilisation--farms, villages, towns, the carefully tended woods, the fine roads running their straight unimpeded course over hill and dale, bearing witness to a _State sense,_ of which we possess too little in this country.
We stopped several times on the journey--I remember a puncture, involving a couple of hours' delay, somewhere north of Beauvais--and found ourselves talking in small hot rooms with peasant families of all ages and stages, from the blind old grandmother, like a brooding Fate in the background, to the last toddling baby. How friendly they were, in their own self-respecting way!--the grave-faced elder women, the young wives, the children. The strength of the _family_ in France seems to me still overwhelming--would we had more of it left in England! The prevailing effect was of women everywhere _carrying on_--making no parade of it, being indeed accustomed to work, and familiar with every detail of the land; having merely added the tasks of their husbands and sons to their own, and asking no praise for it. The dignity, the essential refinement and intelligence--for all their homely speech--of these solidly built, strong-faced women, in the central districts of France, is still what it was when George Sand drew her Berri peasants, nearly a hundred years ago.
Then darkness fell, and in the darkness we went through an old, old town where are the French General Headquarters. Sentries challenged us to right and left, and sent us forward again with friendly looks. The day had been very long, and presently, as we approached Paris, I fell asleep in my corner, only to be roused with a start by a glare of lights, and more sentries. The _barriere_ of Paris!--shining out into the night.
Two days in Paris followed; every hour crowded with talk, and the vivid impressions of a moment when, from beyond Compiegne and Soissons--some sixty miles from the Boulevards--the French airmen flying over the German lines were now bringing back news every morning and night of fresh withdrawals, fresh villages burning, as the sullen enemy relaxed his hold.
On the third day, a most courteous and able official of the French Foreign Office took us in charge, and we set out for Senlis on a morning chill and wintry indeed, but giving little sign of the storm it held in leash.
To reach Senlis one must cross the military _enceinte_ of Paris. Many visitors from Paris and other parts of France, from England, or from America, have seen by now the wreck of its princ.i.p.al street, and have talked with the Abbe Dourlent, the "Archipretre" of the cathedral, whose story often told has lost but little of its first vigour and simplicity, to judge at least by its effect on two of his latest visitors.
We took the great northern road out of Paris, which pa.s.ses scenes memorable in the war of 1870. On both sides of us, at frequent intervals, across the flat country, were long lines of trenches, and belts of barbed wire, most of them additions to the defences of Paris since the Battle of the Marne. It is well to make a.s.surance doubly sure!
But although, as we entered the Forest of Chantilly, the German line was no more than some thirty-odd miles away, and since the Battle of the Aisne, two and a half years ago, it has run, practically, as it still ran in the early days of this last March, the notion of any fresh attack on Paris seemed the merest dream. It was indeed a striking testimony to the power of the modern defensive--this absolute security in which Paris and its neighbourhood has lived and moved all that time, with--up to a few weeks ago--the German batteries no farther off than the suburbs of Soissons. How good to remember, as one writes, all that has happened since I was in Senlis!--and the increased distance that now divides the German hosts from the great prize on which they had set their hearts.
How fiercely they had set their hearts on it, the old Cure of Senlis, who is the chief depository of the story of the town, was to make us feel anew.
One enters Senlis from Paris by the main street, the Rue de la Republique, which the Germans deliberately and ruthlessly burnt on September 2nd and 3rd, 1914. We moved slowly along it through the blackened ruins of houses large and small, systematically fired by the German _petroleurs_, in revenge for a supposed attack by civilians upon the entering German troops. _Les civils ont tire_--it is the universal excuse for these deeds of wanton barbarism, and for the hideous cruelties to men, women, and children that have attended them--beginning with that incident which first revealed to a startled world the true character of the men directing the German Army--the burning and sack of Louvain. It is to be hoped that renewed and careful investigation will be made--(much preliminary inquiry has already of course taken place)--after the war into all these cases. My own impression from what I have heard, seen, and read--for what it may be worth--is that the plea is almost invariably false; but that the state of panic and excitement into which the German temperament falls, with extraordinary readiness, under the strain of battle, together with the drunkenness of troops traversing a rich wine-growing country, have often accounted for an honest, but quite mistaken belief in the minds of German soldiers, without excusing at all the deeds to which it led. Of this abnormal excitability, the old Cure of Senlis gave one or two instances which struck me.
We came across him by chance in the cathedral--the beautiful cathedral I have heard Walter Pater describe, in my young Oxford days, as one of the loveliest and gracefullest things in French Gothic. Fortunately, though the slender belfry and the roof were repeatedly struck by shrapnel in the short bombardment of the town, no serious damage was done. We wandered round the church alone, delighting our eyes with the warm golden white of the stone, the height of the grooved arches, the flaming fragments of old gla.s.s, when we saw the figure of an old priest come slowly down the aisle, his arms folded. He looked at us rather dreamily and pa.s.sed. Our guide, Monsieur P., followed and spoke to him.
"Monsieur, you are the Abbe Dourlent?"
"I am, sir. What can I do for you?"
Something was said about English ladies, and the Cure courteously turned back. "Will the ladies come into the Presbytere?" We followed him across the small cathedral square to the old house in which he lived, and were shown into a bare dining-room, with a table, some chairs, and a few old religious engravings on the walls. He offered us chairs and sat down himself.
"You would like to hear the story of the German occupation?" He thought a little before beginning, and I was struck with his strong, tired face, the powerful mouth and jaw, and above them, eyes which seemed to have lost the power of smiling, though I guessed them to be naturally full of a pleasant shrewdness, of what the French call _malice_, which is not the English "malice." He was rather difficult to follow here and there, but from his spoken words and from a written account he placed in my hands, I put together the following story:
"It was August 30th, 1914, when the British General Staff arrived in Senlis. That same evening, they left it for Dammartin. All day, and the next two days, French and English troops pa.s.sed through the town. What was happening? Would there be no fighting in defence of Paris--only thirty miles away? Wednesday, September 2nd--that was the day the guns began, our guns and theirs, to the north of Senlis. But, in the course of that day, we knew finally there would be no battle between us and Paris. The French troops were going--the English were going. They left us--marching eastward. Our hearts were very sore as we saw them go.
"Two o'clock on Wednesday--the first sh.e.l.l struck the cathedral. I had just been to the top of the belfry to see, if I could, from what direction the enemy was coming. The bombardment lasted an hour and a half. At four o'clock they entered. If you had seen them!"
The old Cure raised himself on his seat, trying to imitate the insolent bearing of the German cavalry as they led the way through the old town which they imagined would be the last stage on their way to Paris.
"They came in, shouting '_Paris_--_Nach Paris!'_ maddened with excitement. They were all singing--they were like men beside themselves."
"What did they sing, Monsieur le Cure?--Deutschland uber alles'?"
"Oh, no, madame, not at all. They sang hymns. It was an extraordinary sight. They seemed possessed. They were certain that in a few hours they would be in Paris. They pa.s.sed through the town, and then, just south of the town, they stopped. Our people show the place. It was the nearest they ever got to Paris.
"Presently, an officer, with an escort, a general apparently, rode through the town, pulled up at the Hotel de Ville, and asked for the Maire--angrily, like a man in a pa.s.sion. But the Maire--M. Odent--was there, waiting, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville.
"Monsieur Odent was my friend--he gave me his confidence. He had resisted his nomination as Mayor as long as he could, and accepted it only as an imperative duty. He was an employer, whom his workmen loved.
One of them used to say--'When one gets into M. Odent's employ, one lives and dies there.' Just before the invasion, he took his family away. Then he came back, with the presentiment of disaster. He said to me--'I persuaded my wife to go. It was hard. We are much attached to each other--but now I am free, ready for all that may come.'
"Well, the German general said to him roughly:
"'Is your town quiet? Can we circulate safely?'
"M. Odent said, 'Yes. There is no quieter town in France than Senlis.'
"'Are there still any soldiers here?'
"M. Odent had seen the French troops defiling through the town all the morning. The bombardment had made it impossible to go about the streets.
As far as he knew there were none left. He answered, 'No.'
"He was taken off, practically under arrest, to the Hotel, and told to order a dinner for thirty, with ice and champagne. Then his secretary joined him and proposed that the _adjoints_, or Mayor's a.s.sistants, should be sent for.
"'No,' said M. Odent, 'one victim is enough.' You see he foresaw everything. We all knew what had happened in Belgium and the Ardennes.
"The German officer questioned him again.
"'Why have your people gone?--why are these houses, these shops, shut?
There must be lights _everywhere_--all through the night!'
"Suddenly--shots!--in the Rue de la Republique. In a few seconds there was a furious fusillade, accompanied by the rattle of machine guns. The officer sprang up.
"'So this is your quiet town, Monsieur le Maire! I arrest you, and you shall answer with your life for the lives of my soldiers.'
"Two men with revolvers were set to guard him. The officer himself presently took him outside the town, and left him under guard, at the little village of Poteau, at the edge of a wood."