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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 52696
   :PG.Title: Joffre and His Army
   :PG.Released: 2016-08-01
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Charles Dawbarn
   :DC.Title: Joffre and His Army
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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JOFFRE AND HIS ARMY
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      JOFFRE AND HIS ARMY

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      BY

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      CHARLES DAWBARN

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      AUTHOR OF "FRANCE AT BAY," ETC.

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      MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
      49 RUPERT STREET
      LONDON, W.

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      *Published* 1916

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      IN MEMORY OF
      GENERAL GALLIÉNI
      TO WHOM THIS BOOK
      WAS DEDICATED
      (BY PERMISSION)


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.. _`FOREWORD`:

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   FOREWORD

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This book is intended as a presentation card to the
French army.  It is a plain story for plain people,
and there has been a deliberate avoidance of any
technicalities.  In it you will find references to the
leading figures in the fighting organisation of France—Joffre
and his most brilliant collaborators; and I have
tried to render just homage to the "poilu," who is the
French common soldier.  Perhaps the most touching
thought about that man, whose deeds of glory and
pure heroism will inspire the poets for many a long
year, is that he represents not the soldier of
profession, but the soldier drawn from the most peaceful
occupations.  Practically the first great encounter
of the French with the Germans in the battle of
Charleroi, and the subsequent retreat, accounted for
a large part of the regular army, and more or less
placed *hors de combat* the greater number of its
officers.  That professional force was replaced by
the Reserve and later supplemented by the youngest
classes—men culled from the very heart of pacific
France.  They came to the trenches with all their
civilian instincts—it was a peasant and bourgeois
army—but in an amazingly short space of time they
were vying with the old soldier in the brilliance of
their exploits, in their ability to endure supreme
hardship with the greatest gallantry, and without
complaint: an extraordinary story of adaptability.
And it came to pass in the process of time that there
was the army at the front and the army in the rear:
the army of the field and the army of the munition
factory, recruited from different elements, for the
men in the trenches were the peasants, the sons of
agricultural France; and the army of the factories—the
munition workers—was composed of the artisan
and typical town dweller.  And it is as well to
remember, when the question of the future of France,
after the war, arises, that the peasant supported to
a great extent the physical sufferings of the war, the
danger of death and mutilation, the exposure in
the trenches, the cold and damp, whilst the townsman
was harnessed to the intensive labour of producing
shot and shell for infantry and guns.  I do not
insinuate that the townsman shirked the more bitter
task.  Each time a demand was made upon him,
involving sacrifice of life, he also was ready to rise
to any height of abnegation.  And in the more
mechanical branches of the war, such, for instance,
as artillery and aviation, it was often a townsman
who was the hero, and who gained, by some glowing
deed, the precious symbol of the war cross and even,
perhaps, the Legion of Honour.  A pure Parisian
was Guynemer, the sergeant pilot, who, on a
monoplane where he was pilot and combatant, bore down
six German machines in as many months, and won
thus his stripes as sergeant, the military medal—the
highest military award in France—the Legion of
Honour and the War Cross with seven palms; and
all this at the age of twenty-one.  Indeed, in every
enterprise that demanded skill and daring the townsman
was to the fore.  But it is not possible to
differentiate in the heroism displayed by the French.
The historian will never point to the bravery of one
class and the timidity of another, for there has been
bravery everywhere—bravery and heroism of the
most sublime sort poured out with lavish hand to
the eternal glory of France.

In these pages I have sought to give a glimpse of
the "poilu" at work in the trenches, that one may
peep a little through the shutters of his soul.  For
the mind of the "poilu" is strangely barred and
curtained, more strictly than the windows in any English
east-coast town.  The outsider is not permitted to
see the light within.  Question him and he will
proudly boast his vices; concerning his virtues he is
silent, and quaintly ashamed; and to understand the
mentality of the "poilu," to discover what manner
of man he is, one must rub shoulders with him in
everyday life.  Upon some of these familiar visits I
hope my readers will accompany me, at least in
imagination, and will gather some insight into the
character of the Soldier of France.  I shall, indeed,
have ill performed my task if I have failed to show
how valiant he is in facing mortal danger, how
uncomplaining in the midst of monotonous peril, and
in the worst discomforts—waiting the order to attack
without the least murmuring, with soldier-like
acquiescence in the bitter cold of a winter's night or
in the chill of early spring.  He has forged in a
surprisingly short time the *âme militaire*; he has
exhibited an amazing adaptability.  Some had
supposed him ill-disciplined, incapable of the highest
military virtues.  "Is this a school treat?"
exclaimed an outraged Britisher as a detachment of
French soldiers slouched, singing and whistling down
the road.  Yes, a sloppy and disorderly lot they
looked, their clothes dirty and ill-fitting, and hung
around with their kit like travelling caravans.  Surely
such men were no soldiers!  There was a large section
of English opinion convinced that the Frenchmen
would not fight; that, probably, was the German
idea also.  What, then, has effected the transformation?
How has the "poilu" become inspired by
the highest military courage, and for weeks and
weeks, as at Verdun, sustained the most devastating
bombardment?  Ah! that is the secret of this war,
that is the secret of the French temperament, that
secluded soul, which is not always what it seems to
be.  It ever carries in it the seeds and possibilities
of greatness: seeds that lay dormant until this war
germinated them and they developed into the glorious
flower of achievement.  In an instant this quick and
imaginative people awoke to the necessities of the
war; they had every reason to realise its meaning;
it was only too plain.  There it was, written in blood
and carnage in the invaded departments.  England,
of course, lacked that object-lesson.  Merely the
Zeppelins reminded her of the "reality" of the war,
with their pitiable toll of innocent lives; and
moreover, the attitude of the authorities, far from
insisting upon the realisation of the war and its horror,
tended to starve the imaginative side of the
campaign.  There were, of course, the scenes at the
recruiting meetings, the posters and the rest: but
that, after all, was undignified, a little pathetic, and
sometimes even rang false; the great diapason of the
Country's Call was but rarely sounded.  "Your
country needs you," said a theatrical-looking poster;
but did it really need one?  One had to be sure of
that.  And yet, in spite of these disadvantages, in
spite of a despairing and exasperating silence about
the achievements and daily heroisms of the army in
the field—until one began to think that the only
records other than the meagre *communiqué*, were
the casualties—in spite, I say, of these drawbacks,
in spite of the paucity of the appeal, the response of
the young men to this voluntary call was stupefying
in its splendour and spontaneity, so that the French
were able to say—though they did not always say
it with satisfying eloquence—again the fault of those
who did not trouble to let them know precisely what
the splendid English army and English organisation
were doing—that never had the world given such a
picture of sacrifice, of absolute, undiluted courage.
The men of England were splendid, and only the
Government, so ill-adapted to the exceptional,
limped painfully, slowly and awkwardly, behind
public opinion, instead of springing in front to
direct it.

I have said that people at home were not always
sure that the French would be equal to the enormous
strain put upon them by the tragic events of the
invasion, by the systematised savagery of a relentless
foe.  Perhaps they had dipped into history and
become inspired by that wonderful picture that
Alfred de Musset draws in *La Confession d'un Enfant
du Siècle*.  A generation pale, nervous and feverish
was born during the wars of the Empire.  "Conceived
between two battles, raised in the colleges to
the roll of drums, thousands of children looked about
them with sombre eyes and shrinking, quivering
muscles.  From time to time their fathers, stained
with blood, appeared, raised them on their chests
shining with decorations, and then, placing them on
the ground, remounted their horses.

"There was only one man living then in Europe:
the rest filled their lungs with the air that he had
breathed.  Each year France gave three hundred
thousand young men to this man; it was the tax
paid to Cæsar, and if he had not had that mob behind
him, he would not have been able to carry out his
plans.  Never were there so many nights without
sleep as in the time of this man; never has one seen
so many desolated mothers, never such silence, the
hush around the shadow of death.  And yet there
was never so much joy, so much life, so much
war-like music in hearts.  Never was there such pure
sunlight as that which dried up all this blood.  It
was the air of this sky without a cloud, where shone
so much glory, where so much steel glittered, that
the children were then breathing.  They knew well
that they were destined to the hecatombs, but they
believed Murat to be invulnerable, and one had seen
the Emperor pass immune through such a hail of
bullets that one doubted whether he could die.
Death was so fine then, so great, so magnificent in
its smoky purple....  The cradles of France were
shields and coffins also.  There were no longer any
old men, but corpses and demi-gods.  Nevertheless,
France, widow of Cæsar, felt suddenly her wound.
She began to fail and slept with so heavy a sleep that
her old kings, believing her dead, wrapped her in a
white shroud.  The old, grey-haired army returned,
worn out with fatigue, and the fires on the hearths of
deserted châteaux sadly rekindled."

The war is over; the children no longer see sabres
and cuirasses; Cæsar is dead, the portraits of
Wellington and Blücher hang in the Consulates.  Anxious
children sit on the ruins of the world, the children
that were born at the breast of war, for the war.
They had dreamed during fifteen years of the snows
of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids.  Every
one was tired, used up, exhausted.  The light of life
had gone out.  The children, when they spoke of
glory, were urged to become priests, priests when
one spoke of ambition, love and hope; and, whilst
life outside was so pale and shabby, the internal life
of society took on an aspect silent and sombre.  The
habits of students and artists were affected; they
became addicted to wine and women.  And then
De Musset speaks of the influence that Goethe
and Byron—the two finest geniuses of the century
according to Napoleon—exercised over Europe.
"Can't you put a little honey in the fine vases you
make?" he asks of Goethe; and of Byron he
questions, "Have you no well-beloved near your dear
Adriatic?" and adds that though perhaps he,
personally, has suffered more than the English poet,
he believes yet in hope and blesses God.  It is the
reign of despair.  "The ills of the century come from
two causes," he says: "the people who have experienced
the Revolution and Waterloo carry two wounds
in their hearts.  All that was, is no more; all that
will be, is not yet.  Do not look elsewhere for the
secret of our ills."

Could he have foreseen the terrific experience
through which France was to pass a hundred years
from Waterloo, how his tone would have altered into
deep commiseration.  And yet it is interesting to
compare this picture of the years following the
Napoleonic wars and the exhaustion which then
revealed itself—the utter hopelessness of every
one—with the condition to-day when, with the first pale
beams of the sun of peace, France is thinking of the
future, already discounting the profit that will be
obtained by her victorious and long-suffering arms.
What great repose has she not merited?  What great
reward of peace and plenty?  This generation has
fought, has given its life with unheard-of prodigality
that the new generation may not have to fight.  It
has purchased freedom at the terrible price of
blood—freedom from the slavery of Germany.  No.  De
Musset's picture is no longer true, but it is doubtless
this portrait of a puny, bloodless, spiritless France
which impressed itself, all the more vividly because
of the splendour of the word-painting, upon the
foreign observer, and it was perhaps these students
of French history who moulded English opinion.  De
Musset's powerful description was photographed upon
the brain, and few realised that the conditions of
which he spoke were transitory, and that France had
emerged triumphant from her darkest hour when the
pulse of her being was but a thread.  The France of
to-day is not bowed down with despair, but is buoyed
with invincible hope.  Hope in the morrow, hope in
the recreative genius of her people—of their
marvellous powers of recuperation.  It is pleasant, it is
comforting, to note the contrast, to observe the
salutary change the century has brought; the France
of De Musset shuddered, demoralised, over the cold
embers of conflict—a conflict gigantic as it then
seemed, but small in face of the sacrifices of the
Great War.  Even the agonies of Napoleon's invasion
of Russia cannot compare with the hecatomb, the
awful onslaught that Joffre had to meet and defeat.
Glory to the "poilu," to his courage and constancy.
He has saved France; he has gained for her the
sweet and fruitful repose of a century wherein her
inventive industry and creative genius may be
revived; wherein she may excel in the arts, in the
most splendid works of peace; wherein she may
prove to be the torch-bearer of advanced civilisation,
the pioneer—only a prudent and alert pioneer—no
longer the dupe to illusions, of that beatific time
when there shall be no more war.

Nor in this picture of fighting France must one
forget the wife and daughter of the "poilu"; their
work has been splendid.  In no direction has the
national spirit been more finely emphasised.  I recall
a visit to a typical factory in the east of France,
some twenty miles behind the lines, where the
workers were women.  I was struck by their positive
fanaticism.  Upon the walls hung mottoes, just as in
pious English homes one sees texts of Scripture.  One
in particular caught the eye by its terse and vivid
eloquence: "Bad work may kill your brother!"  And
I can well believe that there was no bad work
in that factory.  There was no question of wages;
they were never discussed; no one thought of them;
they were of no importance.  Wages, disputes,
strikes! when the men were fighting a life and death
struggle a few miles away, and when you could hear
plainly the hoarse rattle of the guns when the wind
lay in the right direction?  Impossible!  Instead of
striking, women worked themselves to death and
often were carried fainting from their tasks after a
twelve and fifteen hours' day.  And what an example
the masters set of untiring devotion.  Addressing
the Creusot workers in the twenty-first month of the
war, M. Albert Thomas, head of the Ministry of
Munitions, spoke of chiefs who had kept to their duties
for eighteen hours at a stretch.  For them, at least,
there were no restorative week-ends and pleasant
breaks in public fetes—nothing but a continuous,
back-aching and brain-wearying round.  First to
realise the shortage of the shells, some six months
before the English, the French displayed astounding
energy in remedying the defect.  Their ant-like
industry and powers of organisation, rivalling even
the vast enterprises of America, attracted a world-wide
admiration as great as for their heroism in the
field.  And if it awakened an equal homage, its
presence was even less suspected than those martial
qualities for which, after all, history gives credit and
the brilliant proof though we had forgotten it in
this talk of perpetual peace, in an atmosphere of
material prosperity and a super-civilisation bordering
on decadence.

These things are faintly reflected in my pages
together with some appreciation of the English.
Sometimes it is a little pale, that praise for the
gallant ally: the cause of it I have shown already
in a rudderless Governmental policy and a Press
starved into undue reticence by the Censor.  The
harm of it was seen in querulous articles from
Boulevard pens.  "France has borne the brunt, France
has bled, let others now do their share."  That was
during Verdun, when the trumpets had blown the
fame of France over the wide earth and there was
no note resonating for England—in spite of her
casualty list.  Had the chroniclers, then, forgotten
the glorious stand of the English in the Great Retreat,
how they had saved the French army from being
crumpled up by Von Kluck's furious attacks on the
left wing, and how they had shown unparalleled
resistance against overwhelming odds?  No; the
French have not forgotten, it is engraved eternally
in their hearts.  Those who seem to forget adopt a
political pose; yet it is necessary to reassert the
facts, not to diminish the "poilu," but rather that
we may "realise" him the more, that we may
regard him as a brother for whom we have laboured
and fought, for whom we have shed our blood.
England, by her early heroism in the war, contributed
to the full development and glory of the French
soldier.  It is not the least of our satisfactions that
we have helped to build the proud monument whereon
is emblazoned the imperishable record of his victories.
Thus may we cry with greater fervour, "Vive la
France! vive son armée!"  If we know that army
and know its chiefs, we shall be the readier to protest
our faith.




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   CONTENTS

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   CHAP.

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`FOREWORD`_

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I  `THE AWAKENING`_
II  `THE THREE-YEARS LAW`_
III  `DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL ARMY`_
IV  `JOFFRE—HIS ORIGIN AND RECORD`_
V  `PREPARATION`_
VI  `JOFFRE IN ACTION`_
VII  `THE SECOND IN COMMAND`_
VIII  `THE ORGANISATION OF MUNITIONS`_
IX  `FRENCH DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP`_
X  `GALLIÉNI AND HIS POPULARITY`_
XI  `GALLIÉNI AND HIS COLONIAL EXPERIENCE`_
XII  `THE HERO OF THE OURCQ`_
XIII  `THE MILITARY POWER OF ENGLAND`_
XIV  `SOME TYPES OF COMMANDERS`_
XV  `CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIGHTING`_
XVI  `MILITARY COMMAND AND THE REVOLUTION`_
XVII  `THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES`_
XVIII  `TRENCH JOURNALS AND THEIR READERS`_
XIX  `THE AIRMAN IN WAR`_
XX  `THE "POILU'S" HOSPITAL`_





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.. _`THE AWAKENING`:

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   JOFFRE AND HIS ARMY

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   CHAPTER I

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   THE AWAKENING

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"Rather than submit to the slavery of the
Germans, the whole French nation would perish."  These
words of General de Castelnau are no idle boast—the
coloured eloquence of a General who wishes to
hearten his troops: they are a simple statement of
fact.  France has left behind eloquence and
embroidered phrases: her commerce, her agriculture,
her arts are gone.  She has only one business, that
of fighting: her men are all mobilised.  And behind
them stand the old, the young, the women and
children, waiting their turn, should that turn come.
And if France ever lies under the German heel, at
least of the French people there will be none left
to weep.  That is the spirit animating the army of
Joffre, that army whose exploits must have impressed
even the most unimpressionable by their continued
splendour.  Never was finer heroism displayed than
theirs.  And they recognised from the very first
the desperate character of the enterprise.  It was
not a war of chivalry.  There has been no incident as
at Fontenoy when Lord Hay, addressing the French
guards, invited them to fire first.  The Germans
carried no sentiment of any kind into the battlefield,
where their sole endeavour was to overcome the
adversary, and any means were considered legitimate.
To them the doubtful honour of the most diabolical
inventions for destroying life.  This is not the
atmosphere—the atmosphere of asphyxiating
gas—where chivalry thrives, and the French character,
legends, and traditions of fighting, are utterly opposed
to such scientific barbarities.  "These civilised
savages inspire me with more horror than cannibals,"
said Flaubert.  But far from being overcome and
dismayed by German barbarism, the French showed
an instant spirit of adaptation; the hideous
conceptions of the Hun brain were hurled back to them
across the trenches.  And horror begets horror.
Officers, from the most accomplished generals down
to the subalterns, learned with astounding speed
the new art of war—this terrible, unscrupulous,
brutal combat which, after fearful carnage in the
open, as at Verdun, constantly ran itself to earth,
settling down into trench war of the most monstrous
description.

Protracted trench warfare, it has been said a
thousand times, is quite contrary to the French
disposition, which is all dash and go and impulse.
But to-day we shall have to revise our views, no
doubt, and find that the French have mixed with
their audacity, with their natural quickness of
thought and action and their high receptivity, some
of that resistance and tenacity which are characteristically
British.  Confirmed Anglophiles in France
attribute this phenomenon to the moral influence
of ourselves—a flattering and satisfying doctrine to
our own self-esteem.  But the appearance of this
"new" virtue extended to all parts of the population,
and was so universal that we cannot credit this grand
attribute of the French in the hour of their great
adversity to anything but their own innate qualities.
It was exhibited by mayors of communes, even the
most remote, who have been exposed to the brutalities
of the invaders; by the clergy to a conspicuous
degree—nothing was more touching and remarkable
than their absolute devotion in the most nerve-racking
conditions.  It was shown, indeed, by the whole of
the civil population, young and old, and especially by
women.  How splendid they were!  They did their
work with extreme quietude, with a positive genius
for adaptability, and no illustrated paper published
photographs of their uniforms—for they had none.
On the first day of the mobilisation the French women
turned into the fields to gather the harvest the men
had left on the ground.  They had no time to choose
a suitable costume; no need of exhortations from the
Board of Agriculture.  They were left to do the work,
and they did it without fuss and without parade.
Such examples of determination, tenacity, sheer
self-sacrifice, courage and abnegation existed in all
directions, diffusing a golden light over the country,
just as the coloured windows at the Invalides bathe
the tomb of Napoleon in a splendid effulgence.

In the army itself the adaptability of its leaders is
a thousand times exemplified by the manner in which
erudite soldiers who have taught tactics and strategy
in the War School, along certain lines, suddenly
confronted with the problems of actual war, have seen
that they were quite other than those laid down in
the text-books, and thereafter have speedily adapted
themselves to the new conditions.  Some failed, and
there arose the rumour of many enforced retirements
from active command.  But the inference to be drawn
from this was not always correctly stated.  The
generals in most cases were not incompetent; they
correctly applied the old war rules to the situations
as they arose; but they were not sufficiently supple;
they did not adapt themselves to the new conditions.
The officers who proved the most successful were,
for the most part, the colonels and majors, who in
a few months obtained important commands.

The classic instance of this is General Pétain, who,
when the war broke out, was a colonel, and rose with
breathless rapidity to take supreme command of the
armies at Verdun during that terrific fight which
occupied many weeks of the Spring of 1916.  Romantic
as such a rise may seem to be, it is as well to remember
that the new commander was eminently qualified
by reason of his long preparation to occupy such a
position.  He possesses one of the finest brains in the
army—which in France for long has been an
intellectual profession—and had so trained it that he
was able at once to take advantage of the new
conditions of warfare which have so materially changed
since the area of war was charted for the guidance
of commanders.

When the war broke out, France was not ready.
We in England have been often accused of our
lack of foresight; but the fact that France, living
under the shadow of war, at least since the Agadir
incident, was unprepared seems to have been
incredible folly.  How is it to be explained?  The
explanation is politics, and the pleasant, but
alas! entirely false, atmosphere created by the dreams of
pacifists.  Whilst Germany planned war and
prepared for it in the most cold-blooded manner, France
was dreaming of peace and behaving as if war were
a thing of the past.  All her preoccupations were
pacific; to her purblind politicians, the real danger
was either a struggle between Capital and Labour—and
there were not wanting signs that this was
probable—or else a largely imaginary conflict between
the dispossessed Church and the State.  And, again,
there was a large party in the nation led by the
persuasive eloquence of Jaurès which urged that universal
peace was a practical reality.  France herself did not
want to fight, England showed no bellicosity;
Germany, it was true, through her governing classes,
displayed a disquieting tendency to bully, but the
heart of the people—was not that pacific?  Had not
Socialism, and the doctrine of the brotherhood of
man, taken firm root?  The French Socialists were
convinced that it had.  And so they argued war was
a practical impossibility; for, certainly, this great mass
of German opinion, penetrated with Socialism and
with the ultra-pacific doctrines which go with it,
would never permit the nation to be drawn into war
for the benefit of the fire-eaters and directors of the
great war machine.  The wish was father to the
thought, and these misguided but well-meaning people
were always seeing across the Vosges evidence of
the same beneficent principles that manifested
themselves at home.  The French Socialists were, indeed,
to a great extent anti-militarist: did it not take two
to make a quarrel?  Was it likely that they would be
wantonly attacked when they had not the least
intention of attacking anybody?  Very naturally,
I think, they argued in that strain—and the great
fault was that the directors of opinion in France, as
in England, made no effort to explore the dark waters
of political probability.  It was pleasant to walk
ruminatingly along the banks and to dream that the
good time would always continue.  The bomb-shell
of the invasion brought the awakening.  In a certain
sense English politicians were more to blame than
the French, chiefly because no one of them with their
hard practical Anglo-Saxon sense really believed in
universal brotherhood—there was no Jaurès to
capture the public imagination by the witchery of words.
England realised clearly enough that war between
France and Germany was, sooner or later, inevitable,
and the high failure of these self-same politicians was
that they did not bring home to the public conscience
the no less inevitable intervention by England.
"But we are not scaremongers!  There was too
much talk already about the sword and keeping one's
powder dry," say the apologists.  But it is precisely
in a pacific interest that the so-called leaders of the
nation ought to have spoken.  Mathematics is the
base of war—and of its prevention; and in this case
the sum was easy: merely two and two make four.
If England had displayed the precaution that she
adopts in other affairs—the caution of the typical
citizen safe-guarding his own personal interests—then
Germany would have thought a long while
before crossing the frontier and would still have been
thinking about it.  Knowing what we do of the
Teuton temperament, revealed more particularly
in the report of the camp at Wittenberg, we are
convinced that Germany would have hesitated long
had she not had the quasi conviction of an easy
victory.  Everything points to that: the rapid
defeat of France, and then a swift turning upon
Russia, whose mobilisation is proverbially slow and
whose armament was known to be ludicrously
inadequate.  Undoubtedly a little plain speaking as
well as definite and resolute preparations for eventualities
would have done much to prevent war.  Forces
are blind and superior to man, but war was made by
man, and man sets the current that renders it
inevitable; then, the same human energy directed at
the right time and right place could have prevented it.

Nor was there in England the same anti-militarism
which prevailed in France amongst a large section
hypnotised by the engaging doctrine of high-minded
theorists.  There was no anti-militarism, for the
reason that there was no militarism; England was
not a military power.  And thoughtful Frenchmen
have been immensely impressed by the speed with
which she became one.  The unchanging England
had become changed out of all recognition.  I
remember that when Rodin went first to England, he
was struck by the eighteenth-century aspect of the
people and their institutions.  In the houses and in
the streets he met types such as Gainsborough and
Lawrence painted.  Their clothes even had not
changed, for though English women nominally wear
French fashions, they individualise them and adapt
them to their own tastes.  And this friendly observer
was constantly meeting in the unchanging women
evidences of the eternal England in their classic
features and fresh complexions, their dignified
carriage, splendid shoulders and fine open
countenances.  Even the clothes—the broad hat and the
use of scarfs and trinkets for the adornment of the
person—signified the same thing.

And in military matters this faithfulness to the past
was every whit as pronounced.  The English Army
was unchanging in its traditions, habits and customs,
in its equipment and even in its names.  As
M. Germain Bapst, the French battle historian, has
pointed out, the names of commanders remained
unaltered from the Peninsular War and Waterloo
to the Crimea.  Men purchased commissions in the
British Army until after the Franco-German War,
and only a quarter of a century has elapsed since
soldiers were whipped.  In 1894 there were forty-six
sentences of this sort carried out.  There was little
or no change in the army from the Crimea to the Boer
War.  Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener were the
two magicians who awakened England from her
lethargy.

And then consider the continuity of tradition in
the English regiments: they bear on their standards
the names of the old victories, and their history and
achievements can be traced for hundreds of years.
Not so with the French regiments.  Their identity
has been lost in the shifting sands of the Revolution.
To quote one instance: the Regiment of Piedmont,
which existed in the time of Henry VIII, became a
departmental regiment, then the Third of the Line,
and then the Seventh—it is impossible to keep pace
with its changes.  Practically the history of
regiments in France stops at the Revolution.  That was
the moment of great changes when everything was
swept away and new principles established.  England
the immutable, France the fluid, enthusiastic,
passionate, artistic, wildly given over to new ideas
what singular destiny has brought the two together
as comrades and allies on the field of battle in a
union much closer than in the Crimea, where, however,
Canrobert came to the same conclusion as Foch, who
repeated the eulogium, at an interval of sixty years,
to General Delannes, a former chief of staff: "Once
the British Army has agreed to do something, the
thing is done."  The unchanging spirit, then, the
bull-dog tenacity, that tremendous grip that never
lets go—these British qualities blend and render
powerful the Latin temperament, with its quickness
of comprehension and adaptability.  Slow to see a
new fact, still slower to excite himself, John Bull is
the ideal character to play the waiting game, that
game of exhaustion of the war.  The more wonderful,
then, in the eyes of the French that he should have
made so prodigious a military effort.

Eminent French military critics have dealt with
all the phases of the movement for raising men, first
by the old traditional system of voluntaryism, then
by graduated processes of compulsion.  The result
was an army whose peer the world had never seen,
either for the high training of the men or the quality
of the equipment.  Already in the Spring of 1916
the English artillery was more numerous than the
French, especially in heavy guns.  It is true that the
shooting of those pieces was not as good as that of our
Allies, and that the French sent instructors to coach
the English in their own methods; but one need not
be surprised that we had not immediately acquired
the full science of artillery usage upon which the
French have specialised for many years.  In the strict
co-operation of two armies of differing nationalities
working together in the field there must be necessarily
certain difficulties and differences, and it is
certain that the French did not always comprehend
our methods of fighting.  The English "stick it out"
is often opposed to their own notion of a judicious
retreat.  For instance, the "marmites" are falling
fast upon the front-line trench; there is a danger
of the trench caving in and burying its occupants.
Realising the situation, the French withdraw their
men to the second line—perhaps three hundred yards
behind the other.  The British, however, will not
countenance this strategic move; they remain;
their own flank is exposed.  Two rival principles are
here in play.  Say the British: "Better remain in
the trench, because, on the morrow, you must win it
back again by a counter-attack which is a wasteful
process."  "No," say the French, "retreat in time
and save your men; you can get it back at a less cost
than if you stayed and ran the risk of being decimated
by the big shells."

You may see, no doubt, much of the same spirit
in the question of guarding or abandoning sections
of the line which are difficult to keep.  For instance,
the French probably would have given up long ago the
salient at Ypres, which the English maintained at a
considerable cost, mainly for sentimental, at least, for
moral reasons, whereas the French would have urged
that there was a line behind that would have given a
better and easier frontier to defend.  None, however,
can estimate the moral value to the French of the
mere presence at their side of their old rivals and
antagonists; and the effect of contingents arriving in
France from far-off Canada and Australia, New Zealand
and the Cape, has been quite extraordinary.  Almost
inconceivable, also, has been the material help that
Britain has extended to her Allies.  To France alone
we have advanced £500,000,000, a wonderful achievement
in itself, and we have also supplied unending
stores of coals, steel, boots, clothing—material of
all sorts.

Of the "poilu," too, I shall often speak, but you
will never realise how big he is—this sometimes
unlikely-looking man, hung about with pots and
pans and cumbered with all sorts of strange
impedimenta.  And he is often a poet as well as a hero.
I wish you could read the letters from him I have been
privileged to see, written under the hail of bullets and
in the thunder of the big guns.  His courage and
undying spirit shine through these tender
communications which lose so much in the translation,
which are untranslatable, in fact—for one cannot
translate a perfume or a colour, nor can you put upon
cold paper the complexion of a kiss.  The "poilu"
is peculiarly French in the mood and manner of his
life, in his apparent slackness, in the speed with which
he braces up at the proper moment, his disgust and
objection to mere unintelligent parade, his amused
disdain of the "panache," his admiration for and
whole-hearted devotion to a man capable of understanding
and drawing him out, able to appeal to the particular
form of his patriotism, and to fire him with a holy
zeal for a holy cause—to a man, in fact, who
combines a species of apostolic fervour, a winsomeness
and appeal, with the sterling qualities of a real
leader of men.  Of such men I shall presently
speak—men who inspire devotion like Mahomet over his
followers, men who bring out the spirituality of war—if
so be that one is allowed to speak of its spiritual
side.  For amidst the awful wreck of war—the sufferings
it entails, its thousand miseries, the break-up of
the home, the desolation of hearths, and the
abominations practised upon civilians by the drunken or
cynical soldiers of the Kaiser—there are incidents, as
great and as sublime as ever immortalised the saints
and martyrs dying for their religion, suffering nameless
tortures that, in their quivering flesh, they might
represent, for ever, the sustaining power of God.  Of
such heroism, of such priceless sacrifice this war is
full—so full, that one knows not where to begin, and
certainly would not know where to end, in a recital
of deeds of valour and of splendour, irradiating poor
human nature with a glow of glory whose beams will
reach Eternity.  Yet this war, despite its horror,
despite the fact that it has filled the streets of every
big town in France with a melancholy line of cripples,
of men hopelessly maimed, who must go through the
remainder of their existence on this earth with
diminished vigour, has taught lessons and inculcated
warnings which must continue through the years to
bear their fruit and point the way to the right road
as well as constituting a danger-signal to national
shortcomings.

"Quit yourselves like men."  The war will not
have been in vain if this lesson is laid to heart.  Let
us have no more cant; no more false sentiment; no
more idle dreams and castles built upon the foundations
of a civilisation that does not exist.  If, after
nearly 2000 years of Christianity, we have not learnt
to love one another, let us not, at least, pretend we
do—until we are awakened by a Hymn of Hate.  The
Peace of the future is to the strong, to the country
that is alive to the menace of war, to the nation
constantly vigilant, to a people standing to arms.
France, with her woman's soul, clung to a belief in
civilisation that should make war unthinkable.  But
the nations that emerge from this war will have lost
their illusions; they will have grown old and wise,
and perhaps a little hard.  Yet, at least, they will
have learnt to face facts; they will not cry Peace
when there is no peace.  No, the policy of the nations
will be directed by hard facts; the horrors of the camp
of Wittenberg are seared into our souls.  Dreams and
idealism must have no place in our national affairs;
such pleasant pastimes bring too rude an awakening.





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.. _`THE THREE-YEARS LAW`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   THE THREE-YEARS LAW

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During the Summer of 1913, it became evident
that France had to change her military law to enable
her to cope with the new forces Germany had arrayed
against her.  The growth of the Imperial effectives
was quite remarkable.  They had been increased by
new legislation to 876,000; the cover troops, that is,
those placed along the frontier in readiness for
immediate service, were reinforced by 60,000 men and
500 pieces of artillery.  To these numbers must be
added the enormous total of the reserve: 4,370,000.
Such masses were quite unknown to Europe and
inspired legitimate alarm, not only in France, but
amongst the other nations.  The French Army
numbered 567,000 of the active, and 3,980,000 of
the reserve, namely, 700,000 fewer than the Germans.
Again, of this number, 50,000 were employed in
Northern Africa, and the infantry mass was further
depleted by the creation of artillery regiments,
machine-gun sections and aerial squadrons.  It was
time, therefore, to act.

When the German Emperor went to Tangiers in
1905, few French people ignored the significance of
the step.  And when, in 1911, the *Panther* anchored
off Agadir, each one realised that it was a new menace,
a new challenge to the right of France to Morocco,
notwithstanding that "scrap of paper," the Algeciras
Conference.  The presence of the cruiser was a protest
against the settlement by France of the Moroccan
Railway question and against the march of French
columns on Fez, which was the symbol of French
possession.  On both occasions, Parliament went hurriedly
to work to vote extra credits, realising the state of
unpreparedness, and then sank into its habitual
indifference to these matters.  But now it was no
longer possible to postpone the question of effectives.
The German advance was so real that France was
forced to take note of it on pain of being relegated,
definitely, to an inferior position.  It was soon
apparent that if the discussion revealed some of the
vices of the French Parliamentary system, it also
demonstrated that Parliament could rise, on occasion,
above party and give an example of enlightened
patriotism.  The Government of the Republic, indeed,
was more alive to its duty than the Imperial Government,
which, forty-five years before, had not had the
courage to support Marshal Niel's motion for universal
service.  It was on the eve of the elections and it had
its own policy to pursue.  It was again the eve of
the elections in 1913, but the spirit of the country
had changed; temporisation was no longer possible.
"Let the Chamber tell me the sum it will place at
my disposal and I will say in what measure I can
organise the National Mobile Guard," cried Marshal
Leboeuf, in the discussion under the Second Empire.
It was a preposterous attitude to adopt, quite in
consonance, however, with the lack of seriousness of
the period.  On the very brink of the war, the
Government actually proposed to reduce the annual
contingent!

The discussion in 1913 was remarkable for several
things.  One was its great length: it lasted three
months; another was the prolixity and poverty of
the speeches; hardly one contained the germ of a
great idea.  The striking contributions in this mad
welter of talk could be counted on the fingers of one
hand.  The majority of deputies, until convinced of
the error of their ways, persisted in treating the
question as if it were political rather than patriotic.  Day
by day they mounted to the tribune and delivered
orations as empty as air.  An exception was the great
speech of M. André Lefèvre, who had been Under
Secretary of State for Finance, some years before,
and had resigned "because he had not enough to do."  This
novel reason proved his originality; nor was it
belied by his methods in the rostrum.  He was not
eloquent in an ordinary sense; there was no attempt
at phrase-making; his facts spoke for themselves.
His rather homely appearance gave instinctive force to
his unadorned style, but his manifestly deep concern
for his subject obviated all need of rhetoric.  Thus
his sentences were sharp and telling, and free from
all pose or attempts at persuasion; and, perhaps,
because of that, they carried a double conviction.
Facts and figures were so downright in their character
that none could dispute them.

He showed that Germany had spent a colossal sum
upon her military preparations, and had been
indefatigable in their continuance.  He showed that,
during the preceding thirty years, France had spent
£110,000,000 as against £188,000,000 on the part of
Germany.  Who was responsible for this disparity
of such danger to the country?  M. Lefèvre showed
that no party in the State could escape from censure.
In 1868, each section of the body politic was united—to
do nothing: the Republicans, because they would
not "turn France into a barracks"; the Bonapartists,
because they feared the effect of any action upon
their popularity at the elections; and the Government,
because it had not the energy to stand against a cry
of "reaction."

But if M. Lefèvre's speech represented the sound
view of the situation, the contribution of M. Jean
Jaurès presented features of brilliant generalisation,
expressed in lofty language, which always appeals to
Frenchmen.  His counter proposition had but one
defect: it would not have worked.  None the less,
it was attractive in the abstract and had much to
recommend it.  Its weaknesses were in the details,
which were too fantastic and shadowy for a people who
knew what war was and had drunk deep of the bitter
cup of defeat.  The Socialist leader based his
argumentation on the principle of: "la nation armée."  The
only way to meet the situation was to utilise, fully,
the reserve, he insisted.  And in this he was right,
as the Great War has shown.  Germany's initial
advantage, apart from heavy cannon, machine-guns
and a more intensive training of her troops, was due
to her rapid mobilisation of reserves.

But the Socialist leader failed, notwithstanding his
talents, when it came to working out his scheme.
And yet the House, fascinated and half-convinced,
cheered him repeatedly—but it voted the other way.
This is a common attitude in assemblies which
distinguish between personal success and political
expediency.  The deputies, indeed, could not
withhold their support from General Pau, who, with
General Joffre, was the special commissioner of the
Government.  Yet so much was admirable in the
scheme of M. Jaurès that, had he not been known for
his anti-militarism—and therefore suspect—he would
have fared much better.

What was the matter with France in a military
sense?  It was a question, was it not, of effectives?
But the birth-rate must be arraigned for that.
Whatever was done, declared Jaurès, that primary fact
could not be disavowed.  The Germans were more
prolific than the French and, consequently, had
more soldiers.  "The Three-Years Law is mere
plagiarism of the Germans," he said, with an
impassioned gesture such as Jean Weber has so happily
caricatured.  "You are beaten in advance!" he
shouted.  "Notwithstanding the Three-Years Law
you will have an inferiority, at the outset, of 200,000.
Thus the sacrifice demanded will aggravate the
malaise.  The equilibrium, already disturbed, will
be further accentuated to the extent of 20,000 a
year."  The population of France was only 43,000,000
and that of Germany 70,000,000.  In face of this
inequality it was essential that every citizen should
be trained to arms.  But when he came to this part
of the subject, the Socialist orator fell short of his
first flights.  He was pathetically inadequate.  He
proposed a military service of eighteen months, then
of a year, and finally, from 1918, onwards, of six
months.  Before their embodiment, the young men
were to train for one day a month, and, after their
liberation as reservists, one day every quarter.

The war has shown the possibility of training the
young soldier in less than six months; but when
M. Jaurès presented his scheme none foresaw the
fantastic character that the fighting would assume.
If it had presented its habitual physiognomy of massed
movements in the open, soldiers of six months'
training would have been inadequate to the first shock
of battle.  Though, as we have shown, there were
points in the speech that revealed acute observation
and an accurate reading of the times, the treatment of
details was deplorable.  Here and there his inspiration
failed him, as if his mentor, who was known to be
Captain Girard, a writer on military topics, had ceased
to jog his elbow.  One of the least happy of his
inventions was his proposal in regard to the "cover."  He
considered that it was quite adequate with the
protection of the Eastern Forts.  Again, the frontier
departments, being rich and highly industrialised,
could organise their own defence.  "If you have
confidence in the people, if you organise them in
unities constituted locally and ready to march at the
first sound of the war tocsin, if you launch all these
living forces towards the frontier, this, indeed, is
the real cover."  From this passage you may judge
the character of his pleading: the appeal to national
sentiment and spontaneous enthusiasm, as opposed
to the laboured and essentially mechanical preparation
of the Germans.  He went to military history to
prove that, in 1813, Germany was saved not by her
generals formed in the school of Frederick the Great,
but by her *landwehr*, which constituted 60 per
cent. of the army—peasants hastily armed to defend the
soil.  Evidently he thought that the old revolutionary
spirit would flame forth again in France and
suffice against any wanton attack.

He was admirable in his description of the German
plan to invade France abruptly and to bring her to
her knees by forced marches, by a rapid succession of
blows, and the occupation of her capital, and then
to turn swiftly towards Russia.  Jaurès found
consolation—alas! unwarranted—in the thought that
Germany under Prussian domination would never
make full use of her reserves.  She was afraid, he said,
of a democratic army, afraid of that spirit which had
enabled France, amidst all her difficulties and lack
of preparation, to resist for seven months, in '70, and
had given Bismarck and Von Moltke a certain anxiety
even after Sedan.  Better build strategic railways
than barracks, he said, so that an avalanche of men
might be poured on the frontier to meet the German
mass—a conclusion which was wise enough.

Then there was M. Clementel, a former Minister of
Colonies, with some experience of army affairs, who
had likewise his little plan to propose.  He wished
to divide the reserve into eleven classes which would
train alternately, for a month at a time, during the
year.  Parliament rejected it, not because it was
fanciful, but because the transportation of 200,000
men a month to their training camps would
disarrange the railway systems.  M. Messimy—who was
Minister of War, during the early days of the Great
Invasion, and, like Mr. Winston Churchill, resigned
his Cabinet functions to join the army—devised a
method whereby the youth of the country would be
trained for twenty-six months.  How he proposed to
bridge the gap between the departure of the
time-expired men and the arrival of the new recruits was
never made clear.  In the light of his subsequent
experience as a Colonel of troops, and wounded in
action, he probably thought better of his own plan.

General Pau clinched the matter by a series of
irrefutable figures.  His style differed utterly from
that of any other speaker.  He showed the quick
temperament of a leader of the old school, who
believed in a brisk offensive.  Taking umbrage, one
day, at the remarks of a deputy, he gathered up his
papers and walked out of the House, to the
consternation of the Government.  Wounded in the 1870
conflict and bearing the token of it in an amputated
arm, he looked and spoke with the abruptness of the
traditional soldier.  As a leader of men he was
impetuous and brusque in his methods, rather than
a cool calculator like the Generalissimo.  He told the
House, with a certain impetuousness, that the troops
available for national defence were scarcely more
than half the German effectives.  For, abstraction
made of the number serving overseas, France had
only 480,000 in her active army, whilst Germany had
830,000.  First-class reserve, territorials, and the
reserve of the territorials amounted to 3,978.000, of
which a part had performed only twelve months'
service in accordance with the terms of the 1889 law.
In Germany, the reserve amounted to 4,370,000,
giving an advantage to that country of 400,000 men.
The effectives were constantly growing in the one
country, with the advance in population, but remained
stationary in the other.  Whilst France called up
every available man for service, Germany was in the
happier position of being able to dispense with a
certain portion of her resources.  Thus, automatically,
an increase in her peace establishment meant
an increase in the reserve.

The German law of 1913 gave 63,000 more men
to the active army and increased the effectives to
5,400,000.  The speaker was even more impressive
when, looking forward to 1937—in twenty-four years
from that date—he anticipated that the adverse
balance in the reserve would amount to one million
and a half.  "Since our numerical weakness is
undeniable, we must increase the value of our troops,"
declared the veteran in the thunder of the House.
And he added, that military value was dependent
upon cohesion and training.  Those two advantages
could be obtained by increasing the effectives and
prolonging the period under arms.  What had the
law of 1913 given to Germany?  It had given to her
a better quality of troops and permitted greater
rapidity of mobilisation.  The cover troops
represented, henceforth, about half the total effective of
the German Army.  In a few hours, then, half the
German Army could enter the field.  Out of
twenty-three German army corps, eleven were up to war
strength and ready for instant service.  Finally, this
unconsciously eloquent advocate of the momentous
change in French armament said that by incorporating
a class and a half of their youngest reserve, the
German troops of the interior would reach their full
strength whilst the French had to receive four or
five classes of reserves—a fact which retarded,
notably, the mobilisation.

I have given the discussion at length because it
supplies the underlying causes of Germany's military
superiority.  It explains why the "attaque brusquée"
succeeded up to a certain point; it explains, also,
why the Chamber, after listening to the most
authoritative champion of Three-Years, gave M. Barthou,
whose courage throughout the tremendous debate
was proof against all assaults, an overwhelming
majority, and France an additional 180,000 men,
whose presence with the colours was of immense
value in the Great Retreat a year later.  It is
acknowledged by military experts that, had not thoroughly
trained troops formed the base of the army, the
Generalissimo would not have found to his hand
the instrument needed to make the stand on the Marne.
The fact is undisputed, and to M. Barthou is due the
honour of having refused to disregard the logic of
events, for which, alas! he had every precedent.





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.. _`DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL ARMY`:

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   CHAPTER III


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   THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL ARMY

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The national army arose suddenly out of the blood
and turmoil of the Revolution.  The country was
aflame with enthusiasm and informed with the spirit
of sacrifice.  The urgency of the times was well
represented by the law of March 4, 1791, which
declared in all the ardour of the First Republic:
"The service of the country is a civic and general
duty."  That fine definition was born of the need
of the nation to defend itself against overwhelming
odds; and thus, every citizen was called to a place
in the army.  The King's forces, which existed before
the nation in arms, was composed, on the other hand,
of French and foreign mercenaries and a militia
raised by royal authority.  Though, sometimes, these
professionals espoused the popular cause and fought
for patriotic purposes, they were primarily engaged
to defend the King's interest, and the two were not
necessarily identical.  Not infrequently it happened
that the army was on one side of the barricade and
the people on the other.  The recruiting sergeant
had much to do with the presence of men under the
King's banner, and certain vigorous methods reinforced
his arts of persuasion.  To the regular pay of
the soldier was added the prospect of unlimited pillage
in foreign war.  Generally he fought because he was
paid for it, and his royal master had no particular need
to enlist his sentimental interest in the enterprise.

But another change came when the Republic
emerged from the glowing brazier of Revolutionary
France.  The country was beset with numerous
enemies anxious to champion the lost cause of
monarchy, though the people of these nations, as
the official text-books in France tell us, had no
quarrel with the people of France.  And then, just
as one hundred and twenty years later, the German
princes led the hosts against France and the response
was the uprising of the nation.  Since the Revolution,
the nations of Europe have adopted national service
in acceptance of the principle laid down on March 4,
1791, that it was a "civic and general duty."  The
Convention ordered levies *en masse*, and this principle
was embodied definitely in the enactment of March 23,
1793, which said that from this moment until the
territories of the Republic were free from enemies,
all Frenchmen were liable to serve; the 2nd Article
decreed that young men should fight, that the
married men should forge arms and transport material,
the women to make tents and clothing and serve in
the hospitals, the children to convert old linen into
surgeons' lint, and the old men to be carried to the
public squares to encourage the warriors, to excite
their hatred against the Kings, and promote unity
in the Republic.  The annual drafts were fixed by the
law of Fructidor 19 An VI, and they were recruited
by drawing lots and by enrolment.  A later law of
the Year VII allowed those drawn to purchase
substitutes, and it was under this law that Napoleon
raised his armies.  The system lasted until 1814,
when the fortunes of France were at a low ebb.  The
country had become tired of a military Imperialism,
which had devitalised it and left it with monstrous
debts.  There was no further taste for arms;
voluntary engagements had practically ceased.  Thus the
abrogation of conscription was tantamount to abolishing
the army.  The wars of the First Empire had
worked out the vein of militarism.

Compulsion, however, had to be re-established, in
principle at least, on March 18, 1818, by the Gouvion
St. Cyr law.  A certain number of men was called
up annually and the system existed side by side with
voluntary engagements.  The annual contingent was
fixed at 40,000.  There was further legislation on
March 21, 1832, due to Marshal Soult.  This
established that conscription was the normal method and
engagements the subsidiary one, but the principle of
paying substitutes was admitted.  The service was
for seven years.  The army was divided into two
classes: the one performed the full term; the other
was *en congé*, and constituted the reserve.  The
business of finding substitutes rose to such a pitch
that agencies were founded to deal with it.  It became
a crying scandal.  Reform was necessary, and it was
embodied in a law dated April 26, 1855.  By its
provisions a fund was formed.  Those who wished
to buy themselves out were obliged to contribute a
certain sum fixed each year by the Minister of War.
This money was allocated to bonuses paid to
time-expired men to re-engage.  The system was not as
brilliant as it looked and in practice it worked badly.
It lowered the status of the soldier in his own eyes
and in those of public opinion, for it gave to national
service the character of a punishment or a commercial
transaction.  Only those remained in the ranks who
could not find a substitute or because of a monetary
inducement.  Again, it was bad because it created a
permanent class of under-officer who regarded the
army as his perquisite and shut the door of promotion
to the common soldier.  The plan, none the less,
prevailed until 1868, when, like a trumpet blast,
startling Europe out of her sleep, came Prussia's
victories over Southern Germany.

The meaning was clear.  It meant that, since
Napoleon's amazing successes, Prussia had adopted
a military *régime* which gave her superiority over
her neighbours.  It was based on universal service.
If France realised how great were her own military
shortcomings, she had not the strength of mind necessary
to institute a system involving serious sacrifice.
Even Marshal Niel, who presented a project to the
Imperial Legislature, did not prevail against a
conspiracy of optimism based on a total disregard of the
facts.  The Marshal, indeed, played the ungrateful
part of a Lord Roberts in warning his nation against
an illusory peace.  His was the *vox clamantis in
deserto* calling in vain for a real national service.
His prophetic eyes had seen the storm, which others
preferred not to see.  However, the law was altered
in a half-hearted effort to obtain reform, but the old
facilities for substitution remained.  It was then
decided to create a national Garde Mobile composed
of men excused from active service.  Unfortunately,
there was no time to organise it before war with
Germany broke out.  Though it lacked training and
experience and was comparatively ill-disciplined, it
was not wanting in courage, and proved of utility
in the campaign.  Lord Kitchener joined it as a
young volunteer.

When the *débâcle* came, the whole of Europe was
able to read the lesson in the lurid light it flung to
heaven.  German dominance had been built up on
a conscripted army, against which a volunteer and
partially conscripted army struggled in vain.  It was
overborne by sheer weight of numbers.  England
felt herself guarded by the inviolate sea, but the
other Powers of the Continent adopted the principle
of national service.  In France itself, the law of
1872 was the logical outcome of the dread experience
of the *année terrible*.  The subsequent legislation, which
is dated 1889, 1905, and 1913 aimed at rendering
military service more complete and more in accord
with Republican equality.  The last law, just before
the war, imposed the same burden upon each citizen.
But an immense amount of discussion was necessary
before reaching this simple result, for alas! political
interests in various specious guises had interfered
with the pure working out of national defence.  As
a consequence, exemptions were always considerable.
The broadest interpretation was given to "higher
education," and examinations, useless from a national
point of view or as a test of learning, existed for the
sole purpose of allowing the son of the bourgeois to
curtail his military service.  It was obvious that a
knowledge of some out-of-the-way tongue could not
be held to compensate, in a national sense, for the
loss of a man's service in the army.

A large number of exemptions arose through the
laudable desire to lighten the burden for widows and
families dependent upon an only son.  But, as a
result of it, two different categories of reservists were
created, those whom the *baccalauréat* had excused
after a year's service, and that much larger class of
comparatively unlettered lads who escaped with the
minimum term because of being only sons.  In their
case the year's service was not as efficacious as in
the other, where education had made possible a more
intensive process of training.  And two theories,
affecting the use of reserves, see-sawed through the
Parliamentary debates for many years.  One school
held that it was sufficient to season the mass of
reservists with long-service soldiers, whose influence
and training would be strong enough to lead them
to victory on the day of battle; the other side
maintained that salvation lay in giving training to
as large a proportion as possible, so that units
could act independently, and this theory eventually
prevailed.  The Three-Years Law was the outcome
of it.

The law of July 27, 1872, had reaffirmed the old
Revolutionary principle that every Frenchman was
liable to serve.  The military period was fixed at
twenty years—from twenty to forty.  Thus considerable
advance had been made over the earlier legislation.
There was no longer any question of a
limited contingent or of substitution by money
payment, yet, as is clear from my earlier paragraphs,
the law did not establish equality.  The yearly
contingent was divided into two parts; the one served
for five years, the other for one year or six months
only.  The drawing of lots decided to which category
a man belonged.  Only sons, who supported widowed
mothers, the clergy, and members of the teaching
profession were excused; also, there existed a
one-year service for young men who volunteered before
the yearly drawings, who had passed their matriculation
and had paid sixty pounds.  I have touched
already upon the defects of this system and its
doubtful advantage to education.

Then came the law of July 15, 1889, which established
a Three-Years service on a basis of absolute
equality.  It represented the principle of training
for everybody, whereas the earlier enactments had
created a nucleus of professionals to act as motor
to the military machine.  No one served for five
years under this new system, but then no one served
only for six months.  The weakness of the measure
resided in the wide facilities given for "dispenses."  After
a year's effective service, exemption could be
obtained either for bread-winners or for the
theological and general student.  Thus the real advantage
of the Act was whittled down to a partial instead of
a total exemption.  The old *voluntariat d'un an* was
superseded by a special dispensation for students,
but there was no money payment.  Yet the law of
1889 caused heartburnings because of its invidious
character.  Examinations designed to fulfil the letter
but not the spirit of the enactment sprang up with the
express object of shortening military service.  Even
art workers and students in commercial colleges were
included in the dispensation.

And now comes the statute of March 21, 1905,
which purported to promote homogeneity of the
reserves and to suppress exemptions so favourable to
the *fils à papa*.  But its primary object was to reduce
the period of service to two years.  It was a
Revolutionary measure, daring and insensate in its contempt
for the danger involved by an obvious reduction in
the effectives.  This danger was to be conjured in
various ways: by employing "auxiliaries" (or the
medically unfit) in clerical work; by suppressing
exemptions, and limiting furloughs, and by giving
special advantages to re-engaged men.

One of the main objections to the change was that
it prejudicially affected the staff of army instructors,
who were exposed to a dangerous fluctuation.  Just
when greater intensity in the training was needed,
the quality and quantity of the instructors declined.
It was the exact opposite of the condition created
by earlier legislation, which rendered the corps of
drill sergeants practically inaccessible to new blood.
The Bill offered special inducements to *sous-officiers*
to remain with the colours, and gave to likely young
men in the ranks an opportunity to rise—the class,
who, under the earlier laws, would have benefited
by the voluntariat.  These previous efforts at
army-making had created masses of imperfectly trained
reserves.  The *soutiens de famille* (supports of widows
and poor families) represented, for instance, 60,000,
which made 600,000 in a decade.  Each man in this
vast army had had only a year's training, which,
though adequate in some cases, was inadequate in
the mass.  The two-years law sought to remedy this
by requiring a minimum of two years from every
one.  Another important provision allowed grants
to be paid to poor families deprived of their sons,
which shows that Parliament was solicitous for the
weakest in the community, even in such a matter
as the national defence.

Finally, there was the law of 1913, passed by
M. Barthou, the then Premier, in the teeth of great
opposition, and as a reply to the formidable
preparations of Germany.  This we must leave to the next
chapter.  Suffice it to say here that the Act provided
for a three-years service in the Active Army, eleven
years in the First Class Reserve, seven years in the
Territorial Army, and seven in the Reserve of the
Territorial.  Thus the citizen could be mobilised up
to the age of forty-eight.  After that, he was no
longer liable to be called up.





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.. _`JOFFRE—HIS ORIGIN AND RECORD`:

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   CHAPTER IV


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   JOFFRE, HIS ORIGIN AND RECORD

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There is this satisfactory about a Frenchman—that
rarely he disdains his origin.  He is not the
sort of man who spurns the ladder by which he
mounted; rather does he contemplate with pleasure
every rung of the way.  Joffre, in that sense, is
typically French.  He rejoices in the modest origin
which has given him the privilege of building his
own fortune.  But his pride and his independence
come, I think, from his racial attributes.  They are
indigenous to the soil, to that fruitful soil of the
Roussillon, the old province of France which came
under the French crown in the reign of Louis XIV,
in the middle of the seventeenth century, and as a
result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees.  Known to-day
as the Eastern Pyrenees, and become one of the
regular departments of France, it has preserved much
of its old Spanish character.  It has maintained a
particular flavour, like the wine which grows in its
smiling vineyards and the peaches that stretch for
twenty kilometres, a vast and fertile garden, round
Perpignan.  The local capital is peculiarly Southern:
sunny, wide-spaced, prosperous, embowered in
handsome planes.  The inhabitants wear the easy grace
and captivating manner of people who, under a blue
sky, do not find life too hard.  Joffre's town of
Rivesaltes is close by, connected by tram and rail.
It is less agreeable of aspect than Perpignan, there is
less pride in appearances; indeed, it is thoroughly
Spanish in style, even if French in the temper of its
politics.  The inhabitants speak Catalan like their
brethren on the further side of the Pyrenees, where
newspapers are produced in the tongue, but their
sympathies are as wholly French as those of their
famous townsman.  And what a cult of him there
is!  Every café and most of the shops have a
portrait of him on the large scale, as if a small
reproduction would not suffice for his reputation.  The
album of a local tobacconist is a gallery of the great
man in various stages of his development.  Old
inhabitants contribute anecdotes more or less authentic
of his studious yet sturdy youth, of his kindness and
modesty, of his astonishing simplicity.

"Yes, he came here years ago and played *manille*
with his father and his father's friends, and he would
not allow his old acquaintances to change their
manner of speaking to him; they were to say 'thee'
and 'thou' as in the old days.  His father's bit of
land had become flooded.  'You must cut trenches
to drain off the water,' he said to Joffre père, 'I
know something about that; it is my métier.'..."  When
war broke out, the inhabitants had no doubt
about anything.  The country was safe.  What was
an invasion when Joffre was in command?

The future Generalissimo was a flaxen-haired boy,
with a light complexion and a firm, straightforward
and kindly expression.  There was certainly little of
the Southerner either in his face or in the square-cut
vigorous figure, but he had the independence of the
Catalan in his character.  Though an excellent
comrade and full of fun, he did not like to be interfered
with in his work, and was ready to fight his tormentors
to secure quiet.  Later, the kind blue eyes, wide set
beneath the bushy eyebrows, grew steel-like in their
expression when an acquaintance tried to take
advantage of his amiability to advance a protégé.
Joffre has a horror of the recommendation.  "Let the
young man make his own way as I have made mine,"
he would say; "that is the only sound method."  All
his life he has been opposed to patronage; it annoys
him, he feels it to be unfair—a mean advantage.
When he was appointed Chief-of-Staff, and eventually
Commander-in-Chief, in 1911, he received visitors
only once a fortnight at his office in the Invalides,
because he wished to avoid, as much as possible,
bores and protectors of interesting young men.  Merit
is the only channel which he recognises for advancement.
The knowledge of his utter impartiality has
robbed his decisions, often sternly disciplinary, of all
personal sting.  The army felt that in him they had
a final court of appeal, pure and fearless.

Boyhood's days at Rivesaltes were unaccompanied
by a luxury, which might have dulled the edge of
fine ambitions.  The little house in the narrow Rue
des Grangers where he was born, remains the symbol
of his simplicity.  The humble bedroom, flanked by
dining-room and kitchen, where he first saw the
light, the store-room above served by an outside
pulley for the raising of winter's stores—all this speaks
of a laborious and thrifty life such as the peasantry
live hereabouts.  The future General was one of
eleven children of a working cooper.  According to
Joffre's sister, the family, of Spanish origin and called
Gouffre, is of noble descent; but its fortune had
dwindled when Grandfather Joffre, leaving his native
country for political reasons, started as a tradesman
at Rivesaltes.  He left no particular heritage to his
son Joseph, the offspring of middle age, whom he
seems utterly to have neglected.  Joseph was little
more than a working man with a patch of vineyard
close to the town.  But for a friendly uncle, struck
by his intelligence, Joseph Jacques César Joffre—our
Joffre—would not have enjoyed the education which
was his at the *lycée* at Perpignan and at the
Polytechnique in Paris.

It was to his stay in that admirable school for
civil and military engineers that he owes the
groundwork upon which he has so successfully built.  It
gave him an immense advantage at the start.
Though he passed into the school with the high
number of fourteen and became, because of it, a
sergeant in his dormitory, charged with keeping order
amongst older lads—rather trying to his silent and
unassertive character—he did not consistently show
the brilliancy that was expected of him.  On leaving,
his number had fallen to thirty-five, which did not
entitle him to high civil employment under Government.
Whether as a consequence of it, or because of
a pronounced vocation, he joined the Corps of Engineers
as lieutenant.  Already he had had a taste of the
life, sufficiently discouraging, one would think, in the
War of 1870, which broke in upon his school career.
He served for some months as a junior subaltern in
a fort round Paris.  Even at that age, he was known
for his silent seriousness, and the memory of the
national defeat seemed to have sunk deeply into his
soul.  It made him a patriot, eager to work for
France and for her re-establishment.  That, more
than anything else, fired his ambition, for he was not
one to crouch at the feet of chance, waiting, as an
*arriviste* waits, for his own advancement.  Not until
the moment of his Soudan expedition, in early middle
life, did he expand to the full limit of his capacity,
and then the call of country and the consciousness
of duty done for France were responsible.  Before
that, he had not shown, I think, any great desire to
progress beyond the common mark.  But when he
saw that he could be useful to his time and generation,
a holy zeal possessed him to press on to the great
achievement.  And his tranquil courage and perseverance
were rewarded to an extent that seemed
incredible in his early years.  But, even so, he would
not regard his position as head of the army with
complacency or self-satisfaction.  "The war found
me," he said to a lifelong friend; "I did not seek
it."  That is the note of the man.

His Soudan campaign, which came when he was
a Commandant at the age of forty-three, gave him
deserved renown, for it was a masterpiece of organisation.
Before that, he had done more or less humdrum
work on defences, gaining his captaincy that way,
when working on the forts round Paris; he continued
in the provinces and in Upper Tonking, where his
constructions were aimed at the predatory Chinese.  He
fought them from Formosa, whither he had gone as
a change from spade and trowel work, but partly, I
suspect, to forget in change of scene the loss of a
beloved young wife.  Admiral Courbet, most famous
of pioneers in the French Colonial domain, was then
concluding the Tonking campaign, and employed him
to the general satisfaction.  The future Generalissimo
was in fighting and fort building showing an
equal talent.  Finally, he exhibited a new side to his
character by organising an artistic and industrial
exhibition at Hanoi.  Though wrapped up in his
profession and seeming, daily, to take a greater
pleasure in it, he showed adaptability and could turn
his hand to anything.

His celebrated march to Timbuctoo again showed
him as the all-round man, for there he had to think
of everything.  He had gone out into the wilds for a
pacific object, for the building of the Soudan railway,
destined to link the Senegal to the Niger river.  His
new post did not, strictly speaking, appeal to him.
It interrupted his course of lectures on fortifications
at the School at Fontainebleau, which succeeded to his
command of the Railway Battalion of Engineers.  It
seemed to him like his own first-class interment.
Surely there was no glory in building a railway in the
desert; yet he was to find it there.  At that moment
France had become conscious of her colonial possessions,
and with it had become the desire for development.
A haphazard policy had been amended into
a settled plan of pacific penetration by means of the
Niger.  The railway was to be the great instrument
of civilisation, linking the two great waterways and
making the desert blossom as a rose.  It had begun
at Kayes, the capital, under Colonel Galliéni, then
commanding in Upper Senegal, and had been pushed
to the hundred and sixteenth kilometre.  Then yellow
fever and a lack of credits from home brought it
to an abrupt stop.  Commandant Joffre, with his
habitual vigour, added kilometre to kilometre until
the hundred and fifty-ninth mark was reached.

Thereafter came orders to undertake an expedition
to Timbuctoo.  The mysterious city had been entered,
just before, by Commandant Boiteaux, who had gone
up the river Niger in a flotilla of boats as far as
Cabara and there gained the city on foot.  It was
resolved to extend the French dominion over it and
over the loop of the river as it sweeps downward to
its ocean outlet.  Joffre's duty was to support his
superior, Colonel Bonnier, who had given him a
rendezvous outside the city's walls.  The Colonel
was to go by river; Joffre followed the left bank with
a force of one thousand, three parts of which were
bearers and servants.  He started from Segou, two
days after Christmas 1893.  The rendezvous never
took place.  The Colonel having made quicker
progress, turned back to meet the Commandant, but
failed to arrive; the column was assassinated.  Only
one white officer, Captain Nigotte, escaped to tell the
tale in Timbuctoo, where fears were expressed for
Joffre's safety.  But the latter had acted with great
vigour and yet caution in his dealings with the
natives.  He went quickly to the rescue of the few
survivors of the column, chastised the murderers, and
then, on February 12, entered the city without further
fighting, carrying with him the bodies of the white
officers.  At the moment when the news reached him,
he was engaged in crossing the river, in face of a
hostile band of Tuaregs, who had burned his boats
at the habitual crossing-place.

More than 500 miles separated Segou from Timbuctoo,
and the journey had been beset with peril
and difficulty, how difficult and how perilous is
admirably told in Joffre's own report of the
expedition.  He showed good generalship by keeping his
men in close order and by throwing out scouts to
protect his flanks and rear.  At night a careful
watch was set over the camp, and the young Commander
went the rounds to see that his black sentinels
did not sleep at their posts.  Water was a great
difficulty, for there was either too much of it or not
enough.  Great flooded areas, where the river had
overflowed, left swamps which could only be passed
by circuitous marches in an unknown country.  By
contrast there was a stark and staring need of wells
in a burning desert, where bearers dropped by the
way for want of the precious liquid, and communications
were endangered because posts left in the rear
could not obtain the necessary water.  In
consequence, the young Commander had to scatter his
column through the villages, where existed a species
of boycott, for the natives had fled before the advance
and had carried off all foodstuffs.  Joffre kept a
stout heart and a cool head in these trying circumstances.
There was a good deal of fighting, especially
in the later stages, but Joffre took the offensive, as
the safer way, and did not allow himself to be
attacked by the enemy.  He fought to clear a path
for his column.

His initiative and sense of responsibility shone in
this crisis.  When he entered the city the engineer
in him reappeared, and he planned and plotted for
the safety of the citizens.  Strategic positions were
seized and upon them were placed forts and blockhouses.
Then, in his turn, he acted as political
officer and received the submission of the tribesmen.
In the midst of these high occupations he received
orders from the Governor of the region to rejoin his
railway at Kayes.  For once in his life he disobeyed
and sent his reasons, which, of course, were accepted.
When, finally, he left Timbuctoo, he had made
an excellent job of it.  He had established his
reputation as an organiser and soldier-colonist, and
his reward was the red rosette which decorated his
tunic of Lieutenant-Colonel.  His first grade in the
Order had been gained in Formosa.  Timbuctoo
closed the second colonial phase in Joffre's career.

The third was to open two years later when, as
full Colonel, he was given fortification work to do
in Madagascar.  It was at the moment of British
reverses in the Boer War.  Certain memories,
connected with Fashoda and Dreyfus, rankled in French
breasts.  The Paris Government felt it was as well
to be prepared against possible enterprise on the
part of the British fleet in the Indian Ocean; and
so the defences of the big island were set hastily on
foot.  Diego Suarez, the naval base to the north,
was fortified by Joffre under the eye of the Governor,
General Galliéni, who was then gaining renown
for his administration of the island.  It was there
that the two met and fraternised, as expatriated
Frenchmen will, and learned to respect each other's
qualities.

Therewith closed the final chapter in Joffre's
colonial life.  Henceforth he was to work in France,
in the immediate path of the great office to which
destiny was hastening him.  Successively he
commanded the 19th brigade of Artillery at Vincennes,
and the 6th division of Infantry at Lille, of which
town he was the military governor; at Amiens, he
was head of the Second Army Corps.  Between the
stages of Brigadier and General of Division, he was
director of Artillery at the Ministry of War.  And so
he performed the whole cycle of the military art,
before arriving at the Superior Council of War
where he was to receive the crown of the chief
command.  He had served in just the capacities, colonial
and metropolitan, which equipped him for his great
responsibility.  No point in his experience could be
considered useless from the building of forts to the
construction of railways; from the organisation of a
self-contained force on the Niger, to the command
of troops in France; from his lectures to military
students, to his direction of the artillery.

The supreme honour came to him on July 29, 1911.
The *Panther* had dropped a noisy and menacing
anchor in the quiet waters of Agadir.  In spite of
assurances of peace from Germany and the fixity of
the pacifist idea in France, clear-sighted people saw
the cloud of danger in the sky.  Joffre had no
misgivings on the subject.  One of the earliest questions
to occupy him was that of effectives.  None but he
and his charming wife, whom he had married on
returning to France, will ever realise how hard he
worked during the three years that intervened before
the outbreak of the war.  Sundays and weekdays—it
was an incessant round.  He was deeply convinced
that the hour was approaching for the trial of the
French military institutions, to which he was called to
supply not merely the finishing touch, but, alas! a great
deal of the foundation work.  That was the tragedy
of it, the tragedy of an optimism, which had ignored
all German preparations.  It had ignored the vast
accumulations of engines of war on the frontiers of
Lorraine and Belgium, it had ignored the meaning
of the caves and subterranean passages prepared in
advance in the Champagne and the Soissons district,
just as it ignored the other phases of German activity,
the systematic corruption, the spying, and the rest.

Thus Joffre came to the post which his persistent
work had made a just, if onerous, reward.  He was
Generalissimo in new conditions.  The old duality,
which allowed one man to lead in war and another to
prepare for it, was swept away.  Parliament at last
had awakened to its dangers, and MM. Caillaux and
Messimy, Premier and Minister of War, had
submitted to President Fallières a new decree
designating Joffre the Supreme Commander in time of
war and the Chief-of-Staff in peace.

It was an admirable choice.  If it meant little to
the public which had forgotten all about the march
on the Niger, it meant a great deal to the army
which felt comforted and relieved at the appointment
of a sound and thorough administrator.  For Joffre,
by long contact, knew every cog in the military
machine, which he was now called upon to direct.  As
*divisionnaires* went, he was the youngest of his rank
in the army and had still some years before him which
he could count his own.  Thus he joined experience
to a comparative youth, which was all in his favour.
Probably the defects rather than the qualities of the
organisation engaged his attention and stimulated
his amazing energy to even greater efforts.  At the
age of fifty-nine he was faced with a task to try the
strongest head, the steadiest nerves, the most robust
health.  Happily he possessed all three and placed
them unreservedly at the service of the State.  France
was fortunate in her General-in-Chief.  How he
succeeded in the colossal burden of the Great War
may be left for consideration to a future chapter.





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.. _`PREPARATION`:

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   CHAPTER V


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   PREPARATION

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We have seen Joffre in the various stages of his
career acquiring that many-sided experience, which
was to serve him in excellent stead when, finally,
he came to supreme power.  Sometimes the engineer
officer was uppermost, sometimes the combatant.
Though in the latter years, when qualifying for the
Council of War, he commanded troops over the very
ground where French and English were to oppose the
invaders in incredible battles, it is yet true that his
experience, with the exception of operations against
the Chinese and the Tuaregs on the Niger in his
march to Timbuctoo, consisted in the main of
engineering exploits with a military aim.  Thus he coaxed
the desert into a railway track, and thus he cast up
mounds of earth and built defensive masonry around
Paris and in the provinces and at various strategic
points in France overseas.  This contact with a larger
*patrie* and with the wider aspects of his profession
proved of immense service when, in the process of
time, he came to his great estate.  It was in reviewing
the work of his early years, the period of his maturity
and then of his later life that he fully comprehended the
character of his task.  He realised all the elements
that make up France, all the elements that must be
flung into the crucible of a national army.  "Vive la
France" had a new meaning for him, for it meant the
France of Asia and Africa as well as the France of
metropolitan frontiers.

None the less, for all the pleasure of the prospect,
he was sensible of the weaknesses that lay underneath.
None better.  Had he not himself said in his now
famous speech to the Polytechnicians, that you could
improvise nothing in war?  As a soldier, tried in the
service of his country, he was penetrated with that
truth.  There must be preparation in war—that was
the implacable verity.  He was emphatic on the
point in a speech which must be regarded as one of
the documents of the war.  For he was speaking to
officers, past members of the famous school of which
he is a distinguished *alumnus*, and declared with that
sense of reality joined to idealism, which is as
pleasing to the plain man as to those in search of lofty
generalisation, that preparation implied many things.
His auditors, at this Old Boys' gathering, strained
their ears in the expectation of hearing something
removed from the banalities of the usual chairman's
utterance.  And they were not disappointed.  The
speech fitted the occasion like a glove; it was no
common one, for the Balkan War had broken out.
The eventual Commander-in-Chief could not ignore
a subject fraught with such consequence to himself
and to his hearers (for the most part officers)
and quietly aware, no doubt, of the curiosity he
had excited, dealt broadly, yet sufficiently, with the
situation.

He began by arraying the forces one against the
other in the theatre of war.  On the one side he said
were numbers and on the other preparation.  You
could tell by the way in which he insisted on the
latter word how much it meant to him.  And yet
the subject must have been painful, for none realised
better than this impressive-looking man, with brow
rimmed with white hair and the white of massive
eyebrows, that France was not prepared.  In elaborating
his theme, he told what preparation meant.  The
whole of national life must co-operate in it.  And what
were the factors of success?  They were of three
kinds: material, intellectual, and moral.  Under the
first came the number and equipment of the troops,
under the second and third the capacity of leaders
and the patriotism of the people.  It was clear that
he felt the deep significance of the last quality.
Numbers and equipment were certainly important,
but patriotism was the soul of the army.  "To be
ready in our epoch," he insisted, "implies a
significance of which those who prepared and conducted
war in the past can realise only with difficulty.  It
would be illusory to count upon the popular *élan*
though it exceeded that of the volunteers of the
Revolution, if it were not supported by a previous
organisation.  'To be ready' to-day, one must have
directed, in advance, all the resources of the country
and all its moral energy towards the unique end,
'Victory.'"  And then he proceeded to utter the
phrases which have become classical.  They are a
synthesis of Joffre's system, the exposition of his
inward faith.  "One must have organised everything,
foreseen everything.  Once hostilities are
commenced, no improvisation will be valid.  What lacks
then, will be definitely lacking.  The least omission
may cause a disaster."

And he proceeds to particularise.  The call to
arms must reach those for whom it is intended.
Each man must know where to go and how to get
there and he must meet there his officers, his arms,
and his effects.  And over this army which has been
organised, equipped, and assembled must be chiefs,
military and administrative, imbued with the national
theory of the war.  "But neither the material organisation
of this army nor its training would suffice to
assure victory if to this intelligent and strong body
a soul were lacking.  This soul is Patriotism."  That
he should lay stress upon the word showed how deeply
he had realised how even elaborate schemes of mobilisation
could come to naught without this saving grace,
without the faith which moves mountains.  He
seemed to say: "We can save France, even if there
are flaws in our preparations, provided we possess
Patriotism—the sacred flame."  By this alone could
soldier and civilian summon the courage to resist
reverses.

That Joffre himself accepted the heavy burden of
office, showed that he, too, was inspired by a strong
love of country and faith in the unlimited powers of
French adaptability.  He knew that his countrymen
were capable of heroic resistance and a persistent
and yet strenuous effort, which would astonish the
world, because he had read in the heart of the
*piou-piou* undying love for country, and because he had
watched silently the growth of that national spirit
evoked by the brutal provocation of Germany.  He
knew, also, the delicacy of fitting discipline to
democracy and a fierce national spirit of independence
and justice to the exigencies of a European War.
Intuition and experience told him that only by the
finer emotions could the mass be moved, that it
would rebel against mechanical methods and harsh
domination and yield only to the influence of enlightened
chiefs.  Thus he was the man destined to lead
and to become the interpreter of the racial spirit of
France.

Joffre had established between himself and the
soldier in the trenches an irresistible current of
sympathy.  How, nobody knows, but, at the very
commencement, his benevolent activity for the
common welfare was a common saying endearing
him to the legions under his control, and many were
the incidents quoted of his tenderness of heart.  He
had found a swift way to the understanding and
implicit obedience of his troops.  By his acts of
kindness and consideration he had accumulated a stock of
allegiance from which to draw in the supreme hour,
when he should say, as on the eve of the battle of the
Marne: "Now is the time to conquer or to die."  Had
he learned these secret arts of sympathy in the
wilds of Africa or in the cloistered life he led, like the
Pope in the Vatican, when harnessed to his work of
preparation at the Ministry of War?  I do not know,
but I suspect that this trait, like the others, was
inborn and developed by urgent circumstance.  However
we explain it, he became the most popular man in
France, a god and a hero, a name to conjure with.
"Notre Joffre" was a symbol of success, and of popular
confidence.  The "magnificent rumour" which had
preceded him on the day of mobilisation was crystallised
into a solid renown when the public saw with
what calm and celerity he assembled troops and with
what mastery he played upon the railway keyboard.
Napoleon had won his battles with the legs of
his soldiers, Joffre was going to win them with his
railways.

It is not possible, of course, to repair defects of
forty years in two or three years even of unremitting
labour; but knowing, as he did, the tone and temper
of the men he had to command and the miraculous
capacities of their nervous energy he did not doubt
for a moment the final triumph, and a species of
sublime confidence radiated from him whether at the
Ministry or in the field.  It was with his friend and
companion-in-arms, General Pau, that he began to
work at the problems belonging to his position, and
the first of them was the effectives.  When the
intentions of Germany could be no longer disguised,
Joffre resolved upon the only course compatible with
his responsibilities.  He urged the Government to
augment the army *pari passu* with the increased
numbers on the other side of the Vosges, and, happily,
he found in M. Barthou, the Premier, a political leader
as strongly impressed as he with the high necessity
of action.  This admirable statesman became, therefore,
one of his collaborators in the national defence.
A Deputy at twenty-seven and a Minister at thirty-three,
this lawyer and journalist found full scope for
his activities only in the wide region of national
politics.  His quickness of comprehension astonished
the experts, and perhaps confirmed their uneasy
suspicions that a lawyer knows everything; but
M. Barthou's enthusiasm and deep conviction were
beyond all question.  Some reproached him for being
a man of letters, guilty of writing an excellent history
of Mirabeau, but he sacrificed ruthlessly his intellectual
leisure and his love of reading on the altar of
duty.  It would seem as if the figure of the Revolutionary
aristocrat, which glows from the pages of his book,
had communicated his fire to his accomplished and
versatile biographer.  So M. Barthou rose grandly to
the situation and became, with Generals Joffre and
Pau, organiser of the new military plan to save France
from her disparity with the German Army.

Joffre occupied himself with his accustomed method
to the work of preparing the Government victory.
Some one has recalled a conversation which he had
with Joffre at this time.  The General sits in an
armchair looking steadily into space.  His visitor insists
on the impossibility of increasing the annual contingents
to the French Army.  But, he says persuasively,
you can supplement the number by enrolling the
black man.  "The black man," repeats Joffre, and
his mind goes back, no doubt, to his colonial days.
He is again building the railway from Kayes to
Bafoulabé, he is again on the Niger at Goundam, where
they brought him news of Bonnier's massacre with
his eleven officers and sixty-four *tirailleurs*.  And
he asks suddenly: "But what sacred fire will animate
them?  Will they ever equal our own soldiers defending,
field by field, their own soil?"  Joffre, indeed, had
realised the impotency of numbers unless animated
by the spirit of a great cause.  He would not hear
of reinforcing the French regiments by those newly
acquired citizens of France in Central Africa.  "No,
no," he said; "the Three-Years Law is a vital question;
do not give the enemies of the measure the pretext
they seek."

The Generalissimo went to the Chamber, to act,
with General Pau, as Government Commissioner
during the progress of the great debate.  I imagine
that the experience was more painful to him than
first facing fire in a Paris fort in 1870.  For the
Socialist opponents of the Bill heckled the Commissioners,
challenging not merely their arguments but also their
figures.  The temptation was strong upon Joffre at
times to retort angrily upon the obstructionists, but
he kept his temper and a cold, even tone of courtesy.
In his rare interventions he spoke briefly and directly
to the point, figures in hand.  He maintained throughout
an impassive attitude, and looked a formidable
figure as he stood resolutely to his guns dominating
the wilderness of talk.  Even in the lobbies of the
Chamber, in the *entr'actes* of the debate, he did not
unbend from his attitude of reserve, which, though
it angered the obstructionists, impressed them in spite
of themselves.  Here was the man who could keep
his head—the *tête froide* demanded by Napoleon as
the first essential of a battle-chief.  Pau, on the other
hand, was much less calm and was visibly vexed at the
shameless opposition.  The fingers of his whole arm
(for he had lost the other in the War of '70) clinched
and unclinched as if anxious to meet the foe at close
quarters.

Heartily glad to be allowed to return to his labours,
Joffre gave himself more thoroughly than ever to
the task of preparation.  He occupied himself more
particularly with the question of transports, and the
perfection of the system that he worked out was
revealed at the outbreak of the war, when the
Commissariat proved an instant success.  The trenches
were well furnished with food.  But alas! the medical
service, which depended not upon the General Staff
but upon the Ministry of War, proved in those early
days a lamentable failure, for the war had caught it
in a state of transition.  The mobilisation, itself,
impressed every observer by its order and regularity;
Joffre revealed himself a master organiser.  He was
as prepared as man could be with the time and
"material" to his hand.  He had trained his body
as well as his mind by a just balance between work
and rest and physical exercise.  He had the true
soldier's horror of growing soft.  As a captain he was
out riding one day when he fell, owing to his horse
stumbling, and was carried to bed with injuries to his
head.  He spent a few weeks of his convalescence at
Rivesaltes.  Fearing that his mental powers were
affected by his accident, he set himself a hard problem
in mathematics to test his brain.  At the end of
three days' silent work, he cried suddenly in broad
Catalan from his bed to his brother, who was sharing
the room with him, *Soun geuri* ("I am cured").
The anecdote shows his strenuous character and
detestation of self-indulgence, and also that he is
not quite as reserved by nature as his proud title of
*Le Taciturne* would imply.  Joffre's taciturnity, in
fact, is self-imposed—part of his vigorous system of
preparation.  It comes, also, from the fact that he is
not, naturally, an orator and knows it.  Serious and
meditative, his temper is not as severe as some suppose;
his sternness in all questions of discipline has
been forced upon him by duty.  On the contrary, it
pains him considerably to punish any one, and he
suffers as much as his victims when he has to pass
judgment upon serious faults and incapacity.

His daily habits made him physically hard, just
as his studies equipped him for continuous intellectual
labour.  The morning gallop in the Bois on a strong
horse, such as would have carried Du Guesclin in
his wars against the English in the moving Middle
Ages, and his walk to the Invalides or the Ministry of
War from his distant home in Auteuil gave him the
training he needed.  On campaign, the motor-car
replaced the healthier exercise, but even then he
managed to take long solitary walks which reposed
his mind and recreated his body.  Even the most
pressing matters are not allowed to interfere with his
regular rest.  To bed at nine and up at six is a rule
maintained even in the heat of battle.  He feels it to
be necessary for the equipoise of his constitution.
Joffre has the great Corsican's faculty of suspending
his intellectual powers by a mere effort of the will and
thus obtains complete repose of the cerebral system.
His slumbers were childlike even after Charleroi;
on his motor journeys, to points along the Front, he
slept profoundly.  This recuperative power is
inestimable in a commander upon whom is cast a vast
responsibility.  He was often to be seen in his car
behind the lines sunk in restorative sleep, his head
inclined to an angle like some tired Atlas, worn with
supporting the world upon his broad shoulders.

This man, eminently French in heart and mind,
has consistently trained for his great position.  Nothing
has been too great a sacrifice to secure the victory.
To railwaymen, who came to thank him for his praise
of them in the mobilisation, he said: "I work for the
salvation of France and then I shall disappear."  Just
as he knows the character of the men under him,
he knows the value of his own services to France and
throws both into the balance at moments when every
gramme of weight is of consequence.  He seems able
to communicate his own confidence and calm to
others—he, so uncommunicative with his low voice,
his gentle and pensive manner.  Evidently, in this
preparation of the soul for combat he must shut out
the distressing sights and sounds of battle.  He must
not think of devastated homesteads and ruined
villages, he must not think of widowed women and
weeping children, nor, as he goes along the line of
yesterday's battle, must he think of what lies there,
of the ghostly army that is still presenting arms to
him.  All these things he must banish from his mind,
in the hardening processes of a great decision—this
man who has never given a contrary order.  And
yet *Joffre l'humain* is as just a title as any which
honour him, for it expresses his natural kindness
and desire to save life.  And a Socialist professor
wrote, in an organ of his political faith, that if,
after the war, a monument was erected to the great
General, no mother need turn her head away from it.
Joffre was touched when he read the phrase, for he is
as proud of his humanity as of those purely military
virtues, which have gone to his preparation.





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.. _`JOFFRE IN ACTION`:

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   CHAPTER VI


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   JOFFRE IN ACTION

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Fléchier's panegyric of Turenne might have been
written for Joffre, for it expresses his traits with
a curious exactitude.  Said the eloquent Bishop of
Nîmes of the Marshal: "He was accustomed to
fight without anger, to conquer without ambition,
to triumph without vanity....  Bolder to act than
speak, resolute and determined within when
apparently embarrassed, there was never a man wiser or
more prudent, who conducted war with greater order
and judgment, who had more precautions and more
resources, who was more active and more reserved, who
better managed things for his ends and who showed
more patience in allowing his enterprises to mature.
He took measures that were almost infallible, divining
not only what the enemy had done, but what he
planned to do; he could be unsuccessful but he was
never surprised.  And, finally, this system was the
source of many successful gains.  It kept alive that
union of the soldiers with their chief which renders
an army invincible; and it spread amongst the troops
a spirit of energy, of courage and confidence, which
enables them to suffer everything."

There is no feature of this admirable portrait
which does not fit the man.  Joffre belongs to the
same noble line and recommences, it has been said,
the same victory on the same theatre with new forms.
The history of Alsace will enshrine the two names, for
both captains fought there with skill and courage.
Turenne's defence of the province occurred almost
two hundred years before its cession to Germany
as part of the spoils of the victors.  If, like other men,
Joffre has faults he has also the qualities of greatness.
He possesses strength of soul and knowledge formed
by study and reflection, and is yet without pedantry.
He does not allow himself to be guided by sudden
flashes of inspiration, nor does he invent new methods;
he prefers a solid system, founded on poise of mind
and body and reinforced by calm and consistent
attention.  Thus he brings to his task a clear and
even temperament and a profound and searching
judgment.  Possessing, perhaps, more character than
personality, he has less imagination than clairvoyance
and mental vigour, and the fact is an assurance to
those he commands.  He has the temper to succeed,
and is a constant traveller by that road.  Slowly his
career has unfolded itself, and, at each stage, his
nature has deepened and his love of country assumed
a warmer tone.

Not a gay and debonair officer, born with title
and fortune, he is the son of a working man, who has
planned his own career and risen by merit to the top.
I do not propose to catalogue Joffre's virtues, or to
offer an estimate of his strategy—that must be left
to other pens, equipped with the knowledge that
staff histories bring, but his career possesses contours
that, in their flowing curves, express the beauty and
harmony of his life.  A "masterpiece of will power
and equilibrium," he has known how to inspire the
devotion of his soldiers, and this is not the least of his
claims.  His ability to extract to the utmost the
allegiance of those who serve and to make appeal to
their secret sympathies is one of his most precious
talents.  His character, laborious and unobtrusive,
free from ambition, solicitous for the common welfare,
has given him an irresistible hold upon hearts,
so that men's hands stretch out at the moment of
action and he is surrounded and enveloped by an
atmosphere of good-will incalculably precious for
concerted action.  And the women, who Joffre says, are
sublime, give him stoically their husbands and sons,
rivalling in courage those who lay down their lives.
And Joffre, by a mysterious predestination, became
the instrument of that sacrifice, limitless during the
war.  And he never called in vain, for, at his first
demand, up rose valiant youth ready and joyous
to die for the sweet sake of France.  He seems to
have the art of communicating that secret vibration
of the soul, which moves crowds, without so much as
opening his lips.  It is a southern gift, belonging to the
sunny lands where life runs richly and deeply.  And
for this reason, perhaps, the south has become the
region of great generals.  By their inventions and
manoeuvres they express that species of brimming
talent which turns some into poets and plastic workers,
others into men of action, statesmen, or charmers of
the public ear upon stage and platform.  His even
temper that takes no umbrage at rival reputations,
that seeks in everything only the good of the cause
and its strict utility, is the right armour for the
martial figure.  His silence, like his calm, has its
positive and its negative side.  It does not spring
from lack of thought, but from seriousness and
contemplation, just as the other is a proof not of
insensibility, but of a considered system of control.
Nor is his unshakable determination the sign of
obstinacy or a purblind view, but a bright weapon
forged in the recesses of the heart as a defence against
adversity and as the ready instrument of achievement.
Rarely has a man by such simple means, with
no eloquence or artifice, with no advertisement, pose,
or pretension, reached such a pinnacle of authority
at once subtle and conceded and giving confidence
to every one.

When President Poincaré presented the Generalissimo
with the highest military reward—the Military
Medal—he drew a living portrait of the man: "You
have shown in the conduct of your armies qualities
which were not for an instant belied, a spirit of
organisation and order and method, of which the
beneficent effects were extended from strategy to
tactics; a cold and prudent wisdom, which knows
how to guard against the unexpected; strength of
mind that nothing can shake; a serenity of which
the salutary example spreads abroad confidence and hope."

His popularity is as great a factor in his success as
his science and military skill.  It is born of acts of
consideration which, in the opening phases of the war,
came to the common knowledge and gave him an
immense hold over his men.  This or that journal
recorded incidents which showed his kindness and
humanity.  He stayed awhile on his way to the
Front to talk to a wounded "poilu," to ask him about
his services, his health, and his family; and a poor
woman, who had written to him begging that her
son might be placed in a less exposed position,
for she had lost three since the war began and this
one was her sole support, received from Joffre the
reply that she had done enough for the country and
could have back the lad.  A dozen instances of the
sort, repeated here and there, created such an
atmosphere of good-will that allegiance was created in
advance, and Joffre swayed his army by sheer
affection.

The soldier, in the light of Joffre's humanity,
understood delay; he became reconciled to the monotony
of trench life, for a forward move, he knew, would
cost limitless lives.  No, it was better for the war to
drag on at this slow game of "nibbling" the enemy
than to allow a generation of young lives to be offered
to the insatiable god.  France could not afford to be
lavish with the blood of her children, since the future
of the race was as paramount as the fortune of the war.

There were some who said that Joffre's cautiousness
was overdone; that the war would have been
quickened had he shown greater initiative and greater
energy in seizing more sharply the occasions for an
offensive.  The elements for such a judgment are
wanting to us all, but at least this parsimony of life
earned him the sublime confidence and esteem of his
troops, as completely as his fearlessness in disciplining
those who failed in the higher command.  The
fact that he was impartial, that he was ready, if need
be, to chastise his friends, produced a feeling of security
invaluable in such a case.  The whole country felt
that here was a man for whom France had been looking,
imbued with a sense of justice, who stood fast
to principles, and feared not to apply them.  And
in valour, as Emerson has said, is always safety.
When the army heard that a hundred and fifty
Generals had been placed *en disponibilité*, because
of failure in the field, then it realised that Joffre would
brook no obstacle to his success.

In a famous interview which he gave to the editor
of a provincial newspaper—a lifelong friend—Joffre
declared that Charleroi was lost largely owing to
the failure of the Generals engaged in it.  It was not
so much a question of effectives, he insisted, as
inferiority in the higher command.  "Long before the
war, I saw that a great number of our Generals were
fatigued; certain seemed unfitted for their duty and
below its requirements.  I had the intention to
rejuvenate the higher command, but the war came too
soon.  And there were others in whom I had confidence
who justified it, but imperfectly."  Energy must
go with knowledge and experience, he insisted.
"Some were my best friends; but if I am fond of
my friends, I am still fonder of France."  The words
have become linked with Joffre, and so closely
represent him that they deserve to be graven on the
monument that must one day be his when he has
laid aside his sword.

It was this implacable search for efficiency that
gave Joffre such pre-eminence in the army.  Yet he
is scarcely the type to appeal to the romantic side of
popularity.  He is rarely represented on horseback,
he waves no sword, in figure he looks like a comfortable
farmer rather than the traditional soldier; he
spends long hours at an office table, and is suspected
of moving armies through a telephone.  But his
appearance—sound, robust, suggestive of common
sense—accords with his manner and his methods on
campaign.  His life in the midst of the terror and
tumult of war is as simple as his routine at the Ministry
in times of peace.  There was no fuss or parade about
Headquarters, even in the most acute phases of the
conflict.  Everything passed as calmly as if a simple
game were being played with counters engaged, instead
of thousands of human lives.  Joffre directed the
huge machine from a bare room furnished with a
common deal table, a map or two, a black board,
and three cane-bottomed chairs.  The privileged
visitor who saw him for a few moments found himself
faced by a man with the dark undress uniform of the
Engineers, with no decorations upon the jacket save
the three stars on the sleeve which marked his rank.
His conversation, unless the moment warranted
expansion, was scarcely more than monosyllabic.  A
simple "yes," or "no," sufficed; why waste time, when
moments were precious?  And you went from the
room conscious of having met a great personage,
impressive by silence, masterful by the flash of keen but
kindly blue eyes, from beneath protruding eyebrows.
In a neighbouring room was a low murmur of voices
on the telephone—officers talking to the Front or
receiving news therefrom—and above their heads
a mast carrying wires stretched into space tingling
perpetually with live whispers of battles, and armies
in movement.

This was the nerve centre of the army: a plain
building, commodious, simple, effective, strictly
utilitarian.  Here a large force of officers and assistants
did the bidding of the chief; here every morning,
and again in the late afternoon, conferences were
held between the Generalissimo and his staff.  The
inner council consisted of three brilliant specialists
in strategy, gunnery, and transport.  With these he
concerted the common measures of the day, the
preparation to deliver or parry attacks.  When large
and general problems were afoot others of the
Etat-Major were called in; or, it may be that a meeting of
representatives of the Allies, over which he presided
with great authority, called for his wisdom and
perspicacity.  But each day passed with great regularity.
Joffre lived in an unpretentious villa near his
Headquarters, which changed according to the exigencies
of his work.  After his breakfast, over which he wasted
no time, he went afoot to his office, saluted on the
way by soldiers and civilians.  To the former he
would say: "Bon jour, mon brave!" to the latter,
he would vary the address to: "Bon jour, mon
ami!"  Children are attracted by him, and raise
their caps or curtsey to gain a smile.  Sometimes a
little boy preceded him shouting, to Joffre's infinite
amusement: "Vive notre Général!"  Thus greeted
as a symbol of united France, as the redeemer of the
country, Joffre passed into his Headquarters and was
soon plunged in the problem that absorbed him every
hour.  Whilst he slept that calm sleep of his, wires
had flashed with news of victory or defeat or with the
common incidents of the Front.  "If it is good news,
it will keep until the morning," said Joffre when
recommending his officers to respect his rest; "if
the news is bad, you know what to do; everything has
been prepared."  In this way he gained a full night's
repose, whatever the happenings between the parallel
lines of combatants, or in the savage thrust of
midnight raids and assaults.  And he slept on calmly
keeping fresh his energies for the morrow.

And now, when he enters his office, his first duty
is to call for the reports of the night.  These he
studies closely, and they are then classified according
to the armies to which they belong, in cardboard
covers of different colours.  Thereupon takes place
the conference to which I have alluded; and then
Joffre, having finished his morning's work at a time
when most men are beginning it, goes out upon a long
and solitary tramp through the countryside.  He gives
himself freely to his meditations, knowing that none
of the inhabitants, whom he crosses on his path, will
dare to disturb him.  Either he thinks of a knotty
question presented by some new move of the enemy,
or his mind fashions one of those electrifying Orders
of the Day which have become world-famous.  "The
time for looking back has ceased ... die rather
than yield ground."  That order, given on the eve of
the battle of the Marne, has become as celebrated
as Nelson's signal.  Like most men who keep their
thoughts rigidly to themselves, his occasional
utterances are full of a strange force.  And Joffre's
Orders of the Day have reached a high order of
eloquence and exalted passion.

The events of the day may call Joffre to the Front,
whither he goes in a fast motor-car.  On the way he
will lunch at a village *auberge* and scandalises the
proprietor, who has prepared, perhaps, a royal feast—if
he knew in advance the honour to be done him—by
the plainness of his fare.  A simple omelette, a
little fruit and cheese for a Generalissimo!  Boniface
is *bouleversé*!  It is incredible!  With pious
industry a journalist compiled Joffre's menus during
the battle of the Marne.  They were the simple meals
of any bourgeois; a plate of roast meat, preceded
by soup or *hors d'oeuvre* and followed by vegetables
and fruit, constituted the repast.  Notwithstanding
this sobriety, the General does not disdain the
pleasures of the table; like every good Southerner, he is
something of a *gourmet*, but on campaign he exercises
a rigid self-restraint.

The same disregard for personal discomfort
pervades all his arrangements.  When the battle of the
Marne raged, the proprietor of a château at
Bar-le-Duc, whence Joffre directed operations, placed his
house at the Commander-in-Chief's disposal.  Joffre
gave the finest rooms of the house, overlooking a calm
and beautiful garden, to the officers of his suite; he
himself, took a front room facing the Boulevard,
and subject, of course, to the street noises; he thinks
nothing of these things.  His dinner at eight o'clock,
after the day's work—for he resumes touch with the
details of Headquarters towards the end of the
afternoon—is just as simple as the lunch, and Joffre never
varies from this strict *régime*.  Thanks to its
regularity, he is able to sustain, without physical change
or faltering, the heavy burden of his rôle.

Joffre belongs to the African school of soldier,
against whom is reproached an impetuous bravery
without science or system, and only possible against
an enemy untrained, ill-equipped, and ignorant of
tactics.  It was thought that men were unfitted to
fight against a civilised enemy after their contact
with the rude warriors of the desert and jungle; but
by a curious coincidence, Joffre, Galliéni, Marchand,
Gouraud, and Bailloud (Sarrail's lieutenant in his
retreat through Macedonia), all learned their business
of soldiering in the waste places of the earth, in
overcoming the obstacles of rebellious Nature or the
treachery of tribes.  But Joffre has shown, as others
have shown, that this contact with difficulties brings
out the man and educates, strengthens, and vitalises
him.  Often the faults of others have been placed on the
broad back of the Generalissimo.  He has been accused
of ignoring the German intentions to invade France
through Belgium.  What was his Intelligence Department
doing that they did not know?  But Joffre and
his staff were well aware of the plan, and they knew
also the different stages of the march.  But what
they had not reckoned upon was the rapid fall of the
forts of Liège and Namur before the heavy guns of the
invaders.  That the Germans possessed siege artillery
was a matter of common knowledge in France; but
alas! to meet it was involved a large expenditure which
Parliament would not sanction.  That is the reason of
it.  "Cherchez la politique" is the answer to the
shortage in heavy ordnance and in armoured aeroplanes.

It would take too long to tabulate the various
attempts to extort money from Deputies for the
national defence.  But though the attenuated credits
cannot be laid to the charge of the General Staff, it is
true that experts were divided on the use that could
be made of the heavy siege-pieces which the Germans
thrust into battle.  Such cumbersome weapons would
prove white elephants said some in authority, and
protested that they could not "hold" the infantry.
However that may be, Joffre was faced with the
difficulty that the Germans, instead of entering France
by the eastern gate, where forts and "cover"
combined to make the task supremely difficult, chose
the easier road by Belgium and through the
Luxembourg.  Yet it was obviously impossible to tell by
which route the enemy would enter.  Joffre was
forced to watch them all, to secure contact at each
point, to feel the enemy, and then retreat towards
his reserves.  This, indeed, was the plan more or
less successfully carried out.  But the fact that
Belgium was the main path of the invasion caused
a rapid transposition of forces at the last moment,
for the bulk of the army had to swing from the east
to the north, and the process took time.  Here, again,
the Germans were at an advantage, for they had
systematically built railways to the edge of the
Luxembourg and in Alsace-Lorraine, so that their
mobilisation was startlingly rapid.

Joffre was certainly unprepared for the speed with
which the enemy brought into play his reserves.
This was due to the cunning use which he made of his
strategic railways, but also to a perfidious advance in
the date of mobilisation.  The army was already on a
war footing when France had begun her work of
assembling troops.  And so Joffre was handicapped
by many things, by lack of rapid railway transit, of
heavy cannon and of the minute preparation and
prevision which extended to the years preceding
his appointment.  Germany had prepared for war
whilst France was thinking of peace and dreaming of
progress in art and letters and general culture,
anticipating a universal brotherhood, pathetically
chimerical in the face of the armaments across the Rhine.
Politics were greatly responsible for the inferiority
of France in the opening weeks of the war.  The
troops assembled on the Franco-Belgian frontier had
not at once the value of the invading force.  They
were wanting in numbers, in the perfection of their
equipment and in the intensity of their training.
Though Joffre had justly condemned incompetence
in high places, it is also true that France was
overweighted by the masses of a highly trained enemy
which placed all its reliance upon the strength and
rapidity of the first blow.

The Socialist doctrine would have substituted
popular *élan* and the fierce revolutionary spirit for
what it held to be the sterile stupidity of a long
and intensive military preparation.  And again, the
Socialist movement in Germany proved a snare and
delusion to many of the faith in France.  Was it
possible that war could come when millions of the
masses in each nation were vowed to peace?  The
nation was deceived—perhaps it wanted to be
deceived.  In any case, it was much more interesting to
concentrate upon human progress, to let the mind dwell
upon the delightful prospect of the millennium, when
there will be no more war, and when an era of peace
and tranquillity and of mutual co-operation will have
been ushered in, than to linger upon a picture of
militarism bound up with cannon and its human food.

The French General Staff apparently thought that
the German attack would come from the two frontiers
and would seek to envelop the French Army in its
tentacles, and thus conclude with one swift, tremendous
blow a campaign more disastrous than that of
1870.  It seems clear, also, that M. Barthou's success
in carrying the Three-Years Law was an important
factor in the resolution of Germany to invade France
by Belgium rather than by the East.  The new
legislation had given great strength to the "cover,"
and thus there was little chance of passing that way.
Probably had Germany attacked France by the East,
England would never have been brought in and her
rôle would have been confined to protecting the
French coasts by her fleet.  Thus, M. Barthou might
properly contend that the mere fact that the
Three-Years Law was voted determined the action of
Germany and enlisted the support of England.

We have shown that Joffre by his system of making
war and his qualities of heart and head is the ideal
democratic chief.  Obviously, there is little of the
Napoleonic temper in his strategy, which is made up
of prudent vigour and discernment rather than of
brilliancy or spontaneity.  Some urge that Joffre should
have made his stand upon the Aisne rather than upon
the Marne, since the latter line was better defended
by Nature, but his reserves were not sufficiently
accessible.  In any case, conditions have altered since
Napoleon's day, and even the Corsican's great faculty
of improvisation scarcely would have found scope in
twentieth-century conditions.  None the less, Joffre's
dispositions at the battle of the Marne, when he
drew the enemy to his own battle-ground and
supported his line at each end with the forts of Paris and
of the East were strictly in the style of the Master.
And by his very victory he proved the martial qualities
of the French, since with the aid of the English they
administered a sharp repulse to an enemy flushed with
success and organised and equipped in a manner
superior to the Home forces.  Until the story is
disproved, I shall continue to think that the battle
of the Marne would have been definitive and the enemy
driven from the soil of France had Joffre possessed
an adequate supply of munitions.

We have taken the Generalissimo to the edge of the
great battle: let us now give a few particulars of his
chief collaborator.





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.. _`THE SECOND IN COMMAND`:

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   CHAPTER VII


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   THE SECOND IN COMMAND

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If ever Nancy is minded to raise a statue in its
beautiful Place Stanislas to a battle-hero it will be
surely to Noel-Marie Edouard Curières de Castelnau,
for to him is due the existence of the city.  During
three tremendous weeks its fate hung in the balance—weeks
in which Joffre was developing the final phases
of his retreat and then delivering battle on the Marne.
With flank and rear defended from the immense
army that de Castelnau and Dubail prevented from
passing the gap of Nancy, the master strategist was
enabled to win.  Nancy lies in the plain; it can be
never defended, people said, and, therefore, it was
to be left an open town.  Did not the Treaty of
Frankfort forbid the placing of cannon which would
command German soil?  Be that as it may, the
doubters had forgotten le Grand Couronné, a series of
wooded heights and steep plateaux, which marked the
junction of Meurthe with Moselle and interposed a
rugged barrier between the old Lorraine capital and
the frontier.  Here, with a forethought unusual in
a country where so little had been prepared, trenches
had been dug; and when de Castelnau was forced to
retreat from the annexed province before an impassable
barrier of artillery, he raised earthworks, installed
barbed wire entanglements and brought heavy guns
from Toul.  It was the turn of the Germans to be
surprised.  With three attenuated army corps and
four or five divisions of reserve, de Castelnau kept
at bay an immense force of the enemy which battered
savagely at the gates.

How gaily the army marched out to the reconquest
of annexed Lorraine and to occupy the Germans
whilst the English landed in Belgium.  It was a
force thoroughly representative of France, for it was
recruited from all parts.  There were reservists from
Bordeaux, from Marseilles, from Montpellier and
from the West, but the heart of the crusade was the
famous 20th Army Corps from Nancy—Lorrainers
to a man—who had inherited the memory of the
*année terrible*.  With a gesture that expressed
eloquently their spirit, they knocked over the
frontier posts as they sang the *Marseillaise* with the
strenuous accent of the soldier engaging in a holy
war.  Great was their first enthusiasm, but great,
also, their disappointment, for none met them in the
streets; no hand flung flowers to them; no voice cried
in gladness: "Vive l'Armée!  Vive la France!"  The
silence was sinister, scarcely broken by the dull
reverberation of distant cannon bombarding
Pont-à-Mousson.  It took them a little time to realise that
the masters of the soil, fearing a demonstration, had
threatened the inhabitants with its consequences.
The silence and the gloom were fully explained.

For two days the army marched into the old land
of France without meeting serious opposition.  Then
the presence of strong outposts betokened the enemy.
Dubail's army operating to the south strove to enter
more deeply into German territory through Sarreburg;
de Castelnau took the northern route through Delme
and Morhange.  Both were met by a tremendous
opposition.  The battle line stretched in rough
crescent form through the three places I have named,
Dubail's left wing being in contact with de Castelnau's
right.  The Germans had secretly organised a vast
system of defence in which gun positions were
established and distances marked.  The trenches existed
for miles and had been furnished with innumerable
machine-guns and heavy mortars, the possession of
which was now revealed for the first time.  The battle
was joined, therefore, in disadvantageous conditions
for the French.  Every ruse known in warfare was
employed by the foe.  It decked the trenches with
dummies and led on the assailants to their doom, for
mitrailleuses were posted behind the lay figures.
Regiments lost more than half their effectives.  An
early victim was Lieutenant Xavier de Castelnau,
one of the General's sons, who fell whilst leading his
men of the 4th Battalion of Chasseurs to a
counter-attack.  He was mentioned for gallantry in the
Orders of the Day.

The French soon discovered that the forces opposing
them were no mere "cover" troops, but the Bavarian
Army under its Crown Prince, an army under Von
Heeringen and a strong detachment from Von
Deimling's command.  Forced to retreat, de Castelnau
fell back ten miles to the Grand Couronné, which he
fortified in the way I have described.  Dubail, who
had begun well with successes in the Vosges, was
unable to maintain his position on the Sarre and fell
back, also.  His troops, especially the 21st Corps,
behaved with great gallantry and only left Sarreburg
under express orders, and then with colours flying
and the band playing the *Marche Lorraine*.  Though
he delivered many attacks upon the enemy, he was
forced to reform behind the Meurthe, and finally took
up a position at Lunéville and in the fork between
the stream just mentioned and the Mortaigne.

The attack on the Grand Couronné was particularly
severe.  Wave after wave of the enemy threw itself
against the works held by de Castelnau's troops, who,
though exhausted by a week's continuous marching
and fighting, showed an unbreakable spirit.  And
there were brought to the attack, besides the armies
I have mentioned, four new Corps composed of
seventeen brigades of Ersatz, so that the hostile
forces numbered nearly half-a-million men.  The
assailants were encouraged not merely by their
numerical superiority—Dubail's army was about
150,000—but by their success in Lorraine, which had
been hailed by their countrymen as a great victory.
Furthermore, they were under the eye of the Emperor
and a brilliant staff, who were watching them from
the hill of Eply, to the north of the Couronné.  The
Kaiser's dramatic sense had been awakened by the
thought of a triumphal entry into Nancy, the ancient
capital of Lorraine.  He realised what it would mean
in the Fatherland, and that, from a military point,
it would signify that a breach had been made in the
defences of France.  Alas, for human hopes!  The
walls of Jericho refused to fall to the trumpet's
brazen call; and the Kaiser, after waiting in vain for
a victory, departed sombre and silent for other
fields.

The Germans tried every imaginable means to break
through, and bloody were the struggles on hill-tops
and in the woods of the region.  A regiment, suddenly
debouching from a forest, was mown down within a
few yards of the French trenches, and a division,
marching to the attack with drums and fifes playing,
met with a similar fate.  The Forest of Vitremont,
near Lunéville, was filled with the bodies of Germans,
computed to number 4500.  Vigorous counter-attacks
by de Castelnau from north to south, and by
Dubail from west to east, finally held the enemy in
check, and this uneasy equilibrium lasted for a
fortnight—the tremendous fortnight in which Joffre
saved Paris and sent the Germans flying to the north.
At that moment, the eastern frontier from Nancy to
the Vosges was free of the enemy; but at what a
cost!  Thousands had been lost on either side and
villages had been burned and civilians assassinated
by the Germans in pursuance of their studied policy
of terrorisation.

De Castelnau's brilliant tactics brought him renown
and the direction of the 2nd Army on the Compiègne-Arras
line.  Along this Front rising rectangularly
from the Aisne to the north, occurred those terrific
battles, which marked the historic "race to the
sea."  Smarting from their defeat on the Marne, the Germans
sought to turn the Allies' left; Joffre had a similar
idea in wishing to envelop the enemy's right.  The
resultant contest was the *course à la mer*.  But the
forces given to de Castelnau were inadequate for
the purpose, and de Maud'huy's army was added to
the line now creeping forward like a gigantic snake
to the sea.  But before the Germans tried to pierce at
Lens and Arras, they assailed the lower line held by
de Castelnau, and the angle formed by Aisne and Oise
proved a particularly warm corner.  In that late
September and early October, de Castelnau lost as
many men as in Lorraine, and the battles, if less
renowned, were as fiercely fought as those to the
north of Arras on the Yser and at Ypres.

The Germans in extending their lines realised that
if they could reach Dunkirk and Calais they would
not only cut England's communications, but point a
pistol at her heart.  And so they brought up army
after army until the line stretched in a solid trunk of
trenches with branches towards the sea, and 800,000
Germans (eighteen Army Corps and four Cavalry
Corps) made persistent efforts to break through the
Allies or envelop them.  To defeat this plan, Joffre
formed three new armies, of which de Castelnau's was
one, and brought up the English from the Aisne, and
the Belgians from Antwerp.  The situation was often
critical, for de Castelnau, like the other commanders,
lacked ammunition.  But his gift of prevision and
his infinite resource saved the day.  Eventually, the
chief fighting was transferred to the northern part
of the line, but de Castelnau's early resistance had
rendered the greatest service.  And so Joffre thought,
for de Castelnau was given dominion over four armies
from Soissons to Verdun, the longest front in the
possession of a single commander, though Foch and
Dubail were also given groups of armies.  His tenure
of the line was distinguished for the great offensive
in Champagne, whereby 23,000 prisoners and 120
guns were captured by the French, and 3,000 prisoners
and 25 guns by the English in Artois.  That latter
feat will be ever remembered for the house-to-house
fighting in Loos and for the brilliant capture of Hill 70.

The General's vigour of body is as remarkable as
his vigour of mind.  He seems never to tire.  In the
Great War he took no particular care of his health,
going to bed late and rising early with apparent
impunity.  Nor did he follow any system of diet,
eating heartily with a Southerner's appreciation of a
good table.  An excellent horseman, the Great War
left him little time for equestrian exercise.  When
commanding on the Somme he had horses at headquarters
at Amiens, but he rode only once in seven or
eight months.  Like his chief he walked a good deal,
not merely for exercise, but to get into direct touch
with the troops.  He believes in the closest relations
between the leader and the led.  He likes to recall
the names and records of his officers and to ascertain
the thoughts and sentiments of the men.  His
inspections behind the lines were no perfunctory affairs,
but real examinations into moral and *matériel*.
No detail of the kits escaped him, and he questioned
soldiers as if searching consciences.  Officers in his
command have told me that his parades lasted a
couple of hours or more.  He never lost an opportunity
of becoming acquainted with the elements of his
armies.  As he journeyed to the Front he would spring
from his car to compliment a colonel on the appearance
of his regiment, or turn aside to visit a hospital
and comfort the inmates with cheery words.  He is
a believer in moral suasion and the uplift of words.
Men going into battle look to him for encouragement,
and never in vain.  Officers in charge of them
interrogate his personal staff: "What does the General
say?  Does he think we can win?"  And upon the
answer, which is certain to be positive and stimulating,
depends their demeanour in the fight.  There is
something in the look of this soldier of the old school,
courteous and chivalrous, with character, resolution,
and intelligence, written in the high-coloured features,
framed by the white hair that bespeak courage,
health and confidence, and instil in others the bravery
and sacrifice that are dominant in himself.  This
influence is heightened by the knowledge that he has
himself suffered in his intimate affections.  When the
death of Gerald, his second son, occurred on the
Marne—he was buried at Vitry-le-François—de Castelnau
was engaged in a Council of War on the Eastern Front.
The news was brought to him as he deliberated with
his commanders on the plan of battle.  After a painful
moment he said with stoic calm, "Gentlemen, let
us continue."  And he bore with equal fortitude the
news that another son had been wounded and taken
prisoner at Arras.

Such calmness and composure spring from the
deep conviction that all is for the best.  Doubtless,
there was something of predestination in the fact
that he was baptized Noel-Marie, in allusion to the
date of his birth, Christmas Eve.  To his Catholic
parents it was a sign and a symbol.  His early
training at a Jesuit College, before he entered St. Cyr,
confirmed him in his principles, and he is of those
who have practised always their faith.  He attends
Mass everyday, and when going to the Front at night
he arouses a priest to take the Sacrament.  He was
the first to insist upon the attendance of chaplains
with the forces.  To his credit he has never concealed
his faith, though there were times in the history of
the Third Republic when it might have been politic
to do so.  Perhaps this sturdiness in his profession
accounts for the slowness of his promotion.  It began,
however, with a rush—Captain at nineteen, in charge
of a company in the Loire Army under General Davout,
a grandson of Napoleon's famous Marshal; but he
stayed long years working steadily but inconspicuously
on the staff.  The tide turned rapidly when he
again commanded troops, and his quality was seen at
once.  For six years he was Colonel of the 37th Regiment
of Infantry at Nancy (Turenne's old command), and
here he obtained that deep knowledge of the country
which stood him in such stead ten years later.  He
did not get his General's stars until 1906, and then
commanded troops at Soissons, Sédan, and Chambrun.
He distinguished himself in grand manoeuvres in the
Bourbonnais, under the eye of General Tremeau,
president of the War Council and the designated
Commander-in-Chief under the old system.  The new
system, inaugurated by Joffre, brought him into
close contact with the Generalissimo, whose
Chief-of-Staff he became and collaborator in framing the
Three-Years Law, then being passed by the Legislature.
The same year he went to England to attend
the Manoeuvres and afterwards conferred with the
military chiefs; and a mission took him to Russia,
where he discussed the lines of eventual co-operation.

Of an old Southern family, the General was born
(in 1851) at St. Affrique in the Aveyron, the old
Rouergue which came to the French Crown under
Henri IV.  He likes to speak the *patois* with soldiers
from the district, but he is not democratic in the
French sense of the word, though familiar in his
dealings with the ranks and solicitous for their welfare.
But he is exacting where discipline is concerned, and
not only gives orders but sees that they are executed.
His staff as well as his regimental officers respect his
strenuous temper.  His family is noted for intellectual
distinction.  Some of his brothers, as well as his sons,
were at the Polytechnique, the famous mathematical
school.  He, himself, is both classical and
mathematical.  If he has little English and less German,
and his pronunciation of English place-names amuses
his Anglo-Saxon friends, he is a brilliant classic, and
jokes in Latin, when the mood takes, with his staff.
Nevertheless he is thoroughly modern in his
appreciation of science and gives a chance to any likely
inventor.  Manufacturers are numbered amongst his
family, and the largest coal-mine in the south belongs
to it.  His father, however, was a jurist and a friend
of the economist, Le Play.

The General's vigour comes from the natural
energy of his mind.  In his boyhood there were few
sports in France, but he likes to tell his intimates that
he played a sort of football, with an inflated ball, in
his *lycée* in the mountains.  His youngest son is a
well-known champion of the Rugby game.  Of his
six sons, each went to the war.  Three were already
in the Army, one was at school, another in the Navy,
and a third an engineer.  The record is a tribute to
the patriotism—no uncommon trait—of provincial
France.  And there are those who, ignorant of the
austerity of her Catholic families, declared that France
was decadent!  Of the General's six daughters—for
Providence has blessed him with a full quiver—one
has had her arm amputated, having been infected with
gangrene whilst nursing in a hospital.  Such courage
and devotion are well exemplified in the mother,
who heard of her son's death whilst attending the
little church where it is her habit to go daily.  "Which
one?" she asked, almost inaudibly of the *curé*, as
she saw by his look of tenderness, that he had bad
news to communicate.  She thought of her husband,
and of her sons at the Front, and when the name was
pronounced, with a soft sigh of resignation she bowed
her silvery head a little lower over the breviary, and
proceeded with outward tranquillity, though with a
torn heart, to receive the consolation of her religion.

The man whom I have summarily sketched was
invested by Joffre with the dignity of his Chief-of-Staff
and the title of Major-General.  The life-long friend
became the chief aid in his deliberations, and the
virtual leader on the Western Front, leaving to the
highest in command the larger issues of a world-wide
campaign.  Even in Republican France there is
thus place for the *croyant* and the aristocrat, as the
names of Delangle de Gary, de Maud'huy, and D'Urbal
show.





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.. _`THE ORGANISATION OF MUNITIONS`:

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   CHAPTER VIII


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   THE ORGANISATION OF MUNITIONS

.. vspace:: 2

One of the many surprises of the war was the vast
place given to munitions.  Not even the most careful
calculator had foreseen the enormous consumption
of war *matériel* that would result from a long
continuance of trench warfare.  The Germans had
reckoned on an expenditure of 35,000 shells a day,
and the French on about half that; the actual
consumption was often 100,000 shells on each side.

Both French and German had based their figures
on a rapid war, and, had the invaders' plans been
realised, Paris would have been occupied and the
French opposition paralysed in a fortnight.  But
this was reckoning without Joffre, without England,
and without "General Chance," one of the most
important factors in any war.  Ammunition, by reason
of its vast rôle, became as engrossing and as vitally
important as the actual fighting.  For it soon became
apparent that in this war of *matériel* he would win
who could most quickly assemble the largest quantity
of guns and shot and shell.  The Germans began with
an immense advantage, for they had accumulated
secretly a mass of machine-guns estimated at 50,000,
leaving the Allies hopelessly in the rear in this respect.
But even their perverse intelligence did not fully
grasp the logical outcome of their own preparations,
or foresee that, their first plan having failed, they
would be caught inevitably in their own toils.

To the eternal credit of the French, they realised
with great rapidity the character of the war, and set
themselves with methodical speed to adapt themselves
to its unexpected features.  Factories sprang up all
over the country, some created out of boards and
bricks; others existing, but "controlled" in the
English sense, with Army officers assisting the civilian
directors; and a vast business of production was
ordered and marshalled as if the French had never
done anything else in their lives.  At one bound,
they developed into a manufacturing nation, though
the term would have been refused them, in the long
yesterday of the war, by England, the United States,
and Germany.  Their faculty for seeing clearly and
acting quickly, so apparent in their history, again
came to their aid.  It was their distinguishing mark
during the Great Revolution.  Having seized the
essentials of the problem, they acted upon their
insight with startling rapidity and resolution.  Of
course they committed excesses of a dreadful kind,
but their excuse was the gigantic character of the evil
which they sought to remedy.  Much the same spirit
of swift determination, happily without its fearful
manifestations, came upon the French people, and
with all the old Republican ardour they set themselves,
with a sort of grim alacrity, to face the crisis.
The old stern common sense, which has always lain
at the bottom of apparent volatility, again came to
their rescue; and in no way did the French show a
greater grasp of the situation than in their handling
of munitions.

It had been supposed that they were wanting in
order and method, and that their dramatic achievements
were due to the impulse of the moment.  But,
even if this were ever wholly true, it was certainly
not true of the second great struggle with Germany.
The magnificent effort of France was the outcome, not
of improvisation, but of the will to conquer and to
adopt the proper means to secure that end.  Nor was
a Press campaign necessary, as in England, to bring
home to the people the peculiar importance of
war-work in the factories.  It is true that M. Albert
Thomas, who took charge of Munitions in the
circumstances which I shall describe, made speeches to
factory workers in his visits of inspection, but it was
never necessary to wrestle with labour and cause it
to abrogate its proud pretensions, months after the
war had broken out.  Conscription would have settled
that question even if a vivid sense of realities had not
rendered unnecessary any exhortation from Ministerial
lips.  The vital character of the war had penetrated
to every intelligence; it had not stopped half-way
through the social strata, as appeared to be the case
in England.  And the disposition of the working
man in England towards conscription was only
intelligible on the assumption that he did not
understand.  In France, the war was too deadly real, too
close at hand for any to affect an attitude of
light-hearted detachment.

The fact that men in the factories like those on
the railways, were mobilised, simplified matters a
great deal.  A man could not desist from his labour
on the pretext of claiming higher pay without running
the risk of being treated as a deserter—a thing
unthinkable in time of war.  His duty, then was the
soldier's—to remain where he was until relieved by
order.  "We have had no strike since the war
began."  How well I recall the pride with which
those words were uttered by a functionary at the
Ministry of Munitions.  If it spoke well for the
patriotism of the working-class, it spoke equally well
for conscription as a scientific basis for waging war.
For it had cast its net over the whole nation, and
by its means the munitions worker took his place
in the factory as did the combatant in the trench.
But there were certain complications which arose,
none the less, in practice.  If there was no disturbance
of the labour market to exercise the conciliatory
powers of the Minister, production did not yet reach
its maximum until long after the war had broken out.
This was due to the unexampled demand made on
munitions and to the logical completeness of
conscription.  It required many months to adjust a plan
whereby the skilled worker was placed in his rightful
position in the factory, whilst those who had wrongly
usurped his name and functions were sent to the
trenches.  The most unlikely people had described
themselves as mechanics; and one found lawyers,
sculptors, school-teachers, painters, writers and a
host of semi-professional people masquerading as
munition-workers.  On the other hand, numbers of
highly trained specialists, some distinguished chemists
and engineers, had to be extricated from the trenches
to take up their natural positions in the factories,
in the interests of national defence.  This *chassé-croissé*,
inevitable in such a country as France, where
Government must be based upon equality, took some
time to effect.  Indeed, the chief duty of the publicist
during the second year of the war seemed to be to
urge an equitable and intelligent application of the
Dalbiez law, which was aimed expressly at the
shirker.

Nor did private patronage and political "pull"
wholly disappear, even in the stringent atmosphere
of a national crisis.  This was, perhaps, to expect too
much of human nature.  And so the Minister of
Munitions constantly received recommendations for
factory employment from persons whose intervention
it was hard to resist.  On the one hand, the Minister
was asked by important deputies to bring back this
or that worker from the Front; on the other, he was
warned by groups of Republican zealots of the danger
to democracy of showing partiality and conniving at
the existence of the shirker.  In a laudable effort to
strike the happy medium, M. Thomas decided to
receive no more nominations to the factory, and
decreed that only the indispensable man was to be
kept in the rear.  Even the good workman, if of
military age, must become a combatant; his place
in the factory would be taken by an older man.
But there remained, naturally, a certain rivalry
between the trench and the workshop, not unconnected
with the fact that assiduous munition-workers also
received their *Croix de Guerre*—a decoration that,
assuredly, should have been reserved for deeds of
gallantry on the battle-field.  But these various
difficulties, which M. Thomas settled with habitual
celerity and *savoir faire*, were, after all, only questions
of detail, and in no way affected the broad principle
of conscription or the working of the new Act against
the *embusqués*.  There was no quarrel with compulsion,
for each worker recognised the right of the nation to
ask him to suspend his individual rights at such a
moment.  "We are at war; the vital interests of
the country are at stake."  This was a sufficient
argument.  And so all energies were directed to
increasing the output.  In connection with the
establishment of factories, the "white coal" or
water-falls of the mountains were harnessed to the
work, and engineer shops were set up under the falls
themselves to employ the power directly.  Inventors
were given *carte blanche* to work out their ideas and
valuable improvements resulted in the opportunity
given to scientific brains to simplify processes, and thus
effect economies in manufacture.  For the first time
France had begun to explore and develop her own
scientific estate, which she had left, hitherto, largely to
the Germans.  For, if the latter were foremost in chemistry,
they had learned not a little from the researches
of Berthelot and Pasteur.  The great bacteriologist's
study of ferments contributed sensibly to the growth
of the German brewing industry.  Under the direction
of scientific soldiers and officials, production
rose to immense heights, and it soon reached more
than 100,000 shells a day, at a time when, according
to Mr. Lloyd George, the English output was scarcely
more than 15,000 a day.  M. Charles Humbert,
Senator for the Meuse and editor of the *Journal*,
preached in his columns the need of more guns and
shells, and his gospel was enforced by other writers;
but the root argument laid in the comprehension of
the people themselves and in their instinctive
realisation of what there was to be done and how to do it.
Latin brains and Latin culture triumphed in an
absolutely new field.

The genius of Munitions was M. Albert Thomas,
who sprang into prominence from the unlikely beginnings
of a schoolmaster and parliamentarian with
Socialistic leanings.  His assets were youth and
vigour and a large stock of learning.  He had
graduated from the "Higher Normal School," the training
ground for secondary teachers, with an *agrégation*
in history—equivalent to a Fellowship Examination
in England—and then became tutor to a grandson of
Victor Hugo.  In the family were steelworks situated
in the Loire, and the tutor's active mind became
interested in the fascinating processes which turned the
unwrought metal into shining implements of labour.
This knowledge, strengthened by many visits, stood
him in good stead when he became a deputy, and
thereafter Reporter to the State Railways Committee.  His
constituency was Sceaux, on the outskirts of the
capital, and therein was his native commune,
Champigny, where he was born of humble shopkeepers and
continued to reside.  In the Chamber his connection
with the railways brought him into contact with
M. Claveille, then coming into fame as administrator
of the Ouest-Etat line.  M. Thomas must be impressed
by the catenation of events, for, on arriving at the
Ministry of Munitions, he bethought him of the
railway manager and installed him first as his master
of contracts and, then, at the head of manufacture.
So that the guns began to arrive at their appointed
place with the same punctuality with which the trains
on the State Railway, under the reforming zeal of
M. Claveille, began to steam into the Gare St. Lazare.

At the outbreak of the war, M. Thomas, torn from
peaceful Socialistic propaganda in *L'Humanité*, where
he supported M. Jean Jaurès in his opposition to
Three-Years, went to the Front as a lieutenant of
reserve.  After a few weeks in the trenches, he
joined his General's Staff and then was summoned
to Bordeaux, whither the Government had retired
from threatened Paris.  "Will you organise Munitions?"
he was asked.  The battle of the Marne had
revealed not only their primordial necessity, but the
grievous shortage of France, and it was said that had
she been better provided, the Germans would have
had no chance of re-establishing themselves on the
line of the Aisne.  So M. Thomas, faced with the crude
need of the hour, undertook the post and flung
himself into it with his accustomed energy.  His
acquaintance with steel, both in the works he had studied and
the railway he had controlled, fortified his resolution
to undertake the responsibility.  Day and night he
passed rapidly, from point to point, in his motor-car,
organising munition work and exhorting and advising
the engineers of the country engaged in it, until,
gradually, the production was screwed up to a point
where, with the shells made in England, it equalled the
output of the German factories.  Here was a strange
destiny for a man whose reading and reflection had
induced him to believe that the tide of humanity
was set towards universal brotherhood.  Looking as
little like a professor of war as could be possibly
imagined—a little plethoric, a little heavy in face
and figure, and glancing out upon the world through
kindly spectacles—this new embodiment of Mars
accepted his position with a frank and systematised
zeal that led directly to success.  In a short time,
the tree brought forth prodigious fruit.  He worked
ceaselessly, turning Sundays into days of labour;
his only relaxation from exhausting office was to
undertake further journeys of inspection.

There was advantage in the fact that he was a
man of wide general views and not an expert.  Had
he been a gunner, he would have thought exclusively
of the pointing of his piece; as an engineer he would
have reflected on the life-history of the gun from its
early inception to its appearance as a finished article
of destruction.  But being the intelligent amateur,
he was able, like an airman, to soar over intercepted
space, and think of the problem in its wider aspects:
how to obtain the ore and transport it from the other
ends of the earth; how to procure the quickest output
from the arsenals; how to adjust factory labour to the
new law against the shirker; how to provide a
sufficiency of food for the monsters he was evolving; how
to cultivate the scientific *terrain* of the war; and
finally, how he could deliver his deadly wares into the
hands of those who would use them against the enemy.
There were a hundred different problems arising out
of the great military post which the war had given
him, and he managed them all with the ease and
optimism that belong to rapid assimilation combined
with poise, with *sang-froid*, and decision of character.
All these virtues contributed to the success of
M. Thomas.  He was rewarded by official appointment
to the post of Under Secretary of State for
Munitions, specially created for him by M. Millerand, the
then Minister of War.  The honour was unique in
the history of the Third Republic, which does not
always advantage those who serve it best.

All the departments connected with guns had to
be concentrated at the Ministry of Munitions in the
Champs Elysées.  At the outbreak of war the building
was a cosmopolitan hotel on the verge of opening;
the Government, needing quarters for its new department
of State, acquired it, and there amidst Louis XVI
chairs and Empire cabinets were installed M. Thomas
and his coadjutors.  The Socialist pacifist had become
the Grand Armourer of France, the licensed provider
of artillery, in a house of luxury built for the wealthy
classes....  In his chain of duties, however, was
a broken link.  He was not given charge of the
powder, though it was essential to his full usefulness;
and officials in that department corresponded directly
with the Minister of War.  But Galliéni, when he
came to the Rue St. Dominique, saw the faults of
the system and immediately invested his titular
subordinate with the necessary powers.  It was at this
moment, when work was piling high upon his willing
shoulders, that M. Thomas gave M. Claveille authority
over the construction of the guns.  And the railway
manager's experience proved invaluable in his new
post.

France had every reason to be proud of her organisation
of Munitions, and for the spirit which the crisis
prompted amongst her functionaries and workers.
As a University man of distinction, M. Thomas placed
his faith in higher education and was surrounded by
men who had achieved distinction in science and
letters.  A Sorbonne professor of Romance languages,
M. Roques, acted as his chief secretary; and a scholar
of European reputation occupied unremunerated leisure
in conducting the correspondence of the Department.
Thus the Ministry provided another example of public
spirit in France and of Gallic accessibility to new ideas.

Quite apart from the attitude of labour, admirably
attuned to the circumstances, there arose the material
difficulty of finding men.  The Loi Dalbiez was
rigorous in its application, and there was a dearth of
young and vigorous men, both skilled and unskilled,
in the factories.  I have spoken of some of the
methods adopted by M. Thomas to meet the case:
now he went to the colonies and employed Arabs and
Kabyles, Annamites, and other friendly nationals
from France overseas.  This exotic labour worked
harmoniously with the dominant race.  Wages were
on a far less generous scale than in England, and no
worker, however skilled, obtained £8 a week or even
half that amount.  Such prices were unthought of.
The common wage for unskilled labour was five francs
for a ten-hour day for men and women.  Where the
operations were perfectly simple and required only
adroitness, the wages for female labour were
sometimes only 3 frs. a day.  Even the trained mechanic
earned no more than 15 frs., the highest price being
generally 13 frs. 50.  Thus, you see, there was a vast
difference between the English and the French
positions, and it is clear that the cost to the country
of shell production was infinitely less in France, even
at a moment when the output was infinitely greater.
There were no lady workers in the factories—"heureusement
non"—said the official, with an expressive
shrug, when I asked the question, and the whole
scheme of production was worked on carefully
considered, economical, and patriotic lines.  Certainly,
the worker made very little profit out of his labour,
and the intensity of it in France, as in England, put
a considerable strain upon his health.

A veritable scientific mobilisation was necessary
in the Champs Elysées.  Highly trained brains were
needed for the delicate calculations essential to the
manufacture of explosives and to the creation of new
types of guns.  It meant the installation of eminent
specialists at the Ministry and the carrying out of
elaborate experiments in laboratories and open-air
trial grounds.  The syndicates, I repeat, made no
difficulty for the Minister by adherence to rules
framed for peace; but, of course, the power of these
bodies in France over their fellow-workers is less
pronounced than across the Straits.  But, though it
has its stringent rules, it raised no finger of protest
against the speeding-up of production, the continuous
shifts, the employment of women and children and
of coloured labour.  The difficulty that existed was
entirely due to the fear of creating any suspicion of
favouritism amongst those who were fighting the
country's battles by any arbitrary selection of men
for employment in the factories.  None the less, the
munitions worker had to be recruited on a large scale,
for the consumption of shot and shell exceeded all
belief and emphasised the fantastic character of the
conflict.

No doubt the physical existence of the Channel was
answerable for the difference in attitude of French and
English labour.  It was difficult for our workers to
visualise the situation in France with its invaded
departments, its devastated villages, its ruined
industries, its strangulated commerce and those
other disabilities which weigh upon a nation that has
suffered defilement from the foe.  But the French
soon came to see that the loyalty of the British
working man was not in question because of his
reluctance to accept a system which, however, both
Abraham Lincoln and Cromwell found necessary in the
raising of armed forces for the carrying out of national
purposes.  And yet neither could be accused of being
indifferent to the claims of democracy.





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.. _`FRENCH DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP`:

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   CHAPTER IX


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   FRENCH DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP

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A certain number of political students had come
to the discouraging conclusion that discipline could
not exist side by side with a pure democracy.  The
two things, they said, were incompatible.  Trade
Union leaders in England were for a long time
apparently under the same illusion.  Joffre, whom
I have tried to show as the perfect democrat, will
not accept any such view.  In a frank and engaging
mood of communicability, he explained to an
American writer, Mr. Owen Johnson, who visited
him at Headquarters, that democracy was by no
means the uneasy bedfellow of discipline; the two
could exist in the most perfect harmony.  "Where
a nation is truly Republican, I do not think there is
any danger to the spirit of democracy in military
preparation," said Joffre, in reply to the suggestions
that the existence of a large army was a constant
incitement to war, and opposed, therefore, to those
pacific principles upon which a modern republic
must be founded.  Military discipline does not
undermine democracy: that is his argument.  "In
a republic where the need of individual liberty is
always strong, military service gives the citizen a
quality of self-discipline which he needs, perhaps, to
respect the rights of others, as well as to act in
organised bodies."  And then he added that if
America—and the remark applies, of course, to
England—dreaded military service, it was because
the citizen had his eyes fixed on the German ideal
rather than on the French.  The distinction between
the French Army and the German was a difference
in the conception of the rôle of the soldier.  The
German system made a man into a machine.  It was
based on fear, and robbed him of his initiative.  It
explained the attack in close formation, the stupendous
throwing away of life, and an officer class, a
veritable Brahmin caste, that did not transmit
orders directly, but through sergeants and corporals.
The French spirit, on the other hand, implied fraternity.
The officer was interested in the welfare of
his men and regarded them as his children.  Nothing
was indifferent to him which affected them morally
or materially.  The German system was the revolver
at the head, the French the word of encouragement,
the smile, the *bonne camaraderie*.

General Joffre's distinction happily expresses the
fundamental character of the two systems; it goes
to the root of army psychology.  The French method
requires a knowledge of the temperament of the men;
for, though you may drive the dull and high-spirited
in much the same way, provided you are brutal
enough, to lead successfully requires knowledge of
mental characteristics and a certain power of appeal
which elicits the best efforts in your men.  French
officers, therefore, have to be psychologists,
understanding the character of those they lead and the
subtle differences that divide the townsman from the
peasant.  They must vary indefinably the address
when they talk to one or the other.  These two
broad classes are moved by different springs of action,
and the commander has to find out the best way of
firing the lethargic and attracting the fiery nature.

A French friend, who commanded a battalion of
engineers, gave me some explanation of the methods
he employed in dealing with a difficult class, the
town-bred mechanic.  His battalion was composed
of men from provincial centres, with a sprinkling of
skilled workmen from Paris.  He played off one
against the other.  When the Parisian was inclined
to show slackness or insubordination he remonstrated
with him in a tone of raillery and mock commiseration.
It was certainly regrettable that he could not
attain to the same level of conduct or efficiency as
those excellent fellows from the provinces, who,
after all, had not enjoyed the same advantages.
Rarely had he to speak twice to the same delinquent;
the man's *amour propre* was aroused; from that
moment, he commenced to mend his ways.  To the
provincial he said that he was surprised that a man
of his energy and parts should allow himself to take
second place to the Parisian.  Then it was true that
the countryman could not hold his own with workers
from the capital?  This, again, proved admirably
adapted to the particular mentality of his hearer;
his pride was piqued; he gave no more trouble.
Thus, to command under the French system requires
considerable adroitness and intelligence.

The secret, my friend said, of keeping order and
discipline in a regiment without getting oneself
disliked was to refrain from exerting more authority
than was strictly necessary.  One must not be
always on the look-out for faults.  Officers made a
mistake in seeing everything at all times; there are
moments when, as Nelson found, the blind eye was
convenient.  A Frenchman is not naturally inclined
towards discipline; the quicker his intelligence, the
more likely he is to feel resentment at clumsy
authority.  The peasant, slower to think and to
take offence, is more amenable.  He gives up his will
and individuality with greater readiness to the leader,
and even courts direction.  But in the veins of every
Frenchman is some trace of the *frondeur* and
revolutionary.  His mind is impatient of restraint and leaps
readily to conclusions and, sometimes, to tragic
resolutions.  Mere authority, as authority, chafes
him; he dislikes it in the abstract.  To render it
acceptable, there must be an idea behind it.  If
you want to lead him, you must be prepared to
undertake gladly the same risks as he, to go out
and meet them with a gay insouciance.  You must
show him that you do not count your life more
valuable than his, or shelter yourself behind your
position.  You must lead him by going in front,
not by driving him from behind.  It is an age of
miracles; astounding things may happen; notwithstanding
his nonchalance and objection to play the
hero, at the moment of action he becomes
transformed.  You have only to know how to draw him
out, to find the formula which unlocks his heart, to
discover the hidden springs of his emotion.  For an
idea, it has been said, he is ever ready to shoulder
a rifle behind a barricade.  And when that idea
is the country, with patriotism leaping high, his
*frondeur* spirit is capable of all.  Centuries have
not dimmed its ardent inflammability, and each
successive phase in history renews his high susceptibility,
until one feels that the Great War, instead of
exhausting the fruitful soil of France, has enriched it
with new virtues and a new potentiality.  Rifles
have spoken again from the barricades, but this
time the nation is ranged on one side of it and the
invader on the other.  Patriotism and ideality flow
perennially from the mountains of Latin youth,
ready to be diverted to any holy cause.

The spirit is manifest even in the midst of the
battle.  At the critical moment, when officers have
fallen in the hurricane of iron, a man emerges from
the ranks to lead on his comrades to the attack.
From his knapsack, the legendary baton has slipped
into his strong, tenacious hand.  He has shown
qualities of leadership in the supreme hour.  General
Sir Robert Baden-Powell recognised this genius of
the race for instant adaptation when he visited the
French Front and heard stories of improvisation; the
native initiative of the soldier comes ever to his aid
in the tightest corners, where German mechanism
inevitably fails.  Years ago, De Vigny, in a
celebrated phrase, proclaimed the inherent power of a
Frenchman to become a man of war.  Time and
again he has proved his martial qualities—a sheer
instance of atavism.  A sergeant leads a battalion
into the jaws of death with such fire and courage
that each man is electrified, loses his constitutional
timidity and becomes a lion in the fight.  Under
this magic influence he is irresistible, like Cromwell's
Ironsides, whom, strange to say, he physically
resembles.  The low steel bonnet crowns the same
sort of ruddy visage and brown beard which marked
the East Anglian in the seventeenth century.  There
is something of the Englishman in him, something
of the Berserker employing his "irresistible fury"
in a national cause.  His spirit of adventure has
been translated into terms of patriotic achievement.

And the officers themselves know how to acquire
rapidly the science of the trench.  Many in the regular
army fell in the early days of the war; the professional
leader trained and set apart for the career
scarcely existed any more.  Then up sprang the
officer of reserve, until then engaged in civilian
pursuits; nine-tenths were in that condition.  But,
taught in the hard school of war, they developed
into the most accomplished chiefs.

Though the French *pioupiou* is readily accessible
to daring, and glories in a passionate achievement,
he is not hypnotised by names, but demands a real
aristocracy.  It is an error to suppose that he resents
superiority.  On the contrary, he is constantly
looking for it and is eager to recognise it when found.
He is equally impressed by it, whether he finds it
in the plain, plebeian features of Dupont or in the
aristocratic mien of a De Rochefoucauld.  The name
matters nothing; the qualities are everything.  But if
he disregards family, he is insistent on a real
distinction.  Dupont must not shelter his mediocrity
under democracy, or can the patrician hope to
win devotion by a mere show of elegance.  The
accent is not of much account in the trenches;
there, as elsewhere, must be a real superiority.  If it
is wanting, if the officer is mediocre and vulgar in his
taste and habits, shows the same deficiencies and the
same lack of control as the lower ranks, then his
supremacy will be short-lived, whatever his grade.  And it
does happen that old soldiers, promoted from the ranks,
sometimes fail to inspire the respect that should be
theirs, because they cling to the old habits, the old
*laisser-aller*, and know not how to assume the new
virtues that should go with the new position.  For
commissioned rank in the French as in the other
armies of the world must mark a real ascendancy,
moral, mental, and even physical, to be effective in
the best sense.  It is part of the panoply of power.

None the less, the adaptability of the nation is
never better shown than in the speed with which
the officer, newly risen from the ranks, for bravery
and coolness on the field, puts on the whole armour
of leadership.  Yet his speech, probably, will remain
homely, and he will adopt no airs which jar with his
humble origin and native simplicity.  Perhaps the
least successful of these leaders are those who have
longest served in some capacity, such as *adjudant*
(a rank above sergeant), because they are rooted fast
in their old associations and have not those natural
qualities of authority which should be inseparable
from commissioned rank.  The essential is that a
man shall show the temper of a chief, and for this
reason the sportsman often proves more successful
in handling his men than the more intellectual type
of soldier, who is better able, no doubt, to perceive
the purpose of a movement.  Yet the rank and file
will certainly expect high attainments from their
ultimate leaders, and are intelligent enough to know
that no amount of practical experience is a real
substitute for sound military culture.  Obviously, a
knowledge of military history and of the principles
of strategy are not required of the subaltern who
leads an attack on a village; but it is equally true
that only to the student are accessible those
solutions of the past which are of such importance in
understanding the present.  The sportsman, then,
rather than the office soldier, inspires the affection
of his men.  The type is more often found, no doubt,
amongst the aristocracy and the higher *bourgeoisie*
than amongst the artisan class, for in France at
least the last-named has rarely the chance of playing
games and of acquiring dexterity in manly sports.
Again, the men know that those who have risen
from the ranks are harder to serve than the "gentleman"
class, just as the works' foreman is a severer
taskmaster than the employer; thus of all the officers
the type that best succeeds in drawing out the
qualities of his men is he who has had the broadest
education and is the best example of finished
manhood.  The birth and social advantage are merely
the make-weight, not the ground-work, for his
command; the contrary is alien to the Republican instinct
and would be resented.  But if the men are touched
with the feeling that Jack is as good as his master,
they like that master to be a fine, upstanding fellow,
recommending himself as much by his handsome
physical appearance as by his urbanity and *savoir-faire*.
If to this can be added a lively temperament,
disdain of danger and an evident liking for bodily
exercise, his dominion will be complete.  But these
things do not come from books, or are they handed
down from generation to generation like a Roman
nose or a Bourbon chin.  And thus is exposed, no
doubt, the weakness of the hereditary principle.
Alas! man cannot transmit, like a letter in the
post, his courage and adroitness to his descendants.
Meeting cross currents by the way, the atavic message
becomes hopelessly confused.

Yet the French system in its elasticity is admirably
adapted to the genius of the race, for it gives free
play to improvisation.  No account is taken of social
status, but I have shown that social rank, coupled
with mental and moral attributes, do aid a man even
in Republican France.  Valour is no respecter of
persons—the poor man may be as brave as the most
favoured of the gods.  Thus there is ever in the
breast of the soldier the splendid hope that
to-morrow he may begin his ascent to the temple of
Fame.  Cases of promotion are so numerous that they
have ceased to be exceptional, and represented, at
least during the Great War, half the number of
commissioned officers.  The *garçon de bureau*, earning
his five francs a day at the Hôtel de Ville, is a
lieutenant of reserve.  In time of war he rejoins his
regiment and becomes a captain.  He is mentioned
for bravery and is rewarded by the red ribbon of
the Legion.  No one finds it strange that this young
man, son of a roadmaker in municipal employ,
should be on the high road to honours whilst his
father works on the low road of obscurity.

And the man—an amiable functionary of the
Ville de Paris—from whom I had this instance of
Republican grandeur and simplicity recalled his own
military service and the *adjudant* studying to be
an officer, who on wet days instructed young
conscripts in the elementary lessons of the great battles.
He remembers particularly his description of Fontenoy
and his vivid presentation of the forces in contact
and the different dispositions of the generals, which
ended in our undoing and the victory of the French.
The lecturer had kept the rugged speech of his class,
but his obvious enthusiasm and knowledge of his
subject found a quick road to the hearts and
comprehension of his young hearers.  That simple, rough
fellow with a taste for study is a Brigadier-General
to-day.  The Great War gave him his chance to show
his mettle.  It is a common enough story in the
French Army, particularly in the first eighteen months
of the war, when the Great Retreat and several sharp
offensives had inflicted immense loss on the corps of
officers.

The material of the French Army, then, is pretty
fine stuff, but it has to be treated with a delicate
discrimination and with that peculiar French quality
known as *doigté*.  We have seen that town and
country, side by side in the same unit, must be
dealt with perspicaciously by the officer.  Anything
that looks like mere routine and a mere waste of
time and energy is particularly obnoxious to the
sharp fellow from the large centres of population.
"A quoi bon tout ça?" he asks, with a scarcely
concealed irritation.  He is difficult to lead unless he
comprehends the military utility of the order.  Once
his sympathetic intelligence has been gained, he puts
his soul into the work.  The peasant farmer, on the
other hand, accepts everything with the stolid
passivity of those who work upon the land.  He does
not suffer moral torture from the feeling that he is
wasting his time.  Is he not out in the open?  And
the food is good.  His intelligence does not rebel
against red tape, which is so distasteful to his lively
contemporary from the town workshops.  And so the
commander has to show discretion in his manner
of utilising the human material to his hand.  The
mechanic probably will prove an excellent scout and
give a vivid account of the country through which
he passes and the enemy whom he has sighted.  His
interest has been excited, and all his qualities of
resourcefulness and ready adaptability come to the
surface.  He feels that he is being worthily employed,
and is happy in the knowledge that he has been of
service to his superior.  But put him to guard a
haystack and he is much less happy.  That is a peasant's
job, he feels.  And the peasant, indeed, is perfectly
at home in front of the hay; his nostrils dilate with
pleasure at the sweet scent of it; it makes him
think of his own bit of grass growing there in Brittany
on one of those shining slopes where the gorse flames.

As a general rule, mechanical drill is irksome to
the Latin mind; it fetters his individuality.  The
idea of turning perpetually in a barrack square to
attain perfection in movements in mass is by no means
to his liking.  He has never been attracted to it,
nor to the cult of buttons and straps and military
tailoring.  He cares little for such things.  On the
march, he considers only the question of covering
the ground in the quickest manner with the least
expenditure of force.  He is largely indifferent to
his appearance.  Perhaps his artistic instinct tells
him that sweat-covered, with the dust of the road
upon him, he is vastly more picturesque, more like
the real, traditional "poilu," than immaculate in a
new uniform of celestial blue.  He is proud of the
general's praise of his fitness and stamina after his
march of fifty kilometres with a heavy pack on his
back; he would consider it intolerable if he were
reproached for some slackness in his dress, for buttons
that had been displaced, for a belt that had slipped.
These things are of no consequence, he says,
impatiently.  He does not understand that attention
to minutiæ which is the bee in the bonnet of the
old-style disciplinarian.  And yet tradition counts in
this nation of soldiers in a manner surprising to those
who associate indifference with an outward air of
insouciance.  It is as if each man were a Fregoli
capable of a dozen rôles.  Certainly, at the end of
a long march he will pull himself together with a
brave air if he has to pass before the eyes of foreign
officers or through a village street with the inhabitants
lined up to receive him.  There is pride at the bottom
of his character as readily aroused as those instinctive
martial qualities which he inherits from the
great-grandfather of the Napoleonic Wars.





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.. _`GALLIÉNI AND HIS POPULARITY`:

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   CHAPTER X


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   GALLIÉNI AND HIS POPULARITY

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General Galliéni[1] came to his task of defending
Paris with a reputation gained in Madagascar.  Nine
years of successful government had transformed the
island, torn with conflict, into a peaceful possession.
Already credited with great organising powers, he
was suspected of being a good strategist, and he
was soon to prove it.  His very appearance,
energetic, thin, with large, osseous face looking like an
eagle in spite of the *pince-nez*, gave Paris a wonderful
impression of youth and energy.  He was a man
who would make things happen, conjectured the
citizens—and, certainly, he looked like it.  His stride
was masterly, and his orderly officers grew thin in
his service; there was a story of a plump private
secretary who visibly dwindled in an effort to keep
pace with the "patron's" energetic gait.

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[1] General Galliéni died May 28, 1916, while this book
was in the press.

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Paris had never faltered in its attitude of pure
valour even when news lacked and rumour stalked,
gaunt-eyed, and unfettered by the least fact, along
the Boulevards.  Galliéni's appointment to the
governorship of the city put fire into hesitating
pulses and new courage into hearts.  To see him
crossing the street in his uniform of cerulean blue,
that attractive colour of the French Army, was to
receive a lesson in youth and virility.  He had the
look of the fighter grateful to Parisians, who, recalling
their past, did not like the notion of being handed
over tamely to the enemy as an "open" city.  An
open city, forsooth!  What ignominy for the capital
of all the talents!  When the Governor was formally
invested on August 26, 1914, the muscles of his
*administrés* grew tense with resolution.  Then there
would be resistance, resistance to the point of street
fighting.  Inch by inch the town would be disputed.
The Eiffel Tower would be blown up, so that the
enemy could not use its apparatus and antennæ to
transmit or receive messages; bridges would be
destroyed and the Underground would be rendered
useless.  The two million inhabitants who remained
faithful to the city would be evacuated to the
communes south and west of the metropolitan area.
This was the plan as revealed later, and was
apparently authentic.  That the Governor thought the
measures would be necessary I do not believe; but
it was well to be prepared.

In his military eye the enemy could not enter the
city until the home army had been destroyed; that
was an elementary principle of warfare.  But how
much did the Germans know, definitely, of the
condition of the Allies?  One had to be quite sure of
that before one could forecast with accuracy their
line of action.  Did they consider the Allies were
definitely crushed?  It seems almost certain that
they did.  Such a state of mind is revealed in the
despatches they sent from the front, each more
affirmative than the other.  They told of the utter
rout of the French, of their inability to withstand
the advance.  Thus, as Colonel Feyler points out,
the Germans were in much the frame of mind of
Napoleon at Waterloo.  History was repeating itself
in new conditions.  Napoleon disdained Wellington,
whom he considered a mediocre general, and Blücher,
a brave but blundering hussar, and so, without
sufficient preparation, sent his legions against the
British lines.  If the German commanders had not
the sublime arithmetic of Napoleon: "One hundred
and twenty thousand men *and I* make two hundred
thousand," that was the spirit of their calculations.
They were impressed with their own invincibility.
And there was some excuse for their belief
that the English had been annihilated and the French
demoralised.  The British Army was only saved
by bull-dog tenacity and a constitutional inability
to accept defeat; the French showed a new quality
of resistance because of the presence of their
Three-Year soldiers—the three "Regular" classes with the
colours—wherewith the reserves were stiffened into
homogeneity.  In any case, the Germans exaggerated
the effect of their successes.  The wish was father to
the thought.  The apparent direction of the retreat
induced them to believe that the fruit was ripe and
ready to fall into their expectant mouths.  Surely,
they argued, Joffre is going to repeat the mistake of
Bazaine in 1870 and shut himself up in Paris as his
predecessor did in Metz.  He is anxious, certainly,
they said, to seek the protection of the Paris forts,
and yet he must know their shortcomings, for, forty
years before, he had helped to build them.

But the cold fact remained that Joffre did not
enter Paris, but flung down the gage of battle on the
Marne, leaving Paris on his left as a protection to
that flank and the eastern forts on his right to prevent
his line from being turned in that direction.  Galliéni
was quick to realise the situation, to see its
possibilities and its dangers and the necessity for swift
decision.  If Paris had to be fought, the best defence
was a forward move outside the city, an
offensive-defensive.  But a bare week remained before the
Germans approached within striking distance.  In
those feverish days, the Governor of the city mobilised
thousands of labourers and set them to work digging
trenches.  It was obviously impossible to do more
than erect a temporary barrier against the tide, but
the Parisians were caught and fascinated by the
energy of their chief, who instilled into them his
own confidence and his own combativeness.  Galliéni
knew his public with the divination of a psychologist,
and he built barriers at the narrow city entrances
with felled trees and stones torn from the roads.
Obviously such fortifications could not stand a
moment against artillery, but their purpose was as
much moral as military.  If they prevented Uhlans
from capturing the gates by a forward rush, they
were equally operative in inspiring Parisians with
the reality of war, which some were in danger of
forgetting, and at the same time gave them the
assurance that they were being protected.  The
temperament of *la ville lumière* has something of the
child in it: a curiosity and interest in everything,
a thoughtless courage, and the need of constant
assurance that it is being cared for.

And when the hosts advanced, sweeping from the
north of Paris to the east, it was Galliéni who saw
the fault and determined to profit by it.  Von Kluck
had disregarded the Paris army either through
ignorance or temerity, and he was to pay the price.  The
Governor collected an army from here, there and
everywhere, placed it under a superb tactician,
General Maunoury, and at the critical moment carried
it to the field of battle.  Our "intellectual general,"
as Gabriele d'Annunzio calls him, combined activity
with perception.  There was something Napoleonic
and something Parisian, too, in his notion of utilising
taximeters to carry soldiers to the German right wing,
which, threatened, had reinforced itself with a *corps
d'armée* and now seemed likely to envelop the French
left.  Up aloft Von Kluck's airmen decided that
the Parisians were leaving their city by the thousand
in taxicabs.  It was Galliéni's army of Zouaves and
Territorials hurrying out to strike a rapid and decisive
blow at the invaders.

When Von Kluck marched straight upon Paris
as if to devour it and turned aside to the south-east,
he gave Galliéni, as we have said, the opportunity
he sought.  It is, of course, wrong to assume that
the Germans suddenly changed their plan; this was
not so, unless they wished to fly in the face of all
accepted rules of war.  It is highly dangerous to
neglect one's main objective, the crushing of an
enemy, for a subsidiary one.  And if the Germans
had entered Paris without defeating the Allies, they
would have committed a heavy blunder.  Heaven-born
commanders like Napoleon could afford to take
the risks and by their genius escape; lesser men
have to abide by the rules of the game.  Yet the
Germans, proud in their superiority of numbers and
equipment, might have supposed that they could
detach part of their forces to finish off the Allies
and with the remainder occupy the city.  After all,
strategy is a matter of common sense, and the plain
man can see the danger to a general of entering a
city whilst his enemy is at large, powerful enough
to imprison him within the walls and to cut his
communications.  To a strategist of Galliéni's calibre
the problem was perfectly clear.

What he could not know, however, was the exact
intentions of the Germans: whether they were going
to attack the Home Army and simultaneously enter
the city, or whether they would relinquish occupation
until they had made certain of the destruction
of the Allies.  To meet the alternative he employed
his habitual energy and resource; he was prepared
for the two events.  Even after the battle he took
unlimited precautions, accumulating vast stocks of
fodder and cattle in the Bois de Boulogne, until the
famous playing-ground looked like a western cattle-ranch;
he took, also, a careful census of the city,
so that food might be apportioned to the population.
As a military precaution he continued to construct
trenches and defences of all sorts.  Why did he pursue
this mole-like activity of throwing up earth, since the
danger was past?  Galliéni had a double purpose:
to reassure Parisians against the return of the
Germans and to train the young soldier in the art of
modern war.  And so he built endless lines of trenches,
until the country round Paris from Beauvais in the
north to Fontainebleau in the south was scored and
ribbed with excavations.  In their depths he hid
monstrous black cannon, ready to belch flame and
disappear again into their pits.  He left nothing to
chance.

A year after his appointment to the Governorship,
he rose to the higher plane of Minister of War.  The
Viviani Cabinet had quietly given way to the Briand
Administration, and, with that thoroughness of
which the French are capable in great crises, they
began to reconstruct their military organisation.
His new post gave Galliéni a vast rôle, in which his
lively temper and insatiable capacity for work found
full employment.  His part in the battle of the
Marne had become known, and enhanced his reputation.
It was realised that he had acted with immense
decision.  Thus he became newly popular with the
Parisians, and his singular features—the eyes
gleaming behind the glasses as if they were unsleeping in
vigilance—were reproduced everywhere.  His popularity
threatened to rival that of Joffre, except that
Joffre appealed more subtly and invariably to the army.
The new Minister, however, was more Parisian than
the Generalissimo, more distinctly Latin—Parisian,
also, in a certain truculence more affected than real,
for Galliéni is a tender-hearted man, a little diffident
outside the strict orbit of his duty.  He was
particularly strenuous in his dealings with the *embusqué*.
That furtive creature, who shelters behind the flag,
was brought forth from his snug post in the rear.
Several hundreds found employment at the Ministry
of War; thousands more were scattered up and
down the country in dépôts, in stores and factories,
in headquarters of commanders.  Galliéni routed
them out mercilessly, and sent one hundred and
fifty thousand of them to their regiments.  From
his own ministry in the Rue St. Dominique, one
chilly November morning, there emerged a
melancholy column of five hundred military clerks, who
wended their way to the grey lines of the trenches,
abominably wet and dismal, in contrast with those
comfortable Ministerial quarters.  The Minister's
implacability pleased both Paris and the country.
Both were ready to do their duty, but needed to be
told that there was perfect equality in everything
and no preferential treatment.  Galliéni struck
pitilessly at abuses.  A Territorial officer who drove his
superior's car was punished as firmly as a *médecin
major* who showed undue favour to certain of his
patients and retarded their return to the Front.  At
times, no doubt, the Minister was guilty of
exaggeration; but even this was typically French and
was better than inactivity.  In calling up auxiliaries
(men exempted from military service because of
physical defects) he overlooked the economic needs
of the country; but these matters were soon put right.

He proved the foe of red tape and routine.  He
opened windows in his Ministry, which had been
closed for years, and let in fresh air.  He broke down
the methods of the Circumlocution Office, doing away
with useless labour, installing typewriters and
feminine secretaries, the wives and daughters of those
who had fallen in the field, and thus relieving many
men for purely military duties.  "Simpler methods,"
he cried to all who would hear; "I want results";
and, of course, he obtained them.  Then he
suppressed recommendations.  To Parliament, a little
dubious and jealous of its privileges, he explained
that, whilst open to proper representations from
every soldier, he could not listen to interested
recommendations.  He re-established the sovereign power
of discipline, but at the same time constituted
himself a court for the correction of abuse of authority.
In the Chamber he conquered sympathies, though
obviously uncomfortable in the atmosphere.  I saw
him the day after his maiden speech as Minister and
congratulated him on his success.  "Ah, if you only
knew how much this sort of thing costs me," he
said, "you would not talk of my success," and he
shrugged his shoulders with a gesture half-humorous,
half-ironical.  The soldier pleased in the tribune
because of his directness and vibrant patriotism;
but when Socialists interrupted him it was plain
that he chafed at the restrictions of time and place
which prevented him from making suitable reply!
On one occasion he was about to leave the House
because of the behaviour of the Socialists, and was
induced with difficulty by M. Viviani to return to
his place on the Front Bench.  Unconsciously he had
repeated the protest of General Pau a few years before.
It was unfortunate that it was not more effective, for
the opposition of the Socialists arose over a question
of regulating the hours of cafés in Marseilles—palpitating
subject in time of a national war!  The
Minister was happiest when dealing with the
incorporation of the 1917 class—lads of eighteen
who were going to the Front.  The Senate before
whom he spoke appreciated his patriotic quality,
and the fact that, though a disciplinarian and an
energetic commander, he yet kept in his heart
the sense of sacrifice of young lives given to the
country.

In every department Galliéni laboured to promote
efficiency and to perfect the great machine in his
hands.  By some he was reproached for living
voluntarily in the great white light of publicity, but
Galliéni knew that unless he had the public
emphatically on his side his reforms could be crushed
by politics.  When once he had established his
right to freedom of action, then no political cabal,
thinking of its influence at the polls, could pull him
down.  It was for this reason that he took the
public into his confidence, so that it might know
that the best was being done that could be done.
If Galliéni showed no mercy to the shirker, it was
because he wished to encourage the peasant in the
trenches and the mechanic in the factory by the
thought that there was justice for all and favouritism
for none.  Much of his work was accomplished
without the least blare of trumpets or the smallest
paragraph in the Press.  He reorganised the medical
service of the army in the sense of bringing hospitals
into line with authority, and suppressed the *laisser-aller*
of the amateur and philanthropic institution.

Though not in the ordinary sense a social figure—indeed,
he is the despair of hostesses—Galliéni has
social graces and an artistic side to his character
wanting from the more burly figure of General
Joffre.  Though he keeps his counsel in all
professional matters, he is not naturally silent; he has
a dozen interests, not exclusively military, and
touches life at all points.  As a young man, following
his studies in the military school, he consorted
with a literary set in the Latin Quarter, and the
friends of his youth were Ernest Daudet and Jean
Richepin.  He reads and speaks several languages,
believing that one should go direct to one's authorities,
and his conversation is informed with study, reflection
and travel.  He is the type of the modern soldier:
savant, philosopher and metaphysician.  A wide
experience and intellectual tastes have given him
toleration, but he has none for incapacity and
dereliction of duty.  Though accused of overweening
ambition, he is ambitious only to serve the country.
"For an old man like myself, death on the
battlefield would be a recompense," he said on a recent
occasion.  "I should die in defending Paris with
the enthusiasm of a young lieutenant."  This is the
spirit which flamed from the historic poster on the
walls of Paris at the moment when the Government
departed to Bordeaux: "I have received a mandate
to defend Paris, and I intend to fulfil it to the end...."

It was patriotism which induced him to accept
the heavy succession of the Ministry of War from
M. Millerand.  Years before he had been offered the
post, but declined it "because it meant presence in
the Chamber."  But the war changed everything;
it was impossible to urge personal reasons when the
country was at stake.  But he knows so little of
political labels that he makes his friends laugh in
confusing one kind of Republican with another.  To
him they are all the same, provided they have the
national interests at heart.  For this reason he
was equally friendly with men of such divergent
tendencies as Gambetta, Jules Simon, Waldeck-Rousseau
and Albert de Mun.  It is because of his
many-sided appeal that he inspires collaborators
with peculiar devotion.  Two qualities outstand:
his perennial youth, represented by a figure which
might be that of a young cavalry officer, though he
has passed the age limit, and a scientific precision
of thought which means that in everything he is
clear, precise, and piercing, like a sword-blade.

Illness caused him, unfortunately, to relinquish
his post at the Ministry of War in the spring of 1916,
after a few months of strenuous work, but his
influence remains as that of a good patriot inexorable
in his country's service.





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.. _`GALLIÉNI AND HIS COLONIAL EXPERIENCE`:

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   CHAPTER XI


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   GALLIÉNI AND HIS COLONIAL EXPERIENCE

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If General Galliéni allowed his mind to take a
retrospective turn in the intervals of his intensive
work at the Ministry of War, there must have opened
to him a dazzling prospect of colonial enterprise and
adventure.  And in the picture would appear a
gallery of celebrities, brown, black and yellow, as
well as white.  The man who made the profoundest
impression on his character was certainly Faidherbe,
type of the serious Frenchman, whose spectacles
added to the natural gravity of his face.  His work
as pioneer had ceased before Galliéni's had
commenced, but his influence remained, powerful for
good, and vitalising in its effect on the young mind.
He realised that when you beat back barbarism you
must attach the native to the flag and give him new
objects for devotion.  Before the War of 1870, he was
engaged in conquering the Niger Basin.  Galliéni was
destined to complete that work.  Like his master,
as he called Faidherbe, he was inspired by the great
English explorers, Mungo Park and Livingstone.  The
latter was discovering Lake Ngami when Galliéni
was born.

Faidherbe fought in the War of 1870 as commander
of the Northern Army, and won two rare successes
against the Germans at Bapaume and Pont Noyelles.
Then he retired to senatorial and academic honours,
and Briere de L'Isle reigned in his stead as Governor
of Senegal.  Galliéni joined him from his peaceful
garrison of the Île Reunion.  There he could have
lazed and luxuriated to his heart's content, for there
was nothing to do, but that was not his nature.  He
preferred to give himself to professional studies and
to fit himself for the colonial career, for which he
felt already a vocation, if not a positive predestination.
In Senegal the opportunity came early to
display his talents both as soldier and organiser.
Ahmadou, son of El Hadj Oumar, founder of a
Mussulman empire in Central Africa, was endeavouring
to maintain his position by terrorism.  An
English expedition from Gambia looked like barring
the way to French expansion in the Hinterland, and
the Senegal Government felt there was no time to
be lost.  Galliéni, now a captain, fitted out his
expedition, which started from Bakel in 1880.  He took
with him presents to placate Ahmadou, for the object
of the mission was more political than military.  We
have a picturesque account of it, with geographical
and ethnological details and amusing sketches of
negro chieftains from the pen of Galliéni himself.  He
showed as much erudition as enthusiasm for his work,
and did credit to La Flèche, the military school
where he passed his boyhood, and St. Cyr, whence
he graduated, as sub-lieutenant, on the very
day—July 15, 1870—when war broke out with Germany.
He was a real "son of a cartridge pouch," as the
phrase is, for his father, of an old Italian family, was
the last commandant of a French garrison on the
Spanish side of the Pyrenees.

The Captain underwent many perils in his search for
Ahmadou.  His column was ambushed and half its
effectives killed.  The remainder took refuge in a
valley, and the exultant enemy crowned the heights.
Captain Galliéni, with the decision that always has
distinguished him, advanced with a single interpreter
to parley with the foe.  The latter was so impressed
with his valour that it let him continue his journey.
But Ahmadou was coy, and hid himself in his capital
of Segou, which he did not allow the mission to
approach.  For seven or eight months Galliéni and
his companions were practically prisoners of the
irascible Sultan, who sent each morning to tell them
that they would be executed that day—news that
affected them less than the deprivation of salt, to
which they were subjected.  Finally, by much
patience, Galliéni wrung a treaty from his captor,
giving France access to and commercial rights over
the river from its source to Timbuctoo.  It was a
great stroke, and bore witness to the soldier-diplomat's
courage and persistence.

Whilst waiting for the good pleasure of the negro
Sultan, Galliéni was not wasting time.  He was taking
stock of the country, of its resources and its inhabitants,
particularly in view of the extension of the
railway from Kayes (the capital of Senegal), which
was at the basis of French policy in the Soudan.  The
young officer's account of his travels brought him
fame in France, the Gold Medal of the Geographical
Society, the red ribbon of the Legion, and the rank
of Major in the army.  Though Ahmadou's trickery
had somewhat compromised the success of the mission,
important results had been attained, notably in
knowledge of the country, and in providing facilities
for the line.  He was to see Ahmadou again.

He had returned to Paris for a few months' repose,
and then had gone to the Antilles.  Yet the Soudan
called him irresistibly.  His work there was not
complete.  He was now Lieutenant-Colonel and
Governor of French Soudan.  Ahmadou was at his
old tricks; he menaced the colony from the north,
whilst new adversaries arose in Mahmadou-Lamine,
who had excited the fanaticism of his followers, and
had put a small community in Senegal to fire and
sword; in his son Soybou, who operated on the right
bank of the Senegal; and Samory, a rather famous
chief, who was suspiciously active in the south.  It
took Colonel Galliéni two campaigns to settle the
agitation.  The first campaign was both military
and diplomatic.  In its former character it had
Mahmadou and his depredations as its punitive
purpose; in its latter capacity it carried proposals to
Samory to grant access to the Niger over his territory.
Against Mahmadou, Galliéni proceeded with great
vigour.  On Christmas Day, 1880, two columns
converged under the walls of his stronghold Diamou, about
125 miles from Bakel.  The town was taken, but the
chief had flown.  However, the expedition was a
fine piece of organisation, and no French column had
ventured hitherto as far from its base; Galliéni had
sown his rear with a succession of posts.

He parleyed more than he fought.  It was his
principle to conciliate rather than arouse opposition
by strong measures.  He founded a school for hostages,
and sent the sons of the chiefs there as an excellent
way of extending French influence, and established
"villages of liberty," where freed slaves could live
in peace and till the soil, thus promoting economic
development and the repopulation of devastated areas.

The second campaign, undertaken in 1887-8, was
just as active as the first and just as fruitful in results.
In the interval, numerous missions of a politico-geographical
character were organised.  Swamps were
drained, bridges thrown over streams, roads traced,
and posts founded.  Negotiations were resumed with
Ahmadou.  Soybou, who had continued his violence,
was captured and given a soldier's death, out of
respect for his youth and personal courage, and thus,
like a good Mussulman, he entered into the Paradise of
Mahomet, with the indispensable tuft of hair.  It was
a chivalrous concession that gained for the Governor
new suffrages amongst the tribesmen.  Nor did the
young chieftain long precede his father to the bourne
of defeated rebels, for Mahmadou-Lamine, was
presently trapped to his last hiding-place and killed.
Galliéni completed his military measures by building
a large fort to dominate the district, and then pushed
the railway up to Bafoulabé, a considerable performance
in a bare, desert country.  Remarkable changes
took place in the character of the people in a very
few years.  The Colonel gained more territory by
persuasion and negotiation than with the sword.
He added 900,000 square kilometres to the French
colonial domain, and 2,600,000 to its inhabitants.
He was the real creator of the French Soudanese
Empire, and laid the foundations of its political and
administrative organisation.  The results of his
experience were embodied in a brilliant book: *Two
Campaigns in the French Soudan*.

Now he was again in France, a full Colonel,
commanding a regiment in the colonial army which
he joined on leaving St. Cyr in the War of 1870.
With that gallant force, popularly known as the
"Porpoises," he was present at the heroic defence of
Bazeilles, a hamlet near Sédan, by the famous Blue
Division.  The Division burnt its last cartridges
before yielding to the overwhelming numbers of the
Germans, who made prisoners of the survivors.
Amongst them was Galliéni.  He was interned in
Germany, just long enough to enable him to learn
the language of the conquerors.  It was an early proof
of his intellectual alertness.

The black faces of the Senegalese must now give
way, in his colonial recollections, to the Mongolian
type of Indo-China.  The Black Flags over-ran
Tonking.  They were evidently encouraged by Chinese
gold.  Every day the list of their crimes lengthened:
posts attacked, villages laid waste.  No part of the
colony, even the most settled, was free from them.
Galliéni received orders from the Home Government
to restore order and tranquillity.  The officer, now
with an established colonial reputation, began a
systematic study of the problem.  He found that his
predecessor, Colonel Pennequin, had written a work
from which it appeared that the French were putting
their money on the wrong horse in giving dominance
to a race which was merely one of the three principal
ethnical elements of the country.  Injustice was
created by this illogical preference, and tyranny had
grown up.  Colonel Galliéni re-established the balance
by placing the races on a footing of equality.  Then
he attacked the question of the pirates.  He
discovered that economic conditions were partly
responsible, and that brigandage flourished in particular
soils.  He set to work to change the temper of the
people, to reorganise resources and to group and
satisfy local demands for labour and self-development.

To his policy was given the name of "Spots of Oil."  It
happily expressed the system, which consisted in
planting small posts in a region and advancing them
gradually towards the interior, so that the radius
was continually extended.  He made instructors,
agriculturists and mechanics of his white
non-commissioned officers in these military posts.  Both
teachers and taught delighted in the arrangement,
and the work proceeded rapidly.  He was repeating
in Asia the methods he had carried out so successfully
in the Soudan.  Against the pirates he acted
with great energy, rounding them up with mobile
columns until they were forced to yield.  Upon the
northern frontier leading into China he planted a
triple line of block-houses linked by telephone,
heliograph and pigeon post.  To this day the installation
remains, attesting the soundness of the defence
against Chinese bands.  And his friendship and
understanding with Marshal Sou, the mandarin who
represented the Son of Heaven as governor of Kang
Tsei, was largely instrumental in stamping out
piracy.  The wily Oriental learned to esteem the
high intelligence and energy of his white neighbour.
With the capture of De Tham, the most formidable
pirate, the activity of these hordes ceased, and in
four years Galliéni had established peace.  His
doctrine had again prevailed: Draw the sword as
little as possible; fight energetically when you have
to fight, but whenever the occasion offers, discuss,
negotiate, inspire sympathy; and, above all, civilise.

But Galliéni's chief work was done in Madagascar;
it was the coping-stone of his colonial edifice.  Civil
administration had broken down in the island.
Notwithstanding a costly expedition, French influence
was practically confined to the capital, Antananarivo,
and revolt had broken out behind the advancing
columns.  The island, indeed, was seething with
insurrection, and the new Resident, or Governor as
he was soon to be, discovered that the Hovas were
partially responsible for this state of things.  Though
they were given special privileges by the French—again
in defiance of ethnology—they were unworthy
of them.  Galliéni, acting as he had done in Tonking,
treated them as he did the other sections of the
population.  Fearing to alarm local sentiment, he
called a halt in some reforms inaugurated by his
predecessor and retarded the liberation of slaves, for
which both masters and servants were unprepared.
He began gradually to institute reforms, and to carry
out the pacification of the island.  He colonised with
brains, in fact.  Occasionally, he had to use force and
show that he intended that French suzerainty should
be a reality and not a mere shadow, such as Queen
Ranavalona apparently regarded it.  Two Ministers
paid the penalty of their conspiracy before the Queen
was invited to depart and take up her residence in
Algeria as the permanent guest of the Republic.
These measures received the belated approval of
Parliament, though it had hesitated to take the
initiative.

Having got the government of the island into his
hands, Galliéni proceeded to apply his system in
all its completeness.  His most successful experiment
was the division of the island into districts, each in
charge of a commandant.  To these commandants he
sent recommendations worthy to rank with the best
efforts of Roman Proconsuls.  They were penetrated
with good sense, enlightenment and precision.  "When
you root out a nest of pirates, think of the market
you must plant on the morrow," was one of his
instructions.  Another was: "Every advance made
must be with a view to the permanent occupation
of the country."  Both admirably expressed his
policy.  He believed in markets and schools, in roads
and bridges, as instruments of domination.

His fashion of securing collaboration was also
crowned with success.  With great care he selected
his lieutenants, and then allowed them a free hand.
He refused to burden his mind with details, and left
himself free to reflect upon and discuss the larger
issues.  Thus, he summoned an authority on
horse-breeding, and gave him *carte blanche*, within certain
financial limits, to establish a stud-farm and provide
the island with cavalry.  "Give me your report in
two years' time," he said; "meantime, do the best
you can."  At the appointed hour the report was
forthcoming, and the Governor proceeded to act
upon it.  It was typical of his *modus operandi*.  This
faith in his *entourage*, after having tested capacity
and fidelity, was justified by its results.

His governorship of the island lasted nine years,
and its effects were so satisfactory that it seemed
as if a miracle had happened.  Then, at his own request,
he was nominated inspector of troops in Western and
Eastern Africa, in the Antilles and Pacific.  Thus
his colonial career was rounded out, and his title
confirmed of "the great French coloniser."  In each of
his posts, whether in the Soudan, in Tonking, or
Madagascar, he had shown capacity and resourcefulness,
an earnest and intelligent enthusiasm which
had triumphed over obstacles, because science was
joined to energy and knowledge to practical
principles.  Thus the empire he founded was not built
upon sand, but upon the bed-rock of native welfare and
material advancement.  His success in dealing with
natives arose as much from his sympathy as from his
determination to study the character and antecedents
of his *administrés* with the care with which the
physician studies the details of the case upon which
he is engaged.  Thus success came not as something
due to fortune or caprice, but as a definite and
calculated result.

Home again after more than thirty years of
distinguished colonial service, Galliéni, now a General
of Division, was given the 13th Army Corps at
Clermont Ferrand, and later the 14th Army Corps
at Lyons, carrying with it the eventual command
of the army in the Alps.  In 1908 he was called to the
Superior Council of War.  A year or two before the
Great War, which was to give him his crowning
position of responsibility at the Ministry in the Rue
St. Dominique, he took part in the grand manoeuvres
in Touraine, and succeeded not only in out-manoeuvring
"the enemy," but positively in capturing the
General-in-Chief and his staff.  Paris laughed long
over the episode; the victorious General was
anticipating his laurels in actual war.





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.. _`THE HERO OF THE OURCQ`:

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   CHAPTER XII


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   THE HERO OF THE OURCQ

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Four-and-forty years he had waited for that tragic
moment: the crossing of the frontier by the Germans
for the second time.  Through long years of monotonous
preparation he had been buoyed up by the thought
of serving his country in his country's greatest need.
And now the opportunity had come—almost too late,
for his normal career had finished two years before.
But the old soldier in him arose and refused to be
comforted by a country gentleman's occupations,
which had filled his retirement.  There was great work
afoot; he must offer his sword to France.  To his
friends it did not seem that Michel Joseph Maunoury
had greatly changed since the time when he was a
spruce artillery captain, and student of the Staff College.
Hair, moustache, and goatee beard had changed to
white, of course, but the figure remained as slim and
alert as in the old days when he galloped each morning
in the Bois.  Whatever the weather, he appeared
in the *allées*, sitting his horse like a Centaur, and
getting himself fit for the great day which he saw
by his prophetic vision could not be very far off.
He was haunted by the idea of *la revanche*, and
was too honest to conceal it.  The word was not
popular with politicians.  No public man dared
utter it, save Deroulede and his League of Patriots
thundering against national apathy and supineness
in their orations of July 14.  General Bailloud, who
afterwards distinguished himself in Sarrail's retreat
through Macedonia, was punished for saying to his
Army Corps at Nancy that the time would come
when they would win back the Lost Provinces.

That Maunoury continually thought of these things
is clear from the General Order that he issued to
the Sixth Army on September 10 after the battle
of the Marne.  It is dated from his Headquarters
at Claye, near Meaux: "The Sixth Army has just
sustained, during five entire days, without any
intermission or slackening, a struggle against a numerous
adversary whose moral has been exalted by success.
The struggle has been severe; the losses under fire,
the fatigue due to want of sleep and, sometimes,
want of food, have surpassed imagination.  You have
supported all with a valour, a firmness and endurance
that words are powerless to glorify as they deserve.
Comrades, the General-in-Chief asked you in the name
of the *patrie* to do more than your duty; you have
responded beyond what seemed to be possible.
Thanks to you, victory has crowned our standards.
Now that you know its glorious satisfaction, you will
allow it no longer to escape you.  As for myself if
I have done anything worthy, I have been
recompensed by the greatest honour which could have
befallen me in my long career, that of commanding
men like you.  It is with a lively emotion that I
thank you for what you have done, for the revenge
for 1870, towards which all my energies and all my
efforts have been directed for forty-four years, is due
to your efforts."

The document is a real profession of faith.  It
bespeaks the man and his mission, his courage, his
modesty, his patriotism, his long-suffering in the
Cause.  The Order was wrongly attributed to Joffre,
because he had added some phrases at the end to
express appreciation of the part played by the Sixth
Army in keeping engaged a notable portion of the
German forces on the Ourcq Front; but none who
knew Maunoury and his intimate opinions could
question its authenticity.  When he signed the
Order he wore for the first time (though he had
possessed it since 1911) the modest little bronze medal,
with its green and black ribbon, which commemorates
1870.  Thus were linked in his mind the two
dates—1870 and 1914—the one disaster and the other
its vindication.  Maunoury had every reason to
remember 1870.  He was an officer-cadet at the time,
studying at the engineering and artillery school at
Metz, the forerunner of Fontainebleau.  When war
broke out he was appointed to a battery, and arrived
in Paris with it on the very day, September 14, when
the Republic was proclaimed.  He had no idea, as he
marched through the streets with his men, that the
Empire had fallen to a new form of government.
But he was to see the popular temper even more
sharply represented than that.  At the gates of Paris
was fought the battle of Champigny, and there
Maunoury lost his fellow-officers and remained alone
with a remnant of his battery.  Then the rising tide
of the Commune caught him in Paris, unwarned of
the retirement of the Regular Army to Versailles.
He and his men only escaped from the mob by
disguising themselves in *mufti* and walking singly
through the gates.

Happily, he was spared the horrors of a second
siege—that of Paris in the hands of the Commune.
The first had left poignant memories never to be
effaced.  Yet his vocation was so firmly fixed that
he was not to be turned from it even by this
discouraging commencement.  The possibility of avenging
national humiliation braced his energies and kept
him continually at work preparing for the inevitable
day through more than two score years.  He
became one of the most authoritative teachers
of the army.  At St. Cyr, which he had attended as
student, he became professor, and when Fontainebleau
started its artillery course, it was he who
directed it for the benefit of subalterns.  Whilst he
was professing artillery at St. Cyr, a great controversy
raged on the subject.  It was clear that France had
been out-classed by Germany in field-guns; it was
one of the causes of her defeat.  The guns were more
powerful, more accurately aimed, and more quickly
served.  The Germans had learnt the art of shooting,
which the French had neglected.  Though the De
Reffye cannon was much better than its predecessor—a
muzzle-loader, firing an eight-pound shell, which
broke only at two distances—it was still far behind
the German arm.  The young war professor
pronounced strongly in favour of power.  The field-gun,
above all, must be all-powerful, he said; mobility
could come afterwards.  The rival camp protested that
mobility should come first; you could mass your light
and handy guns and obtain the power required.  But
Maunoury unveiled what he considered to be the
sophistry of this argument.  The result of all this
heat was the 75 mm., a model field-gun, which wrought
wonders for France in the Great War.  But its
efficiency was not unconnected with an excellent shell.

Though he had studied deeply the lessons of 1870,
Maunoury was not cast down by them, but rather
stimulated to greater effort.  Immediately after the
war he wrote to his family a letter which shows
his faith in his country's renaissance.  "The frightful
catastrophe leaves France mutilated, but she is
not stricken to death.  All can be repaired if she
really wishes it."  That was the language of a soldier
and optimist, but it interpreted exactly the spirit
of his countrymen and, above all, the capacity of
their eventual leaders.  He was well placed to form
such an opinion, for, as General of Division, he
became Director of the War School, and upon its
benches sat the future commanders of French armies.
Napoleon in his time made use of the material to his
hand, often untrained scientifically—the soldier of
fortune, of practical experience—but he held always
that the best officer came from the Schools.  And
this generalisation is true to-day, truer than ever,
because of the new character of war.  Maunoury set
himself against mere specialisation, and, though he
became an expert, as we have seen, he enlarged his
scope by studying tactics and then applied them in
the field, by commanding first the Fourteenth Army
Corps at Marseilles, and secondly the famous
Twentieth Corps at Nancy, which looked directly in the
face of the foe.  As colonel he had commanded
artillery at Vincennes.

He seemed to have written "finis" to the more
active part of his career when he became Governor
of Paris, but even in this post of pure routine in peace
time, he invented methods of reform.  He objected
to the slackness that prevailed, and circularised
against the slovenliness of soldiers' dress in the
streets, and even on the parade-ground.  He tried
to revive officers' interest in the morning ride in the
Bois.  Paris was amused and at the same time
satisfied with a circular issued during the winter of
1911-12, which expressed surprise that the Governor
met so few officers on wet and cold mornings in the
Bois.  Between the lines you could read his
contempt for softness.  Even in his most strenuous
student days he had always kept himself fit by
constant physical exercise.  At the Cavalry School at
Saumur, he was noted for his good riding; in the
Bois his elegant, upright figure was a reproach against
the carelessness of some officers.

He objected to *laissez-aller* in any branch of the
army.  Discipline was as important as guns and
ammunition, he thought.  Nor did he mean mere
respect for established things or strict obedience to
superiors.  He meant that discipline of the mind
which accepted principles and policies—the unity of
military doctrine; he meant a constant training of
officers in grand manoeuvres, that each might be
accustomed to responsibility in the common scheme.
Only by incessant practice could one attain
perfection.  And behind the discipline there must be
patriotism.  His example and enthusiasm infected
the Paris garrison; in two years he had achieved
marvels.  And then the night parades, inaugurated
by M. Millerand in concert with the Governor, aroused
civilian enthusiasm for the army.  Once more the
streets of Paris resounded with the cry: "Vive
l'armée."  Under the old *régime* it had become
almost seditious as a sentiment, but now the whole
street hummed and sang the *Sambre et Meuse*, and
marched in rhythm with the beating drums and
shrieking fifes.  Even *blasés* Parisians in the cafés
and restaurants stood on their feet as the tattoo
passed and the red-coated orchestras broke into a
rapturous *Marseillaise*, with accompanying cheers.
The *fond* of Paris is always patriotic whatever the
surface currents.

When war fell out of a blue sky, Maunoury was
tending his roses in his garden in the quiet village
of Mer, near Blois.  A few months before, his
neighbours had asked him to stand for Parliament in the
interest of the Three-Years Law; but he declined.
Perhaps his near view of politics, as Commandant of
the Guard of the Senate, had not conduced to a
respect for them.  In any case, he preferred his
open-air life and his country pursuits to the feverish
atmosphere of political Paris.  When he went to the
Luxembourg, where is situated the Senate, it was to
attend a course on arboriculture—not to pay court to
politicians.  These he has kept always at a distance.
It needed a war to wrest him from his gardening and
agriculture, tastes the stronger for being hereditary.
His family was long settled in the Loir-et-Cher, and
one of his uncles had allowed Pasteur to experiment
upon his flocks when investigating cattle-diseases.

The old ardour returned at the call of duty.  First
came dépot work, important even if lacking glory,
and then the command of an army at Verdun for the
eastern offensive.  Alas! it was unsuccessful, and
Maunoury's, with the other French Armies, was soon
in retreat towards the south.  But the watchful eye
of Joffre remarked an attempt on the part of Von
Kluck, commanding the First German Army, to
envelop the left wing (the English Army) of the Allies.
He sent Maunoury to support the wing.  The troops
detrained at Montdidier, to the south of Amiens.
They arrived by divisions, and were flung, one after
the other, into the battle-line—a difficult and
dangerous process under fire.  Von Kluck disregarded the
army forming in front of his right, as if it did not
exist, and concentrated his attention on the English
force, which he wished to crush.  Maunoury's orders
were to fall back on Paris to form the siege garrison.
When the order reached him, he ejaculated, "Heaven
forbid!  Anything but that."  His memory went
back to 1870, and there was revived the old anguish
at the misfortunes of his country.  None the less, he
refused to lose heart, and kept a bold front to the
enemy, retiring in splendid order after holding each
line as long as possible.

Galliéni had seen the enemy's move from north to
east and noted its strategic consequences.  He
communicated his impressions to the Commander-in-Chief,
and Maunoury's army, hastily reconstituted
and now composed of 100,000 men, was thrust again
into an offensive against the flank-guard of Reservists
which was protecting Von Kluck's columns as they
glided past Paris.  The assemblage of that army and
its rapid transport to the strategic points constitutes
one of the romances of the war.

The Sixth Army was composed of divers elements,
most of which had suffered greatly from the fighting
in the east and north.  The cavalry, too, was fatigued
by its long march from Charleroi.  One of its
important bodies was General Lamaize's corps, formed of
two divisions of reserves, which had lost heavily in
Lorraine.  They had fought also at Amiens, whither
they had been transported by train, and then they
marched on foot to Dammartin, to the north of
Meaux, which was one of the points of concentration.
To these divisions was added a brigade of Moroccan
infantry.  The second considerable element was the
Seventh Army Corps, which had battled, also, in the
east before reaching the Amiens district.  One of its
divisions was commanded by General de Villaret,
who later was to be wounded with Maunoury at
Soissons.  Two divisions, which had fought at
Cambrai in French Flanders, and had been much
cut up; a division from Algeria which had just
arrived in Paris; the Fourth Army Corps from
Lorraine where it had lost many men; a cavalry brigade
and the First Corps of Cavalry, consisting of three
divisions; a brigade of Marine Fusiliers, two-and-a-half
battalions of Zouaves and a brigade of Spahis
(native cavalry from Algeria) were also joined to the
force under Maunoury.  The fixed garrison of Paris
consisted of four divisions of Territorials, who were
also employed in outpost work along the line of
contact.

The army was ordered to act in co-operation with
the English, who had assembled in the Coulommiers
district; but, unfortunately, there seems not to have
been quite the co-operation needed between the two
forces, though Maunoury detached a division to the
help of the ally.  The Sixth Army began the attack
on the afternoon of September 5.  In moving to
their positions, the troops found the enemy's reserves
strongly occupying villages to the left of Meaux.
The General-in-chief's dispositions were not entirely
realized, and some critics blame what they call the
hesitancy of the English in assuming a vigorous
offensive.  In any case the Operations, after severe
fighting, were generally crowned with success, and a
great part of the credit of the battle of the Marne
is due to the resourcefulness and skill of Maunoury.
An incident in the battle was the arrival of reinforcements
in 1,100 taxicabs, mobilised by General Galliéni,
in order to transport the Seventh Infantry Division
to the left wing of the Sixth Army.  The infantry
arrived with great promptitude by this means, and
was able at dawn on the morrow to enter into action.
Having distinguished himself in the defence of
Paris, Maunoury was given the command of an army
at Soissons.  There he was wounded during the
Spring of 1915, whilst making an inspection of the
trenches with General de Villaret, who was also
injured by the same bullet.  General Maunoury's
right eye was lost and the left affected.  It meant
that he could no longer hold his command at the
Front, and this fine old soldier, who had done so
much for the French Army, again became Governor
of Paris, after an interval of three years.  Some have
blamed him for exposing himself in the first-line
trenches only thirty metres from the enemy, but his
principle always had been that the Commander-in-Chief
should share danger with his troops.  It is
characteristic of him that he did not shrink from all
the consequences of such a theory.  There was something
a little touching in the circumstances that in
the twilight of his own life, after a brilliant day, he
came to watch over Paris—*la ville lumière*—plunged
into the deep shadows of a precautionary darkness.
And then when his own light faded into a perpetual
obscurity, he retired once again into the peace—alas! the
disabled peace—of private life, a sad but glorious
end for an old soldier.





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.. _`THE MILITARY POWER OF ENGLAND`:

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   CHAPTER XIII


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   THE MILITARY POWER OF ENGLAND

.. vspace:: 2

To convert an army of a few hundred thousands
into a mighty machine of millions—what achievement!
And this, in a few months.  To clothe, equip,
and supply these men with munitions—an even
greater task!  Yet this England did; and French
military critics were amazed at an exploit unequalled
in the world's history.  The little band of men who
fought so gallantly at Mons, and whose opportune
arrival helped to turn the first tide of invasion, have
grown and increased to the gigantic British Army of
to-day.  Nothing delighted the French as much as
the establishment of Conscription in England.  It
seemed to them like the gauge of England's seriousness.
With their clear minds they had long realised
that the voluntary system was inadequate to furnish
the necessary resources to the army in time of war.
True, the French, in their impatience to see England
scientifically increase her army, forgot how slowly
was evolved their own system of national service.
Although, as we have seen, the Convention, in a
moment of revolutionary fervour, decreed that it
was the duty of every one to serve the State, a
national system of compulsion, applicable to everybody,
was not resorted to until more than fifty years
after the Napoleonic Wars, and France had suffered
defeat from conscripted armies.  Then, in its
form, compulsion became a drastic measure from
which none escaped; but, even here, nearly another
fifty years was necessary to implant and make good
the system of absolute equality.  Thus the French
opinion which carped at England for her slowness in
taking up an equal burden in the field was not quite
mindful of French military history.  These critics had
not realised that the completeness of the French
national military service had been the growth of many
years, and that a vast national army could not spring
into being at the mere waving of a wand; and hence
it was impossible for England, even with the resources
of her vast Empire, to have taken, *from the start*, an
equal share in the war.  Even had England adopted
compulsion at the beginning of the war, there were
corps of instructors to form, barracks to build,
training-grounds to be found.  These difficulties were quite
apart from equipment, which hinged largely upon the
supply of labour for the making of rifles.  Lastly,
there was the supreme difficulty of the higher
command.  Generals and staff-officers cannot be turned
out with the speed of drill-sergeants.  Happily the
Press, instead of inflaming the spirit of criticism, set
to work to explain the difficulties under which England
laboured by reason, even, of the character of her
institutions slowly evolved by the centuries.  Both
M. Cruppi and M. Henry Davray emphasised England's
marvellous achievement in raising and equipping so
vast an army, even before she adopted the principle
of Conscription, and appreciated the difficulty of
accommodating compulsory service to the notion
of that individual liberty which is the corner-stone
of English national life.  It was clear that a certain
section of the British public confounded a national
army, formed for a definite national purpose, with
militarism of the Prussian type, and, therefore, had
created a bogey which it was necessary to knock down
before the principle of obligation could be accepted
by a free and enlightened people.  And it is typical
of the conduct of the present war in England that it
was the voice of the people themselves, the clamour
of the man-in-the-street, which forced the Government
to a decision.  When the war broke out many
thousands of Englishmen voluntarily sacrificed their
careers to join the army.  But in so doing they
insisted that the manhood remaining in the country
should be forced to do likewise.  And the man who
stayed at home?  Was he averse from Conscription?
Almost without exception the men who stayed turned
to Westminster and said, "Fetch me if you really
want me.  Fetch me if the need is honestly great."  No,
the great British public—the men in the trenches,
the men at home, and the women (above all, the
women) insisted upon Conscription.  It was
Westminster that slept; Westminster that hesitated,
Westminster (slow as ever in learning to "trust the
people") that mumbled about votes when, even in
those first days of the war, they could have insured
probably speedy victory!  Only when forced by the
man-in-the-street did the Government act.  Throughout
the first stages of the war, the British Government,
instead of leading public opinion, was driven by it.
But in the eyes of a foreign nation, a country,
unfortunately, has only the prestige of its Government,
and the French, chafing against our slowness to adopt
compulsion, little knew that John Bull himself was
fighting, through a maze of lawyers' arguments, for
that very principle.  The farm labourer who, at the
beginning of things, asked, "Why can't they treat us
all alike?" had his finger upon the pulse of the nation
while the politicians hesitated and gambled with
time.  Their fatal lethargy contrasted ill with the
patriotism of France, who, twelve months before,
imposed upon herself a system of national service of the
most complete character.  No partial exemptions were
allowed either in the interests of education or any
of the liberal careers or even of poor widows' sons.
The terms of service, too, were equally long for
infantry as for cavalry.  In Germany a larger and
superabundant population allowed a fairly wide
system of exemptions.  Until before the Great War,
certain categories of men were not called up; the
infantry served only two years, and students benefited
by a one-year system.  French people do not always
realise, I think, the immense price they have paid to
escape from a repetition of the events of 1870.  They
have not realised how seriously has been impeded
their own progress, thanks to the heavy strain placed
upon their resources in men.  It has meant the
withdrawal of practically all the valid young men of the
country from industry and commerce for the preparation
of war.  It has meant the retardation of marriages
and a limited birth-rate, because young people could
not marry until comparatively late; it has meant,
also, that the smallest proportion of the country was
in a condition to emigrate, for emigration takes place
in the years of one's youth.  Thus the French social
and industrial system was under the domination of
military exigencies, and France has made heavy
sacrifices to escape from what she most dreads: the
Prussian yoke.

The enthusiasm in France was, then, immense, when
England finally decided to become an ally in the only
true sense of the word: to impose upon herself a
burden equal to that borne by her friends.  But
France breathed a sigh of bitter disappointment
(disappointment which, it is fair to say, was shared
by the majority of Englishmen), at the large number
of exemptions at first granted; and the excuses offered
by English statesmen by no means assuaged the
irritation felt both at home and abroad.  For instance,
"the maintenance of essential trade" had a sort of
ironic ring to the French whose trade, either essential
or inessential, was hardly maintained at all.  They
listened with a little smile of mockery whilst the
British Minister spoke rather glibly, as it seemed to
them, concerning the necessity of England being in
a position to lend money to the Allies.  There was
a feeling, perhaps, that if they had suffered more,
they would have been more anxious to end the war,
and would have talked with less assurance of the
necessity of possessing money whereby they could
lend it to other combatants.  The large proportion
of conscientious objectors, also, presented a strange
and sinister spectacle to the French, and assuredly so
curious an attitude would not have been tolerated in
France in the stress of a national war.  It seemed a
monstrous proposition that a class of society should
have been allowed to accumulate wealth and a vast
prosperity under the protection of the flag, and yet
decline in the hour of need to bear arms from religious
scruples.  To the alert intelligence of the French, this
was a grotesque and illogic situation, though they
themselves remembered that they had had in the
past their strict religious sects, including the Calvinists
and the Camarists.  The good-will of the English
people as a whole, however, was shown by the zeal
with which this question of national service was
taken up and adopted by a country naturally hostile
to any interference with the old principle of voluntary
enlistment; and the position would have been clearer
to the French had they realised that the driving power
in England was being supplied by the individual and
not by the Government.  The principle of Conscription
was not advocated by Ministers; it was forced
upon them.  In small matters, as in great, the
individual took upon himself responsibility.  Frail,
delicate women went without butter on their bread
and little children denied themselves sweets.  In
France there was no evidence of any such personal
sacrifice.  People lived as well as they could afford.
Why?  Because they relied upon their Government
to *enforce* any necessary sacrifices, and the individual,
having confidence in its Government, felt no personal
responsibility.

It is refreshing to turn from the question of Conscription,
befogged as it was by the stifling atmosphere
of Westminster, to our army, working under the stars,
rubbing shoulders with our Allies in the trenches, and,
amid the bursting shells, establishing friendships and
understandings that are not couched in lawyers'
language.  There in Northern France a brotherhood
has sprung into being which laughs at the arm-chair
critics and takes no count of the blunders of
politicians.  But the arm-chair critic exists in France
(as in England), and his garrulity in clubs and public
places is by no means restrained by his lack of a
real understanding of military affairs.  Let us admit
at once that the British Army has suffered from over
prestige in the popular imagination of France; the
French people thought that England's help would
be sumptuous, colossal, spontaneous and irresistible;
and disappointment inevitably followed this exaggerated
idea of the military assistance we should be able
to give at the beginning of the war.  One heard much
criticism in France—indeed, one heard much the
same in England: "Why did the English, for so
long a time, take so small a share of the battle-line?"  "Where
were Kitchener's great armies that were to
join with the French to drive the Germans back to
Berlin?"  "Why did not the English create a
diversion while the French were fighting at Verdun?"  Such
murmurings and complaints followed the relief
and joy which welcomed the arrival of the British
armies in France, and, among the uninformed portion
of the population, resulted in a certain cooling off
in the sentiment of friendliness.  It was useless to
urge that the British Expeditionary Force could not
achieve the impossible; that an army cannot be
built in a night; that General Joffre was responsible
for the general direction of operations, and that the
British could make no offensive that he did not
decree.  French popular opinion persisted in believing
in the god their imagination had created, and bitterly
proclaimed its feet to be of clay.  But such is the
work of the arm-chair critic all the world over.  It
is his business to destroy confidence, to find fault,
to shake friendships; and of far more real value is the
opinion of the French military command of our army
in the field.  Here, again, we must be prepared to
hear some criticism—but considered criticism that
weighs difficulties and estimates conditions.  The
French military observer notes an absence of good
staff work on the English side, and he begins to
account for it by saying that, to form a staff is a long
and expensive process involving extensive scientific
studies.  Now it is apparent that, up to the time of
the Great War, the profession of arms attracted rather
the high-spirited and sporting type of man than the
scientific student.  In consequence, these excellent
sportsmen were at a disadvantage, perfectly easy to
comprehend, with the continental soldier.  They had
not had the same training.  It was impossible for
them to enter at once into the conception of men
who had been making war scientifically—at least on
paper—for many years.  Excellent spade-work was
done at Aldershot, but the General Manoeuvres could
not be compared in military utility with those
conducted in Germany and France.  Moreover, a long
course is necessary in military history, for without
this one glances at the map and finds nothing; there
is no spirit of comparison available, such as history
brings forth.  On the other hand, if one has the sense
of comparison developed by long and varied reading,
the result is of the utmost value.  One is able to say,
"Napoleon did so and so in certain circumstances;
what is there to prevent the modern commander from
imitating him?"  But without the knowledge such
comparison is impossible.

It is alleged against our leaders that they were not
sufficiently elastic and did not always allow
themselves to be guided by circumstances.  They formed
a rigid rule and would not depart from it.  They did
not change their plans with the required promptitude
when the necessity arose for such a change.  They
were not supple enough, not adaptable in their minds.
Of the immense and epic bravery of the English there
was no question.  "They know how to die," said a
General to me, and the commendation expresses a
universal opinion.  There is something particularly
Anglo-Saxon in the quality of this bravery.  They
stood resolutely to the guns, when perhaps it would
have been better to temper valour with a little
prudence.  It seems to be part of our steadfastness
never to draw back that we may leap the better; it
is part of our magnificent quality to hold fast that we
may be faithful to the end.  Sometimes there is a
pathetic side to this characteristic, as when a sentry
posted outside British Headquarters was left standing
in the road after the retreat of the officers, because
he had not received his marching orders.  That is
typical of the British temperament with all its sublime
self-abnegation; it is characteristic of the British
leader, and it is certain that, in the eyes of the French
observer, some element of suppleness might with
advantage replace a little of our British stubbornness.

Of the new armies sent out by England I have heard
nothing but praise.  General Bonnal, the former
director of the War School, writes: "Our dear Allies
are as brave, if not braver, than we; and the athletic
sports which they cultivate enable them to surmount
material obstacles.  Their moral has never ceased to
be splendid and is always accompanied by
unchanging good humour and gaiety."  He, too,
finds fault with some of the staff work, but universal
is the commendation of the smartness and efficiency
of English company officers, and particularly of the
new class of officer, the student type—young men
from the Universities who exhibit great facility with
maps and show an immediate comprehension of the
exigencies of modern scientific warfare.

But when we have left behind the arm-chair critic
and the military critic we shall find that the British
Army, small or great, has made a vast impression
upon our neighbours, and the lilt of our pipes and
the echo of *Tipperary* will linger in the lanes when the
boom of the cannon has died away.  Long will the
"poilu" recall such exploits as those of the teams of
grenade-throwers in the British trenches, who were
much praised by Foch for their amazing work and
the speed they showed in it, reminiscent of the dash
and energy of a crack football team; and long will
the French Army covet the equipment and smartness
of the British soldier.  It has been the *grand chic* to
imitate the English officer as much as possible by the
arrangement of straps and buttons and the rest;
and some French Generals, particularly Gouraud (who
was Commander-in-Chief in the Dardanelles and saw
much of the British Army at work), have expressed
to me their admiration for British smartness.  "The
British soldier looks smart even in his shirt-sleeves!"
observed Gouraud.

In the matter of uniform, the war has provided a
remarkable instance of the French ability to adapt
oneself to new circumstances.  When hostilities
began, the French were still wearing their red and
blue uniforms, and some of the dashing young officers
went into battle at Charleroi with white gloves and
plumes.  Against them the Germans sent wave after
wave of men in the invisible grey-green uniform.
From the point of view of equipment the French were
much behind us, and their red and blue uniforms
were ludicrously inadequate for modern warfare, and
contrasted unfavourably with the German grey-green
and our own khaki.  But this the French quickly
realised, and in the middle of the battle adopted
horizon blue, which, though it soiled quickly, was, at
least, an excellent uniform from the point of view of
not being too conspicuous.

As to the services rendered by the Navy, the
French, like the English, have not been permitted
to lift the veil of secrecy which has cloaked the
operations.  The newspapers, particularly the *Temps*,
have extolled its efficiency and have assured the
French public that the seas were being swept.  But
they did not see the sweeper, and, therefore, were not
always aware how excellently the job was done.
Nor is the question of imports of such urgency in
France as in England, as the amount of wheat brought
into the country is infinitely less, and, without
difficulty, could be supplied at home.

To sum up one's impression of French sentiment
towards England during the first eighteen months
of war one is bound to admit a certain element of
disappointment, due, undoubtedly, to ignorance and
misconception.  The French public expected—as did
we—a dramatic naval action to begin with.  This
Germany's cautious tactics denied.  Furthermore,
our Allies did us the compliment of imagining we
could achieve the impossible; and when it was found
that our small Expeditionary Force could take but
a slight share in the operations, attention in France
was concentrated upon our National Service system,
and exasperation grew as our politicians played with
the issues of life and death.  But this irritation is
merely superficial, and is evidence of the strain felt
by a highly strung, nervous people, forced to stand
still, for long months, while part of their beloved
country lay under the heel of the invader.  Nothing
can ever change the deep and lasting friendship
between two peoples who have borne the same burden,
shared the same horror, nursed the same hopes and
fears.  The understanding between England and
France is no longer simply an *entente*; it is a
brotherhood of tears.





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.. _`SOME TYPES OF COMMANDERS`:

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   CHAPTER XIV


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   SOME TYPES OF COMMANDERS

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The Generalissimo was, in a certain sense, less
known than any of his Generals, for though much had
been written of him, but little was really apprehended
of his silent and uncommunicative nature.  As the
head of a powerful and almost anonymous organisation,
he lived in a semi-seclusion.  No politician
could boast that he had his ear, for he kept himself
rigidly from such influences.  His popularity with
the masses was remarkable, and his name became a
symbol for economy in lives.  None the less he dwelt
apart in an atmosphere removed from all clamour
and excitation, apparently unconscious of the intrigues
about him.  This segregation carried with it the
disability of its advantage, for it involved a certain
inaccessibility to political necessities, which even the
strongest commander has to consult at times.  "Moral
effect" had infinitely less weight with him than
military utility; indeed, it seemed hardly to exist in
his vocabulary, and probably he bracketed this species
of popularity and concession to the crowd with that
private and subterranean influence of which he was
perpetually afraid.  Rigid in his solitariness he
watched the conflagration from a lonely hill,
silhouetted against the glowing sky, and none could say
that he had pierced to his inmost thoughts.  Nor
in the greater part of his career had he been in close
touch with army life, for his occupations took him to
distant climes where he engaged in road and railway,
bridge and even town construction, thus removing
him from military routine and strengthening those
powers of reflection and cold, dispassionate survey
which are his chief claims to a grateful consideration.
And, doubtless, the desert and the jungle taught him
nervelessness and that calmness which no vibration
of calamitous events could shake.

De Castelnau, the second in command, presented a
complete contrast with his chief.  His character is
open, his oratory at once humorous and compelling.
Though a strict Catholic and attending Mass every
day, his tolerance enabled him to employ as aides-de-camp
two officers of the Alsatian Lutheran Church.
His military science is so sure that he seems to divine
in advance the plans of the enemy, and his experience
of camps and courts, following on his missions to
foreign countries, has given him the widest grasp of
political affairs which in reality lie in the region of
strategy.  Probably the most accomplished General
in the French Army, to him is attributed the plan of
the great offensive designed for the Autumn of 1916.

The events of Verdun gave prominence to the
personality of Pétain.  Before the great attack by
the Germans on the fortress, he was unknown except
to those in close touch with the army.  In a few weeks,
he had become world-famous.  His rapid promotion
was due to the perspicacity of de Castelnau, who had
the general direction of the line from Soissons to
Verdun.  The second in command observed the
vast German preparations, the accumulation of guns
and the massing of infantry, and with the assent of
the Generalissimo, set Pétain to work to stem the tide
of the enemy advance.  With characteristic energy
the new-comer flung himself into the task.  Urgency
was necessary, for it was a question of days.  Divisions
were hurried up to reinforce the thin line of
12,000 men, garrisoning the twenty miles chiefly
threatened by the Germans; heavy artillery was got
together, sometimes improvised from forts and
warships, and an immense accumulation was made of
machine and field guns.  Fortunately, the German
attack was delayed by bad weather, giving the French
greater time to increase their fortifications, and when
the battle opened, a week later, the defenders were
in a good position to resist the first awful thrust of
the German battalions.  None the less, the big guns
of the enemy were superior in range and were more
mobile than the French.  This defect was partially
compensated by moving back the French line, by
employing the 75's as if they were machine-guns,
and yet, in other directions, so cunningly concealing
them that their fire could not be silenced.

The new commander of armies has the gift of
inspiring the enthusiasm of his men.  They are ready
to die for him; to go anywhere at his bidding.  His
magnetism was as strongly exercised upon the students
of the Ecole de Guerre, where, in a memorable series,
he lectured on infantry action.  There is something
in his manner, in his appearance, which excites the
respectful attention of his listeners, who soon learn
to regard him as a master.  And the frank, clear,
piercing eyes, the serene forehead, the handsome face
barred by the moustache, wheat-coloured like the
hair, until two score years and the Great War turned
it to trey, seem the outward expression of the
character.  He has the personality of great leaders, and
those tense and tragic weeks at Verdun served to
emphasise it.  Personal influence counted for more,
perhaps, than actual matter in his discourse.  Clarity
was its strong point, and an unerring touch which
dissipated difficulties and revealed as by inspiration,
in the classic battles of the world, the causes of victory
and of defeat.  Pétain sought the personal factor
in all these great contests.  He gave no mere record
of facts, but studied the psychology of commanders,
his conclusions representing original research and an
untiring quest for truth.  Character meant achievement,
and the absence of it disaster.  There could be
no more pointed lesson to give to students of the art
of war.

He was known as a man of exceptional talent by
those with whom he came into close personal contact.
His criticism of manoeuvres in which he engaged with
his regiment was suggestive and stimulating, and
pointed to rare gifts of discernment.  But if his
reputation became strong in technical quarters, it
did not involve promotion.  He was still Colonel,
mature and a little disappointed and even
contemplating retirement, when war broke out.  But
contact with realities revealed his worth, and his
ascension from the Great Retreat to the prodigious
battle of Verdun was a record in rapidity.  Placed in
charge of the Fourth Brigade of Infantry, he received
three days later the command of the Fifth Division.
On October 25, 1914, he was given the 33rd Army
Corps, which covered itself with glory at Carency,
Notre Dame de Lorette, and Ablain.  Officially a
*divisionnaire*, on April 30, 1915, Pétain became Chief
of the Second Army, with which he led the great
offensive in Champagne.  He pierced the German
lines with such speed and thoroughness that the plan
of attack was somewhat compromised, for the General
Staff had counted on a slower development.  Thus
the movement was stopped, though attended with
great success.

Courteous in speech, he has yet a soldier's dislike
for subtle and tortuous phraseology, and his whole
tendency is to speak his mind.  The result, however
justly phrased, was not always palatable to authority,
and, indeed, a plain statement of the truth is rarely a
passport to official favour.  His energy is legendary,
and the effect of this is heightened by the appearance
of youth conveyed by the pink-and-white complexion
and the slim figure.  As a young man, he is said to
have danced all night at a military ball at Marseilles,
until tired stewards came to him in the morning to ask
him to desist out of pity for the musicians!  Again
at Arras, when in command of the 33rd Regiment
of Infantry, he is said to have been requested by
his landlord to depart, because his skipping in the
morning annoyed the occupant of a flat below him!
Thereupon, says the chronicler, he removed to a
house set in a garden, where, presumably, there were
no neighbours to annoy.  The story is probably
apocryphal, but it represents the energy of the man.
Though he does not skip, he keeps himself fit by
physical exercises.  He considers that a General's
vigour and power of resistance are as important as
his mental equipment.  To assure this nice balance of
mind and body, a system must be resorted to.  If one
weighs food for the war charger, why not for the
warrior?  That is his argument, and he acts upon it.
No leader in the French Army has more persistently
trained himself to support the rigour of a campaign,
and none shows a greater activity.  In the Champagne
offensive, he ran three miles over rough ground at
the head of his troops.

His principle is to leave nothing to chance, but to
oversee and control everything.  Thus, at the height
of the bombardment of Verdun, he surprised his
officers by visiting them in the most exposed positions.
During the battle, he used an armoured machine-gun
car as his moving Headquarters, sleeping there and
conducting his business from it.  At another stage
in the gigantic battle he sat for five days and nights
at his desk regulating details—proof of his powers
of endurance.  He drives like the wind over any road,
leaving even racing motorists aghast at his speed.
He is reputed to have used up a dozen chauffeurs in
as many weeks.  One said, pathetically, that he did
not mind taking his chance of being killed in the
trenches, but to drive for the General was like courting
death.  Pétain believes in sharing danger as he shares
discomfort with his troops.  As a Colonel he was often
to be seen on the parade ground in bad weather
without an overcoat—as an example to his men.
If he has a deep and clear sense of his responsibilities,
he is neither sad nor taciturn in private life.  He
enjoys social intercourse and is a charming
conversationalist.  Though unmarried, he adores children,
and a friend tells me that he saw him when Colonel
of a regiment romping joyously with children on his
back.

His superiority as a soldier comes from his instant
vision.  He sees a problem with such sureness, that
his words bear the look of prophecy.  Long before
the war, he told a young lieutenant of cavalry
that he would regret his arm, for upon the
infantry, he said, would fall the brunt as well as
the glory of the next war.  His prevision showed
that his thoughts were directed towards war when
others probably were thinking only of their own
affairs.

Calmness and equality of temper are the characteristics
of General Roques, who succeeded General
Galliéni as Minister of War.  Possessing as great
will power as his predecessor, he has a quiet and
attractive way of gaining his ends without
compromising their essential character.  He finds the
formula suitable to the occasion, and possesses the
ideal temperament for a Minister of the Republic.
Like Joffre, he has passed the greater part of his
career in the colonies, where he learned the same
lessons of self-reliance and of organisation.  Like
Joffre, too, he worked as an engineer in Madagascar,
helping the future Generalissimo to build Diego
Suarez, and afterwards linking by railway Antananarivo
with the sea.  Seven fruitful years in Madagascar
were prefaced by similar periods in Algeria
and Tonking and an expedition with General Dodds
to Dahomey, which he undertook soon after leaving
the Polytechnique.

Succeeding Joffre as Director of Engineers at the
Ministry of War, he became Director of Aeronautics
at the moment when France began to realise the
military possibilities of the aeroplane.  General
Roques's spirit of organisation was as potent at the
Rue Saint-Dominique as in command of troops.
Mounting by the usual stages of Division, Army
Corps, and Army, he distinguished himself in the two
latter situations on active service, and in the former
at manoeuvres one year before the Great War.  For
his personal bravery and skill in the field he received
the War Cross and the Grand Cross of the Legion.
With the dust of Verdun still upon him he took
charge of Galliéni's portfolio and soon showed a vivid
sense of the realities of modern war.  His conciliation
and tact and his quiet mastery of details earned for
him the good-will and confidence of the army and
of his subordinates.  To that perfect mastery over
himself which is necessary to mastery over others, he
added a decision of character invaluable in high
responsibility.  He is of the school of Generals formed
overseas.  Of such are Joffre and Galliéni, Gouraud
and Marchand.

Gouraud resembles Pétain in his judgment and
charm as well as in his power over men.  He
inspires devotion, and carries the secret of command
in a splendid face and figure.  The empty right sleeve
is a touching testimony to his valour, and for months
he walked limping with a stick, for his right thigh and
left leg had been injured also at the Dardanelles—the
place of his dismemberment.  It was after a day's
bombardment and the Commander-in-Chief was
watching the embarkation of wounded on a hospital
ship, for there was no place to put them on that rocky
shore, searched minutely by the enemy shells.  One
breaking from a Turkish naval gun threw the
General over a wall and inflicted the injuries I have
described.  On the way home by ship to Marseilles,
gangrene supervened in the arm, demanding its
amputation.

I saw him just after his recovery when, with a glad
note in his voice, he announced his approaching return
to the Front.  In conversation with him one realised
why he was called the "lion of the Argonne."  There
is something king-like in his looks—the brown beard,
and the manly, well-formed features—and you are
certain that the khaki tunic covers a lion's heart.
His whole career has been of the noble sort: whether
tracking Samory, the negro chieftain, into the recesses
of his virgin forest, where he captured him after he
had waged fitful war with France for seventeen years;
or whether he was leading a sortie from Fez and
clearing a savage horde from its walls.  For this latter
feat he gained the three stars at a time of life when
most French officers have not reached a colonelcy.
When the Great War broke out Gouraud hastened
from Morocco to the east of France, where he led
Colonial troops in unexampled feats of bravery.
He was shot in the shoulder, but bullets cannot stop
such a man; he seems to bear a charmed life as he
passes heedlessly amidst a storm of flying, shrieking
metal.  His heroic soul is unmoved by the Inferno of
the battle.  Even the worst inventions of the devil
are powerless against this perfect knight, dressed in
the invincible and shining armour of his faith and
patriotism.

It was good to hear him speak of his career as simply
as if he were relating the banal life of some village
attorney.  Perhaps an ancestor who served in
Napoleon's artillery, or a great-uncle who helped the
Duc d'Aumale to conquer Algeria, were in measure
responsible for his military tastes.  Certainly he did
not get them from his father following the pacific
profession of a doctor in a Paris hospital.  At sixteen
or seventeen years of age the Tonking campaign
attracted him with its promise of adventure, but
his youthful imagination was mainly fired by reading
the travels and explorations of Livingstone, of
Cameron, Stanley, Brazza and Galliéni.  And the
Colonies, whatever their bad old reputation in France
for forming soldiers who were theatrical and had no
notion of modern warfare, since they fought against
savages, has proved in this war the nursery of manly
virtues.  Therein a man learns courage and
endurance, self-reliance and a faculty for improvising
everything.  It has produced men of the type of
Marchand, one of the most romantic figures that ever
donned the uniform of the Republic.  His hold over
his men is quite extraordinary; they are ready to
follow him into the jaws of death.  His exploits in
the Soudan recall a time when there was no smile on
the face of John Bull as he looked across to France.
A poet in his ideality and lyric quality, he has the
sublime courage of the Early Christian, the personal
sway of the born leader, the heart and tenderness of
a woman.

No French general has come into closer contact
with the English than Foch, for his army neighboured
theirs for long months together, and none has a higher
opinion of their qualities or was more sensible of the
vast improvement effected in their fighting methods
during the progress of the war.  Foch is one of the
most learned of the chiefs of the army; he directed
the War School during a period of his career, and his
lectures on the art of leading troops in battle are
models of their kind.  When war broke out, he was
commanding at Nancy the 20th Army Corps, which
includes the famous Iron Division.  As disciplinarian
he offers no excuses for himself or for others
for any failure in duty; and there is no soldier, if
it is not Pétain, who has adapted his science more
successfully to the problems of a twentieth-century
war.  Looking forty-five, though twenty years older,
he is of those who prepared assiduously for the great
day of the battle.  Alas! his own family were early
victims of it, for at Charleroi fell his son and his
son-in-law.  Amongst his officers at Nancy was
General Balfourier in charge of a brigade.  Tall and
slim and dark until active service had whitened his
hair, Balfourier has the perfect manners of a man of
the world.  You would take him for a courtier if
you did not know that he was a soldier and a
particularly brave one.  The Tsar's congratulations
reached him in the midst of the gigantic battle of
Verdun, where he had handled the 20th Corps with
such skill and daring as to attract universal attention.
There was always a perfect union between his
infantry and artillery.  He and his wife kept open
house at Nancy to the officers under his command,
and their handsome fortune enabled them to entertain
lavishly both here and at their residence at
Chantilly.  The General's father was as far removed
from Gouraud's from the trade of arms, for he
followed the unlikely profession of a notary; but both
obeyed the call to a soldier's life and achieved an
equal distinction.

These, then, are the men who have led France to
victory.  To-morrow others will spring from her
fruitful soil and represent her courage, her hope, and
her resourcefulness.  The Great War has demonstrated
the adaptability of the race.  It is perennial
in its freshness and inspiration.





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.. _`CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIGHTING`:

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   CHAPTER XV


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   CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIGHTING

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When the German horde surged upon Verdun,
and was hurled back; when, again and again, they
swept to the attack and left their dead piled high
before the might and heroism of France—then was
it most clearly demonstrated that the days of
old-fashioned forts were no more.  The fortress of stone
crumbles before the mighty guns of to-day, and the
hideous machines of war, belching forth tons of
metal, grind steel and concrete into dust.  Before
Verdun it was proved that the fortress of France
was the soul of her soldiers: a fortress that the
mightiest guns could not shake nor all the horrors
of modern warfare humble.  To the armed barbarity
of science the French soldier opposed his
chest, and barbarism was swept back.  That is the
first lesson of the war of millions.  In spite of all
the fearful war machines—the huge guns, the gas,
the liquid fire, engines of destruction before which
man is as puny as a fly—in spite, too, of the
impersonal strategy that moves regiments as pieces in
a game of chess and seems to take no stock of the
little soul of a man, yet, after all, it is the man
that counts.  Both combatants can pour out money,
both can heap up *matériel*, but the side that can
expend the richest store of heroism is the side that
will win.  This personal element in the battle of
to-day was the only factor overlooked by the war
expert.  Bloch, the great Russian writer on military
science, foresaw only one end to fighting, and that
was immobilisation, for each side would sit down in
trenches and wait for the other; but the strange
thing was that this new game of sap and mine, by a
curious détour, conducted to the old hand-to-hand
encounters, in which the right arm played the
determining part and even the bowie-knife was
resuscitated as a deadly weapon, so that we seemed to
live again in the days of Fenimore Cooper and the
Indian fights; and though the Germans sent at our
trenches liquid fire, asphyxiating gases, flying
torpedoes and all manner of explosives, all this science
was accompanied by ambuscades, by acts of treachery
and *ruses de guerre* not unworthy of the Redskin in
the most romantic pages of the novelist.  Thus
modern civilisation and savagery met and shook
hands as men of the same family, unconscious of any
difference in their mental equipment, unembarrassed
certainly by any divergence in *Kultur*.  And perhaps
because of this personal factor in the fighting, which
it was thought would be blotted out and suppressed
in modern warfare, there was developed an individual
courage so remarkable and romantic as to be
unbelievable in its splendour, its intensity, and its
quality of rich lavishness.  Never since the world
began has there been such an *étalage* of personal valour,
such outpouring of splendid deeds of indomitable
and deathless daring.  Seemingly in the sombre
monotony of modern warfare there could arise no
glorious exploit, and yet the trenches were frequently
the unlikely frame of the most palpitating and
stupendous defiance of man's nervous system.  For the
weak envelope triumphed by the grace of the soul;
and man, though his teeth chattered by the mere
brutal concussion of monstrous weapons, yet showed
in his moral resistance a wealth and splendour of
achievement unknown to the old and picturesque
days.  Thus, though the nations warred in such
incredible masses that there seemed no room for
personal bravery, yet never before had it been so
richly poured out, so that even the spies were brave
and went to their doom with hands untied and eyes
unbandaged in utter calmness.  Never in the history
of warfare has there been a more splendid show of
every human quality, whether fighting this desperate
affair of the trenches or out in the open, under the
pitiless rain of unheard-of bombardments, as at
Verdun, where, in one single day, were fired 3,000,000
shells.  And if there had never been a greater
squandering of metal than in this Titanic conflict
of the arsenals, there had never been a greater
expenditure of those splendid treasures of sacrifice, or
such a vast extravagance of youth and manhood, gold
and precious stones from the treasury of all the
manly virtues.

But if Bloch had discounted the personal element
of modern warfare, his theories otherwise were
justified by events.  The Germans knew their Bloch
and heartily believed his doctrine, but in the opening
stages of the battle they made a desperate effort to
escape from his conclusions.  They began in what
Mr. Wells in a famous chapter called the "1900
spirit," that is to say, they were convinced that
neither England nor France was alive to the latest
trench warfare.  Their first methods, the precipitate
attack, massed movements and enveloping tactics,
were dictated by the thought that their adversaries
were old-fashioned fighters who had not learned this
doctrine of the squatting war, who had not, in fact,
read their Bloch or drawn from him the lessons the
Germans had.  And so they fought in the open in
these first phases of the campaign, trusting by their
force and speed, superior leadership and brutal shock
tactics to bear down the Allies before they were
prepared to meet them.  And, of course, they were
greatly aided in this traditional method of fighting
by the fact that they had been allowed to build
unchallenged strategic railways to their frontiers,
which enabled them to pour a million men into the
country, instead of the 300,000 that the French
General Staff expected by the northern route.

The ready adaptation of the Allies to the new
exigencies of war forced the Germans to rush to
earth.  There came a change so sudden that it seemed
as if one had jumped literally from one century to
another.  "We have driven them underground,"
said M. Paul Deschanel, the eloquent President of the
Chamber.  But after they sank into the earth the
Germans still made desperate efforts to escape Bloch's
conclusion: that immobility which he predicted as
being the inevitable result of the conflict of armed
nations.  They endeavoured by their inventive genius
to break that immobility.  By asphyxiating gas, by
liquid fire, by aerial warfare (especially against
England), did they seek, as Mr. Wells points out, to
create, such diversion as would avoid so barren a
conclusion to armed effort.

With the second phase of the battle the pulsing,
stirring features of the old warfare largely
disappeared.  There was no longer the crowded rustle
of the ranks, except when men crept in the
semi-darkness from their trenches and attacked in the
open against barbed wire and murderous missiles.
The long, sinuous line of red, with its sheen and
shimmer of weapons glancing back the sun, gay
plumes to give a nodding note of youth, almost of
feminine finery, had passed to the limbo of military
museums and the pages of the historians of past
battles.  None of these things; instead, men in
musty garments, covered with dust in summer or
the mud of winter rains, and, in place of the cavalry
charge in the open, the terrible twilight war began.
Those who waged it shirked the daylight, dwelt in
pits and crouched in dark ramparts as if the sight
of God's good sun shamed them.  Gone was the
brave display riotous in colour and glory, glittering
from ten thousand points.  In its place was a
lone and dismal landscape, a drab expanse of trenches
interminably long; of furrows deeply drawn through
the earth hiding living grain in their depths.  Singular
country, like some vast cemetery, stretching
indefinitely towards a dull horizon dead in its outer
aspects, and yet hiding in its bowels the quick and
the dead, the living happily outnumbering those
who live no more.  Of course, the great novelty of
the war was its vast length of front.  In France it
stretched from the North Sea to the rocky ramparts
of Switzerland, 700 kilometres across the fair land of
France; and if one counted all the ramifications
and convolutions, then 10,000 kilometres represented
the sum of this amazing and ceaseless industry which
turned soldiers into navvies; moreover, this trench
warfare was universal where fighting occurred, and
was not special merely to Belgium and France, for
it existed in Russia, in Mesopotamia, and the Balkans.
A French Army Corps numbers 35,000 men, and,
taking the general character of the ground, the parts
that can be naturally defended with those that
require barricades of barbed wire and other obstacles
to reinforce their strength, this Army Corps can hold
a line of ten kilometres.  Thus 2,000,000 men is
about the normal garrison of a line of 500 kilometres.
But it must not be supposed that the lines are
uniform; they vary considerably.  For instance,
where the ground is steep and rocky, the defence is
rendered easier and the guards of the first trench
may be less numerous than in cases where the
conditions are more favourable to attack.  But such
matters are settled by the local commandant, who
takes into consideration all the conditions and makes
his dispositions accordingly.  There are parts of the
line where it is not necessary to place men because
the parts are enfiladed by cannon, and other places
where every mechanical means has been resorted to
for strengthening the trenches.  The telephone is
largely used, and is linked with advanced posts,
called *postes d'écoute*, where the observer can note
the least activity in the enemy's trenches.  Thus the
men guarding the first-line trenches can be sensibly
reduced, leaving a greater proportion to remain in the
second-line trenches and in rest chambers dug out
of the earth at the ends of the lines.  Of course, the
trenches vary considerably, and the commander
takes note of the character of the soil.  He makes
use of a hill-side, even of the ditches with
embankments on the side of the road, of every natural
conformation of the soil, and the number of men
necessary to defend the line varies according to
these circumstances.

It is true, certainly, that trench warfare has
inflicted a great loss of the picturesque, of glittering
movements, of kaleidoscopic effects which turned
and twisted into wonderful pictures; the picture
to-day is replaced by a melancholy waste of earth
scored and humped into mounds.

Within was life, and no end to labour, for there
were trenches, always more trenches to be dug as
the line swayed or curved in new forms, yielding to
pressure or being broken by it.  And in the trenches
themselves there was a perpetual search for
improvement, and the longer the troops stayed there, the
more highly organised became their abodes.  If
there was not an abundance of hot water there was
generally enough of cold, and gas on every floor;
alas! too much of it.  There were wooden floors and wooden
walls and pictures, and even sculpture adorned them.
In these subterranean passages dwelt our men in a
kind of heroic enjoyment Of a battle without issue,
of a sort of deadly ding-dong, only varied by the
blackening of the sky with the monstrous smoke of
projectiles that count a man a mere atom in their
whirlwind path—fearful engines that lay waste the
country, that reduce villages to a hopeless jumble
of stones and bent iron and splintered wood, with
derisive-looking chimneys floating in a troubled sea,
like derelicts in the track of a tornado.

It was clear that in this squatting war all
traditions had crumbled hopelessly and wilted away.
The monstrous engines belched fire and destruction.
From the caverns themselves, deeply cut in the once
fertile fields, issued a storm of shot and shell from
machine-guns, from mortars of an old-fashioned
type, from cannon of the newest type—every imaginable
engine of destruction, down to the old hand-grenade,
again in usage from a distant past—a past
so ancient that Scott reminds us in *Rob Roy* that
"in those days this description of soldiers" (*i.e.* the
Grenadiers) "actually carried that destructive species
of firework from which they derive their name."  Thus
every device known to man's inventive and
destructive brain was directed into a new and
diabolical channel, and from time to time the vast
engines employed emitted a rending noise as if the
earth were spitting flame and its rocky ribs had
shattered into quivering fragments—a volcano in its
most fearful mood, sending forth a mad jumble of
rocks and a living stream of lava devastating and
devouring.

A gaunt and desolate country haunted by the
melancholy crows, resounding with clacking detonations
of fusillades and a hoarse bass of heavy cannon,
is the place of invisible war.  One rubs shoulders
with it without being aware of it.  One comes
suddenly upon it in all innocence.  A journalistic friend,
at the beginning of the war, dashed into its area all
unknowing that he had come on top of it.  To his
unpractised eye the lines were no more clearly marked
than the Equator or the North Pole.  And, of course,
every effort is made to conceal the battle-field.
Beet-root grows riotously on battlements, guns hide behind
trees and are covered with branches, so that the
airman, peering from his height, sees nothing but
the flicker of leaves.  The line hides itself as soon
as it fights, and without loss of time prepares against
a possible retreat.  That is the method of it.  Should
it be driven back, there are strong positions in the
rear for the rallying, for the defence *à outrance*, and
for the counter-attack.  Fronts have two or three
lines of shelter trenches, deep enough to cover a man
and generally a yard in width.  These trenches are
proportioned to the effectives employed.  They
contain redoubts and blockhouses where guns are placed;
they are linked by zigzag paths, and, as a last resort,
with a trench of cement, a veritable fortress where
are cannon as well as machine-guns.  These covered
over and fortified trenches nearly always contain rest
chambers and magazines for rifles and the different
sorts of ammunition required.

The lesson of this trench warfare, therefore, is
that if a combatant retires before it is too late
he has every chance to survive to fight another
day; and he has all the more chance of a new
offensive, or at least of maintaining a strong
defensive, if he retires in the direction of his resources,
or what is called his line of operation, whence he
receives his munitions, food and material of war.
He retires from the battle, therefore, at the psychological
moment when he sees he is likely to be overwhelmed,
and reconstitutes himself in the rear.
The opening phases of 1914 gave us two parallel
retreats: from the Belgian frontier to the Seine by
the Allies, and from the Marne to the Aisne by the
Germans.  The campaign in Poland also showed a
similar disposition, and the Russians reformed their
line and beat the Germans after they retreated before
them.  Therefore a mere retreat may be, literally,
little more than a strategic movement in the rear.
It does not mean, certainly, that all is lost or that
the position of the retreating force is one of utter
hopelessness.

After the opening phases of the war, the subterranean
character of the fighting was maintained, until such
big offensives as Verdun re-evoked the old-time
battle, when the Kaiser watched the operations from
an eminence, and on a front of twenty miles scenes
of the old onslaught were re-enacted.  But in this
case the initiative was left to the Germans.  To
them also the greater part of the losses, for whilst
they manoeuvred in the open and hurled masses of
their grey-green warriors upon the French trenches,
the defenders enfiladed the masses and mowed them
down with the gigantic scythes that their science
had forged since the war began.

A curious feature of the fighting in the Great War
was the element of fatigue.  We have met with it
everywhere.  It follows closely the course of the war;
it is seen in every phase.  At Charleroi and Mons
and those terrific fights that marked the beginning of
the war, the retreating armies of England and France
escaped because of the exhaustion of the Germans.
If cavalry had harried their rearguards and mobile
cannon had cannonaded their flanks the retreat
might have been turned into a rout.  For the French,
largely composed of reservists, were within an ace
of demoralisation.  And again the Allies, as
conquerors, showed extreme fatigue in the battle of the
Marne, when the victory might have been more
decisive had it been followed up by unwearied troops,
or, again, by masses of cavalry.

The cavalry, indeed, of both combatants proved
singularly ineffectual, and, as I have just pointed
out, failed as a means of attack or to pursue retreating
armies; and an interesting feature was the dismounting
of the cavalry and its employment as infantry in
the trenches.  Cavalrymen were divorced from their
horses and given infantry guns; and their equipment
and appearance approached very nearly that
of the foot-soldier.  The Cuirassiers, for instance,
took off their picturesque manes and removed the
top pieces of their helmets, and thus very nearly
imitated the *bourguinet*, or low, mediaeval-looking
helmet of the French infantry.  Even reconnaissance,
the old duty of the cavalry, has been undertaken
by the aeroplane; and the horse-soldier, indeed,
has little place in modern warfare.  Some experts,
however, hold that a new rôle has emerged from
the war which the cavalry is qualified to fill.  It
consists in their employment in large forces flanked
by mobile cannon and cyclists, whereby their
offensive radius is greatly extended.


In these few pages I have endeavoured to sketch
the varied phases of a war that opened with the
glittering pageant of the time of Napoleon and
merged into the dreary and sombre monotony of
trench warfare.  The "heroic" days of battle were
over, but a new heroism arose.  Men fought no
longer to triumph as men among men; they were
content to go forward, nameless and unrecognised:
"to march heroically" (in the words of the French
writer), to become, not men among men, but—

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   "des morts parmi les morts."





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.. _`MILITARY COMMAND AND THE REVOLUTION`:

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   CHAPTER XVI


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   MILITARY COMMAND AND THE REVOLUTION

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"On nous fait une guerre ennuyeuse!"  How
often was the plaint heard in France, where this
war of "wait and see," this terrible game of patience,
racked the nerves not only of the soldiers in the
trenches, but of the multitudes who scanned the
morning news in the hope of some startling manoeuvre and
stunning victory which should end the hideous nightmare
of trench warfare.  Had Napoleon and his like
passed, then, for ever?  Could France never produce
his peer?  A man who would rise above all difficulties;
who would drag guns over the snows in hollowed-out
tree-trunks; who would arrive where no man had
arrived; who would achieve the impossible?  Times,
it is true, had changed, but sound opinion urged
the recognised fact that there is only one kind of
strategy, just as there is only one geometry.  The
geometric truth of to-day is the geometric truth of
a thousand years ago; it never changes.  Thus,
strategy is always strategy though the circumstances
may change, and the café critic was a little
inclined to blame the military command for the
dreary monotony of the conduct of the war.

Historians such as Dupuis and Aulard, the eminent
professor at the Sorbonne recalled Convention days,
when youthful Generals were selected through the
intervention of commissioners from the Government,
who visited the armies, interrogated everybody and
discovered talent.  Sometimes they did not discover
it, but only thought they did.  The unhappy man,
perhaps only just promoted from non-commissioned
ranks, was dragged from his obscurity and placed,
often against his own will, in command of an army
and told to get victories or take the consequences.
Good patriots were not allowed to refuse such signal
honour as serving the country in a position of
responsibility; and, placed between the devil of their
own incompetence and the deep sea of the guillotine
(for if they failed they would be hailed, certainly,
before the tribunal and treated as traitors), they
occasionally managed in sheer desperation to win;
but more often they miserably failed, and joined the
number of the suspected in the Conventional prisons.

Not only were these unfortunate people appointed,
willy-nilly, to the command of armies whenever they
attracted the eye of the representatives, but, once
arrived at the perilous summit of their power, they
were watched and their conduct noted as if they were
the most disreputable of mortals.  And their judges
were not only the Convention, but the secret
committees and clubs which flourished at that moment.
Nevertheless, the results of this terrible system were
astonishing.  The most celebrated of the representatives
was Carnot, who was in every way an exceptional
man.  On the eve of the battle of Wattignies,
in October 1793, he obliged Jourdan, the General-in-Chief,
to effect a frontal attack, which failed.  Thereupon
a council was held, and the two men were
seen to differ materially in their views.  Carnot,
with characteristic impetuosity, offered to assume
responsibility for his opinion and even to see to the
execution of his plan.  On the morrow, Carnot, who
kept Jourdan under close observation, noted a column
falling back before the pressure of the enemy.
Instantly he seized a rifle, placed himself at the head
of the retreating force and led them back into
action.  Thanks largely to his energy, the battle was
won.

Saint Just was a man of similar type.  In the
operations on the Sambre, which were unfortunate,
for a time, for the Revolutionaries, Saint Just and
Le Bas pushed the armies to combat, it has been
said, like a pack of dogs, without observing any rule
of war.  There is a memorable scene related by
Dupuis.  Saint Just convoked the Generals to a
midnight council.  "You are convoked," he said,
"to do something great—worthy of the Republic.
To-morrow there must be a siege or a battle;
decide!"  On Kleber smiling satirically, Saint Just
rushed out into the darkness of the garden and
remained there, hatless, for two hours, though the
rain was falling in torrents.  However, from all this
confusion and tyrannous intervention and diversity
of counsel emerged the victory of Fleurus, in the
neighbourhood of Mons and Charleroi, which speaks
so closely nowadays to our hearts.  The Revolutionaries
crossed and recrossed the river many times
before they succeeded finally in overcoming the
Austrians.  And this victory marked the end of the
peril of invasion, which was the excuse of the
presence of the representatives with the armies.
Washington said that an army must be led with absolute
despotism to ensure victory; the armies of the
Revolution certainly merited success from that point
of view rather than by the talent of terrorised
chiefs—men whose previous career was often that of a sous
officier, and totally unfitted them for positions of
authority.  Balland, who commanded a division at
Wattignies, was a drummer in a company of grenadiers,
and, according to a contemporary historian,
"cleaned our boots and ran our errands."

Yet some of outstanding character and talents
profited by this system, which advanced a man like
Napoleon to dazzling heights.  The terror and
confusion of the time gave him the chance he needed to
soar.  Whilst weaker men drowned in the storm, he
rose triumphantly above it.  And his first chance
came through his connection with Saliceti, one of
the representatives, who was a fellow Corsican and
had taken part with Napoleon in struggles in the
island against the dictatorship of Paoli.  They met
on the Riviera, where Napoleon, a simple captain,
was transporting war stores.  Toulon was being
besieged; Napoleon, in the ardour of his temperament,
proposed a plan to Saliceti and his colleague,
Augustin Robespierre, the brother of the dictator,
who happened to be there, insisted on conferring on
him the rank of Brigadier-General, with command
over the artillery in the army of Italy.  Without
these influences, Napoleon would have had to wait
long for his preferment.  Robespierre was particularly
struck by Napoleon, whom he regarded as of
transcending merit and, moreover, a sound and
perfervid Republican!

Though Napoleon was accompanied, as the others
had been, by the commissioners of the Convention
in his campaign in Italy, they were men of an ordinary
type, and he knew how to get the better of them.
Moreover, he was extremely astute in his dealings
with his possible accusers, and played a definite
political rôle.  He became, then, the favourite of
Barras, the most influential of the Directorate, and
finally, thanks to Barras and Carnot, obtained
command of the Italian Army, which was the height of
his ambition.  Here he was able to give the measure
of his military genius.  His ardour and audacity
were equal to every situation, and his popularity
rose to such heights with the masses dazzled by his
victories, and he inspired such confidence amongst
the Convention itself, that he conquered his
independence of action.  Under the former tyrannous rule
of the Convention the strategist was a mere puppet
in the hands of the Government; Napoleon was not
long in restoring all the old power to the General
and giving to strategy its full amplitude, for he was
able, as he rose to be Consul Life Consul, and finally
Emperor—all in four years—to control the political
destinies of France, and thus add to the military
arm the civil power, and make the former serve the
ends of his foreign and internal policy.

It is well to remember that Napoleon owed much
of his advancement—his promotion at the age of
twenty-seven to the rank of Commander-in-Chief—to
his clever utilisation of the social disorder which
followed the Revolution, and he obtained that liberty
of which he had need to beat the enemy, as Colonel
Dupuis points out, by his adroit relations with the
Government.  His personal prestige soon placed him
above those who had given him the power.  Finally,
strong in his immense successes he threw off the
remaining shackles and conquered the right to act
as he thought best.  He himself became the Executive.
He was in the enviable situation of a man who gives
orders to himself.

This page of the past is sufficient answer to the
clamour for the heroic methods of the Revolution.
French people have only to look back to recognise
the danger of allowing ambition to realise itself either
in the army or in politics—still worse when the two are
united.  A later instance, and one even more terrifying
than that of Napoleon I, was that of Napoleon III;
for, though his Empire similarly ended in disaster,
brought about by foreign intervention, in the one case
it represented the paling of a star of surpassing
effulgence, whereas in the other it was the mere
pricking of a bubble, if "historic," reputation.
But in each event it brought humiliation and the
foot of the invader on the soil.  Joffre, therefore, a
democratic and constitutional commander—the antithesis
of Napoleon—is the only type of general
really acceptable to the French Republic; and though
the thoughtless individual may sigh for the breathless
succession of events of Napoleonic days, there
is hardly a Frenchman who would be prepared to
accept the consequences of a return of the Napoleonic
system; and Joffre, working for war that he may
accomplish peace, eschewing inspiration and "strokes
of genius," steadily developing in quietude and
reflection the details of a preconceived plan, is an ideal
figure in a country as profoundly democratic as
France, where a chief modelled on the Prussian type
or given to vain display and the "panache" would
inevitably cause a reaction unfortunate in the
interests of national defence.  Never again will the
French, having learned in the bitter school of
experience, place power in the hands of a man who, by
his masterly temperament, raises in their minds the
fears of a dictator.  *Non bis in idem*.

But not until the second year of the war was
Joffre given that supreme command and that
independence of action so essential to success.  Only
in 1916 was it recognised that there must be a
co-ordination of effort in the different fields; that
the Allies could not act separately without relation
to each other and hope thereby to advance the
common cause; they must carry out a certain
preconceived plan and carry it out with a common
energy, subserving all questions of persons and
national prestige to the unique end of winning the
war.  The English Army, after the retirement of
Marshal French, was placed directly under the
orders of Joffre; thereafter it had its exact place
in the common movement and represented a certain
intimate part of the general machine.  England
thereby showed her loyalty and her conception of
the necessities of the hour in bending to the
principle of French dominance.  It was inevitable, for
the French were the chief combatants on the Western
Front; their army was necessarily the more numerous
and they were defending their own hearths and
homes; the war to them was in reality a war of
liberation.  After, then, the general objects of the
Allies were defined, it was seen that there must be
unity of command.  I remember how urgently a
celebrated French General spoke to me on this subject
after the war had lasted a year.  "For the sake of
our common action," he said, "do insist in England
on the necessity of oneness in the command.  Otherwise,
the problem is impossible."  And when that
principle was at last acknowledged, and England
merged her military fortunes more deeply with those
of France, sacrificing also some of her independence
in the field, the Allies were approaching the German
homogeneity, where the Kaiser conducted the mixed
orchestra and called the tune.  Whatever the music
was like, the general effect was certainly better than
if there had been two or more chiefs and as many tunes.

But although Revolutionary times were no more,
when generals of twenty-three gained such triumphs
as when Rocroi was won by Condé, yet the fierce
spirit of the Revolution remained.  In that sombre
hour France triumphed because she had the fierce
determination to win; because she was ruthless with
old-established reputations unless they responded to
the exigencies of the hour; and also because, having
her back against the wall, she realised that it was
literally a case of "conquer or die."  So in the war
of to-day, the military command was aided by the
popular clamour which speeded up the machine.
When Charles Humbert, Senator of the Meuse, and
certainly one of the organisers of victory, claimed
almost daily in *Le Journal*, which he directs with
such vigour, "more cannon and more munitions,"
he was but repeating, at a distance of one hundred
and twenty years, the cry of Carnot and Lindet, who
were rather disdainfully called "the Workers" by
their colleagues of the Convention.  But the harvest
of the Revolution that the Generalissimo reaps most
richly is that extraordinary and unsuspected virtue
which our Allies have shown, that bull-dog tenacity
and resistance which, blending with the natural
*allégresse* of the French, made them irresistible in
battle where the conditions were at all equal.  In
the last resort, the quality of the fighter prevails;
every observer has recognised that fact.  The guns
may thunder and deal out death and destruction,
but the machine which finally counts is the white
arm, "Rosalie," as the bayonet is named in the
familiar speech of the "poilu."  This fact accounts for
the superiority of the French on the field of battle;
for the final word is to the common soldier, to that
astonishing peasant and tiller of the land, who
constitutes the greater part of the armies of the Republic.
He fights, as I have said earlier in this book, not
because he must, but because he feels he is privileged
to defend his fields against the invader.  Ever present
to his mind, as he meets the Hun, are the depredations
and deeds of horror of this civilised savage, and his
arm is nerved by the determination to save his own
village and his own kith and kin, if possible, from
his devastations.  The personal feeling enforces the
personal element in battle; and, after all, a Holy
Cause is the best sort of armour in which to engage
in battle and the deadliest weapon to wield against
those who have sinned against all the laws of
humanity.





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.. _`THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES`:

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   CHAPTER XVII


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   THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES

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The spirit of the trenches is the spirit of France.
Never did mirror more faithfully reflect the personal
traits than those endless trenches across France the
splendid valour of the race.  In no preceding war
in history has courage been so abounding.  Trench
warfare created a spirit of intimacy as well as a spirit
of adventure.  Men of differing stations, of utterly
opposed traditions, of antagonistic education, were
thrown together in a narrow, self-contained comradeship,
and the result was a firm and singular fusion.
They partook of the same risks, they experienced the
same emotions, whether standing shoulder to shoulder
in the trenches, or racing, side by side, in some rush
attack, storming villages, or retiring, it might be,
beneath the pressure of an overwhelming cannonade.
And out of this comradeship grew a conventual feeling.
Though isolated from the ordinary world, they
were yet of it, for family ties triumphed over even so
radical a difference in experience and mode of life.
The rigours and segregation of the camp-life could
not separate from kith and kin.

Some have compared their existence with the
cloistered life.  True, they took no vows of celibacy,
nor was continence the necessary attribute of their
association, but they had sworn to serve in a deathless
constancy.  They slept and lived hard, exposed to
inclemency; passed days in a narrow semi-darkness,
and at night slept in the roughest shelters or in
grottoes deep in the ground.  Yet there was an essential
difference in their state and that of those bound to
the Church, for their thoughts were of earth rather
than of Heaven—of some distant spot whereon stood
a little white house surrounded with trees, with green
fields beyond, where cattle grazed, children played,
and geese cackled.  Tender memories accompanied
their vigils, and such human sentiments removed
them from the category of the saints, who are not
supposed to listen to the heart, and from the old
professional class of soldier, the *grognards* of
Napoleon's day.  For between waiting France and fighting
France there passed hourly a warm current of
correspondence, ascending and descending, informed
with honest passion, homely and kindly virtues,
which softened and humanised the soldier's solitude
and heartened the civilian.  It was the "poilu" who,
going to the war, comforted those who remained
behind, and the strange thing was that pessimism
more readily took root in security, far from the lines,
than at the Front itself.  And the soldier's courage
was as much seen in his letters as in his conduct in
the field—wonderful tribute to its depth and sincerity.
For there were moments in the interminable war to
try the nerves of the hardened campaigner, much
more those of the young man but lately broken to
its severities.

Yet there was never a tremor in the living wall
encircling *la patrie*, no touch of despair in the letters
that Dupont pencilled home in the intervals of
bombardment.  His natural gaiety found an expression
there, as well as his courage and his calm.  Letters
from only sons, out of reach for the first time of
maternal solicitude, manifested an almost
disconcerting enjoyment of danger and the independent
life.  And those women who had feared hitherto for
the health of their darlings now seemed to rejoice
in new proofs of their courage and contempt of death.
Lads, apparently the most deeply wedded to the
soft and unheroic existence of towns, found an
unexpected satisfaction in the strenuous routine of
camps.  The influence of the *milieu*, the daily contact
with the hard practices and risks of the *métier*,
riveted armour about the soul and bound the brows
with brass.  Men, whose habit in civil life led none
to suspect the martial temperament, proved lions in
the fight.  And I knew a timid soul, a little delicate,
much given to study and reflection who, after a few
months' actual experience of the trenches, became
utterly changed.  No longer apologising for existence
as in the old days, he bore himself proudly in
the field, and performed acts of exceptional bravery.
Of his civilian friends he asked with strange calm:
"Do you know how many Boches I've killed since
the war began?"  And in the surprised silence which
followed, he gave a tally, which was staggeringly
significant.

Apart from the professional pride which dictated
an air of gaiety, when a visitor arrived, the occupant
of the trench did not in his off moments assume the
mien of the troubadour.  On the contrary, he looked
grave and serious, and often austere.  It was remarkable
that when he went to Paris for a few days' relief
from the monotony of danger, he found little enjoyment
in the old-time pleasures.  And those who had
been distinguished for a high thoughtlessness, for an
abandonment to the Red Gods, proved hardy and
virile warriors in the new life, with a speed that
astonished all who had not realised the French
adaptability.  Frivolous in the days before the war,
they now adopted an attitude of disapproval and even
of positive disgust towards some outward symptoms
of the "light heart."

There was not necessarily opposition between
"poilu" and "pekin" (as the civilian is amusingly
called by the army), but there was, nevertheless, a gulf
fixed between the two: the one had seen visions and
experienced realities which were denied the other in
his peaceful civilian path.  It made all the difference
in the world.  Whatever his sympathy, the civilian
brother had not suffered as had the "poilu"; he had
been immune from the hourly risk, he had not endured
cold and hunger; he had not lain out in the frosty
moonlight, in the No Man's Land of the trenches,
terribly wounded by one of the murderous engines
of war; he had not known the anguish of mind in
hospital, the doubt whether the limb could be saved
or not, or whether he must go through life halt and
maimed.  No, for all his sympathy and moral suffering,
the civilian had not reached the experiences of
the other.

Reflections of this sort no doubt obtruded on the
mind of the soldier in his hours of lonely watch.
Sometimes, when echoes of the old life were wafted
back to him in the trenches, or when he saw the report
in newspapers of some futile discussion in the Chamber,
a smile of disdain crossed his lips.  Frankly, he was
a little tired of this sort of thing.  "If the Deputies
were here, they would not talk quite so loudly," he
reflected with bitterness.  And then the headings of
another column caught his eye: "Great scandal, a
contractor charged with fraud!  Huge and hidden
profits."  "Ah!" he exclaims, and his lips purse
again.  This time his comments are far severer than
against the Parliamentarians.  "After all," he says,
"those Deputies are paid to talk; it is their business;
but the blackguards who make money out of us, out
of our lives and limbs——"  The phrase is never
finished, but the intonation leaves you in no doubt
as to the fate of the offenders if they had fallen
into his hands.  On the following day, perhaps, he
sees another scandal of the sort, and now his anger
knows no bounds.  "What—again?  Then they are
all at it!" he exclaims.  In his excited imagination
a considerable part of civilian France is engaged in
plundering military France.  Happily, there was
great exaggeration in his sweeping assumptions.
Certainly there were scandals in France during the Great
War, as there were scandals elsewhere; but they
were few and far between—so few that their rarity
magnified their importance.

The soldier's sufferings in the trenches had warped
a little his judgment.  He was rather hard on others,
disregarding their sacrifices and their griefs, none the
less real because they had not been exposed to sudden
death.  The hard work of munition workers turning
out shot and shell with ceaseless activity often
escaped him, and if, as might happen, he was
deceived in his most intimate affections, and a moral
catastrophe awaited him at home, then his cup
of bitterness was filled, and in his wrath he
declared that all women were faithless and all men
perjurers and conspirators against his honour or
security.  And these were the people for whom he
was risking his life and sacrificing his professional
prospects!

The close union of every day with men engaged in
the strong-hearted and ruthless profession of war
was bound to have a reaction upon thoughts and ways
of life.  In the rude existence of camps, something
of the veneer of drawing-rooms disappeared and
man returned to primitive directness and simplicity
of thought and speech.  He became impatient of
subtlety and complicated ways, which seemed to him
duplicity and the enemy of plain-dealing.  A thing
must be frank and clear to appeal to him.  He had
the soldier's disgust of those who whispered in secret
in the warmth and shelter whilst he was exposed to
the blast.  A new temperament was forged in the
out-of-doors born of the sun and wind and rain.  And
the thoughts of those who struggle with the elements
and the incredible difficulties of a man-made
warfare often take on the rugged character of their
surroundings.

Directness of manner and speech are hardly looked
for in the traditional French, but war as it is to-day,
is no school of politeness, but of vigour and energy.
A new *naïveté* accompanied the new strength of soul,
and one of its manifestations was an art, which at
other moments would have astonished by its crudity
and garishness.  It was visible in the shop-windows,
where cards showed the soldier in the trench.  Above
him, in a luminous break in filmy clouds, appeared
the vision of the wife and children gathered about the
evening lamp.  They were thinking obviously of
the absent "papa."  Maudlin and mawkish though
it was, it appealed to the simple soul.  Exile from
the social round, from the life of affairs, from the
frequentation of cafés and theatres in the small
country towns, had affected the mentality of the
countryman.  This incredible existence of the
trenches, with its hairbreadth escapes and daily
incidents in which life and death played a tragic
game of hide-and-seek, developed such essential
manliness and such rough and hearty heroism that
the mechanism of the mind reverted to the simplest
expression.  Before the great and serious question of
to be or not to be, the minor aspects of life ceased to
have importance.  A man dying of hunger does not
discuss ortolans or peacocks' tongues, nor do the subtleties
of sauce appeal to the meatless.  And the soldier
of France, divorced from his usual pleasures, and
being in no mind to complicate existence, turns to
the readiest and simplest forms of literary or pictorial
expression to satisfy his emotions: it might be the
cinematograph behind the lines, it might be the
*feuilleton* in the halfpenny paper.

No doubt the mass became infected with the peasant
spirit, for peasants formed the bulk of the army,
especially when the townsman became the munition-worker.
The peasant's mind is both childlike and
suspicious, slow to anger, secretive, inclined to deep
reflection.  He attaches himself slowly, and only
after long proof, to those who win his reluctant
confidence, and deeply tenacious are his purposes.  He
will defend his land to the death; he loves it as he
loves liberty.  He insists on his independence as he
insists upon equality, and only upon that principle
will he submit to discipline.  Injustice arouses his
intense resentment, and General Galliéni's crusade
against the shirker found its deepest roots and efficacy
in his tacit recognition.

The fact that it was a war to resist invasion
made it a holy war, differing intrinsically from a
war of aggression, which would never have gained
his whole-hearted support.  The Great War awakened
the old vehemence of the race, which first revealed
its astounding power at the battle of Valmy, where
the shoeless hosts of the Revolution shook the
proudest might of Prussia.  That was the birth
of the National Army, which, a century and a
quarter later, was to come to such extraordinary
development.  The nation coalesced in 1792 against
the foreign tyrant, but that union lacked the
complete union of 1914, though it made up in intensity
of spirit what it needed in numbers.  The
Revolution fought for liberty against a caste system;
then, as now, the peasant recognised that he was
defending his own ground—not the privileges of
feudal Europe—and the knowledge made him strong.
A man is always formidable in defending his own.
In the same way, the French patriot realised that
militarism had forced the German to make war upon
his peaceful neighbour.  In the hospitals I have
seen the soldier share with the sick German prisoner
dainties that had been brought to him.  "Poor devil,
he was forced to fight against us," he would say,
showing his realisation of the intimate differences
of the two.  In *his* case it was a privilege to fight;
he was defending his own fields against the hordes; in
the other, a blind obedience to the State compelled him
to take arm.  One was a virtual volunteer in a sacred
cause, the other the victim of German Imperialism.
It was well to know what one was fighting for, and
when one had realised the grandeur of the cause, then
heat and cold, mud and rats, and even occasional
shortness of rations became of small account.  The
issue was paramount.

The French soldier was actuated by a deep love of
country.  In his mortal breast beat the immortal
heart of France.  When the bugle sounded, as
M. Charles Humbert, the Senator Editor has told us,
there was a magnificent hastening to the frontier.
The fighting souls of the people reappeared, the old
memory of struggles was reawakened.  "We dreamed
of heroic encounters, of brilliant actions, of sublime
gestures, of flags conquered in the sun.  The reality,
alas, was quite otherwise!  Rapidly the war became
a sad and protracted affair."  It became an invisible,
scientific, subterranean war of tenacity and endurance,
though sometimes blazing into manoeuvre
battles as at Verdun.

Life, none the less, was not altogether disagreeable
behind the lines.  There were compensations during
the rest moments.  Concerts and theatrical representations
in which all the stars of the army appeared,
men who had been renowned artists "in the civil,"
made the audience forget the dangers and discomforts
of their actual life.  And in these *entr'actes* in the
villages, the subject of the war was taboo by a sort
of coquetry; one talked of anything else, and occupied
one's leisure in acquiring relics from the ruined
houses in the devastated villages, or sought, in other
ways, to import some variety into the monotony of
danger.  The concerts revealed the singular talent of
the French for improvisation and gave occasion to a
latent gaiety, which flickered and flamed into pure
joyousness.  From the mind in those moments was
banished dull care, and badinage became the current
coin.  Whilst the younger and more vigorous played
games, the studious and literary engaged in
intellectual exercises.  Impressive in their reality are
some of the books that have been written at the
Front.  There is a suggestion of actual experience
about them, of *chases vécues*, which one does not feel
in second-hand impressions.

Poems, too, flowed from the trenches—not poems,
in general, concerned with war, but love and the
softer passions.  Where war was treated, it was as
a mistress, stern and hard to woo.  The Great War
inspired something of the lyricism that succeeded the
Napoleonic era, when de Musset, Hugo, Lamartine,
and a pleiades of poets existed.  Talent certainly
flourished in the trenches.  An opera was a proof of
it—words and music of such startling excellence that
the critics, before whom the work was played,
expressed a deep enthusiasm for it.  It was reserved
for production at the Paris Opera House until the
music of the trenches should have given place to
the music of peace.  Like many a hero in the
fight, the author will remain anonymous until
the war has ceased to be anything but an ugly
remembrance, and then we shall taste the quality
of the composition.

Heroism belongs to no class; it is present in the
simple as in the learned, in the rude as in the polished.
One of the comforting reflections of the war is that
civilisation, in whose name it was waged, is often
justified by her children.  Civilised man proved his
superiority over the savage, and the untutored child
of desert and jungle was less master of himself in
the dread hour than the finished product of the study
and laboratory.  That, at least, contains a certain
solace more satisfying to human pride than the
diabolical inventions of the Germans.  Brains triumphed
in the direction of battles, and they triumphed in the
trenches, where the most cultivated showed the
ascendancy of mind over matter.  Though the savant
and the peasant might be on equal terms of courage,
yet it is true that character is the basis of it.  And
where there were defections from the common bravery,
the explanation was in moral failure.  A division
which broke in the early days of the campaign and
retreated some kilometres from the fight, was
composed of southern regiments containing, it was said,
a large percentage of the flotsam and jetsam of
society.  And this, it seems, proved that only those
can wear the crown of heroism who have borne
themselves uprightly.

The schoolmaster has contributed to the spirit of
the trenches by his glorious example on the battlefield,
if not by his teaching, which was often in a
sense opposed to what we term Patriotism.  Was
he not the arch-antimilitarist?  But his intelligence
was awakened; he realised what was at stake,
and so he strove to make good that civilisation
in the name of which he had taught his beautiful
but impracticable theories.  All honour to his
rapid realisation; all honour to his pupils in the
trenches.





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.. _`TRENCH JOURNALS AND THEIR READERS`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII


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   TRENCH JOURNALS AND THEIR READERS

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There is no better indication of the gaiety and
good humour prevailing at the Front than the
journals that are circulating in the trenches.  I
know one charming periodical which was printed
within a hundred yards of the German lines, deep
down in the earth, in one of those subterranean forts
that one imagined impregnable until it was discovered
that the Germans, by employing their great guns,
could force their way through the soil and attain these
defences.  The best of the journals that the war has
produced on the French side is probably *Rigolboche*,
an extremely clever little paper, and yet unpretentious
withal, being hand-written and reproduced by a
duplicating machine.  The letterpress and sketches
are really charming, and convey in the most eloquent
manner the good temper and high spirits maintained
during this protracted war.  Even the deadly monotony
of the fighting did not damp the artistic ardour
of its contributors.  Indeed, the pages of many of
these jovial little publications prove how indigenous
to the soil of France are wit and talent.  The wide
mobilisation gathers every one into the fold—artist
and *littérateur*, artisan and peasant; but the last named,
notwithstanding his lack of letters, has qualities of
his own, qualities of soul, and even if he is unable to
contribute directly to the trench journal, the little
newspaper sparkles with wit which he inspires.

*Rigolboche* has a characteristic sketch.  The Kaiser
and François Joseph are discovered talking.  "My
dear François Joseph," remarks the Kaiser, "I think
the moment has come to kill the Gallic cock; it is fat
and in good condition."  He draws his knife, but the
cock flies full at his face; at the same time, the British
bull-dog gets his teeth into his leg, and the Russian
bull, charging up, bears him away on his back.

The "poilu" has given his name to many publications.
There is, for instance, the "Poilu et Marie-Louise," a
title a little obscure, no doubt, to the British reader;
but the adjunction of "Marie-Louise" signifies that
it is associated with officers who left the famous school
of St. Cyr in a year when the anniversary of Marie-Louise,
Napoleon's Imperial wife, gave its name to the
academic year.  This organ appears in all the glory
of print; but the majority cannot afford this luxury.
The *Argonaut* explains its origin, of course, distinctly
enough.  It is produced in the Argonne.  It contains
illustrations and letter-press copied by the duplicator.
Another has the suggestive name of *La Saucisse*—the
popular name of the observation balloon, which
directs the fire of the guns.  The *Souvenir*, especially
to French ears, has a serious sound.  Before the war
it had a definite military meaning.  To-day, as
applied to this particular journal, it means an effort
to keep green the memory of those who have fallen
in the field.  Whereas the majority of trench publications
give an amusing view of life at the Front, the
*Souvenir* strikes the grave note.  Its articles are
devoted to cherishing the memory of brave deeds,
and of the heroes who performed them—lest we
forget.  The editor, in an article of considerable
charm, quotes the remark of a mutilated soldier to a
sympathetic civilian.  "Yes, I am the hero to-day,"
says the victim of the war, "but a hopeless cripple
to-morrow."  A glorious deed may be the work of
a moment, but crutches have no apparent glory and
endure for a lifetime.  There is no halo round the
head with sightless eyes; no monument over the
little green grave, and society, on the morrow of
victory, forgets.  And so the poetic and heroic pages
of the *Souvenir* are full of the recital of deeds of valour
either actual in their happenings or symbolical.

*Le Ver luisant* ("The Glow-worm ") represents quite
a different conception of the duty of a trench journal,
as does *La Voix du 75* ("The Voice of the 75").  The
*Bellica*, the *Boum Voila*, the *Boyau*, the *Canard Poilu*,
the *Clarion Territorial*, the *Cri de Guerre*, the *Diable
au Cor* (the organ of the 3rd Brigade of the Chasseurs
Alpins), the *Écho des Marmites*, the *Écho du grand
Couronné*, and the *Écho du 75* are other titles.  Cheery
productions they are, full of light touches—humour
that is not always very refined perhaps, but still
humour, among the bursting shells and the agony of
death.  "Bocheries" is the title of an amusing column
in the picturesquely named *Marmite* (the name given
to heavy shells), and there is sometimes a light
fantastic column of fashions—such, for instance, as the
correct way of wearing the respirator, or the chic
angle to tilt the steel helmet.

The British trench newspapers have also their
particular charm—intermingling Tommy's robust
cheerfulness with the shy pathos of homesick islanders,
but printed on fine paper, in good type, they lack a
little the winsome appeal of those tiny hand-written
sheets, sometimes no bigger than a sheet of foolscap,
that are produced in the very atmosphere of war, and
which are nearly always dainty, and represent in
some subtle way the aroma of France: the wit and
tenderness, the heroism, the grand virtues of the
fighting man, and yet his simplicity of soul.  Obviously,
they have been born in war, and yet unaffected
by the crash of metal, the horrid jar and thud of
falling earth, the ruin of defences, the crashing, crazy
effects of heavy fire.

Here is another paper bearing the title of *La Félix
Potinière*.  Every one who has kept house in Paris
knows that "Félix Potin" is the name of a large
provision stores; but the word *potin* is the slang term
for a piece of gossip, and gossipy indeed are the
contents of this amusing little sheet.  What
tranquillity of mind is revealed by these jokes and *jeux
d'esprit*; one would imagine the Boches were many
miles off instead of just round the corner! and,
moreover, these stimulators to gaiety have the
professional touch: the cuisine is perfect; the man of the
*métier* has been at work, and "news," with its
accompanying comment, is served up with *sauce piquante*.
*La Guerre Joviale* does not belie its excellent title;
it shows us war under its most agreeable aspect; at
least it is heartening if not strictly true.  And
*L'Indiscret des Poilus*, the *Lapin à plume* ("The Feathered
Rabbit") and *Notre Rire* (the organ of the artillery)
are brimful of laughter and the joy of living, even
though sometimes, in their surroundings, there is
little laughter, a festival of Death rather than of
Life.

Another "poilu," a very curious sort of fellow, comes
from the Champagne district, and yet another from
Verdun, smoking hot with battle.  One can imagine
the editor inditing his poems and dishing up his
article—one can almost see him doing it—with an
aerial torpedo sailing overhead and all sorts of
death-dealing engines threatening his plant down in
the deep-sunk chamber where the joyous little herald
blows his blast of good hope and perseverance to the
soldiers of its circulation.  These are real examples
of the indomitable will of France in the most
tremendous episode of her existence, hardly excepting the
Revolution—for the War of '70 sinks into utter
insignificance before this vast and world-wide upheaval.
There is no mistaking the gay insouciant character,
though sometimes the effort to cheer may go a little
beyond the strict requirements.  Nevertheless, these
little papers are barometers of the fighting spirit of
France.  It is not strange to find this fighting spirit
so keenly developed in the first-line trenches, for here
it was tuned to the highest pitch by reason of the stress
of circumstances, by reason of the close proximity of
danger, by the very intoxication of that danger, and by
the common spirit of heroism that comes from close
comradeship; but it is significant that the same
spirit existed at the rear where men were awaiting
their turn for battle—the sort of waiting that is the
severest test for nerves; and it is as symbols of this
splendid and invincible spirit that these charming
little documents have their greatest psychological
importance.

In glancing through the collection of M. de la Roncière,
Keeper of the Printed Books at the Bibliothèque
Nationale of Paris, one is particularly impressed by
the spirit of fraternity that pervades the trench
newspaper, evidence of the thoroughly democratic army
of France.  No journal prides itself as being the
organ of a "crack" regiment.  There are, in fact, no
*corps d'élite*—corps that are specially recruited.  In
the Republican model army each regiment is placed
on a footing of equality, and the tendency in all
records of achievements is to keep a strict balance
and to give no more glory to one unit than another.
None the less, certain regiments have perforce
distinguished themselves in spite of this arrangement.
They have distinguished themselves because they
have been in the forefront of the fighting, because
they have borne the brunt of dangerous enterprises,
because they have persisted in keeping alive the old
traditions of the corps, traditions which arose from
the fact that the men forming it came from a certain
district renowned for its hardy types, and capable
of an endless energy of resistance.  Such a regiment
is the "Chasseurs à Pied," the most famous corps
of the Home Army, and popularly known as the
"Chasseurs Alpins."  For although the Chasseurs
were used all along the eastern frontier from Belfort
to Lunéville, the popular mind constantly associates
them with the mountains—the little thick-set men in
dark blue tunics and blue Tam-o'-Shanters, skimming
over the snow upon skis.  These are men of the Alps
and the Vosges, sturdy of limb and sound of wind, real
mountaineers, courageous, resourceful and capable
of endless fatigue.  No unit of the French Army has
suffered as much as they in proportion to their
numbers.  They have been everywhere where the fighting
was most severe, and at Verdun they took a foremost
part in resisting the colossal attack of the Germans.
Although there was a Chasseur regiment under the
Empire, dressed very much as were the Grenadiers,
with a high fur bonnet, in their present form the
corps is of comparatively recent date, and has existed
only three-quarters of a century; the regimental
records, however, hold some well-known names.
President Poincaré performed his military service in
this famous corps, Bar-le-Duc being his recruiting
centre, and among its officers were both Canrobert
and MacMahon, the one commanding the fifth and
the other the eighth battalion.

The Great War effected changes in the traditional
uniform of the Chasseurs.  Though they kept their
dark clothes out of pride of family whilst the rest
of the army—except the Moroccans, who were in
khaki—adopted the horizon blue, the famous blue
*béret* (Tam-o'-Shanter) embroidered with a golden
bugle was sacrificed for the steel helmet, at least
for service in the trenches—that valuable head-gear
which has saved probably fifty per cent. of head
wounds.

One of the most picturesque elements of the French
army are the Zouaves, with their blue embroidered
tunic and vest and the baggy red trousers reaching
to the knee, the whole surmounted by the fez.  Of
this gorgeous uniform the only survival of the war,
alas, was the fez.  The blue tunic was changed to
a khaki coat, the voluminous trousers copied from
the old Turkish garb became merely baggy khaki
breeches.  *Sic transit gloria mundi*!  But if the Zouaves
were deprived of their brilliant plumage, they made
up for it in glory of achievement.  Largely employed
in storming-parties, the Germans learnt to fear the
Zouaves more than any other troops, so reckless were
they in their bravery and their utter disregard of
desperate odds.  The corps dates from the early days
of Algeria, and was created in 1831, when two
battalions were formed, receiving the name of "Zouaves"
from the Arab *Zouaoua*, a fierce and intractable tribe
of Kabyle, the best fighters of Northern Africa.  The
Zouaves were recruited originally from the Kabyles
and Arabs of Algeria and also, a curious feature,
from the hot bloods of the Paris population—an
element that was introduced, because it was thought
advisable to dilute the number of natives by
Europeans.  The blend was admirable, and the new troops
performed marvels of dash and daring in those days,
just after the July Revolution of 1830, when France
was not sure whether she wanted her new colonies
or not, and left to the Algerian administration the
onus of consolidating the nominal conquest and
pacifying and developing the country.  One of the
early commanders of the corps was de Lamorcière,
a bold and dashing officer, with more than a touch of
eccentricity in his composition.  He spoke all the
Arabian dialects perfectly, and indeed was an ideal
leader for such a corps of dare-devils.

The Zouaves hold many distinguished records in
French history.  Under Marshal MacMahon they
fought at Malakoff and Sebastopol, and the Third
Zouaves went into action under the eyes of Victor
Emmanuel, taking a prominent part in the capture of
the bridge at Palestro, marking the victory of the
French and Piedmontese over the Austrians.

The formation of the Zouaves led to the establishment
of other native or semi-native corps, notably
the Tirailleurs Algériens.  Since that day the
conquest of Morocco has added other elements to the
native army; and, particularly in the early days of the
war, the French populations in the region of the Front
were interested to see the picturesque figures of the
Spahis, or native Moroccan cavalry, in their robes
and turbans, sitting superbly their swift and strong
little horses.

Later, however, the native element (which could
not overcome its fear and repugnance to cannon)
was largely eliminated, and the Zouaves, greatly
increased from their original numbers, were mainly
composed of colonials of French parentage.

But perhaps the most interesting regiment from
the psychological point of view—the regiment that
teems with romance and holds thousands of secrets
in its ranks—is the famous Foreign Legion.  Under
Napoleon I the Foreign Legion existed side by side
with distinctly national regiments, such as the
Portuguese, the Dutch, and even the German regiments.
But under Louis Philippe the two regiments that were
the original force became definitely formed into a
Foreign Legion.  The sphere of the Foreign Legion
was mainly Africa, for owing to its mixed nationality,
resulting in a large diversity of sympathy, it was
deemed unsuitable for European warfare.  True,
it was actively employed in the Crimea, and also
earlier against the Carlists in Spain; but during the
Crimean War there was a certain amount of desertion
by elements of the corps that had Slav sympathies.
Hence the Foreign Legion was mainly employed in
tribal warfare, and Africa was its recognised home.
Strangely diverse were its ranks—the Paris hooligan,
the swindling banker, unfrocked bishops, aristocrats
who had dragged their names into the dust, the
discredited politician.  Of the Legionaries no
questions are asked, and the pseudonyms they adopt often
cover the once famous names of men who have
"disappeared."  Rumour credits the corps with
many strange tales, but it is undoubtedly true that
an authentic German princeling fought with the
Legion until the opening of the war, when he crossed
over to Germany and used his local knowledge to
great effect against his quondam friends.

At the beginning of the war the ranks of the Foreign
Legion were swelled to a vast extent by the stream
of volunteers of all nationalities who loved France
and rushed to her succour.  There were Italians,
Belgians, Greeks, English, Americans, who were
anxious to take up arms for the invaded country.
Poles, Russians, Croates, Slovanes, Serbs, Finns,
Montenegrins, and Tcheques joined.  Some came to
France from the uttermost ends of the earth to offer
their services: Peruvians, Swiss, Argentines,
Norwegians.  There were German Poles and Danes from
Sleswig-Holstein, Spaniards, Galicians, and Italians
from the Trentino, and ten thousand Alsatians,
German subjects, who had escaped.  There were thus
available 35,000 men, a veritable army corps.  This
was the figure, in spite of the rejection of a great
number by the recruiting board at the Invalides.
They all left for their dépôts four days later.  These
volunteers were of all ages and of all nationalities—boys
of eighteen, and mature men of fifty and even
more; Polish miners from the north of France;
Kabyle workmen from factories in the Seine et Oise;
Russian artists, international boxers (including a
negro champion), famous trick cyclists, and jockeys,
who had often worn winning colours at Longchamp
and Auteuil.  Alec Carter the well-known jockey was
killed.  There were also young artists from various
nations at the École des Beaux Arts.  Prominent
writers and artists, a son of Maxime Gorki, and several
quite well-known poets from Central America; the
son of the Russian ambassador, M. Iswolsky, and a
famous pelota player, Pablo Irraguerro.

The regiment has fought splendidly at the Front,
partaking all the sufferings of the soldiers, all their
danger and their glory too.  The force has been
employed in all the grand *coups de chien*.  There was the
spirited address of a Captain who read out the order
of the General, and then said, "Mes Enfants, we have
the honour of attacking the first.  Pay no heed to
those who fall.  If I go down, leave me; push on
without thinking of anything else."  Some sang the
*Marseillaise* and others their national hymns.  Their
conduct on that great day was sublime.  They
rushed fearlessly forward under the storm of shell,
bayonets glittering in the sunshine of an early May
morning.  Nothing stops the formidable advance.
They swarm over the parapet; the course commences.
Their orders were to carry Hill 140, and they fulfilled
their instructions.  The Polish Legion was
extraordinarily brave, and it saw fall at its head,
brandishing the colours, Ladislas de Szuynski, son of the
celebrated Polish historian.  Concerning the Polish
Legion there is the pretty story of a Pole who, wishing
to discover whether there were Poles among the
enemy, crawled on his stomach in the night to the
German trenches.  Once arrived there, he sang, very
quietly, an old Polish song.  Surprised, the German
Poles lifted their heads, observed the bold singer,
and allowed themselves to forget the horrors of war.
When he had finished the listeners began to talk about
Poland, that the Prussian kept underfoot.  A Pole
surely should not fight against France, who fights
for Poland, insinuated the emissary.  There was
another song, and then, under the enchantment of the
old memories, the Poles allowed themselves to be
persuaded and carried over to the French trenches.

One of the principal elements of the new Foreign
Legion were the Garibaldians, who showed immense
fervour.  They formed a part of the 10th Division
under General Gouraud in the Argonne, and with
them were the six grandsons of Garibaldi.  Their
tactics were extraordinarily impetuous, and in a
three-days' fight they lost 800 men.  The special corps into
which they were formed was disbanded on Italy's
declaration against Austria, but their valour had been
such that Joffre expressed his sense of honour in
commanding them.

Wherever it has fought, whether to-day or yesterday,
the Foreign Legion has always left a record of
valour, daring and devilry.  An amusing story is
recalled from Crimean days, when Canrobert stopped
in front of a Legionary and asked him what sort of
shoes he was wearing?  Strange shoes indeed! for
he had blackened his feet, having sold his boots for
*eau de vie*.  But episodes such as this are ever
typical of a corps that sells its shoes for a little brandy,
and its life for a spice of glory.

The colonial troops of the French Army were called,
until a few years ago, Marine Infantry, and were
attached directly to the Navy.  Nowadays the system
adopted is that of some regiments in the British
Army; that is to say, one battalion remains at home
whilst the other battalions serve in the colonies.
They wear a dark blue uniform with yellow epaulettes.
During the course of the war their composition
became very mixed, and negroes and tribesmen from
the Soudan were embodied with them.  In this case
also the colonial troops are perhaps less adapted to
European warfare than they are to their own special
field of action in the colonies against insurrectionary
tribes.

A very fine corps, which covered itself with glory
at Dixmude, is the Marine Fusiliers.  The force
retreated to Dixmude when their original mission,
which was to defend Antwerp, failed, owing to the
collapse of the Belgian defence.  Here they held their
ground with the greatest heroism for over a month,
though the original plan was that they should be
relieved in a few hours, and at this spot a peculiarly
tragic incident took place.  A second in command,
a naval captain, Janiaud, went up to take the
surrender of two German companies of infantry, which
were surrounded by the Marines.  The Germans
seized the captain and kept him prisoner.  The
Fusiliers then opened fire, which was briskly returned
by the Germans, but during the short engagement
which ended in the capitulation of the enemy force,
the captain was shot dead by two German officers
with their revolvers.  After this act of treachery,
which took place in November 1914, the Marine
Fusiliers swore to take no further prisoners, a
resolution to which they have rigorously held in their
various engagements ever since.





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.. _`THE AIRMAN IN WAR`:

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   CHAPTER XIX


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   THE AIRMAN IN WAR

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"Ah, monsieur, you fly like a bird!" said an
admirer one day to Pégoud.

"A bird!" was the famous reply, "Les oiseaux ne
savent pas voler!"  ("The birds don't know how to
fly!")  And indeed the bird-man, soaring at immense
height and incredible speed, has left the little denizen
of the air far behind.  The wings of the machine
are rigid, it is true, but also they are tireless; and
the skill of the inventor and science of the mathematician
have excelled the pulsing wings of flesh and
feather.  A few years back—ten years ago to be
exact—the birds must have tittered as they watched
at Bagatelle the fearsome efforts of the ugly ducklings
of the early days of aviation.  On November 13,
1906, a famous date in the history of flying, Santos
Dumont flew 220 metres in twenty-one seconds,
that is, at the rate of nearly thirty-eight kilometers
an hour.  He had won the prize of the Aero Club
for a hundred meters in a straight line.  The
experiments began at ten in the morning, but the test was
not accomplished until late in the afternoon.  Two
enormous birds spreading their white wings of
canvas—the one belonging to Santos Dumont and
the other to Blériot—lay upon the green carpet of
the ground.  A crowd of enthusiasts, amongst whom
were some of the great names in aeronautics, such as
M. Archdeacon, the Marquis de Dion, Surcouf, Louis
Renault and M. Besançon, were upon the ground
surrounding the two pioneers and eagerly discussing
the theories of lighter than air and heavier than
air—that is, the bag filled with hydrogen that floated in
air, or the aeroplane which flew by its own means of
engine and wings.  The machine of Santos Dumont
was a weird-looking thing.  Some compared it with
an ibis or heron as it rose into the air with its long
neck outstretched and its wings spread—a strange
thing like an antediluvian bird.  Its planes were
formed of canvas frames divided into cubes, so that
at one angle it looked like a flying cupboard.  The
square box-like head in front was the steering
apparatus.  The tail of the beast was represented by
the screw continually lashing its way through the
air.  The pioneer sat in a little cage arrangement
between the planes, so that his head and body
emerged and he had the appearance of riding astride.
The first starts were a little unpromising.  The
machine rose a few inches, and then a few yards,
and came to earth abruptly in each case.  In three
separate attempts it flew one hundred and fifty
yards in all, achieving, in the third attempt, eighty
yards in seven seconds.  But it was not until the
light was failing that the machine really rose to any
height.  It then flew at six metres from the ground at
a tremendous rate.  The airman, however, was forced
to descend for fear of an accident to the crowd, which
was following his movements with impassioned
interest.  He had won the prize of the Aero Club
for sustained flight, an advance, at any rate, upon
the series of leaps in the air which had passed for
flight before that.  It was said that the Wright
brothers had flown twenty-five miles; but that was
in America, and, besides, the Parisians were not very
sure about it; but here in France it was the first
time that mortal man had flown over the heads of
humanity by mechanical means.  The Blériot-Voisin
machine, though very ingenious in its construction,
did not succeed that day; Santos Dumont, the little
plucky Brazilian, was the real conqueror: future
laurels were being reserved for M. Blériot.  The
French, indeed, have pioneered in the air.  The
brothers Montgolfier were the first to make ascents
in their balloon; and the balloon originally appeared
as a military engine for observation above the
battle-field of Fleurus, where the Revolutionary
General Jourdan vanquished the Austrians in 1794.
The dirigible is also largely the product of French
invention.

One of the amazing features of the war was the
rapid development of aviation after the outbreak of
hostilities.  In a few months only the aeroplane
emerged from its experimental stage and appeared
as a highly finished and accurate instrument of
war.  An immense stride was attained when the
machine was first adapted by the French to carry
cannon, which enabled the attack upon another
aeroplane to be made in the horizontal plane instead
of vertically, as was necessary when one machine
had to mount above another in order to drop bombs
or *flèchettes*—one of those refinements of cruelty
which the present war has produced.  Incidentally,
there are some who say that the German *flèchettes*,
launched from the skies, were of such inferior steel
that they buckled up when they touched a hard
object.  However that may be (and we have no
reason to complain of such an arrangement), weight,
whether in the form of cannon or other armaments,
was constantly added to the aeroplane, and the
problem then arose as to the maintenance of speed.
In the aerial machine, speed is the first requisite,
especially nowadays when it is necessary to mount
and mount, perhaps, to six thousand yards to
overfly the enemy craft, be he Zeppelin or fellow airman.
And a few minutes make all the difference—the
difference of kilometers—in the pursuit; thus speed
must always be combined with those offensive
properties that are being gradually added to the
battle-plane.

And a third difficulty was that of starting the
machine quickly in pursuit of an enemy travelling
at the great heights that are now customary—and
indeed obligatory—with the development of
anti-aircraft artillery.  Naturally the machine even of
the speedier sort loses time as it mounts spirally or
in a series of inclined planes to give battles to the
Zeppelin or Fokker.  Would it be possible to turn
the observation balloon into a sort of perch for the
airman, so that he would be suspended always
midway between earth and sky ready instantly (if one
may suppose him able to detach himself) to fly
away in pursuit of the stranger?  Yet in the present
stage of development such a desideratum is difficult
of realisation.  The airman must start from the
ground or return to it every time he wants to
overhaul his engine or replenish his reservoirs.  That is
his touch with solid realities: otherwise one might
suppose him flying for days, never setting foot to
earth, the modern Guardian Angel, hovering eternally
in the heavens.

The aeroplane has completely revolutionised
warfare, inasmuch as it has deprived strategy of its
chief weapon—surprise.  As the eyes of the army
the aeroplane played its most important rôle.  A
light and very speedy machine is the scout, and it
is his duty to make reconnaissances, report upon gun
emplacements, the numbers of the opposing troops,
the movements of the enemy, and the disposition
of his trenches.  But the aeroplanes used in warfare
are not all alike.  The tendency is towards differentiation,
and while the scout is swift and light, the
battle-plane is extremely powerful and heavily armed
with cannon or machine-guns, sometimes also carrying
a spur for ramming enemy craft; and again there
is a third type of machine armed also for defence,
but adapted principally to range-finding, and fitted
with signalling and photographic apparatus; it
hovers continually over the enemy lines directing
artillery fire.  None of the offices of the aeroplane
proved more valuable than that of giving the range
of enemy positions to one's own artillery, and then
registering the shots, marking where they fell too
short, or overpassed the mark.  This is one of the
most dangerous as well as the most useful of the
services rendered by the man-bird.  It requires great
nerve, judgment, and coolness on the part of the
aviator, for he must hang over the enemy trenches
and expose himself to the fire of their anti-aircraft
guns, the efficacity of which made rapid strides as
the war progressed.  The German method of signalling
to the opposing batteries by means of smoke
bombs with different-coloured fuses was soon
improved upon by the French, who used wireless
telegraphy and the heliograph by day.  But the rôle of
the aeroplane is not confined even to these important
services.  It becomes at times the instrument of
aerial bombardment for the destruction of fortified
places, military stores, railway junctions, dirigible
sheds, encampments, bridges, and roads used by the
military.  When war broke out, the French airmen
received explicit instructions not to bombard any
town for fear of inflicting harm upon civilians, but
the Germans were not so scrupulous, and their defiance
of the dictates of humanity forced a change in the
policy of their Allies, if only in self-defence.

The aeroplane could be used also as a link for
communicating with armies and their staffs, particularly
in the case of a besieged army or town.  And, finally,
the man-bird is admirable in the capacity of aerial
policeman; he can watch the clouds and he can
prevent the passage of the enemy pilots.  Not that
it is possible to suppose that one force of aeroplanes,
however numerous, can completely occupy the
heavens, for the skies are broad; but bold aviators
ever on the watch, patrolling the sky in constant
relays (as was the case in the aerial defence of Paris
against the Zeppelins), will generally succeed,
whatever measures are taken against them, in overtopping
the adversary; and the French aviator is remarkably
good in that sort of warfare where native audacity
and resource are in demand—that is why the Frenchman
is so superb a performer in the air.  None the less
it is impossible quite to bar out the enemy.  The
clouds may always hide a foe; the fog is ever the
possible lurking ground of the hostile airship.  But
although the barrage system (so successfully applied
on solid earth in the *tir de barrage*) cannot absolutely
prevent a Zeppelin attack upon a wide-spreading
town, yet the aerial dam has given good results in
the war of the air.  The procedure is to institute a
barrage of aeroplanes over against a certain locality—a
certain restricted space.  The enemy is marked
down and prevented from passing.  Undesirable
visitors are invited to "move on," and they do not
wait for a repetition of the request!  I have heard
of one hardy airman who, charged to watch the
heavens against the passage of the adversary, so
manoeuvred that the thick heavy clouds which hung
in the sky were positively useful to him as a screen.
Noting that at one point there was a clear space in
the dense curtain of fog, he placed himself there and
watched as a look-out might in the embrasure of a
fort.  None came to challenge his vigilance.

Again the barrage tactics are extremely useful in
the prevention of secrets being divulged to the
enemy.  Certain important movements, such as the
moving up of reinforcements, are taking place in a
certain part of the line, and to keep the enemy from
knowledge of the fact *squadrillas* of battle-planes are
sent up to bar the way to the enemy scouts, and
nothing can penetrate the screen of the *avions*.
Thus it has so happened that, thanks to the barrage
system, the enemy has been without definite news
of the Allies' movements during twenty-four hours.
But let it be remembered that the aerial dam implies
the mastery of the air, as important to the Allies
as the mastery of the seas: indeed, one could establish
a very close analogy between the two.  The mastery
of the air—the complete mastery—would have meant
the finish of the war, the absolute victory for that
side which possessed it.  And the aerial fleet must
consist of aeroplanes, not Zeppelins.  For after all
the Zeppelins failed miserably either in their
bombardment of England or their assault upon French
towns.  True they have taken toll of a certain
number of innocent lives in England, but an
infinitesimal number in comparison with the holocaust
caused by a terrestrial bombardment.  Cumbersome,
unwieldy, unable to operate except in a fog, the
Zeppelin was comparatively ineffectual as an engine
of war, and would not have been employed by the
Germans except to prevent the public exposure of a
mistaken policy.  Six aeroplanes could effect more
damage than one Zeppelin, whose radius of action is
circumscribed by the fact that it has to carry vast
weight for a long journey, that it is expensive to
build, and consumes immense quantities of fuel *en
route*; that it is almost as dangerous to itself as to
the enemy on account of its vulnerability from
cannon and from high winds, and moreover it is
constantly exposed to attack from the upper strata
of air by the aeroplane which swoops down upon it
with the speed of the eagle, and against which the
Zeppelin has no defence.  No, it is the aeroplane
that has come to stay, and a very prominent
airman—a man who bears a household name in
aeronautics—declared to me that the side which could
furnish ten thousand aeroplanes with the airmen to
mount them would win the war.  For if aerial
bombardment had, up to that moment, taken very
little place in the hostilities it was because it was on
so small a scale.  Very little effect was to be obtained
by sending half a dozen apparati over a town—it is
true that in some of the French raids over German
towns there were as many as thirty machines employed,
but this was the great exception.  It is easy
to conjure up the effect of a gigantic bombardment—a
shower of metal from the sky—rained everywhere
upon the enemy troops on the march, upon the
enemy convoys in the rear, upon his stores and
magazines, upon his bridges and railways.  Such a
bombardment, if it could be continued systematically
for long enough, would mean his forced surrender, for
retreat would not save him.  His aerial foes would be
always quicker than he, even his quickest motor
transport, and would bombard him from the skies.
So that the mastery of the sky would ensure the
victory for any army.

The development of the aeroplane is full of the
most startling possibilities.  Already it has far
outflown the vision of its inventors, for, a very short
time ago it seems, one of the Voisin *frères* declared
to me that the aeroplane would never be other than
a rich man's hobby, of little use in war-time other
than the dropping of a few explosives.  My
informant has since trodden the path of so many brave
pilots, but had he lived he would have admitted
to-day that the possibilities of the aeroplane seem
limitless.  The appearance of the Sikorski machine
in Russia carrying five or six men in its cabin
encourages the belief that the aerobus will soon be a
practical reality, and the imagination is fired by the
prospect of the air humming with giant aeroplanes,
which, by the way, the Germans also attempted to
use during the war.  There is more than a
possibility—so many surprising things have
happened—that, in the future, commanders will have aerial
motor lorries at their disposal for the rapid
transport of their troops.  Thus strategy and the
physiognomy of the fight would be completely changed.
It would effect a complete metamorphosis.  The
commander who possessed this aerial fleet would be
able to carry the whole of his army with the speed
and ease of the magic carpet of the *Arabian Nights*
to some distant point and descend even into the
enemy country.  Nevertheless, as M. Blanchon in the
*Revue des Deux Mondes* suggests, the General who
resorted to these aerial methods could not carry out
normal military operations for the reason that his
*matériel* must go by road.  But when the science of
air-transport is sufficiently advanced to allow armies
to pass in the sky, presumedly that army will know
how to take care of its lines of communication.

These are dreams of the future, however, and their
realisation is problematical.  But the vision which
is in no wise uncertain—the vision which will be
realised in the near future, is that of vast armies of
wings gathered in the sky.  Nations will no longer
possess fleets of hundreds of aeroplanes, but tens of
thousands will lie in readiness to skim into enemy
country and scatter terror and death over vast
areas.  The nations that plunge into war will no
longer pledge only their fighting men; they will enter
into battle knowing that their women and children
must also endure the worst agony of horror, for
modern science has destroyed civilised warfare, and
modern man has joined hands with primitive man
and wars upon the innocent and helpless.

But it must be conceded that superiority in the
machines should be accompanied by superiority in
pilots.  In a conversation which I had at the time
of writing this chapter with M. Louis Blériot (who
knows as much as any man living of the practical
side of aviation and even its scientific side), the
famous winner of the cross-Channel prize confessed
that France had not sufficiently developed her rich
treasure in expert and adventurous men—the very
pick of the pilots of the world—though the English,
too, were extraordinary for their *sang-froid* and
were remarkable airmen.  For in the air as on
the land, in the last resort, it is the personal
element which tells.  A school, urged Blériot, was
necessary to form such super-pilots as Garros and
Pégoud, men renowned for ever for their prowess in
the air.

For the conquest of the air is to the swift and
strong and fearless.  Prudence and sagacity, and the
slow measured wisdom that comes with the years,
play no part in so breathless a pursuit.  It is a
game for young gods, not for the pale *savant*; a
sport for young eagles, for a man must be sharp of
eye, strong of claw and sinews to cleave his way
through the clouds, right into the face of day.  These
super-men who ride fearlessly amongst the stars
must be the very pick of humanity, revelling in the
sensations of supreme danger, glorying in the
knowledge that in a few seconds an assailant may emerge
from yonder cloud with whom he must come into
death grapples, and well aware that the vanquished
will crash down thousands of feet to earth.  Youth:
youth has been poured out with a lavish hand on
the smoking, bloody altar of the war.  Youth: there
is no incense more precious to the gods.  Alas! a
monstrous sort of selection is exercised.  The young
are mowed down by Death with the scythe, leaving
the least adventurous, the timid and calculating—those
who are sure eventually to die of a cold in the
head—to live on.

Very curious is the psychology of the airman.  He
is billeted so often in the midst of the world in some
pleasant little town away behind the lines—it may
be even Paris; sometimes also Fate sends him to a
château where he lives like a prince amid ancestral
halls and a sweeping park—until the day when duty
calls him to mount the perilous stairway of the skies
to give mortal combat to the enemy.  In the trenches
men welcome an attack as a relief from the deadly
monotony of life in pits, but the airman leaves an
easeful, agreeable, social life for the cold, austere
atmosphere of the skies under the pure radiant dome
of heaven.  It requires a man of special temperament
to withstand so lively a contrast—not to be
softened or unnerved by it.  Think of the solitude
of the upper air, careering absolutely alone, perhaps.
And there is no turning back.  There is no such word
as "funk" in the bright lexicon of the airman.  He
is up there because he is fearless, because he does
not dread being solus in the wide heavens, because
he is a man and no craven, because he has nerves
of steel and whipcord.  And he must be ready to
fight with any weapons.  Garros was equally expert
in attacking and bringing down his man with machine-gun,
carbine, rifle, or even revolver, and in ten days
before he was captured he had "grassed" three
German aeroplanes.  One of the men who fell into
his hands having asked him to announce his capture
to the German lines, Garros started off in that spirit
of chivalry common amongst airmen.  There is this
delightful about the new arm, it has given a touch of
romance to the drab horror of the war.  Whenever
a man was captured or killed, airmen from the
opposite camp dropped a letter informing the
comrades of the victim, often with an added word of
praise.  "Even the Germans are gentlemen in the
air," remarked a young pilot the other day.  There
is chivalry in the air.  The man with his head near
the stars, flying in immeasurable space, has no room
for littlenesses.  His heart is large and splendid like
the splendour of his deeds—deeds that make the
exploits of the old heroes pale into insignificance.
They are the phenomenal fruit of a limitless audacity,
of a glorious and spring-like youth, of the heyday of
existence, when danger is the mad intoxicant, the
heady draught that puts brightness into the eye,
that gives a riotous pleasure to life, that is like
song and wine to the hero clad in the shining and
invincible armour of his own superlative freshness
and illusions.

The bodies that crash down from the heavens and
the souls that soar into the white radiance of Eternity
have known no petty thought, have perpetrated no
mean deed.  Yes, there is chivalry in the Air.





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.. _`THE "POILU'S" HOSPITAL`:

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   CHAPTER XX


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   THE POILU'S HOSPITAL

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There is this wonderful and alluring in France,
that, recognising the faults in an administration or
department of the public service, she sets to work
immediately to effect reform.  And it was clear
enough that the *service de santé*, or hospital service,
was grievously defective at the outbreak of the war.
It was a question that had never been properly
worked out.  Those who had thought about the
subject at all, never supposed that the demands upon
the department would be so terrific.  Probably they
thought, as did most Frenchmen, that the war would
be of quick duration and that—well—the inconveniences
of the system would be but temporary, and
one would do the best one could in so short a time.
But the actual facts were to give the lie to this
prevision as to many others.  The war lasted long,
the demands upon the hospital were not only terrific
but protracted.  But with the spirit of adaptability,
of which the French have given so many proofs
during the war, they set to work with the resolution
to do the best possible.  Little by little the gross
defects of the earlier days were remedied; the number
of doctors, which at the beginning had been
hopelessly inadequate, was augmented, and immense
improvements were made in the organisation of the
hospital trains.  Thereupon the evacuation of the
wounded developed on scientifically humane lines,
in spite of the difficulties of an unexpected kind,
mainly brought about by the colossal character of
the war.  Thus the wounded rapidly received
attention in the ambulances and were quickly sent away
in trains and motor-cars, and reached the most
distant parts of France not later than the morrow
of the combat.  I was at Biarritz when the Champagne
offensive was taking place, and saw arrive at
the station wounded men, still powdered with the
dust of the trenches, who had been in the fight
twenty-four hours before.

The hospitals, however, even the most modern in
their equipment, did not equal the English, still less
the American, but the reason was not far to seek:
a lack of money.  A great many "sanitary formations"
(as they are called in France) suffered also
from a want of motors; in fact the French, by the very
nature of the circumstances, had not the immense
resources that the English possess.  English
newspapers raised immense sums for the care of the sick.
But if the French had not the money to devote to
the niceties of hospital installation they did the best
they could with the time and means at their disposal.
And although, perhaps, the hospitals were not as
clean as would satisfy English tastes, they served
their purpose, which was to restore as many men as
possible to the firing-line and alleviate suffering.

Eternally to their credit is the manner in which
the French resolutely set their house in order after
the failure of the system was revealed on the field of
battle.  It must be remembered that the long duration
of battles nowadays prevents the wounded from
being removed at once, and often they have to
remain the whole of the day where they have fallen
until the night comes and they can be transported.
Naturally it is of high importance in the saving of
life that the wounded should be got away as quickly
as possible to avoid the setting in of gangrene.

The Committee, which was formed by M. Millerand
at the Ministry of War in the early days of hostilities,
to effect reforms in the army medical service, fixed
the number of sixty motor-cars per army corps.
This number was in direct relation with the
accommodation of the hospital trains.  But when the war
took on the character of a war of manoeuvres it
became necessary to employ trains used for ammunition
and even for food supply—returning empty to
their base—for the evacuation of the wounded.  In
a general fashion it may be said that the great
preoccupation of the military command is to transport
the wounded away from the scene of action as rapidly
as possible in order to remain unhampered.  One
could draw a melancholy picture of the first victims
of the war and its shambles being sent right across
France in crawling trains—the word is applicable in
a double sense, a long-drawn-out agony—before the
arrival at the base hospital.  Never shall I forget
the first trainful of British wounded I encountered
coming from Mons.  The goods train, without seats,
benches or beds, crawled and jolted by, passing my
train going in the opposite direction.  We shouted
words of cheer, to which many of the Tommies
replied, gaily enough.  Some even jumped off the
creeping train to pick up the fruit we threw (one
fellow, I remember, with a bandaged leg, hopped
on one foot in the permanent way, determined not
to lose a pear that had fallen there).  But others,
again, made no reply, and we hushed our voices and
bowed our heads as we saw recumbent figures,
stretched in cattle trucks on bundles of straw, figures
that gave no sign.  Would they ever speak again,
these men lying alone, untended, in the creaking,
jarring train?  But these terrible conditions were
quickly changed.  At the beginning of the war there
were only five regular hospital trains provided with
beds for the wounded, and a hundred improvised
trains, formed to a large extent of the rolling stock
of goods trains.  The wounded could not be properly
attended in such trains, because there was a lack of
communication between the different parts, but afterwards,
corridor trains were adopted almost exclusively.
Nevertheless the number of the wounded was so
great, after some of the battles, that every sort of
train possible and imaginable had to be pressed into
the service.  But the Committee, by its wise and
careful dispositions, rendered a great service in
providing train accommodation for sixty thousand
wounded to which the Minister of War added twenty
thousand; and which again, I believe, was considerably
increased by General Galliéni during his brief
but strenuous period at the Ministry of War.

As originally conceived the ambulance of the Front
was equipped for major operations as well as the
hospital in the rear, but afterwards it was found
inadvisable to perform operations in these conditions
where the surgeon had not the time or the tranquillity
of mind necessary for the purpose; and so by a later
arrangement the hospitals for the major operations
were placed fifteen or twenty miles to the rear.
And so it happened that the first mistakes were
rectified.  Instead of great and important operations
being conducted on the field of battle, subject to the
dangers and interruptions from such a propinquity,
the more gravely wounded, whose state required
amputation, were rapidly transported to these hospitals
in the rear after their wounds had been attended to
in the first place, and an examination made in the
field hospital, or ambulances as they are called in
France.  This system gave much better results than
that adopted in the beginning, whereby the
*ambulances de l'avant* (or advanced ambulances) and the
reserve ambulances, the divisional ambulances, and
the army ambulances, were interchangeable.  They
were intended to serve for all the purposes of
attending to the wounded.  They were used either as a
place of temporary relief for the wounded or took
on a *quasi* permanent character according to the
necessities of the case.  When the advanced
ambulances in certain circumstances became stationary,
the reserve ambulances followed the army on the
march.  It seemed in many respects an excellent
system, and certainly was very supple and ingenious,
for these ambulances became interchangeable; but
they possessed the inconvenience, to which I have
already alluded—that is to say, the proper sort
of attention could not be given to the important
cases.  Hence the change that the Committee brought
about, whereby the *grands blessés* were transported
to the hospital at the rear, where the necessary skill
and the instruments required were at their
disposal.  The present system works in this manner.
The battle takes place.  The chief medical officer
fixes the spot in the rear where the formation ought
to be established.  The formation establishes itself
there in a couple of hours with its motor-cars.  An
hour after, it has pitched its first tent and is ready
to shelter the first wounded which come to it from
the ambulances, perhaps in the space of three or
four hours.  Instruments sterilised in advance permit
the surgeons to commence to operate three hours
after having received their orders to establish the
hospital tent.  Other tents can be established to the
number of five.  A hundred wounded persons can
thus be taken care of and treated in the open country.
Reserve ambulances can be called upon in case of
need.  As soon as operated upon, and out of immediate
danger, the wounded, in the majority of cases, can
be evacuated to permanent hospitals further back in
the rear.

In case of retreat, the formation, if warned in
time, falls back carrying with it if possible all the
wounded and follows the troops.  These tent hospitals
carry with them the wherewithal to instal an operating
theatre and a *section d'hospitalisation*, composed
of a hundred beds, five double-walled tents, and the
necessary doctors and male attendants.  Of course
the problem of removing the wounded from these
tent hospitals at the Front is always a grave one.
When the war took on the character of a siege war,
a train acted as a sort of shuttle from the field
ambulances to the station where the "army zone" finished
and the "interior zone" began.  The two were
generally seventy or eighty miles apart.  Here the
wounded were carried to the other train, where the
cases were sorted out and sent to the distant base
hospitals.  But, as I have said, the tendency was to
keep the slight cases as near as possible to the lines,
and send only to distant parts either medical
cases—infectious diseases, and convalescents—or the more
serious surgical cases, which were entering upon a
secondary phase.

One of the most interesting aspects of the question
of the treatment and recovery of the wounded was
the utilisation of the mineral waters which exist
in such abundance in France, particularly in the
Pyrenees; and all the well-known stations of this
delightful region were filled with soldiers recovering
from their wounds or illnesses incurred in the service
of the country.  Magnificent results were obtained
also by the same means in '70.  Strongly impregnated
sulphur waters gave then, as they have given
during this second war, most admirable results,
particularly in combating the infection of wounds
caused by fire-arms.  It is not necessary to insist upon
the dreadful error of the theory that bullet wounds
were clean wounds.  Before it was discovered that
the bullet infected the surrounding tissue much
harm had been done.  The mineral waters were also
invaluable in the treatment of nervous affections
arising from wounds and rheumatism contracted in
the trenches.  Some really remarkable recoveries
have been made in this glorious region irradiated
by the sun and full of pure air charged with the
balsamic odours of a pine-clad district.

Whilst, as I have said, there was rapid improvement
made in the various services, the defect inherent
in all administrations, English as well as French, but
perhaps more particularly French, subsisted.  For
instance, M. Joseph Reinach, the well-known Deputy,
has inveighed especially against the abuse of red
tape in the hospitals.  All sorts of dreadful formalities
were necessary to be fulfilled to obtain a lemon or
a bottle of the simplest medicine.  There had to be
a proper requisition made with several signatures
attached, and this entailed visits to different offices
situated in different parts of the building—a
formidable waste of time.  Some string and nails, value
1 fr. 25, appeared in somebody's report.  Immediately
there was an imperious demand for details, which
were supplied, of course—though purely imaginary.
The precious document travelled during several weeks
from the bottom to the top of the administrative
ladder.  Papers even pursue the unhappy doctor or
stretcher-bearer right into the trenches—though, of
course, every reasonable person would admit that
records must be kept.  M. Reinach, who, furnished
with special powers of investigation, has carried his
inquiries into every part, points out that even if
the high administration decrees simplicity and the
different sub-departments apparently incline, they
continue their complicated practices just the same.
Says M. Reinach, and his words will serve to depict
the unhappy state of the public in this country as
well as in any other: "We believe we are governed
at one time by this party, at another by that.  In
reality, we are governed by the departments in the
interests of a mysterious syndicate of paper merchants.
It will require a revolution more profound than that
of '89 to rid us of administrative routine."  And it
must be remembered also—one feels authorised to
mention it since it is admitted by M. Reinach, as well
as by other thoughtful Frenchmen—-that favouritism
and nepotism have made terrible ravages in this
direction as in so many others; but these abuses
have been corrected, we must hope, by the touchstone
of war.

One of the most pleasing, and at the same time
touching, sides of the war is the heroism in the hospitals.
The majority of the patients belong to the class of
manual labourer, but they were as dignified, as calmly
Stoical, in their way as those who had larger
opportunities for education.  Though they had never read
Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, and were often just
simple labourers, they showed invariably a greatness
of soul.  Women working in the hospitals have given
me pathetic instances of soldiers' gentleness and
resignation.  They calmly watch the surgeon going
about his work probing in their own flesh.  They look
on apparently unmoved, idly smoking a cigarette.
Heroic simple souls of France.  They are always
joking, even before a most serious operation; one
cannot overcome their invincible courage and good
humour.  Often it is touching enough.  In the
Metropolitain of Paris I travelled with a man who
had lost his leg—one of the numerous army of the
mutilated.  In conversation he had forgotten to alight
at a certain station.  The train had already begun
to move from the platform, and, to the alarm of
those next to him, the poor fellow tried to jump out.
He was pulled back just in time.  "*J'ai oublié*," he
said simply, looking reflectively at the empty trouser
leg.  In the hospital it is easier, perhaps, to be
uncomplaining, to support with appearance of
equanimity the pain and suffering of the wounds; it is
more difficult in the evacuation stations, where
sometimes the wounded have to stay a night exposed to
all the discomfort of a provisional arrangement.

There are, too, pathetic instances of self-sacrifice.
The "poilu" (as I have said elsewhere in this book) is
a generous-hearted soul, very forgiving to his enemies,
even when they have done him unspeakable hurt;
he will share food with the wounded Boche in the
next bed.  He will send him his comforts.  "Here,"
he says to the nurse, "take this woollen waistcoat
and give it to that chap over there; I have clothes
enough."  The humanity of the French and their
intrinsic civilisation are revealed in the intimacy of
the hospitals which are tended by those admirable
women whose quiet and unadvertised devotion have
inspired the admiration of every beholder.

Another very charming feature is the care taken
of the permanently crippled.  At Lyons, M. Herriot,
the mayor, worked hard in this direction, and
established schools where the mutilated could be
taught useful trades.  M. Maurice Barrès in Paris,
chiefly by making use of columns in the *Écho de
Paris*, worked for the same holy cause.  One of the
prettiest things is to go into a French hospital and
see the semi-convalescents at work upon ingenious
and charming little objects wherein they show
their taste and inexhaustible ingenuity.  They are
never at a loss, these sons of France: a cunningly
carved flower, an amusing caricature, a doll with
articulated limbs, dainty little baskets—all these bear
witness to the inherent culture and good taste that
are theirs by right of birth, in virtue of having been
born on the fruitful soil of France.

I have spoken of the bravery of the soldier as he
lies under the surgeon's knife; but let us not forget
the signal heroism of the surgeons themselves, and
their staffs.  They have given proof of a super-human
courage and self-forgetfulness, and surgeons
and doctors, stretcher-bearers and nurses, have
frequently figured in the Army Orders for their
absolute devotion to duty.  In many cases the enemy
granted no truce for the recovery of the wounded,
and it was necessary to seek them under a hail of
bullets and shell fire.  Wounds were dressed on the
field of battle during the fight or in ambulances,
which the Red Cross flag did not always protect from
the bombardment of the Huns.  In many cases it
was perfectly evident that the building was the
positive target of the enemy.  The trained nurse, as
we understand her in England, hardly existed at the
outbreak of the war, but the women of the Red Cross
worked in the hospitals and made up for a lack of
professional training by a devotion without limits,
and a whole-hearted willingness to learn and adapt
themselves to the new conditions.  It is true that
no amount of good-will can supply the want of
professional knowledge, but I have the testimony of
many doctors that the better-educated Frenchwoman
speedily acquired the essential part of hospital
practice.  The ladies who belonged to the various societies
under the Red Cross were unpaid, and had gained
their certificates after six-months' service in a
hospital.  Three societies form the Red Cross organisation
in France: the Sociètè de la Croix Rouge, the Sociètè
de Secours aux Blessès, and Union des Femmes de
France.  There is a religious basis to the French Red
Cross, and before the war, before every woman who
had leisure, rushed to offer her services to her
beloved country, nursing in France was almost entirely
in the hands of the Sisters of Mercy.  True, in late
years, in the course of the terrible struggle between
Church and State, many of these splendid women
had been driven from France, banished to carry their
beneficence and charity to foreign climes.  But when
the German hordes swept over the frontier, France
was invaded by another silent army, an army of
white-capped, calm-browed women, who with
exquisite serenity moved to the beds of sickness and
suffering.  The nursing sisters returned to their
kingdom, and the Head of the State bowed to
receive them, for their heroism is matchless; they
blench at no risks, they falter at no fear of infection;
with placid brow they look, undismayed, at the most
fearful sights, and the agonised patient, gazing into
their steadfast eyes, gains strength and courage from
the light of hope and faith that shines there.  Never
again will the Orders be banished from France.

And the priests on the battle-field showed equal
devotion.  Those who were of military age fought in the
trenches side by side with the "poilu," and prejudice
rolled away with the smoke of gunfire.  Some again
were stretcher-bearers, while those above fifty became
chaplains and celebrated Mass in little improvised
churches behind the lines.  The soldier-priest gave a
singular example of Christian courage, an absolute
fearlessness which electrified the soldiers who were
fighting by his side.  I was at Perpignan a few weeks
after a priest, who had lost an eye in the trenches,
was decorated with the Legion of Honour by the
General commanding the district.  Truly the blood
of these servants of Christ, spilt on the battle-field
(and many have been killed), is the seed of the
Church, and from their self-sacrifice and heroism
will spring a harvest of love and charity, if not
actually a revival of religion in France.  It is,
perhaps, too much to expect a general return to the
paths of practising Catholicism, but at least France,
having passed through the agony of blood and tears,
will have forged a spirit of splendid tolerance; for,
as the greatest Healer and Physician came not to
bring peace but a sword, the lasting peace that
dwells in the heart of a nation is learnt from that
supreme teacher, that incomparable healer, the
sword.

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