A Journey Through France in War Time Part 20

It was about the first of October that we reached Belfort, and here we saw the first signs of havoc wrought by gunfire. At Paris we had been within twenty miles of the battlefield where the German hosts were first turned back, but there was not much ruin wrought to buildings at the Marne. Men, unprotected by trenches or any of the later found defensive methods, bore the brunt of the cannon there.

At Belfort we saw signs of bombardment, but they were not so shocking.

The sh.e.l.l fire had been at long range and was apparently brief and inaccurate. This seemed to be the case at all of the towns between Belfort and St. Die. Apparently the Germans had not used so many heavy guns in this region, or perhaps they had not yet become so desperate and ruthless as later on. At any rate, it was at St. Die where we first saw a whole town ruined.

The ruined portion of France extends in a narrow strip around the frontier from the Alps to the North Sea. Very little of this section, about three hundred and twenty-five miles in length and varying from ten to fifty miles in breadth, escaped the fearful blast of war. Few towns located in it can ever be restored to their original condition.

After the great German army had crushed Liege and captured Antwerp, one section came up the valley of the Meuse and the other up the valley of the Schelde, uniting at a point between Namur and Mons. At the latter place Sir John French had gathered his hastily formed army of one hundred and twenty-five thousand men, and with this made a gallant defense. The British were soon forced back with tremendous losses, but they delayed the Germans until the French army, hastily mobilized on the German frontier east of Paris, could be reformed on the Marne. The great German machine drove rapidly down the valleys over the wide and splendid roads, forcing the English backward toward the sea and spreading out to meet the French front so hastily interposed between it and Paris. In this way the German line became extremely long before the Battle of the Marne began. The Kaiser's army had spread itself out like a fan. I was shown maps ill.u.s.trating this mightiest of all military movements, and it was made plain how the English, hanging on the German flank, had placed the invaders in such a position that a skillful attack at the right time and in the right place forced them to fall back and strengthen their lines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ruins of Village--St. Die.]

It was while they were attempting to do this that the French attacked them with all the fierceness of patriots defending their most beloved city. Then what the German commander, Von Kluck, had meant to be only a halt to reform his lines became a retreat that ended only when the Teutons had gained the hills beyond the Aisne. In their retreat they destroyed, or the French were forced to destroy, most of the towns in a section fifty miles wide and two hundred miles long--the fairest part of France--Artois and Champagne.

The surge of battle--such a battle as the world never saw before--swept over all these towns, but it was strange to see how much more some of them suffered than others. At Belfort, the town famous for withstanding sieges, comparatively little harm was done. Rambevillers, in the path of the stream of destruction, was almost unharmed. Gerbeviller, on the other hand, was entirely destroyed, probably out of revenge for the stubborn opposition of its defenders. St. Die was badly wrecked, as were Raon l'Etape and Baccarat.

It was the same all along the front. We saw some towns absolutely ruined, others very badly damaged, and still others in which the sh.e.l.ls seem to have fallen in places where they did little harm, or where, perhaps, there was not time for the complete sh.e.l.ling that had made heaps of brick and stone of other thriving towns.

The smaller towns appeared to have suffered worse than the large cities.

Nancy was badly battered, but not entirely destroyed. Reims, which was under the fire of German guns for many months, and where the wonderful cathedral was destroyed, apparently with malice, had lost about one-fourth of its buildings by fire and explosions resulting from the bombardment.

In the country, the territory once occupied by the Germans and now in possession of the French is seamed with trenches and pitted with sh.e.l.l craters in all directions. To all appearances about every foot of it has seen the tread of either French soldiers or their foes. Back from the lines a short distance in some cases, the fields had become green again, and the trees were trying to send forth new growth from then-burned and battered trunks; but it will be a long time before this part of France loses all of its scars. The filling of the trenches and leveling of the fields will be no mean task of itself. Few farm houses, which in France are built in groups of half a dozen or so, are to be seen. Stone heaps fill their places.

The roads over which we pa.s.sed were in good condition, having been kept in repair. We were told, however, that many of the finest roads near the front had been badly torn up and that it would require much work to restore them. Hundreds of bridges have been destroyed, and most of the rivers and ca.n.a.ls, of which there are many, are now crossed by temporary structures.

We were given a glimpse of the complicated system of railroads, built in large part since the war and to supply the armies with food and other necessaries. These roads were all laid hurriedly, but they seem to be in good condition and are invaluable to the French. Some of them have been laid with rails taken up in other places where they were not so badly needed. In this system of railroads and roads one gets a striking ill.u.s.tration of the huge task it is to feed an army.

The Commission was given figures showing the total number of buildings destroyed in France, with an estimate of their value. These figures had been compiled in July, 1916, and were reasonably accurate at the time we were there, since the Germans had yielded little ground in the interim and there had been less wanton destruction than in the first months of the war. According to this official report, more than half the houses had been destroyed, either by flames or gunfire, in one hundred and forty-eight towns. In the greater portion of these towns nearly all of the houses had been ruined. Besides this there were scores of towns suffering from gunfire which did not lose so large a part of their buildings. Among the buildings destroyed were two hundred and twenty-five city halls, three hundred and seventy-nine schools, three hundred and thirty-one churches, and more than three hundred other public buildings of various kinds and sizes. The mills and factories, like all of the larger buildings, suffered severely, more than three hundred having been totally destroyed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Prefecture at Reims after Bombardment.]

Most of the towns suffering were of the smaller cla.s.s, although four cities of more than one hundred thousand people were bombarded or burned by the Germans. These are Lille, Roubaix, Nancy and Reims. The section swept by the German advance and suffering even worse in the retreat is the most populous in France. It covered about ten thousand square miles.

No one has yet undertaken to figure the loss in property sustained in this region. The Germans have still possession of about five million acres of French soil, including seventy per cent, of the iron ore mines and a large part of the coal supply.

The farmers are already back at work on a great part of the territory ravaged by the war. Farming under such conditions as we saw, where men and women worked in the fields within range of the guns and amid their constant roaring, or with the eternal white crosses for company, may be more exciting than the usual occupation of the agriculturist, but it must be a sad, discouraging and difficult task.

XXI.

GENERAL JOFFRE

Perhaps no other man in France is so talked of so much as General Joffre. Certainly he is the idol of the French people. They look on him as their hero and savior, and his name is mentioned among them with a sort of half-worship. No other people have ever depended on their leaders as have the French. They believe with the right sort of leadership they can do anything. This is the impression you get in talking to them. They say that since the Franco-Prussian War they have looked forward to the time when they might have a general with Napoleon's genius and some other name--for even the name Napoleon now prevents a man from fighting for France, at least if he is of the royal line.

You may be certain that we all looked forward to meeting this great man.

We did not meet him after all at close range, having to content ourselves with a view of the busiest man in France as he rode by in an automobile at top speed.

General Joffre, as we learned, has been at the head of the French Army for two years before the war. He first came into notice when, at the last grand maneuvers, he jarred military circles and greatly pleased the people by unceremoniously dismissing from their command five gold-laced generals whose methods did not meet with his approval.

But Joffre first showed what sort of stuff was in him when he met the Germans at the Marne. It will be recalled that the French, never suspecting that Germany would invade Belgium and having all their military plans laid for mobilizing on the German frontier, were more or less demoralized when they found an entirely new line of defense necessary. They had no railroads built to help reform their line, and the moving of a vast army is a perplexing task. Without a leader in whom the whole army had supreme confidence, and with the German host sweeping across Belgium and hurling back the English, it would have been a hopeless situation.

But while what the Kaiser called "Sir John French's contemptible little army" was holding back for a few days the German onrush at terrific cost, Joffre was busy realigning his forces between the invaders and his beloved Paris, which seemed doomed to all but him. He had studied the situation carefully and detected the fact that the long flank of Von Kluck's army left an opening. This opening was found by the Army of Paris, augmented in every possible way and finally reinforced by every available soldier, rushed from Paris in every kind of automobile to be found. The Germans were stopped at the Marne--twenty miles from Paris. Not only was the capital of France saved, but the invaders were steadily driven back until they were sixty miles away before they could make a successful stand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait in Tapestry--General Joffre.]

It was then that France found Joffre, so the people say. Up to that time they had heard little of him and n.o.body knew who he was or where he had come from. At once they began to inquire. Few of the soldiers had ever seen him, and there had been nothing much in the newspapers about the man who had managed all this.

After the Germans had been forced across the Aisne and there was time to breathe, the French decided to have a review of that part of the army that could be spared. It was here that everybody watched for Joffre. The French tell it in their own way and it is interesting to hear one of them explaining, with the usual gestures, just how the hero looked on the day of that review.

It was not much of a display of military style. The troops reviewed had been in the thick of the fight and there was an enormous amount of mud.

There was no reviewing stand except a muddy elevation, on which the commander was to stand. n.o.body seemed to know where he was or where he would come from, but it was pa.s.sed around that he was to be there and the soldiers watched for him eagerly. Most of them thought that he was a little, fat man. They had unconsciously absorbed this idea from pictures of Napoleon, and, forgetting the terrible stress of the past weeks in the temporary flush of victory, they expected to see their general come to the stand with a blaze of glory. They looked for silken flags and gaudy uniforms and a regular French military parade. This was as little as they thought would do proper honor to the victorious commander of the Allied armies, and they were right, because General Joffre is at the head of the greatest force of men ever gathered together.

As you are told about this in France, the day came and at the spot selected for the review, an open field somewhat back of the lines, with plenty of freshly planted crosses in sight and evidence all around that the peace and quiet had not always been there, a few generals and officers gathered. Finally, a regimental band, playing the first martial music heard since before the battle of the Marne, swung out of the woods at the head of a body of troops.

Then a large man, tall and heavy and wearing an ordinary soldier's overcoat, but with the laurel band around his hat that showed him to be a general, came out of the woods behind the little knoll and walked rapidly toward the group of officers. Every hand went up in salute. Then they knew it was Joffre. He went to the muddy knoll, and stood there watching keenly while the soldiers marched past, the bugles blowing and the bands playing.

In spite of their muddy uniforms and the hard fight they had just gone through, the French say that these soldiers looked spic and span as they pa.s.sed their general. Their rifles went up in salute as straight and accurately as if they had just come from quarters and were marching over a level parade ground, instead of over fields filled with sh.e.l.l holes and slippery with mud--or perhaps something worse.

Joffre is a silent man, they say. This does not interfere in the least with the adoration of the French, who are usually great talkers. They believe in him to the utmost, and they will follow him to the limit of endurance. So long as Joffre is at the head of the French army, the spirit of victory will remain.

Since Joffre has become famous, of course much is known about him. He was born in the Midi, as they call the southern part of France. Trained as a soldier, he saw service in the East, where he did that which he set out to do. There is no particular incident that points to the discovery of his genius, although he must have done unusual things to get to the top. He is known to have been a modest, quiet, home-loving sort of man, spending much time with his family at Auteil, and showing while there that he was very fond of fishing. Fishing is a good recreation for the man who wants to think, and the French believe that while Joffre was doing that he must have been evolving plans for settling with the hated Germans. He likes to fish yet, and when he can get away from the war zone, he hunts a small stream and spends his leisure hours along it.

During his brilliant career since the war began Joffre has developed some of the qualities notable in our own General Grant. There is not a particle of show or bl.u.s.ter about him. He dresses as plainly as possible, talks little and seems to prefer solitude. But his will is imperious and he does not hesitate when anything is to be done, whether it is pleasant or otherwise. For his men he has the greatest consideration, but they say in France that, like Lincoln, he has little regard for Generals. Some of the things told about him remind you of the story of Lincoln. In this story a Confederate raid had resulted in the capture of two generals and a number of privates. When the story was brought to Lincoln, he said it was too bad about the men. Someone suggested that it was a pity the generals had been taken, but Lincoln said that did not matter much, as he could make some more. Joffre has made it uncomfortable for the inefficient generals in France. Many of them have lost their commands and most of them live in fear of his quiet but inexorable discipline.

Joffre does not look kindly on visitors to the Front, and n.o.body gets there without his permission. He signed the pa.s.ses on which the Commission traveled, but he did not seem overjoyed at our coming enough to look us up while we were there. Apparently he regarded us as people who could not help in his big job and who were likely in some way or other to become nuisances.

When you talk with people who know this man you are at once impressed with the fact that he appreciates his great responsibility and that there is nothing on his mind but how to win this war for France. They say he has a clipping bureau that saves for him all that is being printed about the war. He probably expects to read it somewhere after the war is over, but he will not likely be able to do this in the remainder of an ordinary lifetime.

Time only will decide whether Joffre is really a great military genius, or whether he is merely a good general, conscientiously doing his best and fortunate enough to become a popular hero. Modern war is so different from old time variety that no one can judge results up to this time. It is at least certain that Joffre has beaten the Germans back and back, slowly, but surely forcing them out of France. He says himself that he "has been nibbling at them."

There can be no doubt that at the time this is written he has reached the pinnacle of fame in France. He is the man in all France who is most talked about, most admired and most trusted. Were he to die now, as Kitchener died, his place in History would be secure. What will happen before the war is over is another matter. But, having heard the French talk about "Father Joffre" so much and so lovingly, and having been given the most useful thing in France, if you want to see the front--a pa.s.s by him in spite of the great cares resting on his shoulders, I hope that fate will be kind to him and that he will remain the idol of his people to the end.

As might be expected, France is full of the sayings of Joffre. Everyone you meet can tell you a new one. Some of the aphorisms credited to him that I can now recall are: "Go where the enemy is not expecting you"; "No soldier is expected to think of retreating"; "Now is the time to stand and die rather than yield". This last is said to have been his utterance before the beginning of the Battle of the Marne.

XXII.

THE WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION

While no estimate can be made of the cost of rebuilding the towns and cities destroyed in France until after the war is over and it is known what further damage has been done, this matter is already receiving earnest consideration. The French are confident of victory and are satisfied that they will soon be able to rebuild their cities and reorganize their industries. They are a frugal and thrifty people, and usually have more private means than the average American whose manner of living would indicate that he is wealthy. On this account it is my impression that France will recover very rapidly after the war and will soon be as well off in property as before it began.

The chief loss of the French is likely to be their young manhood. Houses can be rebuilt. Factories will spring up over night where there is capital and faith to invest it. Even the fine old cathedrals may be restored or replaced with something that will serve equally well in a practical sense. But the young men--the flower of the French nation--whose lives have been offered on the altar of national defense--these cannot be replaced. Generations must pa.s.s before the terrific price of national existence will be fully paid in this direction.

Most Frenchmen feel this way about the situation. From a material standpoint they expect to soon be as well off as ever. They do not seem to mind the loss in wealth destroyed by the great war. But they are bowed down with grief at the thought of the young men who have been slain and the years that will be required to replace them. Although they do not care to discuss this phase of the situation, the French have already begun n.o.bly to meet the problem of the lame, halt and blind who are a part of the legacy of every war and an exceedingly prominent part of that left by this one.

It is surprising to learn that the Belgians, whose little country has been crushed under the heel of the invader so that its government retains only a narrow corner behind the British army, are even more optimistic than the French. They are determined that the Germans must be driven out and are already laying elaborate plans for reconstruction of their farms and villages and cities. Almost before the Commission had reached Paris we were asked by the Belgians to hold a meeting with their chamber of commerce in that city in order to discuss the problems of Belgium's rehabilitation.