Fighting France Part 3

"Show me your wounded," I ordered.

He immediately conducted me everywhere, explaining the nature of each wound. Some were suffering and groaning; others, seeing the uniform of a French officer, tried to raise themselves up and salute.

The German major asked:

"When they come to evacuate the wounded to Meaux or some other place, do you suppose I shall be allowed to accompany them and continue my treatment?"

"I don't know," I replied, "but there is one thing you can be sure of.

My superiors will act in accordance with the demands of humanity. Now you follow me."

I led him outside to the doorstep. I pointed out the poor homes of the village, ruined, reduced to dust. Everywhere were the dwellings of the entire region, with their furniture lying in the mud and ashes.

"Look at that," I said to him. "That is what your men have done."

The German officer turned very pale, then very red. He answered:

"It's sad, but it is war."

"No," I replied, "it isn't war. It's pure barbarism and it's abominable."

Some few paces away from us French Zouaves were sitting beside some wounded Germans. In their own gla.s.ses they poured out a little cordial for their prisoners; they gave them their last cigarettes. One of them had even taken, as if he were his brother, the head of a wounded German in his left hand to support it. With his right hand, very carefully, he was giving him a drink. I pointed that out to the German major, saying:

"There! That is war--at least it's war as we understand it."

This time he made no answer.

But all the German prisoners repeated what he had said to me as a set phrase. On the whole, when you have seen ten German prisoners you have seen a thousand; when you have questioned one German officer you have questioned fifty. The characteristic of the race is that they have abolished all individuality. You find yourself in an amorphous ma.s.s, cast in a uniform mold, not in the presence of human beings who think their own thoughts.

I often saw trains stop in what is called a _gare regulatrice_, where the prisoners are questioned and distributed. These trains bring in prisoners and their officers. The commandant of the station, in accordance with his duty, has the officers appear before him so that he can question them:

"Your name? Your rank?"

The German states his name and rank, offering of necessity his identification card.

"Your regiment?"

"Such and such a regiment."

"Your army corps?"

"Such and such an army corps."

"Who is the general in command?"

Like an automaton the officer replies:

"_Das sage ich nicht._" ("I can not answer that.")

And you know that it would be an easier matter to make the stone beneath your feet talk than one of these prisoners.

However, the commandant frowns slightly, glances over his notes, and says coldly:

"I know who your general is. If you belong to such and such an army corps, the general in command must be General von Bissing."...

"I have nothing to say."

As a general thing one of the staff had something to say. The interpreter, the convoy officer or the station master would get a lot of fun out of reciting to the German pa.s.sages from von Bissing's famous and ferocious proclamation ordering that no quarter be given and that the troops should not enc.u.mber themselves with prisoners.

Then he would ask:

"What would you say if we were to put such a principle into practice?"

The German often became very pale. He would content himself with a shrug of the shoulders--the shrug of the brute who knows that he is safe among civilized men.

The men I questioned were often doctors who ranked as majors or held some commission in the German medical corps. They were less stiff and automaton-like than the officers and sergeants of the line service.

Their att.i.tude varied in accordance with the number of stars they had on their epaulette. If their rank were inferior to mine, they were exaggeratedly obsequious, holding their hands along the crease in the seam of their trousers with their fingers close together--at strict attention. If their rank were superior to mine, they were defiant and insolent. Nevertheless, they showed themselves more communicative than their comrades of the line service. Most of them spoke French--well enough, though not perfectly. All of them had been in Paris, and one and all repeated this phrase:

"We know your beautiful country well. We have been in your beautiful capital often...."

For my part, I invariably spoke to them of the atrocities their men had perpetrated in that beautiful country, or of those they had perpetrated in the country of our beautiful neighbor.... Rheims, Ypres, Louvain, Andenne, were the names that always returned to my lips. I hoped each time that I would get from those men who, in spite of everything, were men of science, members of humanity's most generous profession, if not a word of contrition at least a ba.n.a.l word of regret. Since they had not ordered the sacrileges or the ma.s.sacres, they need not keep silent. But it was all in vain. They also excused, justified and explained....

The explanation was simple and stereotyped. For the battered Cathedral of Rheims, for the total destruction of Clermont, for the systematic laying-waste of Louvain, for the frightful company of old men, women and children who were dragged off into captivity, three words were the justification--the three words of the German major at Vincy:

"_Das ist Krieg._" ("It is war.")

For the blackened ruins of Senlis, for that charming city of Louvain, razed to the ground in one night as completely as if the scourge of G.o.d had pa.s.sed through it; for Andenne, a.s.sa.s.sinated in cold blood with not one of its houses being granted mercy by the a.s.sa.s.sins; for Termonde, where General Sommerfeld, seated in a chair in the midst of the Grande Place, gave the order that it be burned and replied to the entreaties of the mayor:

"No. Burn it to the ground!"

Five other words sufficed to explain everything:

"Civilians fired on our troops."

Not one village in flames, not one desecrated monument, not one organized killing, not one tortured city that does not fall under the scope of one or the other of those justifications, "War is war," or "Civilians fired on our troops."

Doctors, savants, officers, Bavarians, Saxons, and Prussians have adopted the double excuse with a marvelous unity: they advance it in a certain tone of voice. It is firmly embedded in what is left of their consciences as firmly as the iron cross is riveted on their necks.

Besides, it was all planned, wished for, arranged in advance. German frightfulness formed a part of the plan of campaign. It is enough to read the manual called "Kriegesgebrauch in Landkriege" (Military Usage in Landwarfare) to be very much edified. Every German officer has had this manual in his hands since the days of peace. It comprised his rules of warfare. It was a part of his war equipment, the same as his field gla.s.ses and his staff-officer's card. And here is what he reads on the very first page:

War carried on energetically can not be directed against the inhabitants and fortified places of the hostile state alone; it will endeavor, it ought to endeavor to _destroy equally all the enemy's intellectual and material resources_.

Humanitarian considerations, that is, consideration for the persons of individuals and for the sake of propriety, can have no recognition unless the end and nature of the war allow it.

And, a little farther on, he reads there:

Profound study of the history of war will make the officer guard against exaggerated humanitarian concessions, will teach him that war can not take place without certain harshness, _that true humanity consists in proceeding without tenderness_.

Farther along in that book, he reads:

All the methods invented by the technic of modern warfare, the most perfected as well as the most dangerous, _those which kill the greatest number at once, are permitted_.