Fighting France Part 7

The poor woman understood me. We separated. My own youngest daughter was in my thoughts; and do you not think that the men who have a wider audience could stir the hearts of the young women, twenty years of age in France, if they asked them to perform this act of devotion, and to be the companions of the mutilated, maimed men of France?...

Then, too, the women who had only their dignity and their high spirit to defend themselves against the grossness and the insults of the Prussians, have been the incarnation of the spirit of France.

An old woman who dwelt in a village on the Aisne was spattered with mud by the Kaiser as he pa.s.sed by on horseback. He made a gesture excusing himself. She fixed her eyes on him and said simply:

"It doesn't matter, sir. That mud can be washed off."

A great lady in one of the chateaux in the invaded regions, had to receive one of the Kaiser's sons. The day of his departure he sent for her to thank her for the hospitality she had shown him. The old lady, looking at him, contented herself with replying:

"Do not thank me, sir. I did not invite you here."

And she reentered her house with all dignity.

Because the women of France have been all this and have done all this, France has been able to fight on, and will be able to fight to the end. Because the women of France have been all this and have done all this, the soldiers, in the mud of the trenches, revere them as Madonnas.

The historian Tacitus tells somewhere how, on a hot spring day, a slave, panting and worn out, entered one of the gates of the Eternal City. He crossed the Forum without stopping and, in his course, mounted the Hill of Mars. Finally he came to one of the greatest houses of the patrician section of the city. His cries and shouts filled the house:

"Alas, alas!" he cried.

A lady hastened to him. She was the mistress of the house, the famous Cornelia Graccha.

"What news do you bring?" she asked.

"Alas, alas," repeated the slave, "in the battle down there in Umbria, two of your sons have been killed."

"Fool," was the reply, "I do not ask that. Have the Barbarians been conquered?"

"They have, Cornelia."

"Then what matters the death of my sons if my country is victorious!"

Those wonderful words have been handed down from generation to generation as a symbol of what ancient Rome was. Those words thousands of French women have uttered for the last four years, and they still utter them today. Other voices answer them. They rise from the trenches, and they say:

"Be without fear, women of France. For you we will fight to our last gasp, we will shed our last drop of blood. Know that if for months we have held our heads below the level of the muddy trench and offered our b.r.e.a.s.t.s to death, it is that you may be freed from the wild beasts that have burst forth from the German forests. For your sakes our homes are not in ruins and our towns are not va.s.sals to the enemy. It is all for you, so that when we shall return you need not throw your arms around conquered necks. Our country, women of France, is made up of our homes, our churches, and our fields, and of your beloved faces. Throughout the tragic periods of its history, our country has always been incarnated in your faces, whether they called themselves St.

Genevieve or Jeanne d'Arc. And in our building, to personify the cities that are dear to us, we have always taken your bodies, your foreheads, and the folds of your gowns--see, in Paris, that statue in the Place de la Concorde, in the shadow of the Tuileries, which for days has worn a crepe veil.... Well, today is the same as yesterday. In our trenches our country appears to us in those visions wherein are mingled your faces. We shall believe that our country has been well served only when, on your beloved faces, we shall have caused a smile to appear because the palms we have placed at your feet are the palms of victory."

Future historians will state that France has fought not only with all her courage, her tenacity and her soul, with all her men, women and children: they will also state that these men, women and children, in spite of the terrible times, their suffering and their mourning, have remained firmly united, forming a firm rock from which not a single stone has been splintered.

In that tormented, feverish France where the ardor of the Revolution still boils, there were, before the war, different parties, cliques, groups and churches. The war has leveled, united and bound them all together.

In some admirable pages, consecrated to the "Effort of French Womanhood," M. Louis Barthou has painted the picture of the sacred union there is among all the French women:

I have seen [he writes] our women at the front and behind the lines, in the hospitals, the railway stations, the automobile service, the canteens, the factories, in relief work and in charity work. I have met nurses, unmoved under a bombardment. I have tested the spirit of fellowship which unites them, including as it does the names of the most aristocratic French families and the most modest citizens.

There is no false pride among those in high places nor envy among those lower in the social scale. They wear the same garb, the same cap, with the same cross on their foreheads.

For the soldiers there is the same uniform, and when you say uniform you mean equality in devotion, in the risk of life, and in loyalty to duty. Between the cla.s.ses of society there is no contention, there is only emulation. I do not know whether or not, in times of peace, they had all and everywhere escaped the local pa.s.sions which have poisoned national life, but the war has given them sacred union for a countersign, and they, as disciplined soldiers, have respected this countersign.

The French nurse's smile will have served the nation's defense well, but I emphasize this when I think how well it will have served the nation's unity in the aftermath that shall follow war. What rancors it will have appeased! What jealousies it will have blotted out! What petty prejudices it will have conquered! These society women and women of the middle cla.s.s who have leaned over the beds of sick or wounded peasants, and these young girls who have tended their hurts, bound up their wounds, and calmed their sufferings have, with their delicate hands, so expert in the worst treatments, laid the foundations of a France that is united and fraternal, where envy and hate have no place. All eyes have opened to broader vistas of revealed clearness, to which they have hitherto remained closed through prejudice, or obstinacy. They will have learned that bravery, devotion to the right, loyal and tried disinterestedness, heartfelt and wise knowledge can dwell in the simple soul of the peasant and the workingman. The peasants and the workingmen who have come out from their care will have learned that luxury does not exclude goodness, that beauty is not always a sterile gift, that youth is not altogether callow, that a woman can be pretty and generous, delicate and courageous, rich and sympathetic, and that the mothers whose children are dead excel in lavishing the care of their hands and the tenderness of their hearts on the wounded children who are suffering far from their mothers.

The sacred sense of union that reigns among the men is no less firm.

It is only necessary to read the letters written on the eve of their deaths--in that hour when a man, alone, face to face with himself, lets his soul speak--by the fighters who gave their heart's blood for the sacred cause.

They all say the same things.

Here is a letter a Jew wrote, named Robert Hertz, a second lieutenant of the 330th infantry regiment, who fell on the 13th of April, 1915, at Marcheville:

MY DEAR: I remember the dreams I had when I was a little child. With all my soul I wished to be a Frenchman, to be worthy to be one, and to prove that I was one.... Now the old, childish dream comes back to me, stronger than it ever was. I am grateful to the officers who have accepted me for their subordinate, to the men I have been proud to lead.

They are the children of a chosen people. I am full of grat.i.tude towards our country which has received me and heaped favors upon me. Nothing would be too much to give in payment for that, and for the fact that my little son may always hold his head high and never know, in the reborn France, that torment which has poisoned many hours of our childhood and of our youth. "Am I a Frenchman?" "Would I deserve to be one?" No, little boy, you shall not say that.

You shall have a native land and your step may sound on the earth, nourishing you with the a.s.surance, "My father was there and he gave all he had for France." If recompense is necessary, this is the sweetest one there is for me.

This is the letter of a Protestant, second lieutenant Maurice Dieterlin, who was killed on the sixth of October, 1915, and who, on the eve of the Champagne offensive, wrote these last words they were to read from him, to his family:

I saw the most beautiful day of all my life. I regret nothing and I am as happy as a king. I am glad to pay my debt that my country may be free. Tell my friends that I go on to victory with a smile on my lips, happier than the stoics and the martyrs of all time. For a moment we are beyond the France that is eternal. France ought to live.

France will live. Get ready your loveliest gowns, keep your best smiles to welcome the conquerors in the great war.

Perhaps we shall not be there, but there will be others in our places. Do not weep, do not wear mourning, for we shall have died with a sweet smile on our lips and a lovely superhumanity in our hearts. Vive la France! Vive la France!

What wonderful enthusiasm! But still more beautiful is this prayer, that of a little Protestant soldier from the Montbeliard country, who died in the Gare d'Amberieu hospital:

"Lord, may Thy will and not mine be done. I have consecrated myself to Thee since my youth, and I hope that the example I have offered may serve to glorify Thee.

"Lord, Thou knowest that I have not desired war, but that I have fought to do Thy will; I offer my life for peace.

"Lord, I pray Thee for the welfare of my people. Thou knowest how greatly I love them all, my father, my mother, my brothers and my sisters.

"Lord, return manyfold to these nurses the good they have done me; I am but a poor man but Thou art the dispenser of riches. I pray to Thee for them all."

This prayer, in which the little soldier had put his last living thoughts, was received by a Catholic sister who had cared for him, and sent by her to his sorrowing family--a touching proof of sacred union.

All of them, Catholics, Protestants and Jews, speak of G.o.d and pray to Him.... Read this letter from Captain Cornet-Acquier, that captain to whom his wife wrote, "I would urge you on with my voice if I saw you charging the enemy." He tells this little incident:

"A Catholic captain was saying the other day that he said his prayers before each battle. The commanding officer remarked that that was not the proper moment and that he would do better to make his military arrangements.

"'Sir,' he replied, 'that does not prevent me from making my military arrangements and from fighting. I feel better for it.'

"Then I said:

"'Captain, I do the same thing you do. And I find I get along pretty well.'"

This is the letter a young Catholic wrote the evening before a battle to his fiancee:

MY DEAR JEANNE:

Tomorrow at ten o'clock, to the sounds of "Sidi Brahim" and the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" we charge the German lines. The attack will probably be deadly. On the eve of this great day, which may be my last, I want to recall to you your promise....

Comfort my mother. For a week she will have no news. Tell her that when a man is in an attack he can not write to those he loves. He must be content with thinking of them.

And if time pa.s.ses and she hears nothing from me, let her live in hope. Help her. And if you learn at last that I have fallen on the field of honor, let the words come from your heart that will console her, my dear Jeanne.

This morning I attended ma.s.s and communion with faith. It was held some yards away from the trenches. If I am to die, I shall die a Christian and a Frenchman.