The Soul of the War Part 4

In the corner opposite my own seat was a thin pallid young man, also a little drunk, but with an excited brain in which a mult.i.tude of strange and tragic thoughts chased each other. He recognized me as an Englishman at once, and with a shout of "Camarade!" shook hands with me not once but scores of times during the first part of our journey.

He entered upon a monologue that seemed interminable, his voice rising into a shrill excitement and then sinking into a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

He belonged to the "apache" type, and had come out of one of those foul lairs which lie hidden behind the white beauty of Paris--yet he spoke with a terrible eloquence which kept me fascinated. I remember some of his words, though I cannot give them his white heat of pa.s.sion, nor the infinite pathos of his self-pity.

"I have left a wife behind, the woman who loves me and sees something more in me than vileness. Shall I tell you how I left her, Monsieur? Dying--in a hospital at Charenton. I shall never see her again. I shall never again take her thin white face in my dirty hands and say, 'You and I have tasted the goodness of life, my little one, while we have starved together!' For life is good, Monsieur, but in a little while I shall be dead in one place and my woman in another. That is certain. I left a child behind me--a little girl. What will happen to her when I am killed? I left her with the concierge, who promised to take care of her--not for money, you understand, because I had none to give. My little girl will never see me again, and I shall never see her grow into a woman. Because I am going to be killed. Perhaps in a day or two there will be no more life for me. This hand of mine--you see I can grasp things with it, move it this way and that, shake hands with you--camarade!--salute the spirit of France with it--comme ca!

But tomorrow or the next day it will be quite still. A dead thing--like my dead body. It is queer. Here I sit talking to you alive. But to-morrow or the next day my corpse will lie out on the battlefield, like a bit of earth. I can see that corpse of mine, with its white face and staring eyes.

Ugh! it is a dirty sight--a man's corpse. Here in my heart something tells me that I shall be killed quite soon, perhaps at the first shot. But do you know I shall not be sorry to die. I shall be glad, Monsieur! And why glad, you ask? Because I love France and hate the Germans who have put this war on to us. I am going to fight--I, a Socialist and a syndicalist--so that we shall make an end of war, so that the little ones of France shall sleep in peace, and the women go without fear. This war will have to be the last war. It is a war of Justice against Injustice. When they have finished this time the people will have no more of it. We who go out to die shall be remembered because we gave the world peace. That will be our reward, though we shall know nothing of it but lie rotting in the earth--dead! It is sad that to-morrow, or the next day, I shall be dead. I see my corpse there-----"

He saw his corpse again, and wept a little at the sight of it.

A neurotic type--a poor weed of life who had been reared in the dark lairs of civilization. Yet I had no contempt for him as he gibbered with self-pity. The tragedy of the future of civilization was in the soul of that pallid, sharp-featured, ill-nourished man who had lived in misery within the glitter of a rich city and who was now being taken to his death--I feel sure he died in the trenches even though no bullet may have reached him--at the command of great powers who knew nothing of this poor ant. What did his individual life matter? ... I stared into the soul of a soldier of France and wondered at the things I saw in it--at the spiritual faith which made a patriot of that apache.

19

There was a change of company in the carriage, the democrats being turned into a third-cla.s.s carriage to make way for half a dozen officers of various grades and branches. I had new types to study and was surprised by the calmness and quietude of these men--mostly of middle age--who had just left their homes for active service. They showed no signs of excitement but chatted about the prospects of the war as though it were an abstract problem. The att.i.tude of England was questioned and again I was called upon to speak as the representative of my country and to a.s.sure Frenchmen of our friendship and co-operation. They seemed satisfied with my statements and expressed their belief that the British Fleet would make short work of the enemy at sea.

One of the officers took no part in the conversation. He was a handsome man of about forty years of age, in the uniform of an infantry regiment, and he sat in the corner of the carriage, stroking his brown moustache in a thoughtful way. He had a fine gravity of face and once or twice when his eyes turned my way I saw an immense sadness in them.

20

As our train pa.s.sed through France on its way to Nancy, we heard and saw the tumult of a nation arming itself for war and pouring down to its frontiers to meet the enemy. All through the night, as we pa.s.sed through towns and villages and under railway bridges, the song of the Ma.r.s.eillaise rose up to the carriage windows and then wailed away like a sad plaint as our engine shrieked and raced on. At the sound of the national hymn one of the officers in my carriage always opened his eyes and lifted his head, which had been drooping forward on his chest, and listened with a look of puzzled surprise, as though he could not realize even yet that France was at war and that he was on his way to the front. But the other officers slept; and the silent man, whose quiet dignity and sadness had impressed me, smiled a little in his sleep now and then and murmured a word or two, among which I seemed to hear a woman's name.

In the dawn and pallid sunlight of the morning I saw the soldiers of France a.s.sembling. They came across the bridges with glinting rifles, and the blue coats and red trousers of the infantry made them look in the distance like tin soldiers from a children's playbox. But there were battalions of them close to the railway lines, waiting at level crossings, and with stacked arms on the platforms, so that I could look into their eyes and watch their faces. They were fine young men, with a certain hardness and keenness of profile which promised well for France.

There was no shouting among them, no patriotic demonstrations, no excitability. They stood waiting for their trains in a quiet, patient way, chatting among themselves, smiling, smoking cigarettes, like soldiers on their way to sham fights in the ordinary summer manoeuvres. The town and village folk, who crowded about them and leaned over the gates at the level crossings to watch our train, were more demonstrative. They waved hands to us and cried out "Bonne chance!" and the boys and girls chanted the Ma.r.s.eillaise again in shrill voices. At every station where we halted, and we never let one of them go by without a stop, some of the girls came along the platform with baskets of fruit, of which they made free gifts to our trainload of men. Sometimes they took payment in kisses, quite simply and without any bashfulness, lifting their faces to the lips of bronzed young men who thrust their kepis back and leaned out of the carriage windows.

"Come back safe and sound, my little one," said a girl. "Fight well for France!"

"I do not hope to come back," said a soldier, "but I shall die fighting."

21

The fields were swept with the golden light of the sun, and the heavy foliage of the trees sang through every note of green. The white roads of France stretched away straight between the fields and the hills, with endless lines of poplars as their sentinels, and in clouds of greyish dust rising like smoke the regiments marched with a steady tramp. Gun carriages moved slowly down the roads in a glare of sun which sparkled upon the steel tubes of the field artillery and made a silver bar of every wheel-spoke. I heard the creak of the wheels and the rattle of the limber and the shouts of the drivers to their teams; and I thrilled a little every time we pa.s.sed one of these batteries because I knew that in a day or two these machines, which were being carried along the highways of France, would be wreathed with smoke denser than the dust about them now, while they vomited forth sh.e.l.ls at the unseen enemy whose guns would answer with the roar of death.

Guns and men, horses and wagons, interminable convoys of munitions, great armies on the march, trainloads of soldiers on all the branch lines, soldiers bivouacked in the roadways and in market places, long processions of young civilians carrying bundles to military depots where they would change their clothes and all their way of life--these pictures of preparation for war flashed through the carriage windows into my brain, mile after mile, through the country of France, until sometimes I closed my eyes to shut out the glare and glitter of this kaleidoscope, the blood-red colour of all those French trousers tramping through the dust, the lurid blue of all those soldiers'

overcoats, the sparkle of all those gun-wheels. What does it all mean, this surging tide of armed men? What would it mean in a day or two, when another tide of men had swept up against it, with a roar of conflict, striving to overwhelm this France and to swamp over its barriers in waves of blood? How senseless it seemed that those mild- eyed fellows outside my carriage windows, chatting with the girls while we waited for the signals to fall, should be on their way to kill other mild-eyed men, who perhaps away in Germany were kissing other girls, for gifts of fruit and flowers.

22

It was at this station near Toul that I heard the first words of hatred.

They were in a conversation between two French soldiers who had come with us from Paris. They had heard that some Germans had already been taken prisoners across the frontier, and they were angry that the men were still alive.

"Prisoners? Pah! Name of a dog! I will tell you what I would do with German prisoners!"

It was nothing nice that that man wanted to do with German prisoners. He indulged in long and elaborate details as to the way in which he would wreath their bowels about his bayonet and tear out their organs with his knife. The other man had more imagination. He devised more ingenious modes of torture so that the Germans should not die too soon.

I watched the men as they spoke. They had the faces of murderers, with bloodshot eyes and coa.r.s.e features, swollen with drink and vice.

There was a life of cruelty in the lines about their mouths, and in their husky laughter. Their hands twitched and their muscles gave convulsive jerks, as they worked themselves into a fever of blood- l.u.s.t. In the French Revolution it was such men as these who leered up at the guillotine and laughed when the heads of patrician women fell into the basket, and who did the b.l.o.o.d.y Work of the September ma.s.sacre. The breed had not died out in France, and war had brought it forth from its lairs again.

23

These men were not typical of the soldiers of France. In the headquarters at Nancy, where I was kept waiting for some time in one of the guard-rooms before being received by the commandant, I chatted with many of the men and found them fine fellows of a good, clean, cheery type. When they heard that I was a war correspondent, they plied me with greetings and questions. "You are an English journalist? You want to come with us? That is good! Every Englishman is a comrade and we will give you some fine things to write about!"

They showed me their rifles and their field kit, asked me to feel the weight of their knapsacks, and laughed when I said that I should faint with such a burden. In each black sack the French soldier carried--in addition to the legendary baton of a field-marshal--a complete change of underclothing, a second pair of boots, provisions for two days, consisting of desiccated soup, chocolate and other groceries, and a woollen night-cap. Then there were his tin water-bottle, or bidon (filled with wine at the beginning of the war), his cartridge belt, rifle, military overcoat strapped about his shoulders, and various other impedimenta.

"It's not a luxury, this life of ours," said a tall fellow with a fair moustache belonging to the famous 20th Regiment of the line, which was the first to enter Nancy after the German occupation of the town in 1870.

He pointed to the rows of straw beds on which some of his comrades lay asleep, and to the entire lack of comfort in the whitewashed room.

"Some of you English gentlemen," he said, "would hardly like to lie down here side by side with the peasants from their farms, smelling of their barns. But in France it is different. We have aristocrats still, but some of them have to shake down with the poorest comrades and know no distinction of rank now that all wear the same old uniform."

It seemed to me a bad uniform for modern warfare--the red trousers and blue coat and the little kepi made famous in many great battle pictures--but the soldier told me they could not fight with the same spirit if they wore any other clothes than those which belong to the glorious traditions of France.

24

When I was taken to Colonel d.u.c.h.esne, second-in-command to General Foch, he gave me a smiling greeting, though I was a trespa.s.ser in the war zone, and he wanted to know what I thought of his "boys," what was my opinion of the mobilization, and what were my impressions of the way in which France had responded to the call.

I answered with sincerity, and when I spoke of the astonishing way in which all cla.s.ses seemed to have united in defence of the nation, Colonel d.u.c.h.esne had a sudden mist of tears in his eyes which he did not try to hide.

"It is sublime! All politics have been banished. We are one people, with one ideal and one purpose--La France!"

Then he came to the business of my visit--to obtain a permit to march with the French troops.

"It is very difficult," said the Colonel. "General Foch would do all he could for you--he loves the English--but no French correspondents are allowed on the frontier, and we can hardly make a distinction in your favour. Still, I will put your appeal before the general. The answer shall be sent to your hotel."

25

It was while waiting for this reply that I was able to explore Nancy and to see the scenes of mobilization. The town was under martial law. Its food-supplies were under strict supervision by the commandant.

Every motor-car and cart had been commandeered for the use of the army, and every able-bodied citizen had been called to the colours. I was the only guest in the Grand Hotel and the manager and his wife attended to my wants themselves. They were astounded to see me in the town.

"You are the only foreigner left," they said, "except those who are under armed guard, waiting to be taken to the Swiss frontier. Look!

there go the last of them!"

Through the gla.s.s windows of the hotel door I saw about two hundred men marching away from the square surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. They carried bundles and seemed to droop under the burden of them already. But I fancy their hearts were heaviest, and I could see that these young men--waiters and hairdressers and tradesmen mostly of Swiss nationality--were unwilling victims of this tragedy of war which had suddenly thrust them out of their business and smashed their small ambitions and booted them out of a country which had given them a friendly welcome. On the other side of the fixed bayonets were some women who wept as they called out "Adieu!" to their fair-haired fellows. One of them held up a new-born baby between the guards as she ran alongside, so that its little wrinkled face touched the cheek of a young man who had a look of agony in his eyes.

That night I heard the shrill notes of bugle calls and going to my bedroom window listened to the clatter of horses' hoofs and saw the dim forms of cavalry and guns going through the darkness--towards the enemy. No sound of firing rattled my window panes. It still seemed very quiet--over there to the East. Yet before the dawn came a German avalanche of men and guns might be sweeping across the frontier, and if I stayed a day or two in the open town of Nancy I might see the spiked helmets of the enemy glinting down the streets. The town was not to be defended, I was told, if the French troops had to fall back from the frontier to the fortresses of Belfort and Toul.