25 chapters
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25 chapters
I
I
Captain J. Viaud of the Naval Reserve, to the Minister of Marine. Rochefort, August 18th, 1914. Sir , When I was recalled to active service on the outbreak of war I had hopes of performing some duty less insignificant than that which was assigned to me in our dock-yards. Believe me, I have no reproaches to make, for I am very well aware that the Navy will not fill the principal rôle in this war, and that all my comrades of the same rank are likewise destined to almost complete inaction for mere
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II
II
August, 1914. One evening a train full of Belgian refugees had just entered the railway station of one of our southern towns. Worn out and dazed, the poor martyrs stepped down slowly, one by one, on to the unfamiliar platform where Frenchmen were waiting to welcome them. Carrying with them a few articles of clothing, caught up at haphazard, they had climbed up into the coaches without so much as asking themselves what was their destination. They had taken refuge there in hurried flight, desperat
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III
III
October, 1914. At about eleven o'clock in the morning of that day I arrived at a village—its name I have, let us say, forgotten. My companion was an English commandant, whom the fortunes of war had given me for comrade since the previous evening. Our path was lighted by that great and genial magician, the sun—a radiant sun, a holiday sun, transfiguring and beautifying all things. This occurred in a department in the extreme north of France, which one it was I have never known, but the weather wa
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IV
IV
Rochefort, September 4th, 1914. My Dear and Great Friend, Forgive my letter for the sake of my affection and admiration for yourself and of my regard for your country, which to some extent I have made my own. In the country round Tripoli you played the part of splendid hero, without fear and without reproach, holding your own, ten men against a thousand. In Thrace it was you who recovered Adrianople for Turkey, and this feat, the recapture of that town of heroes, you effected almost without bloo
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V
V
October, 1914. Whereabouts, you may ask, did this come to pass? Well, it is one of the peculiarities of this war, that in spite of my familiarity with maps, and notwithstanding the excellence in detail of the plans which I carry about with me, I never know where I am. At any rate this certainly happened somewhere. I have, moreover, a sad conviction that it happened in France. I should so much have preferred it to have happened in Germany, for it was close up to the enemy's lines, under fire of t
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VI
VI
October, 1914. To gaze upon her, our legendary and wonderful basilica of France, to bid her a last farewell before she should crumble away to her inevitable downfall, I had ordered a détour of two hours in my service motor car at the end of some special duty from which I was returning. The October morning was misty and cold. The hillsides of Champagne were deserted that day, and their vineyards with dark brown leaves, wet with rain, seemed to be wrapped completely in a kind of shining fleece. We
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VII
VII
December, 1914. At first they were sent to Paris, those dear sailors of ours, so that the duty of policing the city, of maintaining order, enforcing silence and good behaviour might be entrusted to them—and I could not help smiling; it seemed so incongruous, this entirely new part which someone had thought fit to make them play. For truth to tell, between ourselves, correct behaviour in the streets of towns has never been the especial boast of our excellent young friends. Nevertheless by dint of
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VIII
VIII
November, 1914. After the lapse of so many years, and in the midst of those moods of rage and anguish or of splendid exaltation which characterise the present hour, I had quite forgotten the existence of a certain enchanted isle, very far away, on the other side of the earth, in the midst of the great Southern Ocean, rearing among the warm clouds of those regions its mountains, carpeted with ferns and flowers. In our October climate, already cold, here in this district of Paris, bare of leaves a
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IX
IX
December, 1914. His name was Max Barthou. He was one of those dearly loved only sons whose death shatters two or three lives at least, and already we had too nearly forgotten all the skill and courage on his father's part to which we owed the Three Years' Service Bill, without which all France to-day would be prostrate under the heel of the Monster. To be sure he, young Max, had done no more than all those thousands of others who have given their lives so gloriously. It is not, then, on that acc
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X
X
"In anticipation of death I make this confession, that I despise the German nation on account of its infinite stupidity, and that I blush to belong to it." Schopenhauer. "The character of the Germans presents a terrible blend of ferocity and trickery. They are a people of born liars. One must see this to believe it." Velleius Paterculus , In the year 10 of the Christian era . March, 1915. Ruins in a mournful light which is anxious, seemingly, to fade away into a premature darkness. Vast ruins, r
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XI
XI
March, 1915. To-day on my way to the General Headquarters of the Belgian Army, whither I am bound on a mission from the President of the French Republic to His Majesty King Albert, I pass through Furnes, another town wantonly and savagely bombarded, where at this hour of the day there is a raging storm of icy wind, snow, rain, and hail, under a black sky. Here as at Ypres the barbarians bent their whole soul on the destruction of the historical part, the charming old town hall and its surroundin
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XII
XII
"All the world knows what value to attach to the King of Prussia and his word. There is no sovereign in Europe who has not suffered from his perfidy. And such a king as this would impose himself upon Germany as dictator and protector! Under a despotism which repudiates every principle, the Prussian monarchy will one day be the source of infinite calamity, not only to Germany, but likewise to the whole of Europe." The Empress Maria Theresa. March, 1915. Far away, far away and out of the world see
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XIII
XIII
June, 1915. The Orient, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora—the mere enunciation of these words, especially in these beautiful months of summer, conjures up images of sun-steeped repose, a repose perhaps a little mournful because of the lack of all movement in those parts, but a repose of such adorable melancholy, in the midst of so many remembrances of great past destinies of humanity, which, throughout these regions, slumber, preserved under the mantle of Islam. But lately on this peninsula of
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XIV
XIV
July, 1915. But lately I had included Serbia—its prince in particular—in my first accusations against the Balkan races, when they hurled themselves together upon Turkey, already at grips with Italy. But later on, in the course of so many wrathful indictments, I did not once again mention the name of the Serbians. That was because my information from those parts proved to me clearly that among the original Allies, the Allies of the Balkans, the Serbians were the most humane. They themselves, doub
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XV
XV
August 1st, 1915. A year ago to-day began that shameful violation of Belgian territory. In the midst of these appalling horrors, time, it seems, has hastened still more in its bewildered flight, and already we have reached the anniversary of that foul deed, the blackest that has ever defiled the history of the human race. This crime was committed after long, hypocritical premeditation, and no pang of remorse, no vestige of shame, caused those myriads of accomplices to stay their hands. It is a c
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XVI
XVI
August, 1915. In spite of the kindly welcome which the visitor receives and a wholesome spirit of gaiety which never fails, it is an inn that I cannot honestly recommend without reserve. In the first place it is somewhat difficult of access, so much so that ladies are never admitted. To climb up to it—for it is perched very high—the traveller must needs make his way for hours through ancient forests which the axe had spared until a very few months ago, along unknown paths winding at steep gradie
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XVII
XVII
August, 1915. The preservation of the lives of our dear wounded, who day by day are stricken down upon the field of battle, depends nine times out of ten on the rapidity with which they are carried in; on the gentleness and promptness with which they are taken to the field hospitals, where they may be put into comfortable beds and left in the care of all the kind hands that are waiting for them. This fact is not sufficiently well known; often it happens that wounds which would have been trifling
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XVIII
XVIII
August, 1915. On a beautiful August evening I am hastening in a motor car towards Rheims, one of our martyred towns, where I am hoping to find shelter for the night before continuing my journey to the General Headquarters of another Army. In order to avoid military formalities I wish to enter the town before the sun sets, and it is already too low for my liking. The evening is typical of one of our splendid French summers; the air is exquisitely clear, of a delightful, wholesome warmth, tempered
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XIX
XIX
November, 1915. It is a place of horror, conceived, it might be thought by Dante. The air is heavy, stifling; two or three nightlights, which seem to be afraid of shining too brightly, scarcely pierce the vaporous, overheated darkness which exhales an odour of sweat and fever. Busy people are whispering there anxiously, but the principal sound that is heard is an agonised gasping for breath. This gasping comes from a number of cots, in rows, touching one another, on which are lying human forms,
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XX
XX
2nd November, 1915. Two or three days ago all along the front of the battle began the great festival in honour of our soldiers' graves. No matter where they lie, grouped around churches in the ordinary village cemeteries, ranged in rows with military precision in little special cemeteries consecrated to them, or even situated singly at the side of a road, in a corner of a wood, or alone and lost in the midst of fields, everywhere, seen from afar off, under the gloomy sky of these November days a
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XXI
XXI
Paris, which is above all other towns famous for its noble impulses, was fêting some days ago our Naval Brigade from the Yser—or rather the last survivors of the heroic Brigade, the few who had been able to return. It was well done thus to make much of them, but alas! how soon it will all be forgotten. To-day, in honour of the Brigade, of which three-quarters were annihilated, our well-beloved and eminent Minister of Marine, Admiral Lacaze, has given instructions that the glorious Order of the D
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XXII
XXII
December, 1915. That day, during a lull in the fighting, the General gave me permission to take a motor car for three or four hours to go and look for the grave of one of my nephews, who was struck down by a shell during our offensive in September. From imperfect information I gathered that he must be lying in a humble emergency cemetery, improvised the day after a battle, some five or six hundred yards away from the little town of T—— whose ruins, still bombarded daily and becoming more and mor
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XXIII
XXIII
March 10th, 1916. It is just here, I believe, that that zone, some fifteen to twenty miles in breadth, so terribly torn and rent, which stretches through our land of France from the North Sea to Alsace, following the line of those trenches, where the barbarians have dug themselves in, it is just here, I believe, that that zone, where suffering and glory reign supreme, attains the climax of its nightmare-like illusiveness, the climax of its horror. I say "just here" because I am not allowed to be
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XXIV
XXIV
September, 1915. Soissons is one of our great martyred towns of the north; it can be entered only by circuitous and secret paths, with such precautions as Redskins take in a forest, for the barbarians are hidden everywhere within the earth and on the hill close at hand, and with field-glasses at their wicked eyes they scan the roads, so that they may shower shrapnel on any rash enough to approach that way. One delightful September evening I was guided towards this town by some officers accustome
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XXV
XXV
"My plan is first to take possession. At a later stage I can always find learned men to prove that I was acting within my just rights." Frederick II. ( called, for want of a better epithet, the Great ). April, 1916. There are certain faces of the accursed, which reveal in the end with the coming of old age the accumulated horror and darkness that has been seething in the depths of the soul. The features are by no means always ignoble, but on these faces something is imprinted which is a thousand
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