The Project Gutenberg eBook of Fighting France
    
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Fighting France

Author: Stéphane Lauzanne

Translator: John Lauris Blake Williams

Release date: June 1, 2006 [eBook #18483]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Brian Sogard, Diane Monico, and the Project
        Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
        http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIGHTING FRANCE ***




Produced by Brian Sogard, Diane Monico, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net











FIGHTING FRANCE

BY

STEPHANE LAUZANNE
LIEUTENANT IN THE FRENCH ARMY, CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOR
EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE "MATIN,"
MEMBER OF THE FRENCH MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
JAMES M. BECK, LL.D.
LATE ASSISTANT ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES

TRANSLATED BY
JOHN L. B. WILLIAMS, A.M.
SOMETIME FELLOW OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
LONDON

1918




Copyright, 1918, by

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America




TO

MY CHIEFS
MY COMRADES
MY MEN
WHO ARE FIGHTING FOR THE GREAT CAUSE
OF LIBERTY AND CIVILIZATION

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED




FOREWORD


To be Editor-in-Chief of one of the greatest newspapers in the world
at twenty-seven years of age is a distinction, which has been enjoyed
by few other men, if any, in the whole history of journalism. There
may have been exceptional instances, where young men by virtue of
proprietary and inherited rights, have nominally, or even actually,
succeeded to the editorial control of a great metropolitan newspaper.
But in the case of M. Stéphane Lauzanne, his assumption of duty in
1901 as Editor-in-Chief of the Paris _Matin_ was wholly the result of
exceptional achievement in journalism. Merit and ability, and not
merely friendly influences, gave him this position of unique power,
for the _Matin_ has a circulation in France of nearly two million
copies a day, and its Editor-in-Chief thereby exerts a power which it
would be difficult to over-estimate.

M. Lauzanne was born in 1874 and is a graduate of the Faculty of Law
of Paris. Believing that journalism opened to him a wider avenue of
usefulness than the legal profession, he preferred--as the event
showed most wisely--to follow a journalistic career. In this choice he
may have been guided by the fact that he was the nephew of the most
famous foreign correspondent in the history of journalism. I refer to
M. de Blowitz, who was for many years the Paris correspondent of the
London _Times_, and as such a very notable representative of the
Fourth Estate. No one ever more fully illustrated the truth of the
words which Thackeray, in Pendennis, puts into the mouth of his George
Warrington, when he and Arthur Pendennis stand in Fleet Street and
hear the rumble of the engines in the press-room. He likened the
foreign correspondents of these newspapers to the ambassadors of a
great State; and no one more fully justifies the analogy than M. de
Blowitz, for it is profitable to recall that when in 1875 the military
party of Germany secretly planned to strike down France, when the
stricken gladiator was slowly but courageously struggling to its
feet, it was de Blowitz, who in an article in the London _Times_ let
the light of day into the brutal and iniquitous scheme, and by mere
publicity defeated for the time being this conspiracy against the
honor of France and the peace of the world. Unfortunately the _coup_
of the Prussian military clique was only postponed. Our generation was
destined to sustain the unprecedented horrors of a base attempt to
destroy France, that very glorious asset of all civilization.

De Blowitz took great interest in his brilliant nephew and at his
suggestion Lauzanne became the London correspondent of the _Matin_ in
1898, when he was only twenty-four years of age. This brought him into
direct communication with the London _Times_ which then as now
exchanged cable news with the _Matin_, and it was the duty of the
young journalist to take the cable news of the "Thunderer" and
transmit such portions as would particularly interest France to the
_Matin_, with such special comment as suggested itself. How well he
did this work, requiring as it did the most accurate judgment and the
nicest discrimination, was shown when he was made Editor-in-Chief of
the _Matin_ in 1901.

His tenure of office was destined to be short for, when the world war
broke out, M. Lauzanne, as a First Lieutenant of the French Army,
joined the colors in the first days of mobilization and surrendered
the pen for the sword. His career as editor had been long enough,
however, for him to impress upon the minds of the French public the
imminency of the Prussian Peril. As to this he had no illusions and
his powerful editorials had done much to combat the spirit of
pacificism, which at that time was weakening the preparations of
France for the inevitable conflict.

The obligation of universal service required him to exchange his
position of great power and usefulness for a lesser position, but this
spirit of common service in the ranks means much for France or for any
nation. The democracy of the French Army could not be questioned, when
the powerful Editor of the _Matin_ became merely a lieutenant in the
Territorial Infantry. As such, he served in the battle of the Marne
and later before Verdun, and thus could say of the two most heroic
chapters in French history, as Æneas said of the Siege of Troy, "Much
of which I saw, and part of which I was."

Having fulfilled the obligation of universal service in the ranks, it
is not strange that in 1916 he was recalled to serve the French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For a time he rendered great service in
Switzerland, where from the beginning of the war an acute but
ever-lessening controversy has raged between the pro-German and the
pro-Ally interests.

He was then chosen for a much more important mission. In October,
1916, he came to the United States as head of the "Official Bureau of
French Information," and here he has remained until the present hour.
As such, he has been an unofficial ambassador of France. His position
has been not unlike that of Franklin at Passy in the period that
preceded the formal recognition by France of the United States and the
Treaty of Alliance of 1778. As with Franklin, his weapon has been the
pen and the printing press, and the unfailing tact with which he has
carried on his mission is not unworthy of comparison with that of
Franklin. No one who has been privileged to meet and know M. Lauzanne
can fail to be impressed with his fine urbanity, his _savoir faire_
and his perfect tact. Without any attempt at propaganda, he has
greatly impressed American public opinion by his contributions to our
press and his many public addresses. In none of them has he ever made
a false step or uttered a tactless note. His words have always been
those of a sane moderation and the influence that he has wielded has
been that of truth. Apart from the vigor and calm persuasiveness of
his utterances, his winning personality has made a deep impression
upon all Americans who have been privileged to come in contact with
him. The highest praise that can be accorded to him is that he has
been a true representative of his own noble, generous and chivalrous
nation. Its sweetness and power have been exemplified by his charming
personality.

Although he has taken a forceful part in possibly the greatest
intellectual controversy that has ever raged among men, he has from
first to last been the gentleman and it has been his quiet dignity and
gentleness that has added force to all that he has written and
uttered, especially at the time when America was the greatest neutral
forum of public opinion.

If "good wine needs no bush and a good play needs no epilogue," then a
good book needs no prologue. Therefore I shall not refer to the
simplicity and charm, with which M. Lauzanne has told the story with
which this book deals. The reader will judge that for himself; and
unless the writer of this foreword is much mistaken, that judgment
will be wholly favorable. There have been many war books--a very
deluge of literature in which thinking men have been hopelessly
submerged--but most books of wartime reminiscences do not ring true.
There is too obvious an attempt to be dramatic and sensational. This
book avoids this error and its author has contented himself with
telling in a simple and convincing manner something of the part which
he was called upon to play.

I venture to predict that all good Americans who read this book will
become the friends, through the printed pages, of this gifted and
brilliant writer, and if it were possible for such Americans to
increase their love and admiration for France, then this book would
deepen the profound regard in which America holds its ancient ally.

                                        JAMES M. BECK.




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE
I

WHY FRANCE IS FIGHTING

The declaration of war and the French mobilization--The
invasion and the tragic days of Paris in August and
September, 1914: personal reminiscences--The premeditated
cruelties of Germany: new documents--The German organized
spying system in France                                             1

II

HOW FRANCE IS FIGHTING

France fighting with her men, her women and her children--The
men show that they know how to suffer: episodes of the Marne
and of Verdun--The women encourage the men to fight and to
suffer: some illustrations--Sacred Union of all Frenchmen
against the enemy--all, without any distinction of class or
religion, die smiling--Letters of soldiers--The organization
in the rear: the work in the factories                             51

III

FRANCE SUFFERING BUT NOT BLED WHITE

Despite her sufferings, France is able to pay 20 billions of
dollars, for the war, in three years--French commerce and
French work during the war--France is helping her allies from
a military standpoint and financially--The saving of Serbia        94

IV

THE WAR AIMS OF FRANCE

Restitution: Alsace-Lorraine--Restoration: The devastated and
looted territories. Guarantees: The Society of Nations            138

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I.--HOW GERMANS FORCED WAR ON FRANCE                     179

APPENDIX II.--HOW GERMANS TREAT AN AMBASSADOR                     183

APPENDIX III.--HOW GERMANS ARE WAGING WAR                         196

APPENDIX IV.--HOW GERMANS OCCUPY THE TERRITORY OF AN ENEMY        200

APPENDIX V.--HOW GERMANS TREAT ALSACE-LORRAINE                    206

APPENDIX VI.--HOW GERMANS UNDERSTAND FUTURE PEACE                 229




FIGHTING FRANCE




I

WHY FRANCE IS FIGHTING


Had you been in Paris late in the afternoon of Monday, August third,
nineteen fourteen, you might have seen a slight man, whose reddish
face was adorned with a thick white mustache, walk out of the German
Embassy, which was situated on the Rue de Lille near the Boulevard St.
Germain. Along the boulevard and across the Pont de la Concorde he
walked in a manner calculated to attract attention. He approached the
animated and peevish groups of citizens that had formed a little
before for the purpose of discussing the imminent war as if he wanted
them to notice him. You would have said that he was trying to be
recognized and to take part in the discussions.

But no one paid any attention to him.

Finally he came to the Quai d'Orsay, opened the Gate of the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, and said to the attendant who hastened to open the
door for him:

"Announce the German Ambassador to the Prime Minister."

He was Baron de Schoen, Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of his Germanic Majesty, William the Second. For two
days he had wandered through the most crowded streets and avenues in
Paris, hoping for some injury, some insult, some overt act which would
have permitted him to say that Germany in his person had been
provoked, insulted by France. But there had been no violence, the
insult had not been offered, the overt act had not occurred. Then,
tired of this method, de Schoen took the initiative and presented a
declaration of war from his government.

The declaration, as history will record, was expressed in these terms:

     The German administrative and military authorities have
     established a certain number of flagrantly hostile acts
     committed on German territory by French military aviators.
     Several of these have openly violated the neutrality of
     Belgium by flying over the territory of that country; one
     has attempted to destroy buildings near Wesel; others have
     been seen in the district of the Eifel, one has thrown bombs
     on the railway near Carlsruhe and Nuremberg.

     I am instructed and I have the honor to inform your
     Excellency, that in the presence of these acts of aggression
     the German Empire considers itself in a state of war with
     France in consequence of the acts of the latter Power.

     At the same time I have the honor to bring to the knowledge
     of your Excellency that the German authorities will detain
     French mercantile vessels in German ports, but they will
     release them if, within forty-eight hours, they are assured
     of complete reciprocity.

     My diplomatic mission having thus come to an end, it only
     remains for me to request your Excellency to be good enough
     to furnish me with my passports, and to take the steps you
     consider suitable to assure my return to Germany, with the
     staff of the Embassy, as well as with the staff of the
     Bavarian Legation and of the French Consulate General in
     Paris.

     Be good enough, M. le President, to receive the assurances
     of my deepest respect.

                                        (Signed) DE SCHOEN.

Immediately M. René Viviani, the French Premier and Minister of
Foreign Affairs, protested against the statements of this
extraordinary declaration. No French aviator had flown over Belgium;
no French aviator had come near Wesel; no French aviator had flown in
the direction of Eifel; nor had hurled bombs on the railroad near
Carlsruhe or Nuremberg. And less than two years later a German, Dr.
Schwalbe, the Burgomaster of Nuremberg, confirmed M. Viviani's
indignant denial of the German accusations:

"It is false," wrote Dr. Schwalbe in the _Deutsche Medizinische
Wochenschrift_, "that French aviators dropped bombs on the railway at
Nuremberg. The general of the third Bavarian army corps, which was
stationed in the vicinity, assured me that he knew nothing of the
attempt except from the newspapers...."

But a blow had just been struck that announced the rising of the
curtain on the most frightful tragedy the universe has ever known.
This announcement was contained in the brief, plain words of the
declaration of war.

De Schoen left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he had been
courteously received for many years, and made his way out. He was
escorted by M. Philippe Berthelot, who was at the time _directeur
politique_ at the Quai d'Orsay. As he was going out of the door, de
Schoen pointed to the city, which, with its trees, its houses, and its
monuments, could be seen clearly on the other side of the Seine.

"Poor Paris," he exclaimed, "what will happen to her?"

At the same time he offered his hand to M. Berthelot, but the latter
contented himself with a silent bow, as if he had neither seen the
proffered hand nor heard the question.

It was a quarter before seven o'clock in the evening. From that time
on France has been at war with Germany.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mobilization had commenced the previous evening. To be exact, it was
on Sunday, August third, at midnight.

How many times the French people had thought of that mobilization
during the last twenty years, in proportion as Germany grew more
aggressive, more brutal and more insulting! Personally I had often
looked at the little red ticket fastened to my military card, on which
were written these brief words:

     In time of mobilization, Lieutenant Lauzanne (Stéphane) will
     report on the second day of mobilization to the railroad
     station nearest his home and there entrain immediately for
     Alençon.

And each time I looked at the little red card, I felt a bit
anxious.... Mobilization! The railroad station! The first train! What
a mob of people, what an overturning of everything, what a lot of
disorder there would be! Well, there had been neither disorder nor
disturbance nor a mob, for everything had taken place in a manner that
was marvelously simple and calm.

Monday, August third, at sunrise I had gone to the Gare des Invalides.
There was no mob, there was no crowd. Some policemen were walking in
solitary state along the sidewalk, which was deserted. The station
master, to whom I presented my card, told me, in the most
extraordinarily calm voice in the world, as if he had been doing the
same thing every morning:

"Track number 5. Your train leaves at 6.27."

And the train left at 6.27, like any good little train that is on
time. It had left quietly; it was almost empty. It had followed the
Seine, and I had seen Paris lighted up by the peaceable morning glow,
Paris which was still asleep. And I had rubbed my eyes, asking myself
if I wasn't dreaming, if I wasn't asleep. Were we really at war? My
eyes were seeing nothing of it, but my memory kept recalling the fact.
It recalled the unforgettable scenes of those last days--that scene
especially, at four o'clock in the evening on the first of August,
when the crowd along the boulevard had suddenly seen the mobilization
orders posted in the window of a newspaper office. A shout burst
forth, a shout I shall hear until my last moment, which made me
tremble from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. It was a
shout that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth, the shout
of a people who, for years, had waited for that moment.

Then the "Marseillaise"! Then a short, imperious demand:

"The flags! We want the flags!"

And flags burst forth from all quarters of Paris, decorated in the
twinkling of an eye as if it were a fête day. Yes, all that had really
happened. All that had taken place. We were really at war.

Little by little the train filled up. It stopped at every station, and
at every station men got aboard. They came in gayly and confidently,
bidding farewell to the women who had accompanied them and who stayed
behind the gate to do their weeping. Everybody was mixed in together
in the compartments without any distinctions of rank, station, class
or anything else. At Argentan I saw some rough Norman farmers enter
the coaches, talking with the same good natured calmness as if they
were going away on a business trip. One expression was repeated again
and again:

"If we've got to go, we've got to go."

One farmer said:

"They are looking after our good. I shall fight until I fall."

The spirit of the whole French people spoke from these mouths. You
felt the firm purpose of the nation come out of the very earth.

The country side presented an unwonted appearance. I remember vividly
the view the broad plains of Beauce offered. They looked as if they
were dead or fallen into a lethargy. Their life had come to an abrupt
end on Saturday, the first of August, at four o'clock in the
afternoon. We saw mounds of grain that had been cut and was still
scattered on the ground, with the scythe glistening nearby. We saw
pitchforks resting alongside the hay they had just finished tossing.
We saw sheaves lying on the ground with no one to take them away. The
very villages were deserted; not a human being appeared in them. You
would have said that this train that was passing through in the wake
of hundreds of other trains had blotted out all the inhabitants of the
region.

We detrained at Alençon, arriving there about mid-day. Alençon is a
tiny Norman village that is habitually calm and peaceful, but on that
day it was crowded with people. An enormous wave, the wave of the men
who were mobilizing, rushed through the main street of the little town
in the direction of the two barracks. I went with the current. My
captain, whom I found in the middle of a part of the barracks, had not
even had time to put on his uniform. He explained the situation to me
with military brevity:

"It's very simple.... It's now three o'clock in the afternoon. The day
after tomorrow, at six o'clock in the morning, we entrain for Paris.
We have one day to clothe, equip and arm our company."

It is no small matter to clothe, equip and arm two hundred and fifty
men in twenty-four hours. You have to find in the enormous pile, which
is in a corner of a shed, two hundred and fifty coats, pairs of
trousers and hats which will fit two hundred and fifty entirely
separate and distinct chests, legs and heads. You have to find five
hundred pairs of shoes for two hundred and fifty pairs of feet. You
have to arrange the men in rank according to their heights, form the
sections and the squads. You have to have soup prepared and transport
provisions. You have to go and get rifles and cartridges. You have to
get funds advanced for the company accounts from the very beginning of
the campaign. You have to get your duties organized, make up accounts
and prepare statements. You have to breathe the breath of life into
the little machine which is going to take its place in the big
machine.

And there was not a person there to help us to do this--not a line
officer, not a second lieutenant. The captain had to act on his own,
to think on his own, to decide everything on his own. He had to do
all by himself the work that yesterday twenty-five department store
heads, twenty-five shoe makers and twenty-five certified public
accountants would have had a hard time doing.

He did it! Every captain in the French Army did it. And the next
morning at six o'clock our little machine was ready to go and take its
place in the operations of the big machine. The following day, at six
o'clock, we entrained again; but no longer was it the confused and
disorganized crowd that it had been the evening before. It was a
company with arms and leaders; a company which had already made the
acquaintance of discipline. That was proved by the silence reigning
everywhere. At the moment of departure the Colonel had commanded:

"Silence!"

There was not a sound. The long train, crowded with soldiers, was a
silent train which passed through the open country, the towns and the
villages all the way to Paris without a sound except the puffing of
the engine. In the evening, silent always, we detrained at Paris and
marched to a barracks situated to the north of the capital. We were
to stay there a month.

       *       *       *       *       *

The story of Paris during the month of August, 1914, is an
extraordinary one that would deserve an entire volume to itself. That
feverish city has never lived through hours that were more calm and
peaceful. During the first two weeks Paris seemed to be in a sweet,
peaceful dream, in which the citizens listened eagerly for sounds of
victory coming from the far distant horizon. On the twenty-fifth of
August Paris, which had heard only vague echoes of the Battle of
Charleroi, awakened with a jolt when it read the famous communiqué
beginning with the words: "_De la Somme aux Vosges_...."

So the enemy was already at the Somme, a few days' march from the
capital! But the awakening was as free from disturbance as the dream
had been. Paris felt absolute confidence in the army, in Joffre; and
the Parisian reasoning was expressed in one phrase, "The army has
retreated, but it is neither destroyed nor beaten; as long as the
army is there, Paris has nothing to fear...." And when Sunday the
thirtieth of August came, Paris was as calm and confident as it was
on the first day of the war.

I shall remember the thirtieth of August for a long time.

They had posted on all the walls two notices. One of them was large,
the other small. The large one was a proclamation of the Government
announcing the departure of its officials for Bordeaux:

     FRENCHMEN!

     For several weeks our troops and the enemy's army have been
     engaged in a series of bloody battles. The bravery of our
     soldiers has gained them marked advantages at several
     points. But in the north the pressure of the German forces
     has compelled us to withdraw.

     This retirement imposes a regrettably necessary decision on
     the President of the Republic and the Government. To protect
     national safety the government officials have to leave Paris
     at once.

     Under the command of an eminent leader, a French army, full
     of bravery and resource, will defend the capital and its
     people against the invader. But at the same time war will
     be carried on over the rest of the territory.

The small notice was from General Gallieni, the new Governor of Paris.
It had, in its brevity, the beauty of an ancient inscription:

     "I have been ordered to defend Paris. I shall obey this
     command until the end."

That same Sunday, the thirtieth of August, was the first day the
Taubes came over Paris. By chance I was guarding one of the city's
gates. I saw the airplane coming from a distance. I had not the least
doubt about it for it had the silhouette of a bird of prey that
rendered the German planes so easily recognizable at that time. For
that matter, no one was deceived by it, and from all the batteries,
forts and other positions a violent fusillade greeted it. There was
firing from the streets, windows, courts and roofs. I followed it
through my field glass, and for a moment I thought it had been hit,
for it paused in its flight. But this was an optical illusion.... The
plane simply flew higher, having without doubt heard the sound of the
fusillade and the bullets having perhaps whistled too close to the
pilot's ears. When he was almost over my post, a light white cloud
appeared under its wings and, in the ten ensuing seconds, there
followed a terrible series of sounds, for a bomb had just fallen and
exploded very near at hand. But so entrancing was it to observe the
flight of this pirate who, in spite of everything, continued in his
audacious course, that I gazed at the heavens, trying to determine
whether or not I saw once more the little white cloud, the precursor
of the machine of death.

And everyone who was near me--workmen, passers-by, women,
children--stayed there too, their feet firmly on the ground, their
glances lost in the limitless sky. No one ran away; no one hid; no one
sought refuge behind a door or in a cellar. It's a characteristic of
airplane bombs that they frighten no one, even when they kill. The
machine you see does not frighten you; only the machine you can't see
upsets your nerves.

However that may be, the curiosity of Paris was insatiable. Even in
the tragic hours we were living through at that time, this curiosity
remained as eager, ardent and amused as ever. Every afternoon, at the
stroke of four, crowds collected in the squares and avenues. The
motive was to see the Taubes! Since one Taube had flown over the city,
no one doubted that a second one would come the next day. A girl's
boarding school obtained a free afternoon to enjoy the spectacle. The
midinettes were allowed to leave their work. At Montmartre, where the
steps of the Butte gave a better chance of scanning the horizon,
places were in great demand.

There was a crowd along the fortifications to see the works for the
defense on which, by General Gallieni's order, men were working.
Thousands of spectators of both sexes, but especially of women, were
examining the bases that were being put in for the guns, the openings
they were making to serve as loopholes, the joists they were putting
across the gates, and the paving stones with which the entrances were
being barricaded. This crowd did not want to believe in the proximity
of the enemy. Or, if it believed it, it didn't want to admit that
there was danger. Or, if it admitted that there was danger, it wanted
to share in it. Above everything it wanted to see; it wanted to see!

The last night in August I had a hard time freeing the approaches of
the gate I was guarding. There were only women, but there were
thousands of them and neither prayer nor argument could persuade them
to make up their minds to go home.

"Nothing will happen," I told them. "Look here now, be reasonable and
go home to bed."

"But we want to see...."

"What do you want to see?"

"Want to see what kind of a reception the Prussians will get if they
come."

Aside from this the mob was remarkably easy to get on with. A strict
order had forbidden that anyone be permitted to enter or leave Paris
until sunrise. As a result the capital found itself cut off from the
suburbs, and lots of little working girls, who came in for the day
from Clichy or Levallois-Perret, couldn't get back to their homes in
the evening. They had to camp out under the stars.

"It's very amusing," they said, "here we are just like soldiers."

I even heard one of them say:

"What a pity there isn't always war."

That same night, about eleven o'clock, a heavy sound was heard coming
from the direction of the city. Some urchins shouted:

"It's the soldiers. It's the soldiers."

An entire Algerian division was, as a matter of fact, detraining and
hurrying to fight before Paris. Behind it followed a long line of
taxi-cabs, the famous line of taxi-cabs requisitioned by General
Gallieni to carry munitions to the battle field of the Ourcq. They
made an incomparable spectacle, that magnificent summer night, in the
bright moonlight, the long column of Algerian cavalry, with their
shining burnouses, on fiery little horses. Applause burst forth from
the mob and reached the soldiers. The women threw kisses at them, but
they overwhelmed my men and me with reproaches:

"See," they shrieked at us, "if we had minded you and gone home, we
wouldn't have seen them."

       *       *       *       *       *

Paris, which didn't know about the Battle of Charleroi, knew about the
Battle of the Marne. Paris knew about the Battle of the Marne not only
on account of the troops who marched through its streets, but because
it heard the big guns roar for three days, without stopping, towards
the north.

What has not already been written and said about the Battle of the
Marne, a conflict which will remain legendary in history? What will
not be said and written on that subject in the future?... Some writers
will see in it a miracle, others a strategic action engineered by a
genius, others a chance stroke of destiny. The truth of the matter is
more simple and appealing than any of these explanations and, although
the whole truth is not yet known about the fight at the Marne, enough
is known to make clear the two or three chief reasons why victory came
to France and defeat to Germany, safety to civilization and a repulse
to barbarism.

To be sure there was a great deal of strategy in it; and the stroke
that was conceived in the master brain of Joffre and carried out by
Generals Gallieni and Maunoury--a stroke which consisted in forming a
new army on the extreme right of the German hordes to come and hurl
itself sharply against these hordes--was a brave and bold maneuver
which prepared the way for victory.

But this maneuver would not in itself have sufficed to win the victory
if Maunoury had not attacked with an irresistible élan on the extreme
left, upsetting the German plan of battle; if Franchet d'Esperey had
not supported Maunoury's attack vigorously and succeeded in breaking
the German left; if, especially, Foch, at the center, had not
performed unheard of miracles in breaking down the enemy's resistance
and not allowing his own lines to be broken; if, farther on, de Langle
de Cary and Sarrail had not held off the Princes of Bavaria and
Prussia before Vitry; if, on the right, de Castelnau had not held
until the end the Grand Couronné at Nancy. The first truth is that
they were all--Joffre, Gallieni, Maunoury, Franchet d'Esperey, Foch,
de Langle de Cary, Sarrail, Castelnau, Dubail, to mention them in the
order of the battle line from left to right--absolutely incomparable.
As an eye-witness said, "each man was on his own," each man gave the
very best there was in his brain, his skill, his mind, his soul, his
heart. The battle would have been lost if a single one of them had
failed once during the entire seven days it raged. Opposed to the Huns
was a chain forged of the finest steel, every link in which met the
test for equal and unparalleled resistance. Therein lay the miracle of
the Marne!

And the second great truth is that behind these generals, who all
showed themselves without equal, were armies which, without exception,
had kept intact their fighting spirit, that is, their faith in
themselves, in their leaders, in the destiny of their country, in the
beauty of the cause for which they fought.... Enough can never be said
of the elemental importance that lies in the morale of the fighting
men on the battle field. It is lamentable to hear far distant
strategists reduce the conflict of two peoples to a problem in tactics
or a list of ordnance statistics. It is enough to make angels weep
when spectators, at a safe distance, speak of succoring a beaten
people by sending them food stuffs, shells and men. Above all, beyond
all, is that immaterial, incalculable, invaluable force which is the
sole true mistress of warfare--moral force--fighting spirit!

The Frenchmen in the Battle of the Marne kept their fighting spirit
intact. I remember asking many of the officers attached to the forces
which, after the Battle of Charleroi, retreated under a broiling sun,
along roads burning with heat, through a suffocating dust, how they
felt at this disheartening time. All of them answered, "We did not
know where we were going or what we were doing, but we did know one
thing--that we would beat them!" One writer, Pierre Laserre, described
this retreat in the words, "Their bodies were retreating, but not
their souls!" This is proven by the arrival on the fifth of September
of Joffre's immortal order, "The hour has come to hold our positions
at any cost, and to fight rather than retreat.... No longer must we
look at the enemy over our shoulders; the time has come to employ all
our efforts in attacking and defeating him."... That evening, when
they heard their leader's appeal, the hearts of the men bounded in
response. The next morning, at dawn, their bodies leaped up and hurled
themselves on the enemy. Therein lay the miracle of the Marne!

Finally, at the very hour when the fighting spirit of the French Army
had never been higher, the fighting spirit of the German Army had
never been lower. It was low because the physical strength of the
Germans was low, worn out, and broken by the shameful orgies, the
disgraceful drinking which had reduced these men to the level of
swine. It was low because the German fighting men had been led to
believe that they would have to fight no longer, that the great effort
was ended, that there was no French Army to put a stop to their
pillaging and burning. "Tomorrow we enter Paris, we are going to the
Moulin Rouge," von Kluck's soldiers said in their jargon to the
inhabitants of Compiègne. "Tomorrow we will burn Bar-le-Duc,
Poincaré's home town," the Crown Prince's soldiers said. What sort of
resistance could such men oppose to Joffre's soldiers? Their spirit,
granting that they had ever had any, was broken beforehand. And that
is another thing that will explain the outcome of the Battle of the
Marne.

       *       *       *       *       *

What Paris knew very quickly, very completely and very surely were the
details of frightful looting and of the first atrocities perpetrated
by the Germans, who demonstrated a premeditated intention to destroy,
defile and wipe out everything in their path. And Paris was doubtless
the first city in France to comprehend the significance of this war,
which is a war of civilization against barbarism, a sacred war in
which the forces of humanity raise a rampart of human breasts against
the violent reappearance of primitive savagery.

Those of us who had a hand in some part of the Battle of the Marne
were not slow to comprehend who the enemy was we were fighting and why
we had to fight him to the death.

Among the many things that will be always engraved on the tablets of
my memory, the deepest is of the time when I was on guard at the field
of battle on the Ourcq, north of Meaux, on the extremity of the battle
line of the Marne. Field of battle I have just written. No, it was not
a field of battle but a field of carnage. I have forgotten the corpses
I met in the roads or in the fields with their grinning faces and
their distorted attitudes. But I shall never forget the ruin that was
everywhere, the abominable manner in which the fields had been laid
waste, the sacrilegious pillage of homes. That bore the trade mark of
German "Kultur." That trade mark will be enough to dishonor a nation
for centuries.

I see again those humble villages situated along the road to Meaux,
Penchard, Marcilly, Chambry, Etrepilly, where a barbarian horde had
passed. Since there were no inhabitants remaining--men whose throats
could be cut, women who could be violated, or babies to shoot
down--the horde had vented its rage on the furniture and the poor
little familiar objects in which each one of us puts a bit of his
soul.

I arrived in Etrepilly at the same time as a detachment of Zouaves.
While they piously buried their companions who had fallen in forcing
their way into the village, I wandered alone among the ruins. There
had been a hundred houses there, and not a single one was untouched.
Some had been hit by shells, and the shell which burst in the interior
of the house had destroyed everything. That, of course, was war, and
there was nothing to say about it.

But other houses, which had been spared by shell fire, had not been
spared by the Kaiser's soldiery. The Barbarians had placed their claws
on them. Everything had been taken out of the houses and scattered to
the four winds of heaven. Here is a portrait that has been wrenched
from its frame and trampled on. A baby's bathtub has been carried into
the garden, and the soldiers have deposited their excrement in it.
There are chairs that have been smashed by the kicks of heavy boots
and wardrobes that have been disemboweled. Here is a fine old mahogany
table that has been carried into the fields for five hundred meters
and then broken in two. An old red damask armchair, with wings at the
sides, one of those old armchairs in which the grandmothers of France
sit by the fire in the evening has been torn in shreds by knife
thrusts. Linen is mixed with mud; the white veil some girl wore at her
first communion is defiled with excrement.... An old man is wandering
among the ruins. He has just come back to the devastated village. He
says to me simply:

"I saw them in 1870. They came here, but they didn't do this. They are
savages."

A woman was there, too. She had come an hour or so ago with the old
man, and she stood on the step of her defiled, despoiled home where
the curtains hung in tatters at the windows. She saw me pass by. She
wanted to speak to me, but her voice stuck in her throat. There she
stood, her arms extended like a great cross. She could only sob:

"Look! Look!"

And she was like a symbol of the whole wretched business.

The men who do such deeds are the men France is fighting.

       *       *       *       *       *

Vincy-Manoeuvre was another one of the villages. It is situated near
the border of the Department of the Oise. It was still in flames when
I entered it. On the outskirts of the hamlet there used to be a large
factory. Only the iron framework of this factory remained; the ashes
had commenced to smoke, giving forth flames from time to time. Here
also every house had been destroyed and pillaged. Only the church
remained standing, and on the belfry which was silhouetted against the
sky, the weather cock seemed to shudder with horror.

Bottles covered the ground everywhere at Vincy-Manoeuvre. There were
bottles in the streets, along the highways, in the fields. They
marked the road by which the vanquished hordes had retreated. I
counted almost two hundred in one trench, where a German battery had
been placed. They lay pell-mell, mixed in with unexploded shells.
Panic had apparently swept the gunners away. They had not had time to
carry off their shells, so they had left them behind. But they had had
time to empty the bottles. Absinthe, brandy, rum, champagne, beer, and
wine had all been consumed, and the labels lay alongside of each
other. Drunken, bloodthirsty brutes, thieving, sickening, nauseous
beasts were what had descended upon France and passed through her
country. Ruins, ashes and filth were the traces left behind by the
German mob.

Some hundreds of yards from the village I noticed a woman lost in the
immense beet fields. Apparently she was unharmed. I walked in her
direction, thrusting aside with my legs corpses of men and horses,
scaling the trenches, making a circuit around the craters made by
shells. Suddenly what was my surprise at seeing two German soldiers,
accompanied by a farmer, coming along a footpath! They stopped at six
paces, gave me a military salute, and pointed to the white brassard of
the Red Cross they wore on their arms.

"Where do you come from?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"

"We come from that farm, where we have been for two days caring for
two of our wounded. We didn't see any French soldier or officer. We
don't know what to do. We want to go to the village down there," they
pointed out a hamlet two or three kilometers off, "where we left a
doctor and one hundred and fifty-three wounded."

"Very good," I said, "follow me."

Obediently the two orderlies marched behind me to the village they had
pointed out. It was situated on the national highway to Soissons. In
this place were a hundred and fifty or two hundred Germans, quartered
in four or five houses under the guard of a company of Zouaves who had
just arrived a half hour previously. The German major, informed of my
arrival, stood in front of the main building. He wore gold-rimmed
spectacles, his face was the type the Alsatian Hansi loves to show in
his books. He spoke very good French and even pretended that he did
not want to answer the questions I asked him in his own language.

"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 glasses 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
mass, 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 passages from von Bissing's
famous and ferocious proclamation ordering that no quarter be given
and that the troops should not encumber 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 attitude 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 banal word
of regret. Since they had not ordered the sacrileges or the massacres,
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
God had passed through it; for Andenne, assassinated in cold blood
with not one of its houses being granted mercy by the assassins; 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 glasses 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_.
     These last are conducive to the quickest end of the war;
     they are, if you consider matters carefully, the most humane
     methods.... Prisoners may be killed in case of necessity if
     there is no other means of guarding them properly.... The
     presence of women, children, old men, the sick and the
     wounded in a beseiged city can hasten the place's fall; in
     consequence it would be very foolish of the beseiger to
     renounce this advantage.... They will force the inhabitants
     to furnish information concerning their army, military
     resources and secrets of their country. The majority of
     writers in all nations condemn this usage. _It will be used
     none the less_--very regretfully--for military reasons.

Finally, on the volume's last page, is found this extraordinary maxim:

     "Any wrong that the war demands, however great it may be, is
     allowed."

Therefore the horrors which the Germans performed from the war's very
beginning, which provoked an expression of great indignation from all
the civilized world, were not perpetrated in a moment of orgy or
madness. They have been perpetrated coldly, deliberately,
intentionally.

Besides, not only the officers and the common soldiers have been
taught to make war in this barbarous fashion. It has been taught to
the entire German people. This precept proves the case. It emanates
not from a soldier but from a poet, who is not addressing the military
class but the civilians, the women, the children, and all Germany. It
is the "Hymn of Hate" by the poet Heinrich Vierordt, which, before the
war, was recited in even the German kindergartens:

     Hate, Germany! Slit the throats of your millions of enemies.
     Raise a monument of their smoking corpses that will rise to
     the heavens!

     Germany, arm yourself with brazen armor and pierce with your
     bayonet the heart of every enemy. Take no prisoners! Strike
     them dumb. Transform into deserts the lands that lie near
     you!

     Hate, Germany! Victory will come from your anger. Shatter
     their skulls with blows from your ax and the butt of your
     musket. These brigands are timid beasts.... They are not
     men.... May your fist perform the judgment of God!

It is useless to say what this spirit has brought about. Germany has
carried on the war with vigor, has armed herself with brazen armor!
She has transformed neighboring lands into deserts! She has slit
throats, laid waste fields, shattered skulls, she has destroyed all
that lay in her path! She has tried to impress the terror she holds
salutary upon the souls of inoffensive old men and women and children!

This is the first of all the reasons why it is necessary now to fight,
and to fight to the death; because these men will understand the
abominable nature of "frightfulness" only when they see that
"frightfulness" does not pay; only when they see the uselessness of
unchaining horror and of beginning another war. Let an assassin go at
liberty and he will commence his killing all over again; send him to
the electric chair and he will regret his crime.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just as France and Paris were not long in understanding what war meant
in Germany's mind, France and Paris were not long in accounting for
the danger they had passed through on account of the German spy
system, on account of the formidable web of espionage the German
agents had woven around all France.

People felt that this German spy system was there, speculated about it
and talked about it for years and years, but it was only in the first
days of the war that they really appreciated how diabolical it was and
how far it had penetrated into the heart of France.

What happened at Amiens at the beginning of September, 1914, is
especially characteristic of this.

Amiens was occupied twice by the enemy. To use the expression of a
military historian, it seemed as if "the French and the Germans were
playing hide-and-seek around the town." As soon as the blue caps of
the French appeared over the horizon, the yellow pointed helmets of
the Germans disappeared, rapidly. German occupation meant the same
thing it did everywhere else--exactions, brutalities, rape.
Immediately after he had entered the Prefecture, the German governor
levied a war contribution of one million francs. He also demanded that
the citizens furnish his troops with wine, cigars, and tobacco; drew
up a list of hostages; and arrested all the men between the ages of
seventeen and twenty years. Within twenty-four hours they were led
away under guard.

Nothing of all this surprised the brave Picard city. Proudly she
submitted to her fate. But one thing moved her, or rather angered her,
and that was the surety and speed with which the German authorities
went directly to all the places they should occupy. They did not
hesitate an instant about the street to follow or the door at which to
knock. The arrest of the fifteen hundred young hostages occurred with
an unheard-of rapidity. It seemed as if an invisible but exceedingly
clever hand guided each step, regulated each movement of the invaders.
Who could it be who directed, advised and commanded the Germans from
behind a veil?

Doubtless the mystery would never have been solved if, during the
second occupation, the citizens had not been warned that the next day
they would have to keep their shades down and close all shutters
because His Imperial Highness, Prince Eitel Friedrich, the Kaiser's
son, would then make a formal entry into the capital of Picardy. The
shutters were closed; automatically the streets were emptied.

Into a deserted city, to the sound of trumpet and drum, preceded by a
staff gleaming with gold braid and mounted on spirited steeds, the
German army entered in state. All the shades were drawn in the city.
However, behind some of them drawn faces peered forth in sorrow or in
anger. In a house on the principal street was a lady whose husband was
at the front. Her father, an aged general who had fought bravely in
the war of 1870, was with her. Through the drawn shades of her home
she was watching the hated scene. And her glorious old father,
however indignant he felt, was watching by her side.

When the parade was passing by, he made a sudden gesture and said:

"Look at that man on the horse, there, now!"

The man in question seemed to have a horse that pranced a little more
than the others. He rolled around in his saddle a little more than the
others. And the two onlookers had no trouble in recognizing this
aide-de-camp of Prince Eitel's as one of the former directors of a
language school that had had a branch at Amiens!

There is a sequel to the story ... for on the afternoon of that
unhappy day Madame X and ten other society ladies of Amiens at
different times heard a ring at their doors and saw that same
individual, in full regalia, booted and spurred, enter their drawing
rooms. He came to call on them, to pay his respects, as if it were the
most natural thing in the world that he should be there in that
costume. They all had to restrain the feeling of disgust and anger
this spy aroused in their breasts. It was for the sake of the safety
of their homes, for the lives that were dear to them, that they did
this. And he, entirely unconscious in his vileness, was suave and
polite, played the man about town, recalled one thing or another,
mentioned dances and parties....

So we once more find justification for the famous definition of German
contained in Schopenhauer's famous phrase: "The German is remarkable
for the absolute lack of that feeling which the Latins call
'verecundia'--sense of shame."

The essence of this feeling which is found among the most savage
peoples is entirely lacking in the Teutonic race. And once more we
find an abominable ambush placed for French culture, good faith and
generosity.

This is not an isolated incident. When the whole truth is known, there
will be even more surprised indignation felt than there is at present.
Inquiries will have to be made. It will be necessary to know why the
enemy, in certain places, has rushed in as if he came out of a trap
door. It will be necessary to know why, in certain ravaged districts,
some houses have been entirely destroyed and others carefully spared.
It will be necessary to know why tennis courts have been put in
certain places and why certain masses of rhododendrons have been
planted in certain parks....

For we know that the tennis courts have helped the Germans carry out
their schemes, and that the flower beds have had a place in the
machinery of war they were developing, which they kept alive until
they were at our gates. A tennis match seems a mere nothing--something
very innocent in the way of pleasure, far from being war-like. And
then, one fine day the discovery is made that the tennis court has a
foundation of reinforced concrete twenty centimeters thick, fit to
support a house six stories high and, consequently, a heavy gun!

A clump of rhododendrons is very lovely, something very gracious,
charming, most poetic. And one day the discovery is made that the
clump conceals a platform set in concrete on which an entire battery
can be aligned.

All that will have to be investigated. All that will have to be
stopped.... And it makes another reason why it is necessary to fight
today, to fight to the death. For these Germans will understand the
inanity of their Machiavellian scheming and of their spy system only
when they shall see these methods fall to pieces, when they shall see
their system fail absolutely.

In conclusion we may say that France fights for two reasons. The first
reason is because on the third of August at a quarter before seven
o'clock war was declared on her; she was forced to fight; her
territory was invaded, her cities burned to the ground; her fields
ravaged; her citizens massacred. The second reason is because she does
not want to have to fight in the future; she does not wish this horror
to be reproduced a second time; she wishes, in the immortal words of
Washington, "that plague of mankind, war, banished off the earth."

To accomplish this the engine that makes war must be destroyed. The
engine that makes war is "made in Germany." War is the national
industry of the Germans, it has been developed and made perfect in
Germany, it is dear to all German hearts. They are proud of it and
have faith in its power. The machine must not only be stopped; it must
be broken and destroyed, thrown out as scrap iron to prevent the
pieces from being reassembled, readjusted and put in running order
once again.

That is why France is fighting, why the whole world ought to fight to
the end, to death or until victory crowns its efforts.




II

HOW FRANCE IS FIGHTING


Two words, courage and tenacity, will serve the future historian in
his description of how France fought, when the time shall have come
for telling the entire story of the world war.

No one has ever doubted French courage throughout all the centuries of
her tormented history; but skeptical remarks have been made in times
past of the tenacity of the French people.

Ten epigrams do not describe this war; nor do three. But one alone
serves this purpose--know how to endure. No more thoughtful words have
ever been spoken than those of the Japanese, Marshall Nogi: "Victory
is won by the nation that can suffer a quarter of an hour longer than
its opponent."

During the four years of war, France has proven that she knew how to
suffer and was able to suffer a quarter of an hour longer than her
enemies.

They knew how to suffer, those soldiers of General Maunoury's army in
the Battle of the Marne. And they turned the tide of battle in favor
of French arms. They marched, fought and died for five days and five
nights, in the passing of which some battalions marched forty-two
kilometers and did not sleep for more than two hours at a time. The
mobility of the fighting units was such that the commissary department
was absolutely unable to supply them with rations. For three days many
of them had no bread, no meat, nothing at all! They subsisted on
crusts they had with them, or on the food they were able, by the
fortunes of battle, to pick up in the villages where they happened to
be. In spite of all this, whenever the order was given to charge, they
charged the enemy with a sort of inspired madness.

"The fight has been a hard one," Marshall Joffre wrote in an order of
the day that will be famous throughout eternity. "The casualties, the
number of men worn out by the exhaustion due to lack of sleep--and
sometimes of food--passed all imagining.... Comrades, the commander in
chief has asked you to do more than your duty, and you have responded
to this request by accomplishing the impossible." That is the finest
word of praise that has been given fighting men since the world began.

       *       *       *       *       *

They knew how to suffer, those other soldiers of the Battle of the
Marne who were a part of General Foch's army at Fère-Champenoise. Five
times they attacked the Château de Mondement, and five times they were
driven back. Their officers were consulting as to the best thing to
do; and the men surrounded the officers, begging them with tears in
their eyes to lead them to the assault for the sixth time. For the
sixth time the attack was sounded, and at the sixth assault Château de
Mondement fell.

That officer at Verdun knew how to suffer. He will remain a figure
for the legends of the future for, running to transmit an order, he
received a bullet in the eyes which shattered his optic nerve. He was
completely blinded. Nevertheless, he continued to advance, trying to
grope his way through the night that had fallen upon him. He
encountered something lying on the ground--a something that was a man
just as badly wounded. The blind man besought him for help.

"How can I help you," said the wounded man, "a shell has broken both
my legs."

"What difference does that make," shouted the blinded man, "I am going
to carry you on my back. My legs will be yours, and your eyes will be
mine."

And, one supporting the other, the blinded man and the lamed man
carried on!

       *       *       *       *       *

That officer knew how to suffer whom one of my brothers met on the
battle field of Lorraine. An artillery officer, his arm was shattered,
a few bits of flesh barely holding it fast to his shoulder. My
brother, when he saw the man painfully dragging himself along, asked
him whether or not he needed help.

"I don't need help," replied the wounded man, "but my battery down
there does. It is retreating."

"If it is retreating, it can't be helped and it is a waste of time for
me to get it ammunition...."

"No," begged the lieutenant, "get the munitions. We Colonials fight
until the last man falls...."

He offered to guide my brother, mounted beside him on the artillery
caisson, and stayed there all day. For after he had supplied his own
battery, it was the battery next it, and then the one next to that,
which he wanted to supply.... Finally, in the evening, at nightfall,
they came to take him off in the ambulance. The major looked at his
shattered arm, examined his frightful wound, and muttered:

"You are in a bad way. Couldn't you have come here sooner?"

The lieutenant replied humbly:

"Pardon me, I lost a lot of time on the way."

       *       *       *       *       *

Those men I saw for months fighting and dying to the south of Verdun,
at the Butte des Eparges, knew how to suffer.

The Butte des Eparges dominates the great plain of the Woevre, and
from the very beginning it has been the theater of a frightful and
long drawn out battle of the kind one seldom sees in this war. The
Germans have been entrenched on the left side of the Butte, the French
on the right. And day and night for four years there has been an
incessant battle over its summit of grenades, bombs and shells; a
terrible hand-to-hand fight in which neither one of the contestants
yields an inch of ground. A brook of blood runs its interrupted course
on each slope. On the south slope it is red with German blood; with
French blood on the north.

The two slopes of the Butte have been so raked by firing that they
have not a single tree, bush, or blades of grass on them; they stand
out sinister and frightful in their nakedness, seeming to cry out to
the men of the plain:

"See, all of you, the scourge of God has passed over this place."

They are dented, furrowed and blown into crevasses by the explosions
of mines; they are sown over with the enormous funnels in which the
fighters take shelter; they are covered with an incessant smoke from
the projectiles that plow them up.

As for the summit, it is a no man's land, that belongs to the dead men
whose bodies cover it. The summit stopped being a battle field to
become a charnel house. The number of men who have fallen there will
never be known. The most fantastic figures come from the lips of those
who come down ... 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 ... it will never be known. But
what is known is that the dead are always there. They form a parapet
above which the living fight on. These dead rot in the sunshine and in
the rain. In accordance with the wind's being from the east or the
west, the frightful odor of all this rotten flesh strikes the Germans
or the French. They lie there, an indistinguishable mass on the
ground, and the men are unlucky who watch by night in the listening
posts or the trenches. They think they are stumbling against a stone,
and it is a skull their feet are touching; they think they are picking
up the branch of a tree, and they have hold of the arm of a corpse.

However, in the shadow of this human charnel house, at the edge of
this bloody sewer, some little French soldiers come and go, eat and
sleep for months at a time. The dreadfulness of the sights, the stench
in the air, the tragic presence of death has not gripped their souls,
their courage or their nerves. They are no less confident and merry
than the others and, in the evening, when the setting sun adds the
purple of its shadows to the red of all the blood that has been shed
on the Butte, they sing from the depths of their charnel house sweet
love songs.... This is the most regally beautiful sight I have seen in
this war; it is the most splendidly moving example I know of what
personal sacrifice for one's country's sake can do.

One day, in a rest village in the neighborhood, I met a soldier from
one of the battalions which was encamped in the charnel house. He was
a boy twenty years old, who hurried along with a flower in his
buttonhole, whistling a tune.... He was so joyful that I asked him:

"You seem as happy as you can be."

"I have leave, Sir," he answered, "and in a week I shall go to the
country to see my mother. But, for the present, I have to go and take
the trench at Eparges...."

As he mentioned the name of the accursed Butte, I could not repress a
movement. He saw it and said:

"Sir, I am glad to go there."

And he told me his name and the number of his company. Then he hurried
away.

It chanced that precisely one week later I met one of his officers. I
asked him about the merry fellow.

"That man? He was killed the day before yesterday at Eparges."

And my comrade added in a low voice:

"He was shot down at my side, struck with a bullet square in the
chest. The death agony set in at once. As I was trying to do something
for him, passing my hand gently across his forehead, I said to him:

"Courage, my boy, courage."

He murmured the reply:

"Oh, I'm glad to die."

Glad ... the same phrase, the same words I had heard a week ago, which
can be heard everywhere on the French front--and they are glad to go
into all the trenches and into all the charnel houses, and it is with
a happy heart that they rest in peace.

       *       *       *       *       *

But France has not only fought with all her courage, with all her
soul, with all her tenacity. She has fought with all her living
strength, with her men, her women, even her children.

What can I say which has not already been said about the men? When I
think of my own men, when I think of all the men floundering and
fighting in this mud, I can find no other means of expression than
the words that have already served the Commander in Chief of the
French Army, General Pétain, on the evening of his great victory at
the Chemin des Dames. In receiving the American newspapermen, he said
to them:

"Do not speak of us, the generals and the officers. Speak only of the
men. We have done nothing; the men have done everything. Our men are
wonderful; we, their leaders, can only kneel at their feet."

       *       *       *       *       *

The women have been no less wonderful. And I want to write a few words
about them.

The women who are at the front have fought like the men. Can you
imagine a more beautiful deed of arms than that of a young girl,
twenty years old, named Marcelle Semer, whose heroic story a French
Cabinet Minister, M. Klotz, told recently at one of the Matinées
Nationales at the Sorbonne.

In August, 1914, there lived at Eclusier, near Frise, a young girl
with gray eyes and blonde hair named Marcelle Semer. She was twenty
years old at the time and kept accounts in addition to overseeing the
work of a factory. At the time of the August invasion, after the
Battle of Charleroi, the French tried to halt the Germans at the
Somme. Not being in sufficient force, they retreated, crossing the
river and the canal. The enemy immediately pursued. Marcelle Semer,
who was following the French troops, had the presence of mind, after
the last soldier had crossed the Somme Canal, to open the drawbridge
in order to prevent the Germans from crossing it, and to hurl the key
to the bridge into the canal in order that they might not take it from
her when they came up. An entire enemy army corps was thus detained
for twenty-four hours by this young girl's presence of mind; and it
was only on the following day that the enemy, having found some boats
on the Somme, made a bridge of them and passed over the canal. But the
French soldiers were already far away.

The Germans were masters of the neighborhood for some days. They
seized the inhabitants as hostages and shut them up in a cave.
Marcelle Semer secretly carried them food. She also carried
sustenance to other inhabitants who had hidden in the woods or in
cellars. She succored and concealed the soldiers whom wounds or
fatigue had prevented from following the main body of troops. She
contrived that sixteen of them, dressed as civilians, escaped. Then
she was apprehended by the Germans, arrested and led into the presence
of a court-martial. The judgment was summary, and after a quarter of
an hour's questioning Marcelle Semer was condemned to death.

"Do you admit," asked the presiding officer, "that you helped French
soldiers to escape?"

"I certainly do," she replied. "I managed it so that sixteen of them
escaped, and they are beyond your reach. Now you can do what you want
to me. I am an orphan. I have only one mother--France. She does not
disturb me when I'm dying."

This was one time when God intervened. Marcelle did not die. Brought
to the place of execution, at the very moment when they were about to
shoot, the French reëntered the village and, by a miracle, she escaped
her executioners. Today she wears the Croix de Guerre and the medal of
the Legion of Honor.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were Frenchwomen and fighters, these women whose names and deeds
are to be found in the columns of the "Journal Officiel." Read, for
example, this citation concerning Madame Macherez, President of the
Association des Dames Françaises de Soissons:

     She willingly assumed the responsibility and the danger of
     representing the city before the enemy, and defended or
     managed the interests of the population in the absence of
     the mayor and the majority of the members of the town
     council. In spite of an intense bombardment which partially
     ruined the city, she took the most effective means possible
     to maintain calm in the city and to protect the lives of the
     inhabitants.

In this department, a lay instructress, Mlle. Cheron, merited a
citation which does not contain the least over-praise:

     She evidenced the greatest energy in difficult
     circumstances. Charged with the duties of Secretary to the
     Mayor, and alone at the time of the arrival of the Germans,
     she was not disconcerted by their threats, and kept her head
     in the face of their demands with remarkable calm and
     decision. When our troops returned, she assumed
     responsibility for the service and feeding of the
     cantonment. She personally took the steps necessary for the
     identification and burial of the dead. Finally, she was able
     to prevent panic at the time of the bombardment by the force
     of her example and her encouragement of the populace.

Those three nuns were also Frenchwomen and fighters of whom the
"Journal Officiel" in the general order spoke as follows:

     Mlle. Rosnet, Marie, sister of the order of St. Vincent de
     Paul, Mother Superior of the Hospice at Clermont-en-Argonne,
     remained alone in the village and showed during the German
     occupation an energy and coolness beyond all praise. Having
     received a promise from the enemy that they would respect
     the town in exchange for the care the sisters gave their
     wounded, she protested to the German commander against the
     burning of the town with the observation that "the word of a
     German officer is not worth that of a French officer." Thus
     she obtained the help of a company of sappers who fought the
     flames. She gave the most devoted care to the wounded,
     German as well as French....

     Mlle. Constance, Mother Superior of the Hospice at
     Badonvillers, during the three successive German occupations
     in 1914, assisted the sisters and remained bravely at her
     post night and day, in spite of all danger, and was busy
     everywhere with a devotion truly admirable....

     Mlle. Brasseur, Sister Etienne, Mother Superior of the
     Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in the Hospital at Compiègne,
     from the war's beginning at the head of a staff whose
     tireless devotion has deserved all praise, has given the
     most intelligent and enlightened care to numerous wounded
     men. During the time of the German occupation, her coolness
     and energetic attitude assured the safety of the
     establishment she directed. Her brave initiative allowed
     several French soldiers to escape from captivity.

The modest postmistress and telegraph operator was a Frenchwoman and a
fighter, who, in the little village of Houpelines, in the north of the
country, deserved this citation in the orders of the day, of which
thousands of soldiers would be proud:

     Refusing to obey the order that was given her to leave her
     post, she remained in spite of the danger. On the first of
     October the Germans entered her office, smashed her
     apparatus and threatened her with death. Mlle. Deletete, who
     had put her valuables and accounts in safe-keeping, gave
     evidence of the greatest calmness. From the seventeenth on
     she endured the bombardment. Her office having been damaged
     severely by the enemy's fire, she took refuge in the civil
     hospice, where four persons were killed at her side. She
     resumed her duties on the twenty-third, since which date she
     has continued to perform them in the face of frequent
     bombardments which have found many victims.

The women behind the lines have been worthy of their sisters at the
front.

In the forges, the foundries, the factories and the munition plants
they have not feared to don the blouse of the workingman, and on this
blouse they wear as insignia a large grenade like that on the brassard
of the mobilized men. Note these figures. On the first of February,
1916, the civil establishments of war, the munition plants, and the
Marine workshops employed 127,792 women. The number has increased, and
on the first of March, 1917, they numbered 375,582 women. On the first
of January, 1918, the women working in the factories manufacturing war
material amounted to 475,000; that is to say, in round numbers, a half
million.

Others, in the hospitals, ambulance and dispensaries have devoted
themselves to the wounded, the mutilated, the sick and the suffering,
to the sacrifice of their health, their youth, and sometimes their
life itself. Here again the figures are eloquent--they speak for
themselves. Three great societies, constituting the French Red Cross,
have carried on this work of charity and devotion--the Société de
Secours aux Blessés Militaires, the Union des Dames de France, and The
Association des Dames Françaises. At the war's outbreak the Société de
Secours aux Blessés had 375 hospitals with 17,939 beds; today it has
796 hospitals with 67,000 beds and 15,510 graduated nurses, three
thousand of whom are employed in military hospitals. On the
thirty-first of December, 1916, the Union des Dames de France had 363
hospitals with 30,000 beds and more than 20,000 graduate or volunteer
nurses. From August, 1914, to March, 1917, the Association des Dames
Françaises had raised the number of its hospitals from 100 to 350, and
from 5,000 to 18,000 the number of its beds; the number of its
graduate nurses from 5,000 to 7,000.

On the thirty-first of December, 1916, the three societies counted
about 42,000,000 days of hospital work, 25,000,000 for the Société de
Secours aux Blessés alone. From the beginning of the war, this society
has expended for equipment the sum of 38,700,000 francs.

Aside from these there are other figures which show the material
effort of the Frenchwomen which I can not pass over in silence. They
show the civic devotion of which they are capable. The Société de
Secours aux Blessés has been granted one cross of the Legion of Honor,
94 Croix de Guerre, 119 Medailles d'Honneur des épidémies. The
Association des Dames Françaises has won 17 Croix de Guerre and 80
Medailles des épidémies. The Union des Femmes de France has won 39
Croix de Guerre. And last comes the glorious list of martyrs of the
societies: 110 nurses have died in the devoted performance of their
duties.

The heroism of these valiant women, many of whom remained in the
occupied territories, will be the eternal pride of France. Madame
Perouse, President of the Union des Femmes de France wrote to M. Louis
Barthou telling him the number of women who had risked their liberty,
their life, their honor even, to protect in the face of the ferocious
enemy the sacred rights of the French wounded. It is fitting to add
that, if they have taken care of the German wounded as well as the
French wounded, they can always recall the reply of a devoted teacher
of the Marne district, Mlle. Fouriaux, to a German major:

"Sir, we have only done our duty as nurses, never forgetting that we
are Frenchwomen."

Mlle. Joulin, a nurse at Douai, did not forget her duty as a
Frenchwoman. She was held a prisoner by the Germans for a year in the
camp at Holzminden, in which she took the place of the mother of five
children who had been put down on the list of hostages drawn up by the
German barbarians.

And if you would know where these heroic women have poured out their
courage, their coolness and their physical resistance, which they have
put in the service of their country and of humanity, you have but to
listen to the declaration of one of them, Mlle. Canton-Baccara, who
has been made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, for having shown
bravery and exceptional devotion in the face of the greatest danger:

"The wounded soldier who suffers," said Mlle. Canton-Baccara, "the
soldier who is complaining or the peasant who is weeping for the farm
that has been pillaged, a woman's smile ought to console and her voice
ought, under all circumstances, to be ready to recall to him that
above these sufferings and troubles, above the paltry struggles of
interest and ambition, there is, above all this, France, our France,
which matters before all else."

Still other women, who were neither in the hospitals, at the front,
nor in the factories, have been admirable fighters. They fought,
according to Mlle. Canton-Baccara's words, with their heart and with
their smile. They fought by the example of abnegation they gave, by
the moral force with which they inspired the men in the trenches.

Madame de Castelnau is a glorious figure, she, the wife of the General
who saved Nancy and stopped the rush of the barbarians on the Grand
Couronné!... Madame de Castelnau had, before the war broke out, four
sons. Three fell on the battle field. The fourth is actually still a
prisoner in the hands of the Germans. On the lips of their father
there is never the slightest word of complaint; on the lips of the
mother there are these admirable words, which the children in the
schools will repeat later on.... Madame de Castelnau was in a little
village when her third son was killed. The curé of the village had the
pitiful task of telling the already mourning mother of this new blow
that had struck her. The curé found Madame de Castelnau, and, in the
presence of her great sorrow, he hesitated and was overcome with
embarrassment:

"Madame," he said, "I come to bring you another blow. But know well
that all the mothers of France weep for you."

Madame de Castelnau knew the truth at once. She interrupted the priest
and, looking him straight in the eye, replied:

"Yes, I know what you are going to tell me.... God's will be done. But
the mothers of France would be wrong in weeping for me. Let them envy
me."

Those are the words of a Frenchwoman of noble descent. But you can
place on the same high level the words of an old woman, a humble soul,
whom the gendarmes found one night crouched on a grave that was still
fresh. It was up near Verdun. She told the gendarmes:

"I come from La Rochelle. Five of my sons have already fallen in the
war. I have come here to see where the sixth is buried--the sixth--my
last son."

Moved by the tragic grandeur of the sight, the gendarmes rendered her
military honors and presented arms. The mother rose and uttered the
words her dead and her heart inspired:

"Even so, Vive la France!"

All of them, mothers of noble birth and of peasant stock, rich and
poor, wives, sisters, and fiancées are the first to exhort their sons,
husbands and brothers to fight to the end. All have the same words of
sacrifice and abnegation on their lips. All of them find words which
best fortify, exalt and console their men.

Read this letter I picked up on the field of battle, a letter written
by a humble peasant woman whose heart, after centuries of noble and
wise discipline, was in the right place:

     MY DEAR BOY:

     We got your letter, which gave us great pleasure. We waited
     anxiously for it. You wrote it two days ago. Since that time
     things have changed. Did you get my letter? I hope so. I
     must reassure you about your father the very first thing. He
     was away only three days, time enough to guide a detachment
     to Bourges. So there is only one vacant place at the
     fireside, but how big that one is.

     My dear boy, you speak to me of sacrifice; yes, it is one.
     And I can tell you it is the greatest one that has ever been
     asked of me. However, I keep calm. I tell myself sometimes
     that I have deserved it. I am ready to pay, but I wish so
     much that you might not pay.

     My dear boy, you speak to me of duty and of honor. I have
     never doubted that you would do what you ought to. Yes, my
     son, a soldier's honor lies in being on the battle field
     when the country is in danger. Go, then, my son, with the
     blessing of your mother and your father, and with that most
     mighty one of your country and of heaven.

     You tell me to accept my lot courageously. Alas, sometimes
     it fails me. However, I shall try to be resigned and I hope
     to see you again in spite of everything. If that should not
     happen, say to yourself, my dear boy, when you close your
     eyes, that you have all the love and all the sweetest kisses
     of your mother, who would like to fly to you.

The sisters are worthy of their mothers. Here is a letter written by
two young girls who live in Lorraine, near Nancy. Plutarch never wrote
anything more beautiful:

                              MOYEN, 4 SEPTEMBER, 1914.

     MY DEAR EDOUARD:

     I have heard that Charles and Lucien died on the
     twenty-eighth of August. Eugène is badly wounded. As for
     Louis and Jean, they are dead also.

     Rose has gone away.

     Mother weeps, but she says that you are brave and wishes
     that you may avenge them.

     I hope that your officers will not refuse you that. Jean won
     the Legion of Honor; follow in his footsteps.

     They have taken everything from us. Of the eleven who went
     to war, eight are dead. My dear Edouard, do your duty; we
     ask only that.

     God gave you life; he has the right to take it away from
     you. Mother says that.

     We embrace you fondly, although we would like to see you.
     The Prussians are here. Jandon is dead; they have pillaged
     everything. I have just returned from Gerbevillers, which is
     destroyed. What wretches they are!

     Sacrifice your life, my dear brother. We hope to see you
     again, for something like a presentiment tells us to hope.

     We embrace you fondly. Farewell, and may we see you again,
     if God grants.

                              (Signed) YOUR SISTERS.

     P.S. It is for us and for France. Think of your brothers and
     of your grandfather in 1870.

And this next letter is sublime. It was addressed to M. Maurice Barrès
by a lady from the city of Lyons, which is perhaps the most mystic
city in all France. In the newspapers mention had been made of the men
disabled by war, and of all the unfortunates who were mutilated, whose
limbs had been amputated, who were helpless or blinded. The question
was raised of knowing what ought to be done to help them. Then the
lady wrote as follows to M. Barrès:

     SIR: One of these recent days, when our troubles have been
     so hard to bear, I went to regain my courage into one of the
     beloved sanctuaries of Notre Dame.... A lady dressed in
     black came in beside me and, as all mothers are sisters in
     these trying days, I asked after her men at the front. She
     told me sadly that she was a poor widow, and that the war
     had taken away her two sons, her sole means of support. One
     of them had had an arm amputated--the right arm--and the
     hands of the other were cut off at the wrists. She came from
     seeing them to pray to the Mother of Sorrows for her
     children and herself.

     I was deeply moved by her sorrow and by her not complaining.
     I sought means to console her. This is the means I have
     found, sir, and I tell it to you now....

     Let us ask the Virgin, I said to her, to create young women
     in France so brave, so strong, and so devoted that they will
     gladly and proudly consent to marry the poor, injured men
     and to be not only their hearts but the limbs which will aid
     them to make their daily bread; leaving to the men the
     privilege of loving them, of respecting their presences and
     of guiding their lives.

     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 passed 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 châteaux 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 reëntered 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 breasts 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 vassals 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.
     Geneviève 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 crêpe
     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 classes 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 passions 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 class 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
     gratitude 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 assurance, "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 Montbéliard 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 God 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 fiancée:

     MY DEAR JEANNE:

     Tomorrow at ten o'clock, to the sounds of "Sidi Brahim" and
     the "Marseillaise" 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 passes 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 mass 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.

     I believe in God, in France and in Victory. I believe in
     beauty and youth and life. May God guard me to the end. But,
     Lord, if my blood is useful for victory, may Thy will be
     done.

Finally, here is a priest, Father Gilbert de Gironde, second
lieutenant in the 81st infantry, who was killed on the seventh of
December, 1914, at Ypres, writing his last letter.... For of the
twenty-five thousand priests who went off at the beginning of the
mobilization, three hundred were called military chaplains, the rest
were officers, stretcher-bearers, or common soldiers--and note the
4,000 citations in the army orders which the "Journal Officiel" has
published, which report the acts of courage and of bravery done by
these priests on the battle field:

     To die young. To die a priest. To die as a soldier in the
     attack, marching to the assault in full sacerdotal garb,
     perhaps in the act of granting an absolution; to shed my
     blood for the Church, for France, for her Allies, for all
     those who carry in their hearts the same ideal I do, and for
     the others also, that they may know the joy of belief ...
     how beautiful that is, how beautiful that is!

Catholics, Protestants, Jews, priests, ministers and rabbis, that is
what they write. It is a belittling, a profanation, that, in spite of
myself, I have separated and differentiated among them. For down
there, in the bloody mud of the trenches, they are one body which
lives together and dies together.

There was a little Breton who, on the Battle field of the Marne, was
shot in the chest. The death agony at once set in, and in his agony he
asked for a crucifix. No priest happened to be on the spot, there was
only a Jewish rabbi. The rabbi ran to get the crucifix, he brought it
to the lips of the dying man, and he, in his turn, was killed!...

In a little barrack in the hollow of one of the depressions at Verdun
lived together a priest, a minister and a rabbi. We often saw the
place. On the evening after a frightful battle, they were all three in
the charnel house where the dead bodies are brought. They were
surrounded by stretcher-bearers, who said to them:

"We do not dare throw earth on the bodies of our comrades without a
prayer being said over them."

The Catholic priest asked to what faith they belonged.

"We do not know. How can we find out? But can't you arrange among
yourselves?"

"Well, we shall bless them one after the other."

And there in the bleeding night was seen the incomparable sight of the
three men side by side, the Catholic, the Protestant and the Jew,
reciting the last prayer and disappearing....

M. Maurice Barrès, the celebrated French writer, from whose
magnificent book, "The Spiritual Families of France," I have borrowed
a great number of the letters I have quoted, has pointed out that all
French churches are fighting in this hour, forming one great church.
Yes, every church and every saint is fighting! These saints belong to
all beliefs, some of them to no belief. But one religion has united
and solidified them all--the religion of their country, the religion
of Liberty, the religion of civilization. All speak the same prayer,
all have the same faith in their hearts, all fall martyrs in the same
cause.

The old walls which, in times of peace, separated parties and men,
have crumbled into dust at the same time when the German shells
crumbled into dust the little village churches. An infinite
cathedral, a cathedral that is invisible and great has risen on high.
It is the cathedral of the faith of France, in which all faiths
commune in the same hope--a cathedral which time and suffering and
death itself shall not destroy.




III

FRANCE SUFFERING BUT NOT BLED WHITE


Listen to the man in the street when he speaks--that man in the street
who reflects public opinion whether it is just or unjust, genuine or
sophisticated. Listen to him when he speaks and you will hear him say:

"Yes, we know. France has a well tempered spirit. But the blood is
gone out of her body. France would like to fight on, to fight to the
bitter end, but France is suffering. France is worn out. France is
bled white."

France is suffering ... that is true. In the cataclysm that she did
not wish for, that she did not start, that she did not prepare, she
has lost more than a million men. And what men they were! The Ecole
Normale, which is the preparatory school for the French university,
lost seventy per cent of its pupils. That means that three-quarters
of the thinkers, the literary men, the scientists, the philosophers,
the professors of the France of tomorrow have been wiped out. They
were the flower of her youth, the élite of her intelligence. Add to
that seven departments, roughly 20,000 square kilometers in area,
which have been invaded, devastated, ruined and pillaged. In these
seven departments all the machinery, all the raw materials, all the
merchandise, all the furniture even to the door-knobs and the boards
in the floors have been taken away. These departments were among the
richest and most prosperous of those on which France prided herself
most industrially.

Add to that the cultivation that has been destroyed, the soil that has
been made untillable, the trees that have been cut down, the roads
that have been torn up and the bridges that have been destroyed. All
the misery, all the mourning, all the sickness: a million wounded and
injured men who have been lost as living forces by a nation which did
not have too many inhabitants. Add the hundred thousand prisoners
Germany sends back to us who have been made tuberculous, paralytics,
nervous wrecks or lunatics because they have been physically
maltreated. Yes, France is suffering.

But it is not true that she is worn out. It is not true that she is
bled white. The horrible hope Germany had formed of emptying France of
her strength, of leaving her, fighting for breath and conquered,
beaten to the earth for centuries to come, has not been realized.
France always stands upright, her arm is still strong, her muscles
vigorous and her blood rich.

To destroy the lie that France is bled white, we must let figures,
facts, statistics and definite proofs speak. The public shall judge
for itself....

A nation that is worn out and bled white has no army to defend itself.
France not only still has an army, but she has an army that is
numerically and materially stronger than it was at the war's
beginning. In 1914, at the Marne, France had an army of 1,500,000 men;
today, after four years of war, France has on her battle front, in
the war zone, an army of 2,750,000 men.

But the value of fighting men today lies only in the artillery they
have to support them behind the lines. It lies in the shells the
artillery is able to fire, in all that material that makes up the
sinews of war of the present day. Here we find the most extraordinary
and marvelous effort that history records. France, invaded, occupied,
weakened; France that had no munitions industry prior to 1914--or a
small munitions industry at best--that France has built up a war
industry that is doubtless the best in the world, which is equal to
the German war industry and on which the Allies can draw in the common
cause.

Listen to these figures and keep them in your heads. They are vouched
for by M. Millerand, who was minister of war during the first year of
hostilities:

     The Battle of the Marne emptied our storehouses.

     On the seventeenth of September, 1914, the minister of war,
     who had then been scarcely three weeks in office, was
     informed that munitions threatened to fail our artillery,
     and that it was necessary without delay to bring to the
     front 100,000 shells per day instead of 13,500 for the .75
     guns. This was merely a beginning. Three days later, on the
     twentieth of September, the minister assembled at Bordeaux
     the representatives of the munitions industry and divided
     them up into regional groups. At the head of each one he
     made one establishment or one individual the responsible
     person. In the face of difficulties which could not be
     conceived unless they had been overcome, with establishments
     diminished in personnel as well as in raw material,
     inexperienced for the most part in the complex and delicate
     operations which were expected of them, the manufacture of
     shells for the .75's mounted from 147,000 which it had been
     in the month of August, 1914, to 1,970,000 in the month of
     January, 1915, and then to 3,396,000 during the month of
     July, 1915.

     222 .75 guns per month have been constructed since the month
     of May, 1915. 227 were constructed in the month of July, 407
     in the month of January, 1916. For this construction, as for
     all the others, once a start was made, there was no stopping
     it.

     All orders for heavy guns had been countermanded at the
     beginning of August, 1914. They were resumed in the month
     of September, 1914. Seventy-five per cent of the orders for
     heavy guns, on which we got along until April, 1917, had
     been given out between September, 1914, and the thirty-first
     of October, 1915. In the first seven months of the war, from
     September, 1914, to April, 1915, there were constructed
     three hundred and sixty pieces of heavy artillery. On August
     first, 1914, we had only sixty-eight batteries. A year
     later, to the day, on the first of August, 1915, we had two
     hundred and seventy-two batteries of heavy artillery.

Now consider these figures, given out by M. André Tardieu, High
Commissioner of the French Republic at Washington, in a letter to the
Hon. Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War:

     In the matter of heavy artillery, in August, 1914, we had
     only three hundred guns distributed among the various
     regiments. In June, 1917, we had six thousand heavy guns,
     all of them modern. During our spring offensive in 1917, we
     had roughly one heavy gun for every twenty-six meters of
     front. If we had brought together all our heavy artillery
     and all our trench artillery, we would have had one gun for
     every eight meters in the battle sector.

     In August, 1914, we were making twelve thousand shells for
     the .75's per day, now we are making two hundred and fifty
     thousand shells for the .75's and one hundred thousand
     shells for the heavy guns per day.

     If you wish to consider the weight of the shells which fell
     on the German trenches during our last offensives, you will
     find the following figures for each linear meter:

     Field artillery             407 kilos
     Trench artillery            203 kilos
     Heavy artillery             704 kilos
     High Power artillery         12 kilos
                                ----
                Total           1442 kilos

     And these are the figures for the monthly expenditure in
     munitions for the .75's alone:

     July, 1916            6,400,000 shells
     September, 1916       7,000,000 shells
     October, 1916         5,500,000 shells

     During the last offensive the total expenditure amounted to
     twelve million projectiles of all calibers.

This incomparable war industry has permitted us not only to fight, to
defend ourselves and to attack the enemy, but also to supply our
friends, our Allies, with the munitions necessary to fight. Up to
January, 1918, these are the amounts of munitions France was able to
hand over to the nations fighting at her side in Europe:

  1,350,000 rifles
800,000,000 cartridges
 16,000,000 automatic rifles
     10,000 mitrailleuses
      2,500 heavy guns
      4,750 airplanes

And to France has come the honor of making the light artillery for the
American Army--amounting to several hundred guns per month.

       *       *       *       *       *

A nation that is worn out and bled white has an empty treasury and is
no longer able to obtain taxes from its ruined citizens. Let us
consider what France had done in a financial way in this war.

From the first of August, 1914, to the first of January, 1918, the
French Parliament voted war credits amounting to twenty billions of
dollars. Of this enormous fund only two billions have been borrowed
from outside sources; all the remainder has been subscribed or paid
for by taxation or by loans in France herself. More than a billion
dollars has been loaned to her Allies by France.

In 1917 France had the heaviest budget in all her history. The single
item of taxes was raised to six billion francs ($1,200,000), and these
taxes were paid to the penny, although ten million Frenchmen were
mobilized in the Army, in the factories, and on the farms, or were
untaxable in the occupied regions.

In 1915, 1916 and 1917 France raised three great national loans. That
of 1915 amounted to exactly 13,307,811,579 francs, 40 centimes, of
which 6,017 millions were paid in hard cash. That of October, 1916,
amounted in round numbers to ten billions francs, of which more than
five billions were paid in hard cash. That of December, 1917, amounted
to 10,629,000,000 francs, of which 5,254 millions were paid in cash.

Thus, in spite of the war, her invaded territories, and her mobilized
citizens, France has in three years raised three national loans of
almost seventeen billions francs in hard cash. That is three times the
amount of the war indemnity she paid Prussia in 1871.

A nation worn out and bled white has no more monetary reserve, no more
funds in its treasury, and has been brought into bankruptcy. The Bank
of France, which is probably the leading national bank in the world,
whose credit has never weakened in the gravest hours of the nation's
history, declared on the first of January, 1918, a gold reserve of
5,348 millions of francs, an increase of 272 millions over the gold in
hand on January first, 1917. This is the greatest deposit the bank has
ever had. All this came from the national resources: the weekly
payments are still a million and a half francs, which are paid without
compulsion and without legal processes.

The individual deposits in the great credit establishments of France
which, on the thirty-first of December, 1914, amounted to only 4,050
millions of francs, amounted to 6,050 millions on the thirty-first of
December, 1917.

And during the first three months of the year 1918, from the first of
January to the thirty-first of March, the surplus deposits made by the
peasants and the working classes in the National Saving Bank was
seventy-five millions of francs, an excess of more than eight hundred
thousand francs daily.

       *       *       *       *       *

A nation that is worn out and bled white is incapable of manufacturing
and sees its commerce and industry perish. Here is the statement of M.
Georges Pallain, Governor of the Bank of France, representing the
accounting of the Counsel General of the Bank for 1917:

     From the industrial and commercial point of view, a
     satisfactory amelioration is noticeable. The investigation
     of the Minister of Industry in July last permits the
     statement that the percentage of factories and business
     houses rendering a periodical accounting, of which the
     advantage is not yet established, is only twenty-three per
     cent; it was fifty-five per cent in August, 1914.

     An indication of the development of industrial activity is
     furnished by the continued increase of the demand for coal.

     Operations for mining ore have been pushed with vigor. Coal
     production increased greatly in 1914. On the whole it still
     remains less than it was before the war, since the invasion
     has deprived us of the valleys in the north and the richest
     portion of Pas-de-Calais; but in the regions where mining is
     still possible the production exceeds by about forty per
     cent the figures for 1913.

     This remarkable increase has compensated to a certain extent
     for the falling off in the importations of coal from
     England; nevertheless it leaves our supply of coal less than
     our demand for it.

     To remedy this insufficiency and, at the same time, to give
     our national industry greater independence, researches and
     experiments have been equally intensified with a view to
     employing our hydraulic resources. In the Alps, in the
     Pyrenees and in the central Massif new installations are
     under way, and they have already attracted important
     metallurgic and chemical plants.

     The development of industrial production has had the result
     of an increase in the volume of commercial transactions.
     These continue to look after themselves and, for the most
     part, they are on a cash basis. The gradual resumption of
     credit operations, which former years signalized, is still
     on the increase. In 1917 the receipts from commerce were
     thirty-seven per cent greater than in 1916. There is a
     notable progression of discounts, while the total of our
     delayed payments has been brought back to 1,140 millions.

A nation that is worn out and bled white is unable to bind up its
wounds or relieve its bed of suffering. France has not waited for the
end of the war and the evacuation of her territory to bring in life
where the Germans thought they had left only death.

In eighty-four of the liberated cantons the work of reconstruction has
already commenced. Commissions have been appointed. These commissions
have proceeded already to the evaluation of the damage done and,
without waiting for authorization, the administration has paid
advances amounting to a not inconsiderable figure. Thus a sum
totalling more than one hundred and forty millions francs has been
expended for the reconstruction of the liberated regions. Seventeen
millions have been expended in cash for repairs; in advances to the
farmers for work or supplies, twenty millions; in advances to workmen,
a half million; for the circulation of funds to the farmers, merchants
and small manufactures, two millions; under the heading of
reconstruction of buildings or the rapid reinstallation of the
evacuated population, one hundred millions.

An _Office National de Reconstruction_ for the villages has been
established, and an agricultural _Office National de Reconstitution_
has been organized; great things have already been realized from
private organizations. This is the account of what one of them, the
organization of National Nurseries, sent in 1914 to the front and into
the liberated regions:

      6,717,575 cabbage plants
      1,980,000 turnip and rutabaga plants
         41,000 radish plants
         27,200 cauliflowers
        270,250 white beets
      5,340,500 leek plants
      1,836,800 chicory and endive plants
        104,500 celery plants
        105,000 tomato plants
         16,900 tarragon plants
      9,569,450 onion sprouts
     26,009,175 total plants of various kinds.

    These plants have been divided up into 2,436 shipments, and
    they have sufficed to nourish not only the people who have
    returned to the devastated villages but also the troops at
    the front.

       *       *       *       *       *

A nation that is worn out and bled white has no colonies, or, if she
has, these same colonies are likewise bloodless and worn out. The
French colonial empire remains intact while the German colonial empire
has disappeared from the face of the earth. The support the colonies
brought to the mother country is wonderful and deserves a separate
study on its own account.

Here is the picture the celebrated German colonial empire offers.

In 1914 Germany possessed a colonial empire two million square
kilometers in area. It represented approximately four times the area
of the German Empire, and before the war its exports amounted to about
one hundred millions of francs or twenty-five millions of dollars.
There were German Southwest Africa, 35,000 square kilometers in
extent, with 1,750 kilometers of railroads, with its copper and
diamond mines, its metals which were worth commercially thirty-seven
millions of marks in 1911; German East Africa, twice as big as the
German Empire, having 1,225 kilometers of railroads, with its harbors
where nine hundred and thirty-three merchant ships had touched in
1911; German New Guinea, as large as two-thirds of Prussia, with its
rich deposits of gold and coal, its maritime commerce of 240,000 tons;
the Samoan Islands, one single port of which, Apia, was visited by one
hundred and ten steamers in a year; Tsing-Tao which, in 1911, had
exported 32,500,000 marks' worth of merchandise, whose maritime
interest was represented by five hundred and ninety steamers which
carried a million tons of freight. All that has fallen away; all that
is actually in the hands of the Allies.

The conquest was difficult; it was finished only in 1916. An order of
the day of General Aymerich, commander-in-chief of the troops which
conquered Kameroon, points with brief eloquence to some of the
difficulties which have been overcome:

     Officers, Europeans and troops who are natives of Africa and
     Belgian Congo.

     At the cost of hardship and unheard-of efforts, you have
     just wrenched from the Germans one of their best and richest
     colonies.

     Followed without a minute's respite from possession to
     possession, the enemy has been obliged to abandon the last
     bit of Kameroon. For eighteen months you have experienced
     the torrid heat of the days and the cold dampness of the
     nights without a change, you have been under the torrential
     equatorial rains, you have traversed impassable forests and
     fetid marshes, you have without a rest taken the enemy's
     positions one after another, leaving dead in each one a
     number of your comrades. Lacking food and often without
     munitions, with your clothing in tatters, you have continued
     your glorious march without complaint or murmur, until you
     have attained the end for which you set out.

In this conquest France played a large part, just as was the case in
the conquest of Togoland, with her Senegalese Tirailleurs, the famous
Tirailleurs, so much decried and discussed before the war, who were to
win the admiration of the English generals under whose orders they
fought.

It is appropriate to cite here the order of the day of the commanding
officer of these troops, because it shows us a side of the colonial
wars, about which little has been said:

     An English detachment under the command of Lieutenant
     Thomson having been strongly repulsed in an attack on the
     post at Kamina, was reinforced by a group of the Senegalese
     Tirailleurs made up of a sergeant, two corporals, and
     fourteen Blacks. From the beginning of the encounter at
     eleven o'clock, the mixed detachment found itself exposed to
     a lively fire from positions that were solidly established
     and supported by mitrailleuses. After the artillery had
     commenced firing Lieutenant Thomson, considering that the
     preparation was sufficient, bravely led his troop on to the
     attack. This courageous initiative failed under a severe
     fire from fifty meters of German trenches. Lieutenant
     Thomson fell mortally wounded. However, the Senegalese
     Tirailleurs, faithful to that tradition which has already
     proved its value in our colonial epic by such famous
     exploits, refused to abandon the body of the unknown leader
     their captain had given them and continued to hold their
     position. When the fight was over and the enemy was in
     flight, the bodies of the sergeant, the two corporals, and
     of nine dead and four wounded Tirailleurs were found
     stretched out alongside the English officer and an under
     officer who was also English. In the very spot where they
     were found, their tomb surrounds that of Lieutenant Thomson.
     United in death, they still seem to watch over the strange
     officer--unknown to them--for whom they sacrificed their
     lives because their leader had given them orders to do so.

Of the German colonial empire, four times as big as the fatherland,
not a spot exists that is not in the hands of the Allies today.
England holds the greater part; Japan has Tsing-Tao; France a
considerable part of the African possessions.

Now let us look at the picture the French colonial empire offers.

In 1914 France ruled, in the north of Africa, over five and a half
millions of natives in Algiers, two millions in Tunis and four
millions in Morocco. When the war broke out there was not a single
German in Morocco who was not certain that the natives would rise in
revolt against France.

"Not a single Frenchman," wrote, in peace times, the correspondent of
the _Cologne Gazette_, "should escape alive." The German Government
was convinced of the fact that the revolt of the inhabitants and the
massacre of the French would be followed by an appeal of all the
Moroccans for the intervention of the Kaiser. But nothing of the sort
took place. In Algiers the most perfect calm continued to reign; in
Tunis there was a little trouble that was soon suppressed; in Morocco
there was a man, diplomat and soldier at the same time, who was able
to keep peace and hold the country firm to France. He was General
Lyautey.

During the early days of August, 1914, the question was raised whether
or not it would be necessary to abandon the outposts in the interior
of Morocco and withdraw toward the coast cities. General Lyautey
declared that he would abandon nothing and advised the French
Government to that effect. He sent troops, the famous Moroccan
regiments, the best fighting units there were in 1914, to the battle
fields of Flanders, receiving in exchange territorial divisions
recruited for the most part from the Midi. However, with these
territorial divisions General Lyautey assured the safety of all that
portion of the empire that was in his care; he finished the operations
he had commenced; he maintained French prestige and, some months later
on, he found means to open at Casablanca a Moroccan exposition which
showed the marvelous work that had been accomplished in that
country--French for a few years only.

The French colonies not only remained incomparably calm and peaceful
but they also made a marvelous effort in coming to the aid of the
mother country both with men and with their commerce.

M. Ernest Roume, Governor General of the Colonies, in charge at the
war's beginning of the government of Indo-China, sent to France more
than sixty thousand native soldiers and military workers in eighteen
months. They were recruited from the Asiatic possessions of France.
In Senegal, in Soudan and in Morocco men volunteered by hundreds of
thousands. Moroccans, Kabyles and blacks came to fight by the side of
the French troops on the Champagne and Lorraine fronts.

Besides, North Africa largely took care of the feeding of France.

In 1914 the cereal crop had been notably deficient in Algiers and
especially in Tunis. However, Algeria did not hesitate to give the
mother land all the grain she asked for; 50,000 quintals of wheat and
500,000 quintals of barley and oats were thus hastened to continental
France, and in addition, 40,000 quintals of wheat went to Corsica and
130,000 to Paris. In 1915 the colonies made an even better showing:
Algeria furnished France with 1,625,000 quintals of wheat, 918,000
quintals of barley, and 77,000 quintals of oats. In 1916 this figure
was passed and the total exports amounted to four million quintals of
grains. As for Morocco, it exported in 1914, 90,000 quintals of wheat
and 130,000 quintals of barley; in 1915 it exported 200,000 quintals
of wheat and a million quintals of barley; in 1916 it exported more
than two million quintals of grains. Add to that the 900,000 sheep
Algeria furnished for the French commissariat and more than 40,000
sheep furnished to the English commissariat to feed the Hindoo troops
stationed at Marseilles. Then add in the cattle exported from Algeria
and Morocco by the thousands, add for Algeria the wines and the
vegetables, and for Tunis the olive oil. In 1916 the confederation of
Algerian winegrowers gave the French poilus fifty thousand hectoliters
of wine.

Everywhere in the colonies buildings have been built, agriculture has
continued, public works have been constructed. In the midst of war
Algeria has opened up railroads; Tunis has opened the line from Sfax
to Gabès; Morocco the lines from Casablanca to Fez and from the
Algerian frontier to Taza.

General Lyautey said, "A workshop is worth a battalion in Morocco."

Workshops have been opened everywhere. There was never so much work
done. The colonial empire was never more prosperous, more active and
more glorious.

       *       *       *       *       *

A nation that is worn out and bled white has passed the stage where it
can come to the aid of others. In her death agony, she has no more
than her own strength to last her during the last hours. France has
been able to come to the aid of the other Allies. She has lent them a
strong helping hand, she has been able to save them from total
extinction. French troops have fought and are still fighting on all
the battle fronts; in Italy, the Balkans, Palestine and Central
Africa. It is almost to France alone and to France especially that the
salvage of the remnant of the Serbian Army has been due.

We remember what happened in September, 1915. At the time when the
dual offensive was attempted in Artois and in Champagne, the German
Armies invaded Poland, Volhynia, Lithuania and Courland, delivered
Austrian Galicia and commenced to submerge Serbia beneath their
innumerable legions. Invaded by three armies, the German, Austrian
and Bulgarian, all of them amply supplied with heavy artillery and
asphixiating gas, poor little Serbia was doomed beforehand. But,
tenacious to the end, her heroic defenders preferred to leave their
country rather than submit to a hated yoke. Step by step the Serbians,
always facing the enemy, retreated to the sea. It was a terrible
tragedy. Their retreat will remain a matter of legend, like that of
the Ten Thousand under Xenophon. As they retreated, the Serbians
called, in their despair, for help.

Who went to Serbia's aid? It was not Russia, whose armies were quite
worn out. It was not England, who feared an attack on Egypt and who
was still fighting at the Dardanelles. It was not Italy, whose special
efforts were directed towards preventing the junction of Austria with
Greece, and who was satisfied with establishing herself at Valona and
thus driving a wedge between her two rivals on the Adriatic coast.

But France, France who is represented as worn out and bled white,
heard Serbia's call for help and decided to respond to it.

Supplies were first landed at San Giovanni di Medua and Antivari in
the smaller French boats. But it was soon evident that these supplies
would be insufficient and that the Serbs could not maintain their
positions in the Adriatic ports even with French help from the sea.
The complete evacuation of an entire army, piece by piece, had to be
undertaken. The transporting of entire Serbia beyond the seas, to
another country, had to be considered. Where were they to go? Where
were the thousands of worn out soldiers, of sick and wounded men, to
be transported?

Once again France answered. France held Tunis, France held Bizerta.
Tunis and Bizerta would shield temporarily the remains of Serbia. From
the end of November, 1915, the smaller French ships, torpedo boats,
trawlers and transports made the trip from Durazzo to San Giovanni di
Medua to embark the Serbian Army. Great steamers, such as the _Natal_,
_Sinai_, and _Arménie_, and a flotilla of armored cruisers followed
them. Thirteen thousand men were transported in this fashion.

But the situation grew worse. The Serbs along the seacoasts were
pressed harder and harder by the Austrians and by Albanian bands.
Besides, the transporting to Tunis was too slow when the progress of
the enemy was considered. Finally the appearance of typhus and cholera
rendered more dangerous the removal of the unfortunate troops to a
great distance. A new plan was arranged. The remaining Serbs were to
be transported not into Tunis, which was so far away, but to a land as
near as possible to the scene of disaster. Corfu was there; Corfu,
only sixty miles away from the farthest point of debarkation; Corfu,
whose climate was marvelously suited to the recovery of sick men;
Corfu which offered a very safe harbor. It was decided to occupy
Corfu, prepare the island, transport the entire Serbian Army thither
and assure that this army would be built up there. And France was
charged with carrying out this operation.

On the seventh of January, 1916, the first French organization of ten
trawlers set out from Malta to make a preliminary reconnoissance
around Corfu, to drag for mines and to clear out the submarines. A
second flotilla followed it forty-eight hours later. On the eighth of
January the armored cruisers _Edgar Quinet_, _Waldeck-Rousseau_,
_Ernest Renan_, _Jules Ferry_ and five torpedo boats, which were
located at Bizerta, received orders to embark a battalion of Alpine
chasseurs with their arms, baggage and mules and to take up their
positions to be ready at the first signal.

On the night of the tenth, the French consul at Corfu woke up the
Greek prefect in order to announce to him the imminent arrival of our
squadron and what it was going to do. After he had received the formal
protest of this functionary, he went down to the port, where there was
no longer any doubt in anyone's mind of what was going to happen. With
him went guides and automobiles to finish everything quickly before
the Germans could offer any opposition. Some minutes later, on time at
the rendezvous agreed upon, the French cruisers came into the harbor
and immediately disembarked their contingent of Alpine Chasseurs.
Before daybreak the principal vantage points as well as the most
important positions on the island were occupied. Suspected persons
were seized in their beds, a doubtful post of T. S. F. was seized
also. Corfu, which went to sleep half German, woke up entirely French
to the tune of the martial music that was to inform the inhabitants of
the little change that had taken place over night.

The question remained of _Achilleion_, the property of William of
Germany, which was about nine miles from the city. If _Achilleion_ had
been a French property and German soldiers had paid a visit, what
pillage, what defilement, what orgies there would have been!

But _Achilleion_ was a German property, and the French have a method
of procedure that is peculiarly their own. This is what happened,
according to the narrative of a young naval officer who was on the
spot:

    At four o'clock in the morning an automobile set out from
    the dock, carrying a squad of twelve marine fusilliers under
    the command of one of the ship's lieutenants. A half hour
    later he presented himself at the gate of the palace and
    demanded that he be admitted. There was no response. He was
    insistent. Finally a door opened and an angry voice cried out
    in the darkness: "This isn't the time for visitors." For the
    owner, who found that there are no such things as small
    profits, permitted a visit for the sum of two francs per
    person. Surprised, the occupant of the palace submitted, and
    our detachment entered _Achilleion_, whose occupants it
    assembled--the watchman and two red-haired chambermaids--_en
    déshabillé_, also a mechanic and an entomologist who wore
    spectacles. Pale with fear, the latter threw himself on his
    knees before the officer. "If I must die, I ask that it may
    be here," said he. He was left in peace. A company of the
    Chasseurs arrived and the marines, with their lanterns in
    their hands, went back to the ships. The Tricolor floated
    over the Kaiser's villa, which was to become a hospital for
    the Serbs.

       *       *       *       *       *

At eleven o'clock in the morning it was all over, and the French
cruisers put out to sea on the return trip to Bizerta.

But the easiest thing had been done. The most difficult was about to
begin. It was not only a question of occupying Corfu; it was also a
matter of arranging to receive a worn-out and decimated army. It was a
difficult task that many would have judged out of the question.
Everything was lacking; there was nothing on hand.

A writer on naval matters, who has been the historian of the French
Navy in this war, M. Emile Vedel, has painted in the pages of
_Illustration_ an unheard-of and unique picture of what this
preparation of Corfu consisted:

     It was nothing less than a question of improvising all means
     that were necessary for disembarking; gangways, landing
     stairs, roads to and from various points on the island where
     the expected troops were to be concentrated; of uniting and
     collecting together the numerous boats--large and
     small--eighteen tugs (among them the _Marsouin_, _Rove_,
     _Iskeul_, _Marseillais 14_, _Audacieux_, _Requin_),
     twenty-seven smaller boats, nine barges, and a dozen
     mahonnes and small craft of all sizes, without counting the
     supply ships, floating tanks, unloading cranes and so
     forth--which the rapid unloading and revictualing of the new
     arrivals demanded; of isolating the sick who were infected
     with typhus and cholera; in a word, of putting on their feet
     the diverse offices that come under the heading of direction
     of the port, all the machinery of which was yet to be
     created. At the same time it was necessary to maintain and
     repair the booms of the harbor, to test the channels, make
     arrangements concerning piloting, anchorage, and new
     supplies of water, provisions and coal for the always
     hurried transports which arrived, unloaded and sailed away
     at all hours of the day and night; constantly to clear out
     and drag the waters near the island; establish observation
     posts around it, station batteries in suitable positions,
     and finally to protect the channels around Corfu and the
     Albanian coast, in which the English aided us effectively by
     sending a hundred drifters (a sort of little fishing boat
     which we call "cordiers" at Boulogne), which, beating
     against the wind under full sail, dragged a cable a thousand
     meters long to snare submarines. Thanks to a pair of
     floating docks, which were placed between the extreme end of
     Corfu and the neighboring coast, a distance of but two or
     three kilometers, our vessels were soon in position, in a
     line thirty miles in length so that they could execute all
     the movements necessary for the landing of the Serbs and
     also have gun drill, launch torpedoes and sea planes, and
     perform the rest of the maneuvers that are indispensable.

     Furthermore, fresh water in sufficient quantities had to be
     procured. For if the springs on the island could supply
     eighty thousand inhabitants, they now had to triple their
     output and give out a far greater supply to meet the demand
     of one hundred and fifty thousand more mouths. Every bit of
     flour had to come from outside, from Italy, France or
     England since Corfu has very few resources and we did not
     wish to encounter the hostility of a population to which it
     was necessary for us to show firmness more than once. The
     most recalcitrant were forced to give in, not without
     ceasing to rob us very much in the dealings they had with
     us. Oranges went up to ten francs a dozen, and small
     shopkeepers realized fortunes by doing money changing at
     fantastic rates.

     And all that will furnish only a very incomplete idea of the
     innumerable obligations the aquatic anthill, from an
     industrial and military standpoint, which is called a naval
     base, has to meet.

On the ninth of January, 1916, the situation of the Serbian Army was
precisely as follows: In the neighborhood of San Giovanni di Medua
there were twelve hundred officers, twenty-six thousand foot soldiers,
seven thousand horses and two thousand cattle; at Durazzo there were
thirty-six hundred officers, sixty-nine thousand soldiers, twenty
thousand horses and four thousand cattle; on the roads that led to
Valona some fifty thousand men including officers, two thousand horses
and three hundred cattle.

In these three principal groups were forty-one field pieces, the
glorious remainder of the Serbian artillery.

Add to that twenty-two thousand Austrian prisoners whom the Serbs
carried along with them in their exodus towards the coast and also the
pitiable troop of refugees, sick men, old men, women, children who,
desiring at any cost to escape slavery and servitude, followed the
retreating army.

The evacuation of this indomitable people was made at San Giovanni di
Medua. The soldiers were sent to Corfu. The civilians were sent to
Algiers and Tunis, the Austrian prisoners to Sardinia. But where were
the typhoid and the cholera patients to be transported? No one wanted
them; and in this stampede of a people, cholera and typhus had made
their appearance and spread with alarming rapidity. A certain number
of cholera patients had been taken to Brindisi; and everyone,
naturally, refused to take them in.

Since this was the case, a French trawler, the _Verdun_, commanded by
Lieutenant d'Aubarède, brought the sick to Corfu. And, as M. Emile
Vedel tells it, this was perhaps one of the most beautiful episodes of
our navy's activity, for there are few deaths as hideous as that to
which they exposed themselves in taking in their arms poor beings
touched with a malady essentially so contagious, and so dirty and
covered with vermin that they made everyone shudder. With precaution
and care that brothers do not always have for their own brothers,
these near-corpses were taken to Corfu, where doctors and nurses from
the French Navy saved some of them and made the end more easy for the
rest.

In twenty-two days everything was almost over. The troops at San
Giovanni and Valona and Durazzo had been evacuated, as had the
Austrian prisoners. All the money of the Serbian treasury had been
transported to Marseilles in the cruiser _Ernest Renan_. It amounted
to about eight hundred million francs.

However, on the twentieth of January, about two thousand men still
remained at San Giovanni di Medua. There were also a certain number of
field pieces. After so many men and guns had been saved, were these to
be abandoned? No. Everything must be saved. The last man must be saved
and the last gun must be saved, whatever may be the risk, the fatigue
and the hard work.

On the morning of the twentieth of January, Captain Cacqueray,
commanding the French naval forces, had two young naval officers of
the French fleet come aboard his ship, the _Marceau_, Ensigns
Couillaud and Augé, who commanded the little trawlers _Petrel_ and
_Marie-Rose_. He ordered them to return once more to San Giovanni and
bring back with them all they could.

"You must succeed and you will succeed," Captain Cacqueray said
simply.

Some few minutes later the two trawlers were out in the Adriatic,
headed for San Giovanni. Here we must quote Ensign Augé's words. He
commanded the _Marie-Rose_, and we must be satisfied with citing from
the eloquent brevity of the ship's log:

     From the peaceful docks of Brindisi, we passed through the
     winding channel of the outer port and then out of the
     harbor, gliding between the buoys. Then the mine fields were
     to be traversed, although the night was black and foggy. As
     we approached the Albanian coast the wind freshened, and in
     a veritable tempest, with hail and icy rain we entered the
     Gulf of Drin, whose water is very turbid. More watchful than
     ever, since submarines had been sighted in the neighborhood,
     we finally arrived at Medua. Almost blocked off by the sand
     bars, the little harbor was further encumbered by a dozen
     wrecks, boats which the Austrians had sunk. The question was
     where to pass through this mess, on the top of the water,
     with masts and spars pointing every way. After having
     rounded the line of mines and the _Brindisi_, an Italian
     vessel that had struck a mine some days before, we made the
     port. Ten houses and a wretched wharf on worm-eaten piling
     at the end of a funnel of mountains with terrible rocks is
     all there is of Medua.

     An empty sailboat was moored to the end of the wharf, which
     facilitated our operations. The _Petrel_, which was of
     lighter draft than my boat, managed to get alongside and, by
     vigorous efforts, we were able to join her. Ashore there
     were soldiers in muddy clothes and worn-out shoes. The
     gangway and the sailboat were soon filled by a chilly cold
     wind, which tried to blow it offshore and which nothing
     could restrain. It was impossible to locate any responsible
     person and out of the question to make one's self
     understood. Everyone thought only of escaping from that
     Hell. Finally some Serbian officers came up who succeeded
     somewhat in controlling their impatient troops. They made us
     bring up the first cannon, which was pushed over the shaking
     planks of the wharf. With great effort and by the use of
     triple tackles the gun was got aboard the _Petrel_, and the
     carriage and wheels on the _Marie-Rose_, whose hatch was
     wider. The beginning was slow, but, after the second cannon,
     the embarking went along smoothly.

     There was not enough time. Everyone stamped in the mud. With
     the completely washed out Serbian uniforms mixed the
     brilliant colors of those of the Montenegrin guard. Seated
     on a stone, King Nicholas sat stoically in the falling rain,
     awaiting the arrival of the Italian torpedo boat that was
     to place itself under his orders. Soldiers from the French
     mission arrived and did police duty. The radio-operators
     from the Italian post arrived and put their baggage on
     board. An officer of the Serbian Army was there with all the
     state archives. A crowd of people instinctively pressed
     towards us and got mixed up with the soldiers who were
     supposed to keep order. In spite of the tempest which
     thwarted everything, we managed to embark eighteen .75 guns
     and three 100 howitzers, as well as a hundred cases of
     projectiles. The weather grew more dreadful, with hail
     stones in the icy rain. Blows were necessary to prevent the
     crowding aboard of that mob of people whom neither shouts
     nor threats could stop. We allowed as many as possible to
     embark--about a hundred on the _Petrel_ and twice as many
     with us--Serbs, Montenegrins and Allies, of all classes and
     conditions, and, despairingly we shoved off to stop the
     crowd that remained. We were the last hope of these poor
     people--there were about fifteen hundred of them, whose only
     hope now was to face the frightful paths, marshes and
     swollen rivers that separated them from Durazzo.

     Night was falling; there remained only time to get away.
     Cases of preserves were quickly opened. All our bread and
     biscuits were used, and some bowls of boiling tea comforted
     our guests. But leaving the harbor, the sea grew heavier
     and torrents of spray put the finishing touch to the
     inextricable disorder that prevailed aboard ship. The storm
     stayed with us until we made Brindisi, where we arrived at
     seven o'clock on the morning of the twenty-second. When
     Italy was sighted, the tiredness and discouragement
     disappeared as if by magic. Hand clappings, praise of
     France, promises of victory and of revenge, and absurd
     efforts to disembark everything at once--passengers and
     material. (Journal of Ensign Augé, Commander of the
     _Marie-Rose_.)

Is that all? No; it is not. For if French effort is limitless, the
tonnage of the trawlers is not. And, in spite of every effort, they
were unable to get everyone aboard. Down there in the mud at Medua
some Serbs still waited, turning anxious eyes towards the high seas to
see whether or not the tricolor would appear on the horizon.... Well,
it did reappear, for France never gives up the fight. The French motto
here, as everywhere else, was "to the bitter end." On the
twenty-fourth of January the _Petrel_ and the _Marie-Rose_ started on
the final trip. Will they arrive in time? Probably not. In the
mountains that surround San Giovanni rifle shots and the rattle of
mitrailleuses were heard; the road to Alessio was deserted, the beach
seemed deserted, Medua harbor was covered with wreckage of all sorts,
rendering navigation impossible. However, the tiny craft entered the
harbor and approached the shore. Finally they saw some Serbs there.
The news was as disturbing as possible. The Austrians were only a few
kilometers off. There was fighting on the outskirts of the town. The
last able-bodied Serbs struggled manfully to hold off the Austrian
advance guard, which pressed them hard. Not a minute was to be lost if
a last salvage was to be made.

After a brief consultation, the two young commanders decided to take
off everyone in their old boats, aided by a huge lighter which they
took in tow. A grave responsibility if the weather did not hold; but
the man who risks nothing will gain nothing.

They worked with feverish haste. The hope of not being abandoned gave
wings to the weak. By four o'clock in the afternoon everything was
practically ready ... four "seventy-fives," ten artillery caissons,
two radio outfits, a thousand new rifles, hundreds of cases of shells,
cartridges and grenades and likewise large quantities of harness were
loaded on the trawlers. All the men who were in the town, its
outskirts or on the beach were assembled and embarked on the boats.
Not one was left behind. This time, safe from the rifles in the
distant mountains, everyone was saved.

     At four-fifty in the afternoon [writes Ensign Augé] our
     little boats cleared the harbor for the last time and made
     the open sea. Suddenly we see a trail of foam hastening on
     us with a mad rush. It started three or four hundred meters
     off on our right. There is a lightning flash and we see the
     torpedo cross our bows, too low, fortunately. A submarine
     has tried to attack us but has missed. We describe a great
     circle in order to avoid a second attack. Fortunately night
     falls to end the chase, and we make for the Italian coast.
     Although the sea is smooth, the third boat is lurching
     terribly. About midnight I hear terrible cries from this
     boat. It is dark as pitch and impossible to make out
     anything in the darkness. The cries continue: sparks burst
     forth. Something is thrown into the sea. It is impossible
     to know what is happening. So much the worse. The most
     dangerous thing would be to stop. Let us go on.

They went on and finally arrived in sight of Italy the next morning.
The incident of the night before had been a little thing which had
started a panic on board the boat. Little by little the roofs and
towers of Brindisi appeared in the distance. The entire squadron of
Allied ships was there, ranged in battle formation. When they saw the
two little boats which were bringing in the last Serbs with their last
guns, they rendered military honors to the heroic saviors, the crews
cheering and the colors saluting. Supreme and unprecedented homage was
rendered two nations: France and Serbia.

       *       *       *       *       *

In January, 1918, M. Vesnitch, Serbian Minister to France, on a
mission to the United States, during an after-dinner speech, in a
voice that did not conceal his emotion and with a different manner
from his usual downcast one, told some of the details of this Passion.
And he added:

"We are grateful to everyone, but Serbia's heart will remain attached
through all centuries to come to France."

I repeat these words, which are France's sweetest reward, because they
attest in history what France, the nation "worn out and bled white"
has done to save and succor her little ally.

Finally let me say that the men are wrong who believe France is
without strength and resources. Beneath her torn garments, in rags,
under flesh that is cruelly bruised, there beats a virile heart which
fights on and on. And there is young, red blood which still flows and
is always ready to flow for the immortal principles of Liberty,
Justice and Humanity.




IV

THE WAR AIMS OF FRANCE


A French statesman, Mr. Louis Barthou, has summed up the War aims of
France in the three words: "Restitution, Reparation, Guarantees."

Restitution means the surrender of all occupied territories, of the
territories occupied by force during forty-seven months, as well as
the territories occupied by force during forty-seven years. Between
the five departments forming Flanders-Argonne and the five departments
forming Alsace-Lorraine, France is unable to make any distinction.
France wants Metz back on the same ground upon which she wants Lille
back. If Germany is to keep Metz she might as well keep Lille. Her
claim to Strasbourg is not better than her claim to Cambrai.

And this is a thing which "the man in the street" fails sometimes to
understand. He says: "Yes, we know, Alsace-Lorraine was taken from
France forty-seven years ago by violence, without the people of the
occupied territories being consulted. But how did France acquire
Alsace-Lorraine in previous times? Was it not also by force after
successful wars? Is it not a fact that Alsace-Lorraine, in days of
yore, belonged to Germany, and that, historically, Alsace is a German
land?"

No, it is precisely not a fact. It is the contrary of a fact and of
truth. And this must be made clear, once for all.

When France demands Alsace-Lorraine, she does not do so because she
will have some more departments in her geographical configuration, but
because these territories belonged to France during centuries and
centuries, because they were taken from France by force forty-seven
years ago, because the people of these territories not only were never
consulted, but also protested against Prussian domination--because, in
a word, it is a question of right.

In a speech, which he delivered on the 24th of January, 1918, before
the Reichstag, Count von Hertling, the Imperial German Chancellor,
expressed himself as follows:

     Alsace-Lorraine comprises, as is known, for the most part
     purely German regions which by a century long of violence
     and illegality were severed from the German Empire, until
     finally in 1779 the French Revolution swallowed up the last
     remnant. Alsace and Lorraine then became French provinces.
     When in the war of 1870, we demanded back the district which
     had been criminally wrested from us, that was not a conquest
     of foreign territory but, rightly and properly speaking,
     what today is called disannexation.

It is doubtful that Count von Hertling will ever leave in history the
memory of a great Chancellor; but, if he does, it will be no doubt in
the History of Ignorance and Falsehood. Never has a statesman in so
few words uttered with such impudence so many untruths!

Historically speaking, there are in Alsace-Lorraine three parts: there
is Lorraine, there is Alsace, and there is the southern part of
Alsace including the town of Mulhouse.

As regards the town of Mulhouse, the question is most simple and
clear. The town never, at any time, belonged to Germany or to the
Germans. It belonged to Switzerland and, at the end of the 18th
century, during the French revolution, the town, after a referendum,
decided to become French. A delegation was sent to Paris, to the
French Parliament, then called the _Conseil des Cinq-Cents_, and the
delegation expressed publicly, officially, the desire of Mulhouse to
be part of the French territory. There was a deliberation, and
unanimously the _Conseil des Cinq-Cents_ voted a motion couched in the
following terms: "_The French Republic accepts the vow of the citizens
of Mulhouse._"

A few weeks later the French authorities, among scenes of unparalleled
enthusiasm, made their entry into the town, and the flag of Mulhouse
was wrapped up in a tricolor box bearing the inscription: "The
Republic of Mulhouse rests in the bosom of the French Republic."

Alsace--the rest of Alsace--became French in 1648, more than two
centuries before the war of 1870. It became French according to a
treaty. The treaty was signed by the Austrian Emperor, because Alsace
belonged to the Austrian Imperial Family. And it is not without
interest to quote an article (article 75) of the treaty:

     The Emperor cedes to the King of France forever, _in
     perpetuum_, without any reserve, with full jurisdiction and
     sovereignty, all the Alsatian territory. The Austrian
     Emperor gives it to the King of France in such a way that no
     other Emperor, in the future, will ever have any power in
     any time to affirm any right on these territories.

When today one reads that treaty, one has the impression that more
than two centuries ago the Austrian Emperor had already a sort of
apprehension that later on another Emperor would interfere in the
matter and create mischief!

Fifty-three years after that treaty, the Prussians, who dislike seeing
anything in some one's else possession, tried to recover Alsace. Their
own ambassador tried to dissuade them, and in 1701 Count Schmettau,
ambassador of Prussia in Paris, wrote to his king:

"_We cannot take Alsace, because it is well known that her inhabitants
are more French than the Parisians_...."

Could anything answer better the affirmation that "Alsatians are of
German tendency?"

Lorraine became French in 1552, more than three centuries before the
war of 1870. Lorraine became French not after a war and as the result
of a conquest, but according to a treaty signed by all the Protestant
Princes of Germany, in which we find the following sentence, which is
really worthy of meditation: "_We find just that the King of France,
as promptly as possible, takes possession of the towns of Toul, Metz,
and Verdun, where the German language has never been used._" So that
the Germans themselves put on the same line the towns of Metz, Toul,
and Verdun, and recognized that the town of Metz was not German.

All this is extremely simple and clear. What happened several
centuries later is equally clear.

When, in 1871, on February 16th, the deputies of Alsace-Lorraine
learned that their provinces would be given up to Germany, they
assembled, and in an historical document which was signed by all of
them--there were thirty-six--they protested in the following terms:

     Alsace and Lorraine cannot be alienated. Today, before the
     whole world, they proclaim that they want to remain French.
     Europe cannot allow or ratify the annexation of Alsace and
     Lorraine. Europe cannot allow a people to be seized like a
     flock of sheep. Europe cannot remain deaf to the protest of
     a whole population. Therefore, we declare in the name of our
     population, in the name of our children and of our
     descendants, that we are considering any treaty which gives
     us up to a foreign power as a treaty null and void, and we
     will eternally revindicate the right of disposing of
     ourselves and of remaining French.

And, three years later, in January, 1874, when for the first time
Alsace and Lorraine had to elect deputies, they reiterated the same
protest. They elected fifteen new deputies; some were Protestants,
some were Catholics, one of them was the Bishop of Strasbourg, but
they unanimously signed a declaration which was read at the Tribune of
the German Reichstag. The declaration was the following:

     In the name of all the people of Alsace-Lorraine, we protest
     against the abuse of force of which our country is a
     victim.... Citizens having a soul and an intelligence are
     not mere goods that may be sold, or with which you may
     trade.

     The contract which annexed us to Germany is null and void. A
     contract is only valid when the two contractants had an
     entire freedom to sign it. France was not free when she
     signed such a contract. Therefore our electors want us to
     say that we consider ourselves as not bound by such a
     treaty, and they want us to affirm once more our right of
     disposing of ourselves.

I beg to call the attention of the reader to two sentences of this
protestation:

"Europe cannot allow a people to be seized like a flock of sheep,"
wrote the deputies of 1871. "People are not mere goods which may be
sold or with which you may trade," proclaimed the deputies of 1874.
Now you will find, nearly word for word, the same thought expressed
in the message of President Wilson to Congress, when he wrote: "No
right exists anywhere to hand peoples about from sovereignty to
sovereignty as if they were property."

That right does not exist, and it is because that right was
outrageously violated in 1871 that France wants Alsace-Lorraine to
come back to her. It is because, in 1871, Right has been wronged that
today Right must be reinstated.

Some people have spoken of a referendum. Why a referendum? Was there
any referendum in 1871? And how could there be a referendum? How could
you include in this referendum the hundreds of thousands of Alsatians
who have fled from German domination? How could you exclude from this
referendum the hundreds of thousands of Germans who have come to
Alsace?

The referendum was rendered by Mulhouse in 1798. Will that town be
obliged to vote again? And how many times will it be obliged to vote
for France? The referendum was rendered by the whole of Alsace and
Lorraine in 1871 and 1874, by their elected deputies, when they
unanimously protested against the German annexation.

It was rendered twenty years ago by the census which was taken by the
Germans themselves in Alsace. According to that census, in 1895,
notwithstanding the fact that the teaching of French was prohibited in
the public schools, there were 160,000 people in Alsace speaking
French. And five years later, in 1900, according to another census
there were 200,000 people in Alsace speaking French. And of these
200,000 people, there were more than 52,000 children.

The referendum was also rendered by Alsatians who, before this war,
engaged themselves in the French Army, and became officers. According
to the official statistics of the French War Department, there were in
1914 in the French Army 20 generals, 145 superior officers, and 400
ordinary officers of Alsatian origin. On the other side, in the German
Army in 1914, there were four officers of Alsatian origin.

And finally the referendum was rendered only one year before the
present war, in 1913, when Herr von Jagow, then Prefect of Police in
Berlin, made the following extraordinary declaration: "We Germans are
obliged in Alsace to behave ourselves as if we were in an enemy's
country...." What better referendum could you wish than such an
admission by a German statesman?

Moreover, the question of Alsace-Lorraine is not only a French
question, but also an international question. It is not only France
who has sworn to herself to recover Alsace-Lorraine--it is all the
Allies who have sworn to France that she should recover it.

"We mean to stand by the French democracy to the death," solemnly
declared Mr. Lloyd-George on the 5th of January, 1918, "in the demand
they make for a reconsideration of the great wrong of 1871, when,
without any regard to the wishes of the population, two French
provinces were torn from the side of France and incorporated in the
German Empire."

And, three days later, using nearly the same words, President Wilson,
in his luminous message to Congress, said: "_The wrong done to France
by Prussia in 1871, in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has
unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years should be
righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the
interest of all._"

All the statesmen who have spoken since the beginning of the war in
the name of the Allied Powers have attested that this war is not only
a struggle for the liberty of nations and the respect due to
nationalities, but also an effort toward definite peace. Their words
only appeared fit for stirring up the enthusiasm of the crowds, and
fortifying their will of sacrifice, because they gave expression to
their feelings and prayers. If they are forgotten by those who uttered
them they will be remembered by those who heard and treasured them.

In September, 1914, Winston Churchill said: "We want this war to
remodel the map of Europe according to the principle of nationalities,
and the real wish of the people living in the contested territories.
After so much bloodshed we wish for a peace which will free races, and
restore the integrity of nations.... Let us have done with the
armaments, the fear of strain, intrigues, and the perpetual threat of
the horrible present crisis. Let us make the regulation of European
conflicts just and natural." The French republic, of one mind with the
Allies, proclaimed through its authorized representatives that this
war is a war of deliverance. "France," said Mr. Stephen Pichon,
Foreign Minister, "will not lay down arms before having shattered
Prussian militarism, so as to be able to rebuild on a basis of justice
a regenerated Europe." And Mr. Paul Deschanel, the President of the
Chamber, continued: "The French are not only defending their soil,
their homes, the tombs of their ancestors, their sacred memories,
their ideal works of art and faith and all the graceful, just, and
beautiful things their genius has lavished forth: they are defending,
too, the respect of treaties, the independence of Europe, and human
freedom. We want to know if all the effort of conscience during
centuries will lead to its slavery, if millions of men are to be
taken, given up, herded at the other side of a frontier and condemned
to fight for their conquerors and masters against their country, their
families, and their brothers.... The world wishes to live at last,
Europe to breathe, and the nations mean to dispose freely of
themselves."

These engagements will be kept. But they will have been kept only when
Alsace-Lorraine--the Belgium of 1871, as Rabbi Stephen Wise has called
it--has been returned to France. Then, and only then, will there be
real peace. Then, and only then, will the "Testament" of Paul
Derouléde have been executed:

     When our war victorious is o'er,
     And our country has won back its rank,
     Then with the evils war brings in its train
     Will disappear the hatred the conqueror trails.

     Then our great France, full of love without spite
     Sowing fresh springing-corn 'neath her new-born laurels,
     Will welcome Work, father of Fortune,
     And sing Peace, mother of lengthy deeds.

     Then will come Peace, calm, serene, and awful,
     Crushing down arms, but upholding intellect;
     For we shall stand out as just-hearted conquerors,
     Only taking back what was robbed from us.

     And our nation, weary of mourning,
     Will soothe the living while praising the dead,
     And nevermore will we hear the name of battle
     And our children shall learn to unlearn hate.

Just as France will not accept peace without restitution, she will not
accept peace without reparation.

Germany can never make reparation for all the ruin, all the
destruction, all the sacrilege she has wrought. There can be no
reparation for the Cathedral of Rheims, for the Hotel de Ville at
Arras, for the deaths of thousands of innocent beings, for the
slaughter of women and children.

But there can be reparation for the damage done to machinery. The
treasures of art which, contrary to all law and right, Germany has
taken into her own country, can be returned. They can return the funds
illegally stolen from the vaults of municipalities, banks and public
societies. They can pay off the receipts which they themselves have
signed for the objects they have compelled the owners to hand over to
them.

Every château in the north of France, places such as those of the
Prince of Monaco, of Mr. Balny d'Avricourt, that of Coucy, have been
looted and pillaged. Antique furniture, paintings by the great
masters, sculptures, historic pieces of tapestry have been carried off
into Germany. Tapestries, sculptures, furniture and paintings must
come back from Germany. The museums at St. Quentin and Lille have seen
their collections of value to art and science carried off; these
collections must come back. Factories have been robbed of their pumps,
of their equipment, of their trucks; other pumps, other equipment,
other trucks must be put in their place. Otherwise, nothing will
prevent that in the future other expeditions will come to ransack
other countries. A bold move towards Venice allowed base hands to be
laid on the most beautiful works of art humanity had produced. A
fortunate descent on the shores of Long Island or of New Jersey would
allow the Metropolitan Museum to be looted.

At Ham, in the Somme district, the Grand Duke of Hesse, the former
Empress of Russia's brother, one morning entered the shop of an
antiquarian and picked out a number of ancient bibelots and vases,
ordering that they be sent to his quarters. The owner thought it would
be wise to state the price of the lot:

"The price," exclaimed the Grand Duke, "there's nothing for me to pay
for! Everything here belongs to me."

But the owner protested, since, as he said, he did own the goods.

"Here," said the Grand Duke, "this will pay you for them."

And he handed the man his card with the words "good for so many
francs" written on it; also his signature.

The number of francs mentioned on the Grand Duke of Hesse's card will
have to be paid in full after the war. So will the thousands of
requisitions signed by persons of less importance--governors,
generals, colonels, majors, men who thought they could ransack all
Belgium and the north of France with impunity, giving in exchange mere
scraps of paper.

The great cities of Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Laon and Mezières have
been compelled to pay exorbitant levies for war purposes, which have
amounted to billions of francs. This was contrary to all international
law and to the Hague Tribunal's regulations. The funds thus illegally
extorted will have to be repaid in full. No indemnities--that is
understood and is perfectly just. It is precisely because there will
not have to be any indemnities that the indemnities already extorted
will have to be made good.

       *       *       *       *       *

Finally, just as France cannot make peace without receiving
restitution and reparation, she cannot make peace without receiving
certain guarantees.

Here we approach one of the most complex and difficult aspects of the
entire problem, because we find ourselves in the presence of the
famous League of Nations. President Wilson, one of the most noble and
generous spirits, one of the greatest figures that has appeared in the
entire war, launched if not the idea at least the first definite
statement thereof.... And this statement has awakened in all hearts,
tired of carnage and slaughter, the same infinite hope that words of
goodness, liberty and fraternity always awaken, which evoke the
thought of the supreme end towards which humanity tends. The statement
has done better than merely move men's emotions, it has moved men's
thoughts. It has kindled in them a ray of hope which tends to shine
more brightly every day in that they know that the civilized world
will be truly a civilized world only when it is formed and fashioned
in the likeness of a civilized nation. In a civilized nation no one
has the right to kill another man, to obtain justice by using force,
to commit murder, nor to raise armed bands to shoot, blow up or kill
with poisoned gas other men. Tribunals exist to appease differences
and to prevent fighting; every citizen is associated with every other
citizen in the common cause of security and progress.

In a civilized world no nation has the right to massacre, no nation
ought to have the right to resort to the use of force to obtain
justice, no nation ought to have the right to attack, harm, or
destroy another nation. There ought to be tribunals to appease the
differences of peoples as well as those of individuals; every nation
ought to be associated with every other nation to assure the progress
of the entire world.

This theory is not only appealing, it is irrefutable. But it is a law
for this earth that the most profoundly just and true theories, those
which have been most scientifically demonstrated, encounter, when put
into practice, obstacles which have not been surmounted and are often
insurmountable.

President Wilson, who is not only a great jurist and a noble idealist,
but who also has that genius for realization which is a characteristic
of all America, has not failed to appreciate the difficulties which
the League of Nations would encounter were it put into practice. And
if, in his messages, he has insisted with a force that is every day
more eloquent on the necessity of tackling the problem; he has never
given a detailed solution for it.

He has done better than that, for he has swept aside certain factors
which would have made it absolutely impossible. On the second, of
April, 1917, in his immortal declaration of war, he formally declared
that "no autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within a
partnership of nations or observe its covenants. It must be a league
of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals
away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would
and render account to no one, would be a corruption seated at its very
heart. Only a free people can hold their purpose and their honor
steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any
narrow interest of their own."

These are admirable words of truth and of philosophic depth, words
which deserve to be graven in stone. No autocracy, then, in the League
of Nations, no German militarism nor Austrian imperialism in it. No
universal league of nations, even, but a limited society, a society of
democracies!

Certain hasty critics have observed neither the same prudence nor
logic as President Wilson. They have been farther from the truth, much
farther from the truth. They have falsified his text, as do all
commentators. They have desired to build complete in all details the
League of Nations, which only existed in outline. They have succeeded
in showing how difficult the construction would be, and they have only
been able to set up a house of cards which the first breath of wind
would knock down.

For example, this is how one of the most eminent French socialists, M.
Albert Thomas, a man who has given abundant proof of his practical
experience and actual talents, formerly the French Minister of
Munitions, depicts the League of Nations:

     Let us suppose [he wrote on the twenty-fifth of December,
     1917], as the mathematicians say, that the problem is
     solved. Let us suppose that the society of nations, made up
     of all the nations, had been created by common accord about
     the year 1910 or 1912. What would it have accomplished?
     After the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the
     Hague Tribunal, or perhaps the Washington Tribunal, would
     have made inquiry into the conditions of the murder. It
     would have taken certain steps. And if Austria, still
     dissatisfied, had invaded Serbia for the sake of revenge or
     to give scope to her ambitious designs, if Germany had
     joined with her in this, then all the other allied nations,
     in the performance of their duty, would have entered into a
     war against the central powers in order to force them to
     respect the liberties and the integrity of little Serbia.
     For there can be no rule without sanction therefore. No
     international law is possible if there does not exist at the
     service of this law the "organized force that is superior to
     that of any nation or to that of any alliance of nations" of
     which President Wilson speaks.

     If the society of nations had existed in 1914 and if Germany
     had violated its laws, the entire world would have taken
     military action against Germany by means of war, economic
     action by means of blockade and of depriving her of the
     necessities of life. The entire world would have been at war
     with her and her allies. And in order that the league of
     nations might continue to exist, in order that the rule of
     justice, scarcely outlined, could have continued to exist,
     the victory of the entente powers would have been as
     necessary as it is today. Mr. Lloyd-George and President
     Wilson would have said, as they say today, "No league of
     nations without victory."

     The difference is that in 1914 a verdict in the case would
     have been handed down by the common tribunal of the nations,
     and that there would have been no possible discussion of the
     violations of right committed by Germany nor on the
     responsibility for having caused the war.

     The difference would have been that in place of seeing the
     neutral nations hesitating, frightened by German force,
     disturbed by German lies, rallying only under the protection
     of one of the Entente armies, at the moment when they had
     seen on which side lay right, they would all, at the very
     beginning, have entered into the battle in fulfillment of
     their obligations not only on account of their moral
     responsibility but on account of their clearly understood
     interests.

     Finally the difference is that, the rights of the peoples
     having been defined clearly, there would have been no
     moment's uncertainty nor hesitation concerning the ends of
     the war.

     And it is impossible to doubt that the present situation of
     the war would have been decidedly different from what it is
     today.

I have cited the passage at length in order to give the critic's
argument its widest scope. But, alas, who does not see the argument's
fallacy? Who does not perceive that this reënforced skyscraper is a
cardboard column liable to fall with the first push that is given it?

Moreover, from the very beginning, the originator of the idea of the
society of nations admits the hypothesis of a war and presupposes all
the nations in the league are making war against another nation. Even
with the society of nations there will still be wars. Even with the
society of nations there will be no guarantee of absolute peace.

So we are shown the spectacle, in case of war, of all the nations
making war at once, without the least hesitation, without delay,
without any discussion, against the people that disturbs the peace of
the world. Is it a certainty that this unanimity would result? Is it a
certainty that there would be no falling away, no delay? And, granting
that there would be none of this, is it a certainty that irremediable
catastrophes could be avoided? To consider once more M. Thomas'
example of the war of 1914, let us suppose that there had been at that
time a society of nations, that England had had an army, that the
United States had had an army, and that the Anglo-American army had
not lost a day nor an hour. Is it a certainty that they would have
prevented the Germans from being at the gates of Liège on the seventh
of August, in Brussels on the nineteenth of August, and before Paris
on the second of September? And if today France, England, America,
Italy, Japan and four-fifths of the civilized world, in spite of the
treasure of heroism and effort that has been expended, have not been
able to prevent the present result, is it possible that this would
have been obtained with the assistance of Switzerland, the
Scandinavian nations, Holland and Spain?

"The difference," continues M. Thomas, "is that there would not have
been the possibility of any discussion of the violation of rights
committed by Germany, nor upon what nation rests the responsibility
for causing the war." But is that so sure? How was there any
discussion in 1914 of the violation of Belgium by Germany? Did not
Germany herself, in the teeth of all the world, hurl the avowal of
this violation when von Bethmann-Hollweg, in the Reichstag, cynically
declared: "We have just invaded Belgium.... Yes, we know that it is
contrary to international law; but we were compelled by necessity. And
necessity knows no law." What international tribunal's verdict could
have the force of this avowal from the lips of the guilty man?
However, the world has not moved, the world has not trembled, the
world is not now up in arms. And who would guarantee that another time
when the case will be perhaps less flagrant, the crime more obscure,
the aggressor less cynical, the world will tremble and rise in arms?

Moreover, is it always possible to determine the responsibility for
war's origin? Is it always possible, before an international tribunal
of arbitration, to throw the proper light and all the light on the
course events have taken? Will the judges always be unanimous?

Take the case of the last Balkan War in 1912. Is it possible today,
from a six years' perspective, to establish with any degree of
certitude the reasons for its outbreak and determine without
hesitation the responsibility for it? Can you affirm with any degree
of certainty that a court composed of American, European and Asiatic
jurists would be unanimous in condemning Turkey and exonerating
Bulgaria? And tomorrow, if the Ukraine should suddenly hurl itself
against the Republic of the Don, or if Finland invaded Great Russia,
with your international court would you be really in a way to
pronounce a verdict within five days? And if Sweden took Finland's
part and Germany took Great Russia's, could you guarantee that
Argentina, Japan, Australia and even France would consent to mobilize
their fleets and their armies to settle the question of a frontier on
the banks of the Neva? Can you guarantee that every war of every Slav
republic would have for a correlative the mobilization of the entire
world?

And then are you certain that the idea of a society of nations is
exactly a new one? Are you certain that there did not exist a society
of nations before the outbreak of the present war? Have you never
heard that, on the fifteenth of June, 1907, at The Hague, forty-four
nations of the civilized world (and Germany was one of the number)
assembled and met together to form such a league? Have you never heard
of the treaty that was signed then which, according to the wording at
the treaty's head, had for its object "fixing the laws and usages at
war on the land"? Have you never read the terms of this convention,
have you never glanced through the sixty-odd articles which today, in
the presence of the nameless horrors in which we lend a hand, offer a
prodigious interest to actuality?

Glance over these articles--and let us see how they have been applied:

     ARTICLE 4 provides that "_prisoners of war must be humanely
     treated. All their personal belongings, except arms, horses,
     and military papers, remain their property_." Now all the
     prisoners held by Germany have, without exception, been
     spoiled of their money, of their portfolios, of their rings,
     of their jewels, of their eyeglasses.

     ARTICLE 6 says that "_the state may employ as workmen the
     prisoners of war_," but it is careful in stipulating "_that
     the work must not be excessive and must have nothing
     whatever to do with operations of war_." ARTICLE 7 says
     that "_prisoners of war shall be treated as regards board,
     lodging, and clothing on the same footing as the troops of
     the Government who captured them_." Each of these two
     articles has been violated since the beginning of the war by
     the Germans. After the Battle of the Marne, when the
     advancing French troops of Joffre arrived on the Aisne they
     found French civilians captured by the Germans and compelled
     by them to work in the trenches. Moreover, an official
     report emanating from Mr. Gustave Ador, President of the
     International Red Cross, now member of the Swiss Federal
     Council, called the attention of the belligerents as soon as
     October, 1914, to the bad treatment of the French prisoners
     in Germany. Each French officer had, as prisoner, a salary
     of one hundred marks per month, which was not even half of
     the pay of an under-officer.

     ARTICLES 23, 25, 27, and 28 are so interesting that they
     must be quoted _in extenso_:

     ARTICLE 23. In _addition to the prohibitions provided by
     special conventions, it is especially forbidden_:

     (a) _To employ poison or poisoned weapons._

     (c) _To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his
     arms, or having no longer means of defense, has surrendered
     at discretion._

     (d) _To declare that no quarter will be given._

     (e) _To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to
     cause unnecessary suffering._

     (f) _To make improper use of a flag of truce, of the
     national flag, or of the military insignia and uniform of
     the enemy, as well as the distinctive badges of the Geneva
     Convention._

     (g) _To destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such
     destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the
     necessities of war._

     (h) _A belligerent is likewise forbidden to compel the
     nationals of the hostile party to take part in the
     operations of war directed against their own country, even
     if they were in the belligerent's service before the
     commencement of the war._

     ARTICLE 25. _The attack or bombardment, by whatever means,
     of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are
     undefended is prohibited._

     ARTICLE 27. _In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps
     must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings
     dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes,
     historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and
     wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at
     the time for military purposes._

     ARTICLE 28. _The pillage of a town or place, even when taken
     by assault, is prohibited._

     It seems that the men of The Hague, when they wrote those
     articles, had a sort of prescience of the future cruelties
     of war and that they wanted to avoid them. Let us see how
     far they have succeeded.

     It was forbidden to employ poison or poisoned weapons. No
     later than last spring when the Germans evacuated certain
     parts of the north of France instructions emanating from the
     German general headquarters were found in the pocket of many
     German prisoners or on the dead, and those instructions
     indicated how the water of the wells was to be poisoned:
     "Such and such a soldier," ran instructions, "will be in
     charge of the wells, will throw in each one a sufficient
     quantity of poison or creosote, or, lacking these, all
     available filth."

     It was forbidden to declare that no quarter would be given.
     And here is the order of the day issued on August 25, 1914,
     by General Stenger, commanding the Fifty-eighth German
     Brigade, to his troops: "After today no more prisoners will
     be taken. All prisoners are to be killed. Wounded, with or
     without arms, are to be killed. Even prisoners already
     grouped in convoys are to be killed. Let not a single living
     enemy remain behind us."

     It was forbidden to pillage a town or locality, even when
     taken by assault. And on the corpse of the German private
     Handschumacher (of the Eleventh Battalion of Jägers,
     Reserve) in the very earliest days of the war, was found the
     following diary: "August 8, 1914. Gouvy (Belgium). There, as
     the Belgians had fired on the German soldiers, we at once
     pillaged the goods station. Some cases, eggs, shirts, and
     all eatables were seized. The safe was gutted and the money
     divided among the men. All securities were torn up."

     In fact, pillage and robberies went on on such a high scale
     during the first months of the war that considerable sums of
     money were sent from France and Belgium to Germany. A German
     newspaper, the _Berlin Tageblatt_, of November 26, 1914,
     implicitly avowed it when, in a technical article on the
     military treasury ("_Der Zahlmeister im Felde_"), it wrote:
     "It is curious to note that far more money-orders are sent
     from the theater of operations to the interior of the
     country than _vice versa_."

     ARTICLE 50 of this Hague Convention states that "_no general
     penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the
     population on account of the acts of individuals for which
     they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally
     responsible_." Side by side with this article, it is
     interesting to reproduce an extract from a proclamation of
     General von Bülow, posted up at Liège on August 22, 1914:
     "The inhabitants of the town of Andenne, after having
     protested their peaceful intentions, treacherously surprised
     our troops. It is with my full consent that the general in
     command had the whole place burned, and about a hundred
     people were shot." Moreover, here is an extract from a
     proclamation of Major-Commander Dieckmann, posted up at
     Grivegnée on September 8, 1914: "Every one who does not obey
     at once the word of command, 'Hands up,' is guilty of the
     penalty of death." And finally here is an extract from a
     proclamation of Marshal Baron von der Goltz, posted up in
     Brussels on October 5, 1914: "In future all places near the
     spot where such acts have taken place [destruction of
     railway lines or telegraph wires]--no matter whether guilty
     or not--shall be punished without mercy. With this end in
     view, hostages have been brought from all places near
     railway lines exposed to such attacks, and at the first
     attempt to destroy railway lines, telegraph or telephone
     lines, they will be immediately shot."

     ARTICLE 56 of the Hague Convention provides that "_the
     property of municipalities, that of institutions dedicated
     to religion, charity, and education, to the arts and
     sciences, even when state property, shall be treated as
     private property. All seizure of, destruction, or willful
     damage done to institutions of this character, historical
     monuments, works of art and science, is forbidden, and
     should be made the subject of legal proceedings._"

     Four names, which will be eternally remembered, are here
     sufficient to answer: there is Rheims and its Cathedral,
     Louvain and its library, Arras and its Town Hall, Ypres and
     its bell tower.

In the course of this war, Germany has disavowed her signature any
number of times and has broken her pledges just as often as she has
made them. Germany is a proven perjurer not only in the eyes of the
nations at war with her, but also in the regard of the forty-four
countries signatory of the Hague Convention. However, we have never
heard that a single one of these nations lodged a protest against her
actions. The Hague Convention has been torn into shreds, and not one
of its signers has entered the slightest protest.

Is the next society of nations to be modeled on the same principles?
Is the next society of nations going to draw up articles of the same
kind as the Hague society? Is the future society of nations to accept
among its members the same Empire of Germany which in 1914 declared
bankruptcy? Will the future act of the society of nations be a simple
scrap of paper, like the last act of 1907?

But let us cease asking these questions. There is no gain in asking
certain questions to gain certain replies. There is no gain in
examining certain problems to make the difficulties of the solution
more apparent.

There is no doubt that the society of nations will exist some day. For
the honor of humanity we must hope that it will exist. But it is not
one day's work, nor the speaking of a single discourse nor the writing
of one article that will build it. In M. Clemenceau's words, right can
not be firmly established as long as the world is based on might. To
bring about the rule of Right, Might must be destroyed and driven out
as the very first move in the campaign for ultimate liberty.

German Might will not be destroyed by international compacts to which
Germany will be party. Recall the treaty guaranteeing Belgium's
integrity, which was one that Germany signed. Recall the Hague
Conventions, signed by this same Germany. The men are fools who will
not recall these things, who will not profit by them as examples.
German might will only be destroyed by international agreements to
which Germany is not a party, and which shall place German might
beyond the regions in which it can play a dangerous part.

Now we are not building this upon sand, but upon a foundation of solid
rock.

Germany needs two things to continue her national existence. She must
import from other countries certain products necessary to her
existence. For example, there is wool, of which she was obliged to
import 1,888,481 metric quintals in order to manufacture her sixteen
thousand grades of woolen fabrics. There is copper, of which Germany
imported 250,000 tons in 1913 (200,000 tons came from America), in
order to sell the merchandise she finds has a good market in foreign
countries. Considering all Germany's exports for the period from
1903-1913, we find that their total has passed from 6,400 millions to
12,600 millions, an increase of nearly one hundred per cent.

There lies the best, the true, indeed the only means whereby the
Allies can compel Germany to disarm. We do not demand that the
economic war shall continue after the actual warfare is at an end, but
we can demand that the Allies shall not lay aside their economic arms
when the Germans shall have laid aside their fighting arms. In other
words, we can demand that the Allies do not give Germany wool, copper
and money if they know that this wool, money and copper are to feed
the war machine. This war machine cost the German Empire nearly four
hundred millions of dollars according to the budget of 1914. Suppose
the Allies said to Germany, "As long as you have a military and naval
budget of four hundred millions of dollars, we regret that we shall be
unable to sell you wool and copper. We regret that we shall be unable
to buy anything from you. But, if you reduce this budget by half, we
are willing to give you one million metric quintals of wool and
125,000 tons of copper. Likewise, we are disposed to make purchases
in your market totalling one billion dollars. If your military and
naval budgets fall to nothing, we are willing to go much farther and
buy and sell everything with you in unlimited quantities." Suppose the
Allies make these proposals to Germany. Suppose they are put into
effect. Will they not be a better guarantee of universal peace than
all the Conventions and all the courts of arbitration in the world?

Then let no one disturb the peace of the world for his selfish
purposes. Left to themselves, the little Balkan States and Slav States
will not start great, long wars, just as the lone robber posted at the
edge of a woods will not endanger a province's communications for very
long. The formidable thing is the great country that is arranged and
planned along the lines of war, where everything is organized with a
view to war; just as the formidable thing for a city is the small band
of malefactors who are able to terrify half the citizens by the use of
highly perfected arms.

There will be no lasting peace until the most terrible war machine
the world has ever known shall have been destroyed, reduced to an
impotent state of non-existence. Ideals will not destroy this machine,
but practical means and getting down to the facts of the case will do
so. Pasteur did not overcome hydrophobia by writing treatises and
dissertations. He met poison with poison, he injected the healing
serum into the veins of the maddened dog. Now Germany is the mad dog,
and Germany must be inoculated. After that there will be time to pass
hygienic measures for the regiment of the entire world. Today Germany
must be killed or cured. Germany is the cancer that must be cut out,
lest it eat up the world.

It has been a matter of life and death for Liberty and Civilization.
Both of them have been sick unto death. Clutched foully by the throat,
they have heard their own death rattle; they themselves thought they
might not survive. Now they stand on their feet, so weak, so pale, and
so feeble that their life might still be despaired of. If we do not
obtain definite guarantees against the monster who has barely failed
to strangle them and to force the entire world back into the darkness
of slavery, we shall have failed in our task, and the blood shed in
the fight for Liberty will have been shed in vain.

       *       *       *       *       *




APPENDICES


The following irrefutable documents, selected from among thousands of
others which history will record, prove better than any other means
how the Germans understand war and peace. They deserve a place in this
volume because they demonstrate why and against what France is
fighting.




APPENDIX I

HOW GERMANS FORCED WAR ON FRANCE


Answering to the Pope, in September, 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm II declared
"_that he had always regarded it as his principal and most sacred duty
to preserve the blessing of Peace for the German people and the
world_." More recently, driving through the battlefield of Cambrai,
the Kaiser, according to the war correspondent of the Berlin
_Lokalanzeiger_, exclaimed: "God knows what I have not done to prevent
such a war!"

A document made public by M. Stephen Pichon, French Foreign Minister,
shows exactly how, in the last days of July, 1914, the Kaiser tried
"to preserve the blessings of Peace for the German people and the
world" and what he did "to prevent such a war."

Speaking at the Sorbonne, in Paris, on March 1, 1918, M. Pichon said:

     I will establish by documents that the day the Germans
     deliberately rendered inevitable the most frightful of wars
     they tried to dishonor us by the most cowardly complicity in
     the ambush into which they drew Europe. I will establish it
     in the revelation of a document which the German Chancellor,
     after having drawn it up, preserved carefully, and you will
     see why, in the most profound mystery of the most secret
     archives.

     We have known only recently of its authenticity, and it
     defies any sort of attempt to disprove it. It bears the
     signature of Bethmann Hollweg (German Imperial Chancellor at
     the outbreak of the war) and the date July 31, 1914. On
     that day Von Schoen (German Ambassador to France) was
     charged by a telegram from his Chancellor to notify us of a
     state of danger of war with Russia and to ask us to remain
     neutral, giving us eighteen hours in which to reply.

     What was unknown until today was that the telegram of the
     German Chancellor containing these instructions ended with
     these words:

     _If the French Government declares it will remain neutral
     your Excellency will be good enough to declare that we must,
     as a guarantee of its neutrality, require the handing over
     of the fortresses of Toul and Verdun; that we will occupy
     them and will restore them after the end of the war with
     Russia. A reply to this last question must reach here before
     Saturday afternoon at 4 o'clock._

That is how Germany wanted peace at the moment when she declared war!
That is how sincere she was in pretending that we obliged her to take
up arms for her defense! That is the price she intended to make us pay
for our baseness if we had the infamy to repudiate our signature as
Prussia repudiated hers by tearing up the treaty that guaranteed the
neutrality of Belgium!

It was explained that the above document has not previously been
published, because the code could not be deciphered: the French
Foreign Office succeeded only a few days before in decodifying the
document.

Moreover, Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, on March 18, 1918, acknowledged
the accuracy of M. Pichon's quotation and contented himself to declare
that "his instructions to Von Schoen were justified."




APPENDIX II

HOW GERMANS TREAT AN AMBASSADOR


This document is quoted from the French "Yellow Book," page 152:

          _From Copenhagen_
          _French Yellow Book No. 155_

     M. Bapst, French Minister at Copenhagen, to
     M. Doumergue, Minister for Foreign Affairs.

                              COPENHAGEN, AUGUST 6, 1914.

     The French Ambassador at Berlin, M. Jules Cambon, asks me to
     communicate to your Excellency the following telegram:

     I have been sent to Denmark by the German Government. I have
     just arrived at Copenhagen. I am accompanied by all the
     staff of the Embassy and the Russian Chargé d'Affaires at
     Darmstadt with his family. The treatment which we have
     received is of such a nature that I have thought it
     desirable to make a complete report on it to your Excellency
     by telegram.

     On the morning of Monday, the 3rd of August, after I had, in
     accordance with your instructions, addressed to Herr von
     Jagow a protest against the acts of aggression committed on
     French territory by German troops, the Secretary of State
     came to see me. Herr von Jagow came to complain of acts of
     aggression which he alleged had been committed in Germany,
     especially at Nuremberg and Coblenz by French aviators, who
     according to his statement "had come from Belgium." I
     answered that I had not the slightest information as to the
     facts to which he attached so much importance and the
     improbability of which seemed to me obvious; on my part I
     asked him if he had read the note which I had addressed to
     him with regard to the invasion of our territory by
     detachments of the German army. As the Secretary of State
     said that he had not yet read this note I explained its
     contents to him. I called his attention to the act committed
     by the officer commanding one of the detachments who had
     advanced to the French village of Joncherey, ten kilometers
     within our frontier, and had blown out the brains of a
     French soldier whom he had met there. After having given my
     opinion of this act I added:

     "You will admit that under no circumstances could there be
     any comparison between this and the flight of an aeroplane
     over foreign territory carried out by private persons
     animated by that spirit of individual courage by which
     aviators are distinguished.

     "An act of aggression committed on the territory of a
     neighbor by detachments of regular troops commanded by
     officers assumes an importance of quite a different nature."

     Herr von Jagow explained to me that he had no knowledge of
     the facts of which I was speaking to him, and he added that
     it was difficult for events of this kind not to take place
     when two armies filled with the feelings which animated our
     troops found themselves face to face on either side of the
     frontier.

     At this moment the crowds which thronged the Pariser Platz
     in front of the Embassy and whom we could see through the
     window of my study, which was half open, uttered shouts
     against France. I asked the Secretary of State when all this
     would come to an end.

     "The Government has not yet come to a decision," Herr von
     Jagow answered. "It is probable that Herr von Schoen will
     receive orders today to ask for his passports and then you
     will receive yours." The Secretary of State assured me that
     I need not have any anxiety with regard to my departure, and
     that all the proprieties would be observed with regard to me
     as well as my staff. We were not to see one another any more
     and we took leave of one another after an interview which
     had been courteous and could not make me anticipate what was
     in store for me.

     Before leaving Herr von Jagow I expressed to him my wish to
     make a personal call on the Chancellor, as that would be the
     last opportunity that I should have of seeing him.

     Herr von Jagow said that he did not advise me to carry out
     this intention as the interview would serve no purpose and
     could not fail to be painful.

     At 6 o'clock in the evening Herr von Langwerth brought me my
     passports. In the name of his Government he refused to agree
     to the wish which I expressed to him that I should be
     permitted to travel by Holland or Belgium. He suggested to
     me that I should go either by way of Copenhagen, although he
     could not assure me a free passage by sea, or through
     Switzerland via Constance.

     I accepted this last route; Herr von Langwerth having asked
     me to leave as soon as I possibly could it was agreed, in
     consideration of the necessity I was under of making
     arrangements with the Spanish Ambassador, who was
     undertaking the charge of our interests, that I should leave
     on the next day, the 4th August, at 10 o'clock at night.

     At 7 o'clock, an hour after Herr von Langwerth had left,
     Herr von Lancken, formerly Councilor of the Embassy at
     Paris, came from the Minister for Foreign Affairs to tell me
     to request the staff of my Embassy to cease taking meals in
     the restaurants. This order was so strict that on the next
     day, Tuesday, I had to have recourse to the authority of the
     Wilhelmstrasse to get the Hôtel Bristol to send our meals to
     the Embassy.

     At 11 o'clock on the same evening, Monday, Herr von
     Langwerth came back to tell me that his Government would not
     allow our return by way of Switzerland under the pretext
     that it would take three days and three nights to take me to
     Constance. He announced that I should be sent by way of
     Vienna. I only agreed to this alteration under reserve, and
     during the night I wrote the following letter to Herr von
     Langwerth:

                              "BERLIN, AUGUST 3rd, 1914.

         "M. LE BARON;

         "I have been thinking over the route for my return
         to my country about which you came to speak to me
         this evening. You propose that I shall travel by
         Vienna. I run the risk of finding myself detained
         in that town, if not by the action of the Austrian
         Government, at least owing to the mobilization
         which creates great difficulties similar to those
         existing in Germany as to the movements of trains.

         "Under these circumstances I must ask the German
         Government for a promise made on their honor that
         the Austrian Government will send me to Switzerland,
         and that the Swiss Government will not close its
         frontier either to me or to the persons by whom I
         am accompanied, as I am told that that frontier has
         been firmly closed to foreigners.

         "I cannot then accept the proposal that you have
         made to me unless I have the security which I ask
         for, and unless I am assured that I shall not be
         detained for some months outside my country.

                              "JULES CAMBON."

     In answer to this letter on the next morning, Tuesday the
     4th August, Herr von Langwerth gave me in writing an
     assurance that the Austrian and Swiss authorities had
     received communications to this effect.

     At the same time M. Miladowski, attached to the Consulate at
     Berlin, as well as other Frenchmen, was arrested in his own
     house while in bed. M. Miladowski, for whom a diplomatic
     passport had been requested, was released after four hours.

     I was prepared to leave for Vienna when, at a quarter to
     five, Herr von Langwerth came back to inform me that I would
     have to leave with the persons accompanying me at 10 o'clock
     in the evening, but that I should be taken to Denmark. On
     this new requirement I asked if I should be confined in a
     fortress supposing I did not comply. Herr von Langwerth
     simply answered that he would return to receive my answer in
     half an hour. I did not wish to give the German Government
     the pretext for saying that I had refused to depart from
     Germany. I therefore told Herr von Langwerth when he came
     back that I would submit to the order which had been given
     to me but "that I protested."

     I at once wrote to Herr von Jagow a letter of which the
     following is a copy:

                              BERLIN, AUGUST 4, 1914.

         "SIR:

         "More than once your Excellency has said to me that
         the Imperial Government, in accordance with the
         usages of international courtesy, would facilitate
         my return to my own country, and would give me
         every means of getting back to it quickly.

         "Yesterday, however, Baron von Langwerth, after
         refusing me access to Belgium and Holland, informed
         me that I should travel to Switzerland via Constance.
         During the night I was informed that I should be
         sent to Austria, a country which is taking part in
         the present war on the side of Germany. As I had no
         knowledge of the intentions of Austria towards me,
         since on Austrian soil I am nothing but an ordinary
         private individual, I wrote to Baron von Langwerth
         that I requested the Imperial Government to give me
         a promise that the Imperial and Royal Austrian
         authorities would give me all possible facilities
         for continuing my journey and that Switzerland would
         not be closed to me. Herr von Langwerth has been good
         enough to answer me in writing that I could be
         assured of an easy journey and that the Austrian
         authorities would do all that was necessary.

         "It is nearly five o'clock, and Baron von Langwerth
         has just announced to me that I shall be sent to
         Denmark. In view of the present situation, there is
         no security that I shall find a ship to take me to
         England and it is this consideration which made me
         reject this proposal with the approval of Herr von
         Langwerth.

         "In truth no liberty is left me and I am treated
         almost as a prisoner. I am obliged to submit,
         having no means of obtaining that the rules of
         international courtesy should be observed towards
         me, but I hasten to protest to your Excellency
         against the manner in which I am being treated.

                              "JULES CAMBON."

     Whilst my letter was being delivered I was told that the
     journey would not be made direct but by way of Schleswig. At
     10 o'clock in the evening, I left the Embassy with my staff
     in the middle of a great assembly of foot and mounted
     police.

     At the station the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was only
     represented by an officer of inferior rank.

     The journey took place with extreme slowness. We took more
     than twenty-four hours to reach the frontier. It seemed that
     at every station they had to wait for orders to proceed. I
     was accompanied by Major von Rheinbaben of the Alessandra
     Regiment of the Guard and by a police officer. In the
     neighborhood of the Kiel Canal the soldiers entered our
     carriages. The windows were shut and the curtains of the
     carriages drawn down; each of us had to remain isolated in
     his compartment and was forbidden to get up or to touch his
     luggage. A soldier stood in the corridor of the carriage
     before the door of each of our compartments which were kept
     open, revolver in hand and finger on the trigger. The
     Russian Chargé d'Affaires, the women and children and
     everyone were subjected to the same treatment.

     At the last German station about 11 o'clock at night, Major
     von Rheinbaben came to take leave of me. I handed to him the
     following letter to Herr von Jagow.

                         "WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 5, 1914.

         "SIR:

         "Yesterday before leaving Berlin, I protested in
         writing to your Excellency against the repeated
         change of route which was imposed upon me by the
         Imperial Government on my journey from Germany.

         "Today as the train in which I was passed over the
         Kiel Canal an attempt was made to search all our
         luggage as if we might have hidden some instrument
         of destruction. Thanks to the interference of Major
         von Rheinbaben, we were spared this insult. But
         they went further.

         "They obliged us to remain each in his own
         compartment, the windows and blinds having been
         closed. During this time, in the corridors of the
         carriages at the door of each compartment and
         facing each one of us, stood a soldier, revolver in
         hand, finger on the trigger, for nearly half an hour.

         "I consider it my duty to protest against this
         threat of violence to the Ambassador of the
         Republic and the staff of his Embassy, violence
         which nothing could even have made me anticipate.

         "Yesterday I had the honor of writing to your
         Excellency that I was being treated almost as a
         prisoner. Today I am being treated as a dangerous
         prisoner. Also I must record that during our
         journey which from Berlin to Denmark has taken
         twenty-four hours, no food has been prepared nor
         provided for me nor for the persons who were
         traveling with me to the frontier.

                              "JULES CAMBON."

     I thought that our troubles had finished, when shortly
     afterwards Major von Rheinbaben came, rather embarrassed, to
     inform me that the train would not proceed to the Danish
     frontier if I did not pay the cost of this train. I
     expressed my astonishment that I had not been made to pay at
     Berlin and that at any rate I had not been forewarned of
     this. I offered to pay by a cheque on one of the largest
     Berlin banks. This facility was refused me. With the help of
     my companions I was able to collect, in gold, the sum which
     was required from me at once, and which amounted to 3,611
     marks, 75 pfennig. This is about 5,000 francs in accordance
     with the present rate of exchange.

     After this last incident, I thought it necessary to ask
     Major von Rheinbaben for his word of honor as an officer and
     a gentleman that we should be taken to the Danish frontier.
     He gave it to me, and I required that the policeman who was
     with us should accompany us.

     In this way we arrived at the first Danish station, where
     the Danish Government had had a train made ready to take us
     to Copenhagen.

     I am assured that my British colleague and the Belgian
     Minister, although they left Berlin after I did, traveled by
     the direct route to Holland. I am struck by this difference
     of treatment, and as Denmark and Norway are, at this moment,
     infested with spies, if I succeed in embarking in Norway,
     there is danger that I may be arrested at sea with the
     officials who accompany me.

     I do not wish to conclude this dispatch without notifying
     your Excellency of the energy and devotion of which the
     whole staff of the Embassy has given unceasing proof during
     the course of this crisis. I shall be glad that account
     should be taken of the services which on this occasion have
     been rendered to the Government of the Republic, in
     particular by the Secretaries of the Embassy and by the
     Military and Naval Attachés.

                              JULES CAMBON.




APPENDIX III

HOW GERMANS ARE WAGING WAR


The French Government, as soon as it heard of the first German
atrocities, instituted a Commission of inquiry composed of three high
French magistrates: Mr. Georges Payelle, President of the Cour des
Comptes, Mr. Georges Maringer, Councilor of State, and Mr. Edmond
Paillot, Councilor of the Cour of Cassation. That Commission proceeded
to the spot where the atrocities had been perpetrated and heard
witnesses, who deposed under oath.

All evidence and proceedings have been printed and fill up ten heavy
volumes.

Among many depositions, the following one, taken the twenty-third of
October, 1915, at Paris, will give an idea of the horrors to which the
invaded regions of France were submitted.

       *       *       *       *       *

Duren Virginie, wife of Berard Durem, 29 years of age, inhabitant of
Jarny in the Department of Meurthe et Moselle, a refugee at
Levallois-Perret:

     I swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

     On the 25th of August, 1914, the sixty-sixth and
     sixty-eighth Bavarian regiments were quartered together at
     Jarny. I was ordered to bring water for the soldiers, so
     went in search of a large number of water pails. At three
     o'clock in the afternoon an officer, who met me, told me I
     had carried enough water and ordered me to go back to my
     house. As the Germans were firing on our house with
     mitrailleuses, I took refuge in the cellar with my two sons,
     Jean, aged six, and Maurice, aged two, and also my daughter
     Jeanne, nine years of age. The Aufiero family was also
     there. Soon petrol was poured over the house; it got into
     the cellar through the air-hole, and we were surrounded by
     flames. I saved myself, carrying my two little boys in my
     arms, while my daughter and little Beatrice Aufiero ran
     along holding on to my skirt. As we were crossing the
     Rougeval brook, which runs near my house, the Bavarians
     fired on us. My little Jean, whom I was carrying, was struck
     by three bullets, one in the right thigh, one in the ankle,
     and one in the chest. The thigh was almost shot away, and
     from the place where the bullet through his chest came out
     the lung projected. The poor child said, "Oh, Mother, I have
     a pain," and in a moment he was dead. At the same time
     little Beatrice had her arm broken so badly that it was
     attached to her shoulder only by a piece of flesh, and
     Angele Aufiero, a boy of nine years, who followed a short
     distance behind us, was wounded in the calf of the leg.
     Little Beatrice suffered cruelly and wept bitterly, but she
     did not fall down, continuing to go along with me.

     While these things were taking place, the Perignon family,
     which lived next door to us, was massacred.

     When they were no longer shooting at us, I tried to wash my
     baby, who was covered with blood, in the brook; but a
     soldier prevented me, shouting, "Get away from there."

     Finally we got to the road. Meanwhile they were driving M.
     Aufiero out of the cellar. The Germans, who spoke French
     after a fashion, said to his wife, "Come see your husband
     get shot." The poor man, on his knees, asked for mercy, and
     as his wife shrieked "My poor Côme," the soldiers said to
     her, "Shut your mouth." His execution took place very near
     us.

     The Bavarians sent me, my children, Mme. Aufiero and her
     daughter to a meadow near the Pont-de-l'Etang. A general
     ordered that we be shot, but I threw myself at his feet,
     begging him to be merciful. He consented. At this moment an
     officer, wearing a great gray cloak with a red collar, said,
     as he pointed to the dead body of my child, "There is one
     who will not grow up to fight our men."

     The next day, in my flight to Barrière Zeller, an officer
     came up and told me that the body of my dead child smelled
     badly and that I must get rid of it. Since I could find no
     one to make a coffin, I found in the canteen two rabbit
     hutches. I fastened one of these to the other, and there I
     laid the little body. It was buried in my garden by two
     soldiers, and I had to dig the grave myself.




APPENDIX IV

HOW GERMANS OCCUPY THE TERRITORY OF AN ENEMY


In the first days of April, 1916, the following notice, bearing the
signature of the German commander, was posted on all the walls of
Lille, the great town in the north of France which has been occupied
by the Germans since the beginning of the war.

     All the inhabitants of the town, except the children under
     fourteen years of age, their mothers, and the old men, must
     prepare to be transported within an hour and a half.

     An officer will decide definitely which persons shall be
     conducted to the camps of assembly. For this purpose, all
     the inhabitants must assemble in front of their homes, in
     case of bad weather they shall be permitted to stay in the
     lobbies. The doors of the houses must be left open. All
     complaints will be unavailing. No inhabitant of a house,
     even those who are not to be transported, can leave the
     house before eight o'clock in the morning (German time).

     Each person may take thirty kilograms of baggage with him.
     Should there be any excess over this amount, all that
     person's baggage will be refused regardless of everything.
     Separate packages must be made up by each person, and a
     visibly written, firmly secured address must be on each
     package. The address must bear the person's name, surname,
     and the number of his identification card.

     It is very necessary for each person to provide himself with
     utensils for eating and drinking, also with a woolen blanket
     and some good shoes and some linen. Each person must have on
     his person his identification card. Whoever shall attempt to
     evade deportation shall be punished without mercy.

                              ETAPPEN--KOMMANDANTUR

The threat contained in the notice cited here was carried out to the
letter. Here is an account of it from the communication addressed by
M. D----, formerly the _receveur particulier_ of Lille, to M. Cambon,
formerly the French Ambassador to Berlin:

     On Good Friday night at three o'clock the troops who were
     going to occupy the designated section, Fives, came through
     our houses. It was dreadful. An officer passed by, pointing
     out the men and women whom he chose, leaving them a space of
     time amounting to an hour in some cases and ten minutes in
     others, to prepare themselves for their journey.

     Antoine D. ... and his sister, twenty-two years of age, were
     taken away. The Germans did not want to leave behind the
     younger daughter in the family, who was not fourteen. Their
     grandmother, ill with sorrow and terror, had to be cared for
     at once. Finally they met the young daughter coming back. In
     one case an old man and two infirm persons could not keep
     the daughter who was their sole support. And everywhere the
     enemy sneered, adding vexatious annoyance to their hateful
     task. In the house of the doctor, who is B.'s uncle, they
     gave his wife the choice between two maids. She preferred
     the elder and they said, "Well, then she is the one we are
     going to take." Mlle. L., the young one who has just got
     over typhoid and bronchitis, saw the non-commissioned
     officer who took away her nurse coming up to her. "What a
     sad task they are making us do." "More than sad, sir, it
     could be called barbarous." "That is a hard word, are you
     not afraid that I will sell you?" As a matter of fact the
     wretch denounced her. They allowed her seven minutes and
     took her away bare-headed, just as she was, to the Colonel
     who commanded this noble battle and who also ordered her to
     go, against the advice of a physician. Only on account of
     her tireless energy and the sense of decency of one who was
     less ferocious than the rest, did she obtain permission, at
     five o'clock in the afternoon, to be discharged, after a day
     which had been a veritable Calvary. The poor wretches at
     whose door a sentry watched, were collected together at some
     place or other, a Church or a school. Then the mob of all
     sorts and conditions of people, or all grades of social
     standing, respectable young girls and women of the street,
     was driven to the station escorted by soldiers marching at
     the head of the procession. From there they were taken off
     in the evening without knowing where they were going or for
     what work they were destined.

     And in the face of all this our people evidenced restraint
     and admirable dignity, although they were provoked that day
     by seeing the automobiles going around which were taking
     away these unfortunate people. They all went away shouting
     "Vive la France. Vive la Liberté!" and singing the
     Marseillaise. They cheered up those who remained; their poor
     mothers who were weeping, and the children. With voices
     almost strangled with tears, and pale with suffering, they
     told them not to cry as they themselves would not; but bore
     themselves proudly in the presence of their executioners.

Another document shows better than all this talking the treatment the
French have been receiving from the Germans for over thirty months.
This document is a German notice which was found at Holnon, northwest
of St. Quentin. The document bore the official seal of the German
commander.

                              HOLNON, 20th July, 1915.

     All workmen, women and children over fifteen years of age
     must work in the fields every day, also on Sunday, from four
     o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night, French
     time. For rest they shall have a half-hour in the morning,
     an hour at noon and a half-hour in the afternoon. Failure to
     obey this order will be punished in the following manner:--

     1.--The men who are lazy will be collected for the period of
     the harvest in a company of workmen under the inspection of
     German corporals. After the harvest the lazy will be
     imprisoned for six months and every third day their
     nourishment shall be only bread and water.

     2.--Lazy women shall be exiled to Holnon to work. After the
     harvest the women will be imprisoned six months.

     3.--The children who do not work shall be punished with
     blows from a club.

     Furthermore, the commandant reserves the right to punish men
     who do not work with twenty blows from a club daily.

     Workmen in the Commune of Verdelles have been punished
     severely.

                               (Signed) GLOSE,
                               COLONEL AND COMMANDANT.




APPENDIX V

HOW GERMANS TREAT ALSACE-LORRAINE


Von Bethmann-Hollweg, Count von Hertling and Herr von Kuhlmann state
that Alsace-Lorraine is a province of the German Empire by right and
by fact, and that it is firmly attached to Germany.

The following picture shows how this _German_ province is treated by
Germany:


_Treatment of the Civilian Population_

The Government has established for the duration of the war an
insurmountable barrier between Alsace-Lorraine, which is called a
territory of the Empire, and the rest of the German states. Briefly,
Alsace-Lorraine is treated as a suspect.

An inhabitant of Alsace-Lorraine can not mail his letters in Germany.
For example, Wissembourg is on the border of the Palatinate. There is
a great temptation for the citizens of this town to assure a rapid
delivery of their letters and their escape from annoying censorship by
making use of the German mail system. A music teacher, Mlle. Lina
Sch---- was sentenced to pay a fine of one hundred marks in March,
1917, for an infraction of this sort. The war council at Saarbruck,
which pronounced this sentence, had already, in June, 1916, sentenced
for like cause, the Spanish Consul, to the payment of a fine of eighty
marks because he had allowed a citizen of Sarreguimine to have letters
to his sons, who were refugees at Lausanne, addressed to the Spanish
Consulate.

In addition, German hostility to the Alsatians is shown by a number of
childish measures against Alsatian uniforms and costumes, in
proportion as they resemble the French.

In all seriousness the question arose of forbidding the Catholic
Clergy to wear the soutane, as it was the custom in the Latin
countries. It was given up; but steps were taken in the case of the
firemen.

The _Nouvelle Gazette_ of Strassburg published an official notice,
dated the ninth of December, 1915, which emphasized an order
suppressing the uniforms worn by the Alsatian firemen because the cut
was French, as was the cap, and complained that this order was not
everywhere observed:

     Recently, in the course of a fire which broke out near
     Molsheim, it is an established fact that the firemen wore
     their old Alsatian uniforms, and that the fire alarm was
     sounded by means of the old clarions of the type in use in
     France. The _Kreisdirection_ finds itself obliged to insist
     that the suppressed uniforms disappear, and that the
     clarions do likewise; and to ask that it be informed of
     contraventions that happen in the future.

     Other societies and associations, such as the singing
     societies which frequently still wear uniforms recalling
     those of the French collegians, ought to lay aside the
     forbidden garments, which are to be entrusted to the guard
     of the police.

But these puerilities seem insignificant compared to other things to
which the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been subjected, things which
unite them more firmly than ever to the French and the Belgians of the
invaded regions.

The great deportations which have been practiced in France and Belgium
have been repeated in Alsace as recently as January, 1917. The
inhabitants of Mülhausen between the ages of seventeen and sixty years
were assembled in the barracks at that place, whence they were sent
into the interior of Germany.

This proceeding has been practiced on a large scale since the war's
beginning. Preventive imprisonment, called _Schutzhaft_, was applied
to Messin Samain, who was first incarcerated at Cologne and then sent
to the Russian front, where he was killed. It was also applied to M.
Bourson, former correspondent of _Le Matin_, who is interned at
Cannstatt in Wurtemburg. Other citizens, after having been held in
prison for weeks and months, have been exiled finally into Germany.

The Germans themselves have been so demoralized by the régime they
have established that the authorities have had to put a check on
anonymous denunciations, almost all of which were false, by an
official communiqué published in the _Gazette de Hagenau_ for the
sixth of December, 1916.

The story of how the civilian population has been treated will only be
known in its entirety later on. The government has, as a matter of
fact, forbidden the press to publish accounts of the war councils'
debates because the population, far from being terrified by them,
would find in them laughing matter.

It is estimated that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have served in
actual hours more than five thousand years in prison. Here are some
crimes committed by them:

M. Giessmann, an old man seventy years old, saluted French prisoners
in a Strassburg street: Sentence, six weeks in prison.

Guillaume Kohler, an infantry soldier from Saverne, during a journey
in Germany, censured the inhuman manner in which certain German
officers treated their men at the front. The council at Saarbruck
sentenced him to two years in prison.

Emilie Zimmerle, a cook at Kolmar, sang an anti-German song as she
washed out her pots. Thirty marks fine.

Mlle. Stern, the daughter of a pastor at Mulhouse, spoke against the
violation of Belgium. One month in prison.

Abbe Théophile Selier, curé at Levencourt, for the same offense, six
weeks in prison.

Even children and young girls have been punished for peccadillos that
were absolutely untrue.

The _Metz Zeitung_ for the twenty-second of October mentions the
sentences pronounced against Juliette F. de Vigy, eighteen years old,
a pupil in the commercial school, and Georgette S----, twenty-three
years old, a shop girl, dwellers at Mouilly. Having gone one morning
to the station at Metz, they saw some French prisoners in a train to
whom they spoke and at whom they "made eyes."

Juliette F----, the more guilty of the two, was sentenced to pay a
fine of eighty marks, and Georgette S---- to pay one of forty marks,
because "acting this way to prisoners of war exercises a particularly
disturbing effect on them."

Two little girls of Kolmar, named Grass and Broly, were arrested for
"having answered, by waving their hands, kisses French prisoners threw
to them."

A boy fifteen years old, pupil in the upper school at Mulhouse, named
Jean Ingold, who, in the classroom tore down the portrait of the
Emperor and painted French flags on the wall with the inscription
"Vive la France," was condemned to a month in prison. The War Council
saw an aggravating circumstance in the fact that Jean's father
"occupies a very lucrative position as a German functionary."

On the thirtieth of March, 1916, two sisters from Guebwiller--Sister
Edwina, née Bach, Mother Superior, and Sister Emertine, née Eckert,
were charged with anti-German manifestations for having treated as
lies the figures regarding French and Russian prisoners sent out in
the German communiqués, for having protested against the bombardment
of Rheims Cathedral, for having treated as false the German victories
that had been announced, and for having said on the subject of the
German invasion of Belgium, "How can they attack a country that asked
for nothing?"

The result was that they got six months' imprisonment.

The case of Mme. Berthe Judlin, in the faith Sister Valentine, is more
tragic.

The Mulhouse newspapers have published the account of the proceedings
in the case of this Sister before the War Council. It appears that she
has been the victim of monstrous calumnies, and that her fate can well
be compared to that of Miss Edith Cavell.

She was accused of having, from the ninth to the fourteenth of August
when she was assigned to the convent of the Redemptorists at
Riedishiem, favored the French wounded at the expense of the German
wounded. These accusations, which specified in particular, that she
had taken various objects away from one wounded man (a charge the
prosecution withdrew) and that she hid the cartridges of the French
wounded in the attic, were contested by Sister Valentine. After the
testimony of the witnesses, nine for the prosecution and fourteen for
the defendant, the government commissioner asked that she be punished
with a sentence of fifteen years at hard labor and ten years of
deprivation of civil rights. Her lawyer asked for her acquittal. The
War Council on the fourteenth of December, 1915, after an hour and a
quarter's deliberation, decided that "Sister Valentine has done harm
to the German Army" and has hidden the cartridges. It condemned Sister
Valentine to "five years of hard labor and five years' deprivation of
civil rights."


_The War on the French Language_

The Germans never cease recalling and von Hertling has just repeated
the fact that eighty-seven per cent of the Alsatians speak German. It
is strange, then, that the German reign of terror has manifested
itself in one particular against the use of French, even in the region
where French is the language universally spoken.

The fact that a person speaks French has become a special offense,
that of "provocation." And this offense appears to be a frequent one.

On the twenty-second of February, 1916, the sous-prefect of Boulay
gave the following warning to the mayors of his arrondissement:

     The use in public of French will be considered a
     "provocation" when used by persons who know enough German
     to make themselves understood or who can have recourse to
     persons who understand German as intermediaries.

The War Council Extraordinary at Metz, in consequence handed down a
decision condemning two women to fourteen days in prison because, in a
manner that gave "provocation," they spoke French in a trolley car in
spite of the warnings of the conductress.

In addition, the War Council Extraordinary at Strassburg fined a
salesman who "not only let a French label remain on his packages, but
had put a French label on a package addressed to a customer who
understood German."

A little girl from Bourg-Bruche who, although she spoke German, used
the French language in spite of repeated warnings, had a sentence of
detention inflicted on her by the same tribunal.

The Mulhouse _Tageblatt_ for the twenty-third of September, 1917,
announced that women who had conversed to one another in French in
public had been condemned to from two to three weeks imprisonment by
the War Council at Thionville.

Another person who had made a usage of the French language that gave
grounds for "provocation," was condemned to pay a fine of fifty marks
or serve ten days in prison.

The _Oberelsaessische Landeszeitung_ for the twelfth and twenty-sixth
of October published the following sentences: "Fines of twenty and ten
marks to the venders A. Nemarg and M. Cahen for having spoken to a
convoy of French officers in the station at Thionville."

Twenty and thirty marks fine to Amélie Bany and Catherine Jacques of
Knutange "for having spoken French although they understood German."

The Mayor of Broque, a commune where French is spoken, was sentenced
to three months' imprisonment for having spoken French to his
councilors.

In Alsace this campaign against the French language is carried even
into the girls' boarding schools, which have always been the principal
centers for the study of French.

An order from the Statthalter, dated March tenth, 1915, forbade French
conversations in the schools.

A German pastor of the Lutheran Church named Curtius, who had opposed
suppressing the old parish of Saint Nicholas at Strassburg, was
removed. His successor, who was better disciplined, gave in to the
measure that was demanded.

The war against the French language has been marked by the suppression
of all French newspapers since the war's beginning, the _Journal
d'Alsace-Lorraine_, the _Messin_, _the Nouvelliste d'Alsace-Lorraine_.
But nothing shows better the necessity of having organs of public
opinion in French than the establishment at Metz of the _Gazette
d'Alsace-Lorraine_ by the government, which served as a model for the
_Gazette des Ardennes_, founded later on at Mezières, to demoralize
the inhabitants of the invaded districts in the north and west of
France.


_The Treatment of the Soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine_

The soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine, whose loyalty was proclaimed at the
war's beginning, have, as a matter of fact, been treated like spies
and embryo deserters.

In August, 1915, at the opening of the Alsatian parliament, the
Statthalter denounced the anti-patriotism of a part of the population
and stigmatized the "traitors" who had "gone over to the enemy."

In fact, no less than fourteen thousand Alsatians, in the face of
manifold perils and difficulties, had rejoined the colors of their
true country. All the newspapers of Alsace-Lorraine still publish the
lists of them as citizens and of their belongings as "refractory
individuals."

The movement has never stopped. During the thirty-second month of the
war, on the fourteenth of March, 1917, General von Nassner,
commandant for the district of Saarbruck, published the following
extraordinary order:

"Whoever, after due examination, has reason to believe that a soldier
or a man on reprieve proposes to desert and who can still prevent the
execution of this crime, must without delay give notice of this fact
to the nearest military or police authority."

The Strassburg _Neueste Nachrichten_ for the twenty-seventh of
September announced that the "_chambre correctionnelle_ at Kolmar had
condemned by default one hundred and ninety men from the
arrondissements of Guebwiller and Ribeauville to fines of six hundred
marks or forty days in prison for having failed to perform their
military obligations."

The _Oberelsaessische Landeszeitung_ for the eleventh of October,
1917, announced sentences of fines of three thousand marks or three
hundred days in prison for the same reason against seven persons.

The _Haguenauer Zeitung_ from the eleventh to the twentieth of
October published the names of seventeen soldiers, some of them
deserters, the others guilty of rebellion in favor of the enemy or of
treason.

On the twenty-fifth of October there was another list of deserters,
nineteen of whom were natives of Strassburg.

In his book, "The Martyrs of Alsace and Lorraine," M. André Fribourg
has fifteen pages taken from the lists of the debates of the German
war councils. These pages are made up of the names of young Alsatians
who have left their country rather than fight against France.

Besides, far from treating the Alsatians enrolled in the German Army
like Germans, the government has accorded them a distinctly different
treatment.

It has sent them to the Russian front and employed them at the most
dangerous posts, as this secret order, from the Prussian Minister of
War to the temporary commander of the Fourteenth Army Corps, proves:

     All men from Alsace-Lorraine employed as secretaries,
     ordnance officers, etc., must be relieved of their duties
     and sent to the battle front. In the future, all the men
     from Alsace-Lorraine will be sent to the "General Kommando,"
     who will send them at once to the units on the Eastern
     Front. This order to go into effect before the first of
     April, 1916.

          FOR THE STELLVERT, GENERAL KOMMANDO RADECKE, MAJOR.

Finally, it was only on the ninth of October, 1917, that the
Strassburg _Neue Zeitung_ announced the abolition of the special
postal control to which the soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine were
submitted at the front.

     It is but just [says the _Freie Presse_ on that occasion]
     that the exceptional measures taken against the soldiers
     from Alsace-Lorraine be abolished at last. Among these
     measures we consider the interdiction still in force for a
     man to return to his native town. And [the same newspaper
     adds] from the moment that the bravery of our soldiers from
     Alsace-Lorraine is vaunted everywhere, it is absolutely
     wrong to reward them with scorn and insults.

In the notice from G. Q. G. for the twenty-fifth of November, 1917,
are the details gathered from the Alsatian prisoners themselves of the
treatment their compatriots endure in the German Army.

On the twenty-second of last June, all the Alsatians received orders
to present themselves at the F. R. D. of their division, where they
were received by the Vizé Sergeant, flanked by two guards.

The former said to them:

"What! You have not yet laid aside your accoutrements; traitors,
deserters, scoundrels, rascals. Get into the shelter quick where you
can put up nine additional supports for the roof and where you can
kick the bucket at your ease."

Since some of the Alsatians declared that, having received nothing to
eat or to drink, they could not work, a lieutenant, who was summoned
by the adjutant, ran up with his riding whip and, making one of them
step forward, beat him until he lost consciousness.

Later on another lieutenant ordered the Vizé Sergeant to "train the
Alsatians well. They are all robbers and traitors."

All these facts proclaim in an undeniable manner that the soldiers
from Alsace-Lorraine are not treated like ordinary citizens by the
German Army, but like foreigners temporarily under the domination of
Germany.


_The Sequestration of Property_

For a "German" country, Alsace-Lorraine seems to have a great number
of landowners who are French, if one is to judge by the sequestrations
and confiscations with which the authorities have been so desperately
busy for three years.

In fact the local newspapers contain lists of sequestrations that are
almost as long as the lists of deserters.

And these confiscations apply not only to the landowners who live in
France. A large number have been pronounced against inhabitants of
Alsace-Lorraine who live abroad. Orders were given them to reënter the
German Empire, orders they had no possible chance of obeying, but
which gave the imperial government an easy pretext for pronouncing
their denationalization and the confiscation of their property.

Also, the sequestrations followed by sales under the hammer, of French
and Alsatian properties were extremely numerous. Among these
properties there are a certain number of considerable importance.

On the twenty-fourth of August, 1916, _Les Dernières Nouvelles de
Strasbourg_, advertised the sale under the hammer of the properties of
Prince de Tonnay-Charente, situated at Hambourg and consisting of a
splendid château, furnished in Louis Fourteenth style, Gobelin
tapestries of great value, family portraits, green houses, outhouses,
ponds, farms, etc., etc.

The Strassburg _Post_ for the twenty-ninth of October announced the
liquidation sale of Cité Hof, belonging to the heirs of Paul de
Geiger, including "forty-two hectares of fine arable land, fine
dwelling houses, barns and stables, a very fine park, summer houses, a
coach house, etc." ... "of the Villa Huber, with a fine park,
servants' quarters, garden, surrounded by twenty-eight hectares of
fields."

The same paper for the fourth of October announces the sale of the
famous château of Robertsau, the property of Mme. Loys-Chandieu, née
Pourtalès, with two hundred and thirty hectares of farm land and one
hundred and thirty hectares of forest.

The _Metzer Zeitung_ for the twentieth of October announced the
liquidation of twenty properties in the Moyeuvre Grande district, and
of eleven in that of Sierek.

Many people have obviously been covetous of these French possessions.

On this subject curious letters and unceasing polemics appeared in the
Alsatian newspapers.

Certain interested persons complained (_Strassburger Post_ for the
third of November) that the time was so short that only the
inhabitants of the country and their immediate neighbors had any
opportunity of profiting by these occasions. They remarked with all
justice that to get the highest prices for these sales there ought to
be a large number of bidders.

For the farm lands, the neighbors would suffice to bring up the bids
to a high enough sum, but when it was a matter of a magnificent
château, like that at Osthofen, with a garden and a park, bidders for
this luxury would scarcely be found among the peasants. The
speculators alone would step in and would acquire for a mere nothing
properties of great value. And the plaintiffs added, "Is that
desirable?"

The following considerations advanced by one of the plaintiffs are not
without interest. "Sufficient means of communication still remain
between France and Germany. Do you not see the danger of feigned
sales, to third persons, who will buy in the goods at small cost and
will hand them over later on to their former proprietors? In this way
the French influence over the ownership of the land will be
reëstablished in the future."

To these complaints and wrongs the _Strassburger Post_ for the eighth
of November replied in detail.

It assured that the list of goods to be disposed of had not only been
placed by the authorities in the several states of the empire, to give
buyers time to take advantage of possible bargains, but also a
catalogue of stationary objects had been published in fifteen hundred
copies by Schultz & Co. of Strassburg.

This catalogue was quickly used up and the demand for it continued to
come in, which proved that the buyers were informed in time.

The newspaper adds that the things to be sold have been visited by
buyers coming from old Germany as well as from Alsace-Lorraine, and
sales propositions have been made before the publication of notices in
the newspapers.

It seems, furthermore, that if the sales of land and the exploitation
of farm lands have ended rapidly, it was because colonization
societies, called "black bands," have overtly bought up or had bought
up the properties by their agents, in the hope that their plans would
be realized after the war. In industrial matters, there was recently
founded in Berlin a German syndicate which proposes to buy up the
actions.

For the textile industry in particular, it is a question of a
veritable trust against which is arrayed "a syndicate of Alsatian
manufacturers who have felt the need of defending themselves."

The entire scope of recent German policies with regard to
Alsace-Lorraine shows that this land which von Hertling said was
"allied to Germanism by more and more intimate bonds" has been, as a
matter of fact, to treat it like a foreign land, kept by force under
imperial domination and submitted, like the occupied portions of
France and Belgium, to a veritable reign of terror.




APPENDIX VI

HOW GERMANS UNDERSTAND FUTURE PEACE


If an account is desired of the manner in which the Germans understand
a future peace, this letter suffices. It was addressed to the
_Berliner Lokalanzeiger_ by Herr Walter Rathenau. He was in charge of
the direction of all industrial establishments in Germany:

     We commenced war a year too soon. When we shall have
     obtained a German peace, reorganization on a broader and
     more solid basis than ever before must commence immediately.
     The establishments which produce raw materials must not only
     continue their work, but they must also redouble their
     energies and thus form the foundation of Germany's
     economical preparation for the next war.

     On the lessons taught by actual war we must figure out
     carefully what our country lacks in raw materials and
     accumulate great stores of these which shall never be
     utilized until _Der Tag_ of the future. We must organize the
     industrial mobilization as perfectly as the military
     mobilization. Every man of technical training or partial
     technical training, whether or not he is enrolled in the
     list of men who can be mobilized, must have received
     authority by official order to take over the direction of
     industrial establishments on the second day which shall
     follow the next declaration of war.

     Every establishment which manufactures for commercial
     purposes ought to be mobilized and to know officially that
     the third day after the declaration of war it must make use
     of all its facilities in satisfying the needs of the Army.

     The quantity of merchandise which each one of these
     establishments can furnish to the Army in a given time and
     the nature thereof ought to be determined in advance. Every
     establishment also ought to furnish an exact and complete
     list of the workmen with whose services it can dispense, and
     those men alone can be mobilized for military services.

     Finally commercial arrangements will be made necessary with
     nations outside Europe through which we will give them
     sufficient advantages, specified in detail, so that it would
     be directly advantageous to their commercial interests to
     carry on commerce with none of the belligerents and not to
     sell them munitions.

     We can accept such obligations for ourselves without any
     fear and finally, when the next war shall come, it cannot
     come a year too soon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber's Notes

Pg. 6, Sunday, August third, left as original as it's uncertain which
day the author meant. Sunday was actually August 2, Monday was August
3; and the context from the beginning of the chapter was that the
declaration of war was delivered late afternoon Monday, August 3.
(Mobilization had commenced the previous evening. To be exact, it was
on Sunday, August third, at midnight.)

Pg. 7, unforgetable changed to unforgettable. (It recalled the
unforgettable scenes.)

Pg. 14, thirteenth changed to thirtieth, per context (when Sunday the
thirtieth of August came).

Pg. 14, week changed to weeks. (For several weeks our troops)

Pg. 54, beseiged and beseiger left as original, as author quoted from
another book. (in a beseiged city can hasten the place's fall; in
consequence it would be very foolish of the beseiger to renounce)

Pg. 88, removed ending double quotes. (I feel better for it.')

Pg. 90, mobolization changed to mobilization (priests who went off at
the beginning of the mobilization).

Pg. 100, sum of artillery kilos do not equal Total kilos. Left as
original.

Pg. 108, tetragon changed to tarragon (16,900 tarragon plants).

Pg. 162, catastrophies changed to catastrophes (irremediable
catastrophes could be avoided?).

Pgs. 163, 206, Bethmann-Hollweg, hyphenation inconsistent with
Pgs. 180, 182, Bethmann Hollweg. Kept as in original.

Pg. 167, ARTICLE 23 has no (b) paragraph.

Pg. 193, protect changed to protest to reflect the actual letter (I
consider it my duty to protest against this threat of violence to the
Ambassador).

Pg. 219, correstionnelle changed to correctionelle ("_chambre
correctionnelle_ at Kolmar).

Pg. 229, Appendix VI, added HOW to title to match Table of Contents
and make it consistent with rest of Appendices.











*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIGHTING FRANCE ***


    

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.


START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
    other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
    whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
    of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
    at www.gutenberg.org. If you
    are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
    of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
  
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:

    • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
        the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
        you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
        to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
        agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
        within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
        legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
        payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
        Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
        Literary Archive Foundation.”
    
    • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
        you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
        does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
        License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
        copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
        all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
        works.
    
    • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
        any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
        electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
        receipt of the work.
    
    • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
        distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
    

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.