Chapter III: Part 3

But no! A soft, rustling sound makes me turn my head towards the opposite side of the room, and from behind a screen of red silk which concealed another door the young Queen appears, so near to me that I have not room to make my court bow. My first impression, necessarily furtive as a flash of lightning, a mere visual impression, I might say a colourist's impression, is a dazzling little vision of blue--the blue of her gown, but more especially the blue of her eyes, which shine like two luminous stars. And then she has such an air of youth; she seems this evening twenty-four, and scarcely that. From the different portraits I had seen of Her Majesty, portraits so little faithful to life, I had gathered that she was very tall, with a profile almost too long, but on the contrary, she is of medium height, and her face is small, with exquisitely refined features--a face almost ethereal, so delicate that it almost vanishes, eclipsed by those marvellous, limpid eyes, like two pure turquoises, transparent to reveal the light within. Even a man unaware of her rank and of everything concerning her, her devotion to duty, the superlative dignity of her actions, her serene resignation, her admirable, simple charity, would say to himself at first sight:

"The woman with those eyes, who may she be? Assuredly one who soars very high and will never falter, who without even a tremor of her eyelids can look in the face not only temptations, but likewise danger and death."

With what reverent sympathy, free from vulgar curiosity, would I fain catch an echo of that which stirs in the depths of her heart when she contemplates the drama of her destiny. But a conversation with a queen is not directed by one's own fancy, and at the beginning of the audience Her Majesty touches upon different subjects lightly and gracefully as if there were nothing unusual happening in the world. We talk of the East, where we have both travelled; we talk of books she has read; it seems as if we were oblivious of the great tragedy which is being enacted, oblivious of the surrounding country, strewn with ruins and the dead. Soon, however, perhaps because a little bond of confidence has established itself between us, Her Majesty speaks to me of the destruction of Ypres, Furnes, towns from which I have just come; then the two blue stars gazing at me seem to me to grow a little misty, in spite of an effort to keep them clear.

"But, madam," I say, "there still remains standing enough of the walls to enable all the outlines to be traced again, and almost everything to be practically reconstructed in the better times that are in store."

"Ah," she answers, "rebuild! Certainly it will be possible to rebuild, but it will never be more than an imitation, and for me something essential will always be lacking. I shall miss the soul which has passed away."

Then I see how dearly Her Majesty had already loved those marvels now ruined, and all the past of her adopted country, which survived there in the old stone tracery of Flanders.

Ypres and Fumes incline us to subjects less impersonal, and gradually we at last come to talk of Germany. One of the sentiments predominant, it seems, in her bruised heart is that of amazement, the most painful as well as the most complete amazement, at so many crimes.

"There has been some change in them," she says, in hesitating words. "They used not to be like this. The Crown Prince, whom I knew very well in my childhood, was gentle, and nothing in him led one to expect---- Think of it as I may, day and night, I cannot understand---- No, in the old days they were not like this, of that I am sure."

But I know very well that they were ever thus (as indeed all of us know); they were always the same from the beginning under their inscrutable hypocrisy. But how could I venture to contradict this Queen, born among them, like a beautiful, rare flower among stinging nettles and brambles? To be sure, the unleashing of their latent barbarism which we are now witnessing is the work of that King of Prussia who is the faithful successor of him whom formerly the great Empress Maria Theresa stigmatised; it is he indeed, who, to use the bitter yet very just American expression, has given them swelled heads. But their character was ever the same in all ages, and in order to form a judgment of their souls, steeped in lies, murders, and rapine, it is sufficient to read their writers, their thinkers, whose cynicism leaves us aghast.

After a moment's pause in which nothing is heard but the noise of the wind outside, remembering that the young martyred Queen was a Bavarian princess, I venture to recall the fact that the Bavarians in the Germany Army were troubled at the persecutions endured by the Queen of the Belgians, who had sprung from their own race, and indignant when the Monster who leads this Witches' Sabbath even tried to single out her children as a mark for his shrapnel lire.

But the Queen, raising her little hand from where it rested on the silken texture of her gown, outlines a gesture which signifies something inexorably final, and in a grave, low voice she utters this phrase which falls upon the silence with the solemnity of a sentence whence there is no appeal:

"It is at an end. Between _them_ and me has fallen a curtain of iron which will never again be lifted."

At the same time, at the remembrance of her childhood, doubtless, and of those whom she loved over there, the two clear blue eyes which were looking at me grow very misty, and I turn my head away so that I may not seem to have noticed.

XIII

AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF THE SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN THE EAST

_June, 1915._

The Orient, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora--the mere enunciation of these words, especially in these beautiful months of summer, conjures up images of sun-steeped repose, a repose perhaps a little mournful because of the lack of all movement in those parts, but a repose of such adorable melancholy, in the midst of so many remembrances of great past destinies of humanity, which, throughout these regions, slumber, preserved under the mantle of Islam. But lately on this peninsula of Gallipoli, with its somewhat bare and stony hills, there used to be, in the winding folds of every river, tranquil old villages, with their wooden houses built on the site of ancient ruins, their white minarets, their dark cypress groves, sheltering some of those charming gilded _stelae_, which exist in countless numbers, as everyone knows, in that land of Turkey where the dead are never disturbed. And it was all so calm, all this; it seemed that these humble little Edens might have felt sure of being spared for a long time yet, if not for ever.

But alas! the Germans are the cause of the horror that is unchained here to-day, that horror without precedent, which it is their genius to propagate as soon as they have chosen a spot wherein to stretch out their tentacles, visible or concealed. And it has become a most sinister chaos, lighted by huge flames, red or livid, in a continuous din of hell. Everything is overthrown in confusion and ruin.

"The ancient castles of Europe and Asia are nothing more than ruins," writes to me one of our old Zouaves, who is fighting in those parts; "it is to me unspeakably painful to see those idyllic landscapes harrowed by trenches and shells; the venerable cypress trees are mown down; funereal marbles of great artistic value are shattered into a thousand fragments. If only Stamboul at least may be preserved!"

There are trenches, trenches everywhere. To this form of warfare, underground and treacherous, which the Germans have invented, the Turks, like ourselves, have necessarily had to submit. And so this ancient soil, the repository of the treasures of antiquity, has been ploughed up into deep furrows, in which appear at every moment the fragments of some marvel dating from distant, unknown epochs.

And at every hour of the night and day these trenches are reddened with blood, with the blood of our sons of France, of our English friends, and even of those gentle giants of New Zealand, who have followed them into this furnace. The earth is abundantly drenched with their blood, the blood of all these Allies, so dissimilar, but so firmly united against the monstrous knavery of Germany. Opposite, very close, there flows the blood of those Turks, who are nothing but the unhappy victims of hateful plots, yet who are so freely insulted in France by people who understand nothing of the underlying cause. They fall in thousands, these Turks, more exposed to shrapnel fire than our own men; nevertheless they fight reluctantly; they fight because they have been deceived and because insolent foreigners drive them on with their revolvers. If on the whole they fight none the less superbly, it is merely a question of race. And the simplest of them, who have been persuaded that they had to do with only their Russian enemies, are unaware that it is we who are there.

On this peninsula we occupy a position won and retained by force of heroism. The formation of the ground continues to render our situation one of difficulty and our tenacity still more worthy of admiration. Our position, indeed, is dominated by the low hills of Asia, where the forts have not yet all been silenced; there is therefore no nook or corner, no tent, no single one of our field hospitals, where doctors can attend to the wounded in perfect security, absolutely certain that no shell will come and interrupt them.

This terrible void France desires to fill with all possible dispatch. With the utmost haste, she is fitting out a great hospital ship, which the Red Cross Society has offered to provide at its own expense with three hundred beds, with linen, nurses, drugs and dressings. This life-saving ship will be moored in front of an island close to the scene of battle, but completely sheltered; steam and motor launches will be attached to it to fetch those who are seriously wounded and bring them on board day by day, so that they may be operated upon and tended in peace before infection and gangrene set in. How many precious lives of our soldiers will thus be saved!

It must be understood that the stretcher-bearers of the ship will bring back likewise wounded Turks, if there are any lying in the zone accessible to them; and this is only fair give and take, for they do the same for us. Some Zouaves who are fighting there wrote to me yesterday:

"The Turks are resisting with unequalled bravery; this all the newspapers of Europe admit. But our wounded and our prisoners receive excellent treatment from them, as General Gouraud himself announced in an Order of the Day; they nurse them, feed them, and tend them better than their own soldiers."

And here is a literal extract from a letter from one of our adjutants: "I fell, wounded in the leg, beside a Turkish officer more seriously wounded than myself; he had with him emergency dressings and he began by dressing my wound before thinking of his own. He spoke French very well and he said to me, 'You see, my friend, to what a pass these miserable Germans have brought us!'"

If I dwell upon the subject of the Turks it is not, I need hardly say, because I take a deeper interest in them than in our own men; no one will insult me by such a reflection. No. But as for our own soldiers, does not everyone love them already? Whereas these poor fellows are really too much misjudged and slandered by the ignorant masses.

"Spare them as soon as they hold up their hands," said a heroic general, brought home yesterday from the Dardanelles covered with wounds. He was addressing his men in a proclamation admirable for the loyalty of its tone. "Spare them," he said; "it is not they who are our enemies."

So, then, the great life-saving ship which is about to be sent to those parts is being made ready to sail in all haste. But the Red Cross Society have herewith taken upon themselves a heavy responsibility, and it will be readily understood that they will need money, much money. That is why I make this appeal on their behalf to all the world. So much has already been given that it is an earnest wish that still more will be forthcoming, for with us charity is inexhaustible when once the noble impulse stirs. I would ask that help may be given very soon, for there is need of dispatch.

How greatly this will change the condition of life for our dear soldiers. What confidence it will give them to know that if they fall, seriously wounded, there is waiting for them a place of refuge, like a little corner of France, which is equivalent to saying a corner of Paradise, and that they will be taken there at once. Instead of the miserable makeshift field hospital, too hot and by no means too safe, where the terrible noise never ceases to rack aching temples, there will be this refuge, absolutely out of range of gun fire, this great peaceful ship, open everywhere to the good, wholesome air of the sea, where at last prevails that silence so passionately desired by sufferers, where they will be tended with all the latest improvements and the most ingenious inventions by gentle French nurses in white dresses, whose noiseless footfall disturbs no slumber nor dream.

XIV

SERBIA IN THE BALKAN WAR

_July, 1915._

But lately I had included Serbia--its prince in particular--in my first accusations against the Balkan races, when they hurled themselves together upon Turkey, already at grips with Italy. But later on, in the course of so many wrathful indictments, I did not once again mention the name of the Serbians. That was because my information from those parts proved to me clearly that among the original Allies, the Allies of the Balkans, the Serbians were the most humane. They themselves, doubtless, observed that I made no further reference to them, for no insulting letter reached me from their country, whereas Bulgarians and even Greeks poured upon me a flood of unseemly abuse.

Since then the great philanthropist, Carnegie, in order to establish the truth definitely in history, has set on foot a conscientious international court of inquiry, whose findings, published in a large volume, have all the authority of the most impartial official documents. Here are recorded, supported by proofs and signatures, the most appalling testimonies against Bulgarians and Greeks; but noticeably fewer crimes are ascribed to Serbia's account. But this volume entitled "Conquest in the Balkans" (Carnegie Endowment) has, I fear, been too little read, and it is a duty to bring it to the notice of all.

Moreover, who would refuse pardon to that gallant Serbian nation for the excesses they may have committed? Who would not accord to them the profound sympathy of France to-day, when the Prussian Emperor, in his ruthless ferocity, has sacrificed them as a bait for one of his most abominable and knavish plots? Poor little Serbia! With what magnificent heroism she has succeeded in defending herself against an enemy who did not even shrink from the atrocious act of burning her capital at a time when it was peopled solely by women and children! Poor little Serbia, suddenly become a martyr, and sublime! I would willingly at least win back for her some French hearts which my last book may perhaps have alienated. And that is the sole purpose of this letter.

XV

ABOVE ALL LET US NEVER FORGET!

_August 1st, 1915._

A year ago to-day began that shameful violation of Belgian territory. In the midst of these appalling horrors, time, it seems, has hastened still more in its bewildered flight, and already we have reached the anniversary of that foul deed, the blackest that has ever defiled the history of the human race. This crime was committed after long, hypocritical premeditation, and no pang of remorse, no vestige of shame, caused those myriads of accomplices to stay their hands. It is a crime that leaves with us, in addition to immeasurable mourning, an impression of infinite sadness and discouragement, because it proves that one of the greatest countries in Europe is hopelessly bankrupt of all that men have agreed to call honour, civilisation, and progress. The barbarian onslaughts of ancient days were not only a thousand times less murderous, but, let it be specially noted, incomparably less revolting in character. There were certain dastardly deeds, certain acts of profanation, certain lies, at which those hordes that came to us from Asia hesitated; an instinctive reverence still restrained them; and, moreover, in those times they did not destroy with such impudent cynicism, invoking the God of Christians in a burlesque pathos of prayer!

Thus in our own day has arisen a grisly Emperor, with a pack of princelings, his own progeny, a litter of wolves, whose most savage and at the same time most cowardly representative wears a death's head upon his helmet; and generals and millions of Germans have been found ready to unite, after a calculated preparation of nearly half a century, in committing this same preliminary crime, the forerunner of so many others, and by way of prelude, to crush ignobly in their advance a little nation whom they had deemed without defence.

But lo! the little nation arose, quivering with sacred indignation, and attempted to check the great barbarism, suddenly unmasked; to check it for at least a few days, even at the cost of a seemingly inevitable doom of annihilation.

What starry crowns can history award worthy of that Belgian nation and of their King, who did not fear to bid them set themselves there as a barrier.

King Albert of Belgium, dispossessed to-day of his all and banished to a hamlet--what tribute of admiration and homage can we offer him worthy of his acceptance and sufficiently enduring? Upon tablets of flawless marble let us carve his name in deep letters so that it may be well insured against the fugitiveness of our French memories, which, alas! have sometimes proved a little untrustworthy, at least in face of the age-long infamies of Germany. May we remember for ever, we, and even our far distant posterity, that to save civilised Europe, and especially our own country of France, King Albert did not for one moment shrink from those sheer, unconditional sacrifices which seemed beyond human strength. Spurning the tempting compromises offered by that monstrous emperor, he has fulfilled to the end his duty of loyal hero with a calm smile, as if nothing were more natural. And so perfect is his modesty that he is surprised if he is told that he has been sublime.

As for Queen Elizabeth, let each one of us dedicate to her a shrine in his soul. One of the most dreaded duties that falls almost invariably to the lot of queens is having to reign over adopted countries while exiled from their own. In the special case of this young martyred queen, this doom of exile which has befallen her, and many other queens, must be a far more exquisite torture, added to all the other evils endured, for a crushing fatality has come and separated her for ever from all who were once her own people, even from that noble woman, all devotion and charity, who was her mother. This additional sorrow she bears with calm and lofty courage which never falters. She is by the King's side, his constant companion in the most terrible hours of all; a companion whose energy halts at nothing. And she is by the side of the poor who have lost their all by pillage or fire; by the side of the wounded who are suffering or dying; to them, too, she is a companion, comforting the lowliest with her adorable simplicity, shedding on all the increasing bounty of her exquisite compassion. Oh, may she be blest, reverenced, and glorified! And for her altar, dedicated within our souls, let us choose very rare, very delicate flowers, like unto herself.

XVI

THE INN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN

_August, 1915._

In spite of the kindly welcome which the visitor receives and a wholesome spirit of gaiety which never fails, it is an inn that I cannot honestly recommend without reserve.

In the first place it is somewhat difficult of access, so much so that ladies are never admitted. To climb up to it--for it is perched very high--the traveller must needs make his way for hours through ancient forests which the axe had spared until a very few months ago, along unknown paths winding at steep gradients; among giant trees, pines or larches, felled yesterday, which still lie about in all directions; paths that are concealed by close-growing greenery with such jealous care that in the few open spaces occurring here and there trees have been planted right into the ground, trees uprooted elsewhere, and which are here only to hide the wayfarer behind their dying branches. It may be supposed that on the neighbouring hills sharp eyes, unfriendly eyes, are watching, which necessitate all these precautions.

But there are many people on the road through those forests, which seemed at first sight virgin. Viewing from a little distance all these mountains covered with the same strong growth of forest, so luxuriant, and everywhere so alike in appearance, who would imagine that they sheltered whole tribes? And such strange tribes, evidently survivors of an entirely prehistoric race of men, and in the anomalous position of having no women-folk. Here are nothing but men, and men all dressed alike, with a singular fancy for uniformity, in old, faded, woollen great-coats of horizon blue. They have not paid much attention to their hair or beards, and they have almost the appearance of brigands, except that they all have such pleasant faces and such kindly smiles for the wayfarer that they inspire no terror. So far from this he is tempted rather to stop and shake hands with them. But what curious little dwellings they have built, some isolated, some grouped together into a village! Some of them are quite lightly constructed of planks of wood and are covered over with branches of pine, and within are mattresses of leaves that serve for beds. Some are underground, grim as caves of troglodytes, and the approach to them is protected by huge masses of rock, doubtless their defence against formidable wild beasts haunting the neighbourhood. And these dwellings are always close to one of the innumerable streams of clear water which rush down babbling from the heights, among pink flowers and mosses--for these miniature waterfalls are many, and all these mountains are full of the pleasant music of running water. From time to time, to be sure, other sounds are heard, hollow sounds of evil import, detonations on the right or the left, which the echoes prolong. Can it be that there is artillery concealed almost everywhere throughout the forest? What want of taste, thus to disturb the symphony of the springs.

They have probably just arrived here, these savage tribes, dressed in greyish blue; they are recent settlers, for all their arrangements are new and improvised, and so likewise is the interminable winding road which they have laid out, and which to-day our motor cars, with the help of a little goodwill, manage to climb so rapidly.

One of the peculiarities of these hidden villages which crouch in the shade of the lofty forest trees is that each has its own cemetery, tenderly cared for, so close that it almost borders on the dwellings, as if the living were anxious not to sever their comradeship with the dead. But how comes it that death is so frequent among these limpid streams, in a region where the air is so invigorating and so pure? These tombs, so disquieting in their disproportionate numbers, are ranged in rows, all with the same humble crosses of wood. They have borders of ferns carefully watered, or of little pebbles, well selected. Flowers such as thrive in shady places and are common in these parts, shoot up their pretty pink spikes all around, and the whole scene is steeped in the green translucent twilight which envelops the whole mountain, the twilight of these unchanging trees, pines and larches, stretching away into infinity, crowded together like wheat in a field, tall and straight like gigantic masts.

In our haste to reach that Inn of the Good Samaritan, which is our destination, we keep on climbing at a rapid pace, notwithstanding acute-angled corners where our cars have to back before they can effect the turn, and other awkward places where our cars slip on the wet soil, skid, and come to a stop.

These tribes, so primitive in appearance, through whose midst we have been travelling since the morning, seem to be concentrating their energies especially on making these roads, which, one would think, cannot really be necessary to their simple mode of existence. In our onward course we meet nearly all these men, working with might and main, with axes, shovels, stakes and picks, hurrying as if the task were urgent. They stand erect for a moment to salute us, smiling a little with touching and respectful familiarity, and then they bend down again to their arduous work, levelling, enlarging, timbering, or digging out roots that are in the way, and rocks that encroach. And when we were told that it is scarcely ten months since they began this exhausting work in the midst of forest, virgin hitherto, we are fain to believe that all the Genii of the mountains have roused themselves and lent their magic help.

Oh! what tribute of admiration mingled with emotion do we owe to these men, likewise, the builders of roads, our gallant territorials, who seem to be playing at wild men of the woods. They have revived for us the miracles of the Roman Legions who so speedily opened up roads for their armies through the forests of Gaul. Thanks to their prodigious labour, performed without a break, without a murmur, the conditions of warfare in this region, only yesterday still inaccessible, will be radically changed for the benefit of our dear soldiers. Everything will reach them on the heights ten times more expeditiously than before--arms, avenging shells, rations; and in a few hours the seriously wounded will be gently driven down in carriages to comfortable field hospitals in the plains.

Roughly speaking at an altitude of about fourteen or fifteen hundred metres, the ancient forest with its arching trees ends abruptly. The sky is deep blue above our heads, and infinite horizons unfold around us their great spectacular display of illusive images. The air is very clear and pure to-day in honour of our arrival, and it is so marvellously transparent that we miss no detail of the most distant landscapes.

We are told that we have reached the plateau where stands that hospitable inn; it is, however, not yet in sight. But the plateau itself, where is it situated, in which country of the world? In the foreground around us and below nothing is visible except summits uniformly wooded with trees of the same species; this brings back to mind those great, monstrous expanses of forest which must have covered the entire earth in the beginning of our geological period, but it is characteristic of no particular country or epoch of history. In the distance, it is true, there are signs of a more tell-tale nature. Thus yonder, on the horizon, that succession of mountains, all mantled with the same dark verdure, bears a close resemblance to the Black Forest; that chain of glaciers over there, silhouetting so clearly against the horizon its ridges of rosy crystal, might well be taken for the Alps; and that peak in particular is too strikingly like the Jungfrau to admit of any doubt. But I may not be more definite in my description; I will merely say that those bluish plains in the East, rolling away at our feet like a great sea, were but lately French, and are now about to become French once more.

How spacious is this plateau, and how naked it stands among all those other summits mantled with trees. Here there is not even brushwood, for doubtless the winter winds rage too fiercely; here nothing grows but short, thick grass and little stunted plants with insignificant flowers. It is ecstasy to breathe here in this delicious intoxication of pure air and of spaciousness and light. And yet there is some vague sense of tragedy about the place, due perhaps to those great round holes, freshly made; to those cruel clefts with which here and there the earth is rent. What can have fallen here from the sky, leaving such scars on the level surface? We are warned, moreover, that monstrous birds of a very dangerous kind, with iron muscles, often come and hover about overhead in that fair blue sky. And from time to time a cannon shot from some invisible battery comes to disturb the impressive silence and reverberates in the valleys below; and then comes, long drawn out, the whirring of a shell, like a flight of partridges going past.

We notice some French soldiers, Alpine _chasseurs_, or cavalry on their horses, scattered in groups about this plain, as it may be called, situated at such an altitude. At this moment all lift their heads and look in the same direction; this is because one of those great dangerous birds has just been signalled; it is flying proudly, remote in the open sky, in the clear blue. But immediately it is pursued by white clouds, quite miniature clouds, which give the effect of being created instantaneously, only to vanish as quickly--little explosions of white cotton wool, one might say--and it seems impossible that they should be freighted with death. However, that evil bird has understood; he is aware that good marksmen are aiming at him, and he turns back on hasty wing, while our soldiers gaily burst out laughing.

And the inn? It lies just in front of us, a few hundred paces away; it is that greyish hut with its gay tricolour floating on the light breeze of these altitudes, but near it stands a very lofty cross of pine-wood, four or five yards high, stretching out its arms as in solemn warning.

The fact is, I must admit, that people die very frequently at this Inn of the Good Samaritan or in its neighbourhood, and it is for this reason that in the beginning I recommended it with reserve. It is surprising, is it not, in such health-giving air? But the truth of it is indisputable, and it has been necessary hurriedly to attach to it a cemetery whose existence this tall cross of pine proclaims from afar to travellers.

Yes, many men die here, but they die so nobly, a death of all deaths most desirable--each according to his own temperament, according to the nature of his soul: some in the calm serenity of duty done, others in magnificent exaltation, but all in glory.

Can this be the famous inn--in other words the dwelling of those officers who command this outpost, and where their friends on rare and brief visits, liaison officers, bearers of dispatches, etc., are sure of finding such cordial and genial hospitality--this modest hutting built of planks? So it is, and that there may be no mistake, there is an imposing signboard in the fashion of old times. Shaped like a shield, it hangs from an iron rod and bears the inscription, "Inn of the Good Samaritan." The legend is painted in ornamental letters, and the humour of it is irresistible among such Crusoe-like destitution. Doubtless one day some officer in a specially happy mood thought of this jest as a welcome for comrades coming thither on special duty. Naturally he found at once among his men one who was a carpenter and another a decorator in civil life, both very much amused at being ordered to put this unpremeditated idea forthwith into execution.

The furniture of the inn is very rough and ready, if the truth be told, and the wall of planks just shelters you from the snow or rain, but from the wind hardly, and from shells not at all. But one fills one's lungs to the full with the air that reaches one through the little windows, and from the threshold, looking downwards, there is a marvellous bird's-eye view of great forests, of an unending chain of glaciers, clear as crystal, of unbounded distances, and even over the tops of clouds.

Ah well! all along the battle front there are such Inns of the Good Samaritan. These others are perched less high, and they do not bear the same name; indeed very often they have no name at all; but in all of them prevails the same spirit of kindly hospitality, firm confidence, smiling endurance and cheerful sacrifice. Here, as there, between two showers of shells, men are capable of amusing themselves with childish trifles, so stout of heart are they, and if access were not forbidden on military grounds I would invite all pessimists in the background, who have doubts of France and of her destiny, to come here for a cure.

And now, having seen the inn, let us pay a pious visit to the annex, the inevitable annex, alas! Around the wooden cross which dominates it is a piece of ground enclosed with an open fence, made of boughs of larch artistically intertwined. Within its bounds those tombs, too numerous already, preserve something of a military aspect, ranged as they are in such correct alignment and all with the same little crosses, adorned with a wreath of greenery. The Cross! In spite of all infidelity, denial, scorn, the Cross still remains the sign to which a tender instinct of atavism recalls us at the approach of death. There is not a tree, not a shrub, for none grow here: on the ground there is only the short grass that grows upon this wind-swept plateau. An attempt has been made, to be sure, to make borders of certain stunted plants found in the neighbourhood, but rows of pebbles last best. And in five weeks or so, thick shrouds of snow will begin to cover up everything, until another spring succeeds the snows and the grass grows green again, in the midst of still deeper oblivion.

Nevertheless let us not pity them, for they have had the better part, these young dead who rest there on that glorious mountain-top which is destined to become once more, after the war, a solitude ineffably calm, high above forest, valley and plain.

XVII

FOR THE RESCUE OF OUR WOUNDED

_August, 1915._

The preservation of the lives of our dear wounded, who day by day are stricken down upon the field of battle, depends nine times out of ten on the rapidity with which they are carried in; on the gentleness and promptness with which they are taken to the field hospitals, where they may be put into comfortable beds and left in the care of all the kind hands that are waiting for them. This fact is not sufficiently well known; often it happens that wounds which would have been trifling have become septic and mortal because they have been left too long covered with inadequate, uncleanly bandages, or have trailed for many hours on the earth or in the mud.

In the first weeks of the war when we were taken unawares by the barbarians' attack, treacherous and sudden as a thunderbolt, it was not bullets and shrapnel alone that killed the sons of France. Often, too, it happened that help was slow in arriving; sufficient haste could not be made, and it was impossible to cope right at the beginning with these shortcomings, in spite of much admirable devotion and ingenuity in multiplying and improving the means of service. Since then helpers have poured in from all sides; gifts have been showered with open hands; organisation has been created with loving zeal, and things are already working very well. But much still remains to be done, for the work is immense and complex, and it is our duty to hold ourselves more than ever in readiness, in anticipation of great final struggles for deliverance.

Now a society is being formed for sending to the Front some fresh squadrons of fast motor-ambulances, furnished with cots and mattresses of improved design. Thus thousands more of our wounded will be laid immediately between clean sheets, then brought into hospital with all speed, without that delay which is a cause of gangrened wounds, without those jolts that aggravate the pain of fractured bones and inflict yet more grievous suffering on those dear bruised heads.

But in spite of the first magnificent donations, a remainder of the money has still to be found to complete the enterprise satisfactorily. And so I beseech all mothers, whose sons may fall at any moment; I beseech all those who have in the firing-line a kinsman dear to them; I beseech them to send their offerings without hesitation, without calculation, so that soon, before the April battles begin, several hundreds of those great life-saving ambulances may be ready to start, which will assuredly preserve for us a vast number of precious lives.

XVIII

AT RHEIMS

_August, 1915._

On a beautiful August evening I am hastening in a motor car towards Rheims, one of our martyred towns, where I am hoping to find shelter for the night before continuing my journey to the General Headquarters of another Army. In order to avoid military formalities I wish to enter the town before the sun sets, and it is already too low for my liking.

The evening is typical of one of our splendid French summers; the air is exquisitely clear, of a delightful, wholesome warmth, tempered with a light, refreshing breeze. On the hillsides of Champagne the beautiful vines on which the grapes are ripening spread a uniform expanse of green carpet, and there are so many trees, so many flowers everywhere, gardens in all the villages, and roses climbing up all the walls.

To-day the cannon is heard no more, and one would be tempted to forget that the barbarians are there close at hand if there were not so many improvised cemeteries all along the road. Everywhere there are these little graves of soldiers, all alike, which are now to be found from end to end of our beloved France, all along the battle front; their simple crosses of wood are ranged in straight lines as if for a parade, topped, some of them, with a wreath; others still more pathetically with a simple service-cap, red or blue, falling to rags. We salute them as we pass.

Among these glorious dead there are some whose kindred will seek them out and bring them back to the province of their birth later, when the barbarians have gone away, while others, less favoured, will remain there forever until the great final day of oblivion. But what masses of flowers people have already been at pains to plant there for them all. Around their resting-place there is a brave show of all shades of brilliant colour, dahlias, cannas, China asters, roses. Who has undertaken this labour of love? Girls from the nearest villages? Or perhaps even their own brothers-in-arms, who dwell on the outskirts everywhere like invisible subterranean tribes in these casemates, trench shelters, dug-outs of every shape covered over with green branches?

This region, you must know, is not very safe, and when we arrive at a section of the road which is too much exposed, a sentinel, especially posted there to give warning, instructs us to leave the high road for a moment, where we should run the risk of being seen and shelled, and to take some sheltered traverse behind the curtains of poplars.

One of my soldier-chauffeurs suddenly turns round to say to me:

"Oh look, sir, there is an Arab cemetery. They have put on each grave their little crescents instead of the cross."

Here to be sure the humble _stelae_ of white wood are all topped with the crescent of Islam, and this is something of a shock to us in the very heart of France. Poor fellows, who died for our righteous cause, so far from their mosques and their marabouts they sleep, and alas! without facing Mecca, because they who laid them piously to rest did not know that this was to them a requisite of peaceful slumber! But the same profusion of flowers has been brought to them as to our own countrymen, and I need not say that we salute them likewise--a little late, perhaps, for we pass them so rapidly.

We reach Rheims just before sunset, and here a sudden sadness chills us. All is silent and the streets almost deserted. The shops are closed, and some of the houses seem to gape at us with enormous holes in their walls.

One of the infrequent wayfarers tells us that at the Hotel Golden Lion, Cathedral Square, we may still be able to find someone to take us in, and soon we are at the very foot of the noble ruin, which is still enthroned as majestically as ever in the midst of the martyred town, dominating everything with its two towers of open stone-work. I stop my car, the sound of whose rolling in such a place seems profanation; the sadness of ruins is intensified here into veritable anguish, and the silence is such that instinctively we begin to talk softly, as if we had already entered the great church that has perished.

The Golden Lion--but its panes of glass are broken, the doors stand open, the courtyard is deserted. I send one of my soldiers there, bidding him call, but not too loudly, in the midst of all this mournful meditation. He returns; he has received no reply and has seen holes in the walls. The house is deserted. We must seek elsewhere.

It is twilight. A golden after-glow still lingers around the magnificent summits of the towers, while the base is wrapped in shadow. Oh, the cathedral, the marvellous cathedral! what a work of destruction the barbarians have continued to accomplish here since my pilgrimage of last November. It had ever been a lace-work of stone, and now it is nothing but a lace-work torn in tatters, pierced with a thousand holes. By what miracle does it still hold together? It seems as if to-day the least shock, a breath of wind perhaps, would suffice to cause it to crumble away, to resolve itself, as it were, into scattered atoms. How can it ever be repaired? What scaffolding could one dare to let lean against those unstable ruins. In an attempt to afford it yet a little protection sandbags have been piled up, mountain high, against the pillars of the porticoes, the same precaution that has been taken in the case of St. Mark's in Venice, of Milan, of all those inimitable masterpieces of past ages which are menaced by the refined culture of Germany. Here the precautions are vain; it is too late, the cathedral is lost, and our hearts are wrung with sorrow and indignation as we look this evening upon this sacred relic of our past, our art, and our faith, in its death throes and its abandonment. Ah, what savages! And to feel that they are still there, close at hand, capable of giving it at any hour its _coup de grace_.

To bid it farewell, perhaps a last farewell, we will walk around it slowly with solemn tread, in the midst of this deathlike silence which seems to grow more intense as the light fails.

But suddenly, just as we are passing the ruins of the episcopal palace, we hear a prelude of sound, a tremendous, hollow uproar, something like the rumbling of a terrible thunderstorm, near at hand and unceasing. And yet the evening sky is so clear! Ah yes, we were warned, we know whence it comes; it is the bombardment of our heavy artillery, which was expected half an hour after sunset, directed at the barbarians' trenches. This is a change for us from the silence, this cataclysmal music, and it contributes to our walk a different kind of sadness, another form of horror. And we continue to gaze at the wonderful stone carving overhanging us--the bold little arches, the immense pointed arches, so frail and so exquisite. Indeed how does it all still hold together? Up above there are little columns which have lost their base and remain, as it were, suspended in the air by their capitals. The windows are no more; the lovely rose-windows have been destroyed; the nave has huge fissures from top to bottom. In the twilight the whole cathedral assumes more and more its phantom-like aspect, and that noise which causes everything to vibrate is still increasing. It is a question whether so many vibrations will not bring about the final downfall of those too fragile carvings which hitherto have held on so persistently at such great heights above our heads.

Here comes the first wayfarer in that solitude, a well-dressed person. He is hurrying, actually running.

"Do not stay there," he shouts to us; "do you not see that they are going to bombard?"

"But it is we, the French, who are firing. It is our own artillery. Come, do not run so fast."

"I know very well that it is we, but each time the enemy revenge themselves on the cathedral. I tell you that there will be a rain of shells here immediately. Look out for yourselves."

He goes on. So much the better; it was kind of him to warn us, but his jacket and his billy-cock jarred upon the melancholy grandeur of the scene.

Where a street opens into the square two girls now appear; they stop and hesitate. Evidently they are aware, these two, that the barbarians have a habit of taking a noble revenge upon the cathedral, and that shells are about to fall. But doubtless they have to cross this square in order to reach their home, to get down into their cellar. Will they have time?

They are graceful and pretty, fair, bare-headed, with their hair arranged in simple bands. They gaze into the air with their eyes raised well up towards the heavens, perhaps to see if death is beginning to pass that way, but more likely to send up thither a prayer. I know not what last brightness of the twilight, in spite of the encroaching gloom, illumines so delightfully their two upturned faces, and they look like saints in stained-glass windows. Both make the sign of the cross, and then they make up their minds, and hand in hand they run across the square. With their religious gestures, their faces expressing anxiety, yet courage too and defiance, they suddenly seem to me charming symbols of the girlhood of France; they run away, indeed, but it is clear that they would remain without fear if there were some wounded man to carry away, some duty to perform. And their flight seems very airy in the midst of this tremendous uproar like the end of the world.

We are going away too, for it is wiser. In the streets there are a very few wayfarers who are running to take shelter, running with their backs hunched up, although nothing is falling yet, like people without umbrellas surprised by a shower. One of them, who nevertheless does not mind stopping, points out to us the last hotel still remaining open, a "perfectly safe" hotel, he says, over there in a quarter of the town where no shell has ever fallen.

God forbid that I should dream of laughing at them, or fail to admire as much as it deserves their persistent and calm heroism in remaining here, in defiance of everything, in their beloved town, which is suffering more and more mutilations. But who would not be amused at that instinct which causes the majority of mankind to hunch their backs against hail of whatever description? And then, is it because the air is fresh and soft and it is good to be alive that after the unspeakable heartache at the sight of the cathedral and the passion verging on tears, a calm of reaction sets in and in that moment everything amuses me?

At the end of a quiet street, where the noise of the cannonade is muffled, in the distance, we find the hotel which was recommended to us.

"Rooms," says the host, very pleasantly, standing on his doorstep, "oh, as many as you like, the whole hotel if you wish, for you will understand that in times such as these travellers---- And yet as far as shells go you have nothing to fear here."

An appalling din interrupts his sentence. All the windows in the front of the house are shivered to fragments, together with tiles, plaster, branches of trees. In his haste to run away and hide he misses the step on the threshold and falls down flat on his face. A dog who was coming along jumps upon him, full of importance, recalling him to order with a fierce bark. A cat, sprung from I know not where, flies through space like an aerolith, uses my shoulder for a jumping-off place, and is swallowed up by the mouth of a cellar. But words are too tedious for that series of catastrophes, which lasts scarcely as long as two lightning flashes. And they continue to bombard us with admirable regularity, as if timing themselves with a metronome; the wall of the house is already riddled with scars.

It is very wrong, I admit, to take these things as a jest, and indeed with me that impression is only superficial, physical, I might say; that which endures in the depth of my soul is indignation, anguish, pity. But at this entry which the Germans made into our hotel, that peaceful spot, with flourish of their great orchestra, in the presence of so many surprises, how retain one's dignity? There is a fair number of little shells, it seems, but no heavy shells; they travel with their long whistling sound, and burst with a harsh din.

"Into the cellar, gentlemen," cries the innkeeper, who has picked himself up unhurt. Apparently there is nothing else to be done. I should have come to that conclusion myself. So I turn round to order in my three soldiers too, who had remained outside to look at a hole made by shrapnel in the body of the car. But upon my word I believe they are laughing, the heartless wretches; and then I can restrain myself no longer, I burst out laughing too.

Yes, it is very wrong of us, for presently there will be bloodshed and death. But how resist the humour of it all: the good man fallen flat on his face, the self-importance of the dog, who thought he must put a stop to the situation, and especially the cat, the cat swallowed up by an air-hole after showing us as a supreme exhibition of flight its little hindquarters with its tail in the air.

XIX

THE DEATH-BEARING GAS

_November, 1915._

It is a place of horror, conceived, it might be thought by Dante. The air is heavy, stifling; two or three nightlights, which seem to be afraid of shining too brightly, scarcely pierce the vaporous, overheated darkness which exhales an odour of sweat and fever. Busy people are whispering there anxiously, but the principal sound that is heard is an agonised gasping for breath. This gasping comes from a number of cots, in rows, touching one another, on which are lying human forms, their chests heaving with rapid and laboured breathing, lifting the bedclothes as though the moment of the death-rattle had come.