Part 3

I am on a bit of rising ground, from which I look down on all the terrible landscape, the succession of monotonous hillocks zebra-streaked by whitish "guts," and the few trees disheveled by shrapnel bullets. In the further distances these intertwined wires, stretched in all directions, sparkle in the sun, somewhat like "the Virgin's threads," which spread over the meadows in Spring. And on all sides the detonations of artillery keep up their accustomed rumble, which goes on unceasingly here, night and day, like the roar of the ocean against the cliffs.

Ah! the huge bird has found some one to speak to in the air! I see it all at once assailed by a host of those little tufts of white cotton--bursting shrapnel--which look so innocent, but which are so perilous for birds of its breed. It turns about hastily; its crimes are put off for another time.

From behind a nearby rising ground come forth a group of men in blue, who will reach me before the officer who is coming over there. It is the chance one, the one among thousands of these little processions which one meets incessantly, alas! along the battle front, and which form, so to speak, part of the stage setting. At its head four soldiers are carrying a stretcher, and others are following, to relieve them. Attracted also by the illusory protection of the branches, they stop instinctively at the entrance of the little wood to take breath and change shoulders. They come from the first-line trenches, which are three or four kilometers away, and are carrying a "gravely wounded" man to an underground hospital, which is some quarter of an hour away. They also had not foreseen this vicious sun that scorches one's head; they are wearing their helmets and cloaks, and they feel the weight of them as much as that of the precious load which they take such pains to carry steadily; more, they drag along, on each foot, a thick shell of sticky mud which gives them feet like elephants, and the sweat runs in big drops over their fine, tired faces.

"What is the matter with your wounded man?" I ask in a low voice.

In still lower voices they answer me: "He is ripped up the belly--oh! the trench surgeon told us that...." They finish the sentence only with a shake of the head, but I understand. For the rest, he has not stirred. His poor hand remains pressed to his brow and his eyes, doubtless to protect them against the baking sun, and I ask: "Why did you not cover his face?" "We did put a handkerchief over it, Colonel, but he took it away; he said he would rather have it like that, so that he can still see something between his fingers."

VII--HOW GLORIOUS IS THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE

Ah! but the two last men, besides sweat, have broad smears of blood across their faces and running down their necks. "Oh, nothing much the matter with us, Colonel!" they tell me; "we got that as we came along. We started to carry him along the 'guts,' but it shook him too much; so we came on outside in the open." Poor, admirable dreamer! To save their wounded man from jolting they have risked all their lives! Two or three of these huge death beetles which ceaselessly hum past have smashed themselves near them against the stones and have sprinkled them with their fragments; the Germans do not take the trouble to shoot at a single passerby like myself, but a group, and especially a litter, is irresistible for them. Of the two who are streaming with blood, one is, perhaps, not much the worse, but the other has an ear torn off, and hanging only by a shred of skin.

"You must get your wound dressed by the surgeon immediately, my friend," I say to him.

"Yes, Colonel, we are on our way there to the hospital. It suits exactly."

That is the only thing that has occurred to him to say in complaint: "It suits exactly." And he says it with such a fine, quiet smile, while thanking me for taking an interest in him.

I hesitate to go closer to look at their gravely wounded man, who has remained without stirring, for fear I might disturb his last thoughts. I do go close to him, however, very gently, because they are going to carry him away.

Ah! He is a mere lad! A village boy; one can guess that at once by his bronzed cheeks, which have just begun to grow pale. The sun, as he wishes, floods his handsome 20-year-old face, which is at the same time vigorous and candid, and his hand is still held like a guard before his eyes, which are set and seem no longer to perceive anything. They must have given him morphine to keep him from suffering too much. Humble child of our countryside, brief little life, what is he dreaming of, if he is still dreaming? Perhaps of his kerchiefed mamma, who wept happy tears every time she recognized his childish writing on an envelope from the front? Or is he dreaming of the farm garden that held his earliest years?

I see on his breast the handkerchief with which they tried to cover his face; it is of fine linen, embroidered with a Marquis's coronet--the coronet of one of his bearers. He had wanted "to go on seeing things," doubtless in his terror of the great night. But even this sun, which must dazzle him, will soon cease suddenly to be recognizable for him; to begin with, it will be the half-darkness of the hospital, and, immediately afterward, will begin for him the long inexorable night, in which no sun will ever dawn again.

"VIVE LA FRANCE"--HOW MEN DIE FOR THEIR COUNTRY

_Last Messages of French Soldiers_

_Told by Rene Bazin, Member of the French Academy_

Behind the dry official reports of military events is a vast fund of emotional human stories. Glimpses of this side of the Great War are found in private letters, personal experiences, and thrilling episodes of courage, humor, or pathos which are being preserved in the New York Times _Current History_.

I have heard magnificent sayings of our soldiers; others have been written to me by those who heard them. I would not have them perish. It seems to me that they naturally form a part of the epoch we are living through; that they are good to read and meditate on, unconscious testimonies of that which historians will call the new life of France, of that which has ever been her deeper life, widened and developed in this hour of trial.

Therefore I shall record here not all these sayings and traits, but some of them.

At B., in the hospital of the Grand Hotel, a wounded soldier was to have a limb amputated. But he was so weak that the surgeon hesitated.

"If we could only give him some blood!"

"If that is all that is needed I am ready to give it!" answers another wounded soldier, a Breton.

The transfusion is made. The staff of the hospital, touched by the devotion of this wounded soldier, who was known to be very poor, made a little collection here and there, very quietly, and gathered five hundred francs, which they took great satisfaction in offering to him. One day one of them came close to his bed, spoke of the service he had rendered, thanked him and offered him the money. Mark his answer:

"Oh, no! I give my blood; I do not sell it!"

A very young soldier from the North, with a beardless and rather childish face, is stretched at the back of a trench, dying from a terrible shell wound in the stomach. In spite of the frightful wound he does not complain, he does not repine, and in his wide, upward-gazing eyes one could just perceive the expression of sadness which he often had. For since mobilizing he had received no news from his home in the occupied territory. His comrades are doing what they can for him, offering him water to drink, unbuttoning his tunic, trying to stanch the blood. Opening his eyes, which he had kept for a long moment closed, and no longer with an expression of suffering, he said to one of his comrades, a big, hairy fellow who was bending over him:

"Friend, you must not tell mother what a frightful wound I had! A bullet is better than what I have!" Then he distributed a few little things he had in his pocket--his knife, his purse, a corkscrew, a tinder-box--a last testament soon ended. Finally, with difficulty, he opened his notebook and, setting himself to write, though he could no longer see very clearly, he traced a few lines. When he had finished his soul departed.... Three minutes later, as the word of his end spread along the trench, at this time not under heavy bombardment by the enemy, a Captain arrived, smeared with mud up to the shoulders. He saw the soldier. "Oh, poor boy! One of my bravest!" Respectfully he took the notebook, which had fallen on the ground, opened it and read: "Au revoir, father; au revoir, mother; au revoir, little sisters; I am dying for my country. Vive la France!"

Sergeant Raissac of Beziers was mortally wounded in an assault on a German trench. When they lifted his body his hand still held a photograph representing his mother, his sisters and himself, and on the back of the picture he had managed to write, with his last effort, "Adieu! No tears, but a Christian acceptance. I am at peace with God."

Yesterday, during his two days' leave, I met the son of a poor countrywoman, a workman whom I have loved for a long time. When I took leave of him, saying, "Good luck to you, Marcel!" he looked up with unreproaching eyes and answered me: "On the one side, and on the other, I fear nothing!" And this meant: "Life? Death? What does it matter? I am ready!"

What does all this signify? It is the poetry of chivalry that continues; it is the unfinished Crusade; it is God making Himself manifest through purified France.

Those who seek the sublime will find nothing grander.

II--THE YOUNG HEROES OF FRANCE

_Told by Maurice Barrès, in memory of Max Barthou, who volunteered at eighteen_

I believe that young heroes abound at this moment when every family is cruelly involved in the war. The son dreams of helping his father, his elder brothers, of joining them, of avenging them. Are his city and his home invaded? With his whole heart he tries and examines himself as to what his duty and his honour demand. I remember how the minds of my companions, some 10 years old, and our slightly older brothers were fired in 1870....

Do you wish me to bring you my contribution to the monument of our young patriots?

First, a little story. On Nov. 24, 1914, on a cold day, about 3 in the afternoon, the Prussians, whom they call "Boches," are once again trying to cross the frontier, to enter France. It is very cold, there is a high wind, and snow covers the ground. Who tells the story? A workman at the front, who, from the neighbourhood of Pont-à-Mousson, writes to his two little children at his home at Neuillez sur Marne. They gave me his letter. I should spoil it if I retouched it. I transcribe it just as it is:

"My dear little Marcella, this story, which happened to some French soldiers, you are to tell to your little Charlie and your companions, and you are to show them how two little children saved the lives of twenty-eight papas.

"In a lonely farmhouse a detachment of reservists, composed of thirty men, are resting from the labours of the night in an underground cellar, waiting for the next night to begin their work again and accomplish their mission.

In a room about them, two children, Liza and John, are sitting beside their mamma near the fire. All three talk the old country dialect. All at once the mother rises, runs to the door and sees some horsemen coming from a distance.

"'My children,' she says, pressing them to her heart, 'I think the Prussians are coming. They will see that we have lodged and fed French soldiers, and they will surely want to make us tell where they are. They will take them and shoot them.'

"'We must say they have gone away there, just in the opposite direction!' said little John.

"'Oh, no!' said their mamma; 'if we deceive them with a lie they will come back and take vengeance. Listen rather! I shall speak to the Prussians only in dialect, and they won't understand a word. Do you also do as I do, and, to everything they say, answer always in the same phrase, in dialect.'

"The clatter of hoofs was heard, and the rattle of weapons.

"'Courage, my children!' said their mamma. The door opens. The Boches enter. They ask questions, but the mother's answers are unintelligible to them.

"'Look at these two children! They must learn French at school,' said the officer, who spoke a little French.

"One of the Germans seized little Lisa, while another caught little John.

"'Where is your father?' he asked in a harsh voice. 'Where are the French that passed here?'

"Lisa raised her blue eyes to this foreign soldier and, all trembling, replied in dialect. John did the same. The soldiers, irritated, suspecting a trick, searched the house, but did not find the trap-door which had been previously covered with dirty straw. They threatened to cut the children's throats. They told them they would kill their mother, too, if they did not answer. The poor children began to cry, but, faithful to their mother's directions, they repeated, through their tears, the same phrase.

"The French soldiers who were in the cellar and who heard everything through a ventilator felt their blood boil, and, but for their officer, would have come forth to protect the poor children, and, without doubt, would have been killed, for they were outnumbered.

"The Prussians did not think that such young children, threatened with death, would be capable of such heroic discretion; they ended by believing that they could not make themselves understood and rode away.

"And that is how two little children, Lisa, aged 8, and John, aged 10, by their obedience to their mother and by courage kept thirty men from being killed, twenty-eight wives still have their husbands, and forty-seven little children have their papas. Among these forty-seven little children my little Marcella and my little Charlie will perhaps see their papa again."

I leave this story in its fine simplicity. A workman who had become a soldier chats with his children far away. But the chief attraction in it for me is that the fact reported is quite authentic. I know the farm in the district of Meurthe et Moselle, and later on I shall tell its name, as well as those of the farmer's wife and the two children, who have received a well-earned reward.

FOR GOD AND ITALY--BREATHING DEATH WITH THE ITALIANS

"_Where Minutes Are Eternal_"

_Told by Gabriele D'Annunzio, Italy's Most Famous Living Poet and a Lieutenant in the Italian Navy_

The great D'Annunzio, like most of the famous poets, painters, and composers of Europe, is offering his life to his country. He is a Lieutenant in the Italian Navy. Occasionally some word is heard from him in which we see war through the eyes of the poet. He sent this graphic description of his experiences as a mine-layer to the _London Telegraph_ of December 29, 1915.

I--A POET AT SEA WITH THE ITALIAN NAVY

It can be said of the Italian war what Percy Bysshe Shelley said of the Medusa's head which he saw in Florence, and which he attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: "Its beauty and its horror are divine."

This night of danger and death is one of the sweetest that ever spread its blue veil over the face of the heavens. The sea darkens, and in its innumerable pulsations the nocturnal phosphoresence is already discernible. Here and there the rippled surface of the sea glitters with an internal light as a quivering eyelid, disclosing mysterious glances. The new moon is like a burning handful of sulphur. Ever and anon the black cloud of smoke rising from the funnels hides it or appears to drag it in its spirals like a moving flame.

Life is not an abstraction of aspects and events, but a sort of diffused sensuousness, a knowledge offered to all the senses, a substance good to touch, smell, taste, feel. In fact, I feel all the things near to my senses, like the fisherman walking barefooted on the beach covered with the incoming tide, and who now and then bends to identify and pick up what moves under the soles of his feet. The aspects of this maritime city are like my passions and like the monuments of Nineveh and Knossus, places of my ardor and creations of my fancy, real and unreal, products of my desire and products of time. This city is one of those tumultuous harmonies whence often the most beautiful elements of my art are born. Nothing escapes the eyes Nature gave me, and everything is food for my soul. Such a craving for life is not unlike the desire to die in order to achieve immortality.

In fact, to-night death is present like life, beautiful as life, intoxicating, full of promises, transfiguring. I stand on my feet, wearing shoes that can easily be unlaced, on the deck of a small ironclad on which there is only space enough for the weapons and the crew. Steam is up. The black smoke of the three funnels rises toward the new moon, shining yellow in the cloud, burning like a handful of sulphur. The sailors have already donned life-saving belts and inflated the collars which must support the head in the agony of drowning. I hear the voice of the second officer giving the order to place in the only two boats the biscuits and the canned meat.

A young officer, muscular, but agile as a leopard, who has Boldness' very eyes, and has to his credit already an admirable manoeuvre in conducting the destroyer from the arsenal to the anchorage, pays for the champagne. We drink a cup sitting around the table on which the navigation chart is spread, while the commander of the flotilla dictates, standing, to the typist the order of the nocturnal operation, which is to be issued to the commanders of the other ships. A suppressed joy shines in the eyes of all. The operation is fraught with danger, is most difficult, and the cup we drink may be our last.

An ensign, who is little more than a boy, and a Sicilian, who resembles an adolescent Arabian brought up in the court of Frederick of Serbia, rubs in his hands a perfumed leaf, one of those leaves which are grown in a terra cotta vase on the parapets of the windows looking into the silent lanes of the city. The perfume is so strong that every one of us smells it with quivering nostrils. That single leaf on that terrible warship, where everything is iron and fire, that leaf of love, seems to us infinitely precious, and reminds us of the gardens of Giudecca and Fondamenta Nuove left behind.

The commander continues to dictate the order of the operation with his soft Tuscan accent, with some same telling words that Ramondo d'Amoretto Manelli used in the epistle he sent to Leonard Strozzi when the Genoese were vanquished by the navy of the Venetians and Florentines.

II--"WE ARE GOING TO PLANT MINES ON A HOSTILE COAST"

Ours is a marvelous exploit. We are going to plant mines near the enemy's coast, only a bare kilometer from its formidable batteries. The ensign fastens the black collar around his neck, and will presently inflate it with his breath.

We are ready. We sail. The firmament over our heads is covered with smoke and sparks. Along the gunwale, on each side of the ship, the enormous mines in their iron cages rest on the supports projecting over the water. The long torpedoes are ready for the attack, protected by their iron tubes, with their bronze heads charged with trytol, beasts in ambuscade. The sailors, their heads covered, are grouped around the guns, whose breeches are open. All the available space is strewn with weapons and contrivances, and full of alert men. In order to go from stern to prow it is necessary to crouch, bend, pass under a greasy torpedo, leap over outstretched sailors, strike the leg against the fastening of a torpedo, squeeze against a hot funnel, entangle one's self in a rope, receive squarely in the face a dash of foam while grasping the railing.

I ascend the bridge. We are already clear of the anchorage. It is dark. The moon is dipping in the sea. In an hour it will have disappeared. The ship quivers at the vibration of the machinery. The funnels still emit too much smoke and too many sparks. On board all the lights are out, even the cigarettes. Darkness enshrouds alike both prow and stern. The last order megaphoned resounds in an azure dotted with sparks and stars--which are only inextinguishable sparks. A light mist rises from the water. The wake foams, and the sea ahead parts in two broad furrows along the sides of the ship, giving forth, now and then, strange reflections.

Following in our wake the second destroyer looms up darkly, and after her all the others in line. When the route is changed to reconnoitre the coast, from the great central wake many oblique ones part, designing an immense silver rake.

The commander is against the railing, leaning out toward darkness, with his whole soul in his scrutinizing eyes. Now and then he turns his ruddy face and transmits an order with exact and sharp words. The helmsman at the wheel never once removes his eyes from the compass, lighted by a small lamp in a screened niche. Clearly he is a man of the purest Tyrrenean race, a true comrade of Ulysses, with a face which seems to have been modeled by the trade wind. Near by is the signal box. "Half Speed," "Full Speed," "Slow," "Stop." Through the speaking tube the orders are transmitted to the engine room. "Four--Three--Zero."

We are making twenty-three knots an hour. The foam of the great wake glitters under the stern lights. "A little to the right."

The navigating officer is bending over the chart, held down by lead weights covered with cloth, measuring, figuring with the compass and the square, under the blue light of a shaded lamp. A great shooting star crosses the August sky, disappearing toward the Cappella.

III--A DRAMATIC MOMENT IN THE NIGHT

Impatience gnaws my heart. I strain my sight to discern in the darkness the signal which has been prearranged. Nothing is to be seen yet. I descend from the ladder and move toward the stern, skirting the row of torpedoes, leaping over the outstretched sailors. From the stern the dark silhouettes of the other destroyers in line are visible. All of a sudden the signal is flashed in the direction of the prow. We are nearing the spot of our operation. Every will is strained.

"One--Two--Zero."