CHAPTER X

OUR ALLY FRANCE

O torn out of thy trance, O deathless, O my France, O many-wounded mother, O redeemed to reign! O rarely sweet and bitter The bright brief tears that glitter On thine unclosing eyelids, proud of their own pain; The beautiful brief tears That wash the stains of years White as the names immortal of thy chosen and slain. SWINBURNE.

Tout homme deux pays—le sien et puis la France. VICTOR HUGO.

Among the many changes which this great war will bring about, it will certainly again make true Victor Hugo’s touching boast, “Two countries hath each man—his own and France.”

For nearly a thousand years this was true of all the gentlepeople in our three kingdoms. Scotsmen and Irishmen might be at daggers drawn with England, but always they remained not only friendly, but on the closest terms of intimacy with France. Charming French princesses married Scottish kings, and you will perhaps remember that when the great Scots wizard waved his wand, “the bells would ring in Notre Dame,” not, observe, in Westminster Abbey or in Old St. Paul’s!

There was a Scots College and an Irish College in Paris, and no one in Scotland and Ireland was reckoned a scholar unless he had studied in France.

The fact that England and France were almost always at war made no difference to this pleasant state of things, and now we like to remember that the one place where, till this year, British and French fought side by side, was in the Holy Land during the Crusades. In old days wars raged over years, not over weeks or months, and now and again great stretches of French country belonged to England. I know a beautiful parish church in the heart of France which was built by the British in the thirteenth century—seven hundred years ago.

Those of you who have learned any history must know that poor Queen Mary exclaimed that when she died the word “Calais” would be found graven on her heart, so deeply had she felt its recapture by the French. Not long ago, speaking of the Germans’ desperate wish to get to Calais, a great English writer observed, smiling, “As to the effect which their occupation of Calais would produce on this country, they are three hundred years too late. Calais is not inscribed on the heart of _our_ Queen Mary!”

Ill-fortune often brings countries far more closely together than does good fortune. After the execution of Charles I, English, Scottish, and Irish loyalists fled to France, and lived there long years of a not unhappy exile. Louis XIV gave them a magnificent welcome. He presented the Stuarts with one of his most comfortable palaces, one, too, within an easy distance of his own palace at Versailles; and when you read the enchanting, intimate letters of Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, you will see how much the two courts intermingled, and what a constant coming and going there was from France to England and from England to France. When Charles II became king he did not forget his French friends. In fact I think it may be whispered that he remained far more of a Parisian than a Londoner, and you will feel this too if you ever read the letters he wrote to his beloved sister, the fascinating Henrietta, who had married the brother of Louis XIV.

England was very English in the eighteenth century, but, even so, there was constant intercourse between London and Paris. English names occur almost as often as French ones in the correspondence of the famous Madame du Deffand, and the best picture of the French society of that day is to be found in the letters of her old friend, Horace Walpole. Marie Antoinette had many dear English friends, and Englishwomen as well as Englishmen were made very welcome by her, not only in the Palace of Versailles, but at her own beloved Petit Trianon.

So close was the tie then between the two countries that they read as a matter of course each other’s books. Innumerable little girls in France are now called Clarisse because of a wonderful story, written by an English bookseller named Benjamin Richardson, called “Clarissa Harlowe.” Equally in this country, few, if any, children were named Clare or Julia before the publication of “La Nouvelle Héloise,” written by the Jean Jacques Rousseau to whom I alluded in my first chapter.

You might have thought that the great Revolution would have broken the old connection between the two countries and the two capitals. So far was this from being the case that there were many people in England who sympathised with the aims of the Revolution. Others, while regarding all that went on in the France of that day with horror, yet felt their affection for France and the French people become closer. An affectionate familiarity between the two countries was further encouraged by the sudden appearance in England of thousands of French people, who, known as the Emigrés, were largely composed of members of the French nobility who had escaped from France on the eve of the great Revolution. Many of them lived in England till after the Battle of Waterloo, and our grandmothers were all taught French, dancing, and the harp by lady Emigrées.

Even the Napoleonic Wars did not really break the links binding France and England. In some ways they may even be said to have strengthened them. Not only were our troops always on the Continent, but Napoleon occasionally made a great sweep of any English travellers he could catch, either in France, or in the countries which he successively conquered. These unfortunate people were what would now be called “interned” in various French towns, where in some cases they were compelled to remain for years. But I am glad to tell you that these forlorn creatures were treated most kindly by their French neighbours, and when they finally came back to England, so fond had they become of France that some of them used to go back there for two or three months of each year.

Gradually, it is difficult to say why, the two countries drifted apart. Indeed it began to seem that the nearer they grew together in a material sense—the less and less time it took to get from London to Paris, for instance—the less all that was best in French art and in French life, appealed to English people.

One thing that perhaps made the English nation distrust the French was France’s constant change of rulers. After France had had a king for a few years she would suddenly change about and have a republic; then would come a king again, another small revolution, and then an emperor! It was during the reign of an emperor, Napoleon III, that Paris became for the first time the playground of Europe, the place where foreigners went rather to amuse themselves in stupid ways, instead of to see beautiful things and to meet agreeable and interesting people.

Then, quite suddenly, there came a terrible day, just forty-four years ago, when the playground of Europe became a battle-ground, and when, with surprise and horror, England saw that the French, busily engaged in amusing themselves and other people, had entirely neglected to get ready for the awful thing, War, which had suddenly come upon them. As a result of this neglect, Germany, for the first time in their joint history, conquered France.

So easily, so surprisingly quickly, was this conquest achieved, that it made the Germans get what is vulgarly called “swelled head.” It also undoubtedly led to their confident belief that everything must go well with them in the present war. But France, as Germany now knows to her bitter cost, had learned her lesson. Without spending nearly so much time and thought on war, and the terrible engines of war, as Germany had done for forty years, she yet prepared quietly and soberly for the big conflict which, unlike England, she felt quite sure must be coming on Europe, if only because of the extraordinary preparations which she noticed her bullying neighbour was continually making.

II

You may know that the beautiful provinces or counties of Alsace and of Lorraine were the heavy price France paid for her defeat at Germany’s hands in 1870. But these two provinces always remained French at heart, and their possession by Germany was like an open wound in France’s side. Small wonder, therefore, that when war was declared the first thought of the French Government was, unwisely and imprudently as many people now think, to throw an army into Alsace.

The rapture with which the people there welcomed the French advance was changed into terror when the fortunes of war brought about a temporary retreat. The Germans hate these Alsatians, and cruel was the vengeance they took on them. One terrible example of their revenge aroused deep feelings of pain and horror all over the world, the more so that they actually boasted of the act in the following words:

“The German column was passing along a woody defile, when a little French lad (Französling) belonging to one of those gymnastic societies which wear tricolour ribbons (_i.e._ the Eclaireurs, or Boy Scouts), was caught and asked whether the French were about. He refused to give any information. Fifty yards further on a battery suddenly opened fire from the cover of a wood. The lad was asked in French if he had known that the enemy was in the wood. He did not deny it. Then walking with firm steps to a telegraph post he stood up against it, with a green vineyard at his back, and received the volley of the firing party with a proud smile on his face. Infatuated wretch! It was a pity to see such wasted courage!”

But we know that his courage was not wasted, and that by their ill-advised recital of that little boy’s heroism, the Germans inspired innumerable Frenchmen, and Frenchwomen too, to show themselves even braver and more fearless for love of country than they might otherwise have done.

It was near a town called Nancy that there took place a touching incident two days after the outbreak of war.

A French detachment came into contact with German troops; soon the Germans retired, leaving behind them a young wounded officer. The French soldiers picked him up, and behaved, as I am glad to say our allies always do behave to their wounded enemy, not only with mercy but with kindness. He was, however, dying, and his last words were, “Thank you, gentlemen. I have done my duty. I have served my country, as you are serving yours.”

This young officer was Lieutenant Baron von Marschall, son of the late Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who for a few months was German Ambassador in London. He had been, till a few days before the declaration of war, a happy and popular Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

Duty must have been one of Nelson’s favourite words, for not only did he signal the word in his immortal message, “England expects every man to do his duty,” but the last words he ever spoke were, “I have done my duty; I praise God for it.” The French have some fine sayings concerning duty. Of these the oldest and the finest is, “Fais le droit, advienne que pourra.” “Do thy duty whatever may happen.”

It was in Lorraine that Georges André—one of France’s most famous runners, who is also a Rugby Internationalist, and scored against both England and Ireland in last season’s matches—won the Médaille Militaire (the French Victoria Cross). André, with his company, was surrounded by a large German detachment in a small village. They fought like lions, and he himself at last captured the enemy’s standard, regaining the French lines under a hail of bullets.

We have seen how the German Commander on the fall of Liège handed General Leman back his sword. Much about the same time that this was occurring in Belgium, a similar incident, on a humbler scale, was happening in Alsace.

A Uhlan patrol was surprised by French soldiers. They all took to their heels save one, who fought magnificently until finally overpowered by force of numbers. His French captors, much to his surprise (for the German soldiers had been told the infamous lie that the British and French gave no quarter to the wounded), shook him warmly by the hand, exclaiming, “Tu es un chic type!” a meed of praise which it is impossible to translate. They also showed their admiration of his pluck in a more practical manner, for though they were short of food themselves they supplied him with food and drink before he was taken to the General Quarters.

One likes to remember that in no great war have men had the monopoly of gallant deeds. In this book you have read, and will read, of many such performed by women. A lady can no longer defend a castle, as was done in mediæval Christendom by so many great-hearted wives whose husbands were away fighting. But she can risk her life, and lose it too, for her country, as the following pathetic story proves:

Madame Favre-Schwarz, of Basle, a young and beautiful French lady, married to one of the richest merchants in Alsace, was executed after a court-martial very early in the war. She had attempted to blow up an important tunnel on the line of the Rhine near Leopoldshöhe, in order to hinder the advance of German troops towards her beloved country. Madame Schwarz met her death bravely, and shouted “Vive la France!” as she fell.

After this war is ended, and indeed during the conduct of this war, I hope that no one will ever again sneer at a woman merely for being a woman.

Splendid work has been done to help the men at the front by the women of each of the countries—those of our enemies as well as in our own and those of our allies—during the course of this awful struggle. I was told by a wounded soldier, to whom I had the privilege of talking in a London hospital, that what struck him most during the first terrific battles in which he took part, was the way in which Frenchwomen of all ages, from aged crones to little girls, came into the trenches under fire with fruit and water. This was a true errand of mercy, for during the earlier part of the war the heat was terrible, and our soldiers suffered awfully from thirst.

When the enemy entered Soissons the Mayor of the town had already left it. Accordingly, a certain Madame Macherez, the widow of a former Senator—or, as we should say, of a former member of the French House of Lords—informed the Commander that she was quite ready to take over the government of Soissons.

He assented, and at once she took charge of the police, of the fire station, and of the hospital. She “ran” the town most successfully, and that though the German Commander began by making enormous demands on the unfortunate citizens. He asked for nearly 200,000 pounds (weight) of food, including preserved meats, smoked sausages, and flour, and 40,000 pounds (weight) of tobacco, adding the significant threat that if all this were not at once forthcoming Soissons would be burnt to the ground.

Madame Macherez bluntly told him that it would be just as reasonable for him to ask for the sun and the moon as for all these things. She offered, however, to give what she could, and not only was her offer accepted, but the town was spared the dreadful fate which befell many places in the North of France.

We can easily imagine this brave woman’s joy when, a few days later, the same troops who had behaved in an arrogant, if not in a barbarous, manner passed in full retreat through Soissons!

The French have a peculiar, passionate love for their flag—the Revolutionary tricolor which banished the old lilies of France and under which Napoleon led his soldiers from victory to victory.

Very early in this war a light infantry regiment, closely engaged by the enemy, saw over twenty men who in turn held the standard cut down; a fresh soldier immediately grasped the coveted trophy and held it aloft, while his comrades ringed him round with dead. So it went on until supports arrived, and the standard and the little remnant of gallant men were saved.

I must tell you what a London lady did to cheer and encourage the young men who were eagerly joining the colours. She lives in a street where recruits are constantly passing, and she felt sad to see how weary they often looked, and what little notice passers-by took of them. She therefore bought a large Union Jack, and whenever a contingent of recruits marched by she hurried to her front door and waved the flag, thus showing them that there was at least one person there who wished to do them a little honour and felt gratitude for what they were doing for England. In due course she was rewarded, for an officer, before then quite unknown to her, called specially to tell her how much his men had been cheered and touched by her action.

Some time before the British airmen’s daring raid into Germany, two French flyers, Lieutenant Cesari and Corporal Prudhomme, performed a magnificent exploit over Metz.

They left Verdun under orders to reconnoitre and destroy if possible the Zeppelin sheds at Metz. The two airmen flew over the line of forts, the lieutenant at about 8000 feet up, and the corporal at 6500. In the midst of a cloud of bursting projectiles they kept on their way, but a little before they arrived above the parade ground the lieutenant’s motor suddenly stopped!

Determined not to descend without having accomplished the task assigned to him, he proceeded to volplane, and it was in planing that he launched his bomb at the shed. A little later, much to his surprise, for he had given himself up for lost, his motor re-started. Corporal Prudhomme also dropped a bomb from his machine. On their return journey hundreds of shells were fired at them, but they reached headquarters safe and sound.

A French aviator is reported to have brought down from the skies a German rifle bullet which he had caught in his hand! He was flying at a height of about 7000 feet, when he suddenly became aware of a small black object close to his head. He thought it was an insect of some kind, and was enough of an entomologist to realise that a flying insect at such a height was a curiosity. So he stretched out his hand and grasped what to his amazement proved to be a bullet! It was evidently a rifle bullet that had been fired almost vertically, and had there reached its utmost elevation.

It has been said that this great war has been waged in a very pitiless manner, but there have been, as we have seen, merciful exceptions.

One of these was the reconciliation on the battlefield between a French and a German soldier, who lay wounded and abandoned near the little town of Blâmont. They were there all through the cold, dark night, with only the dead about them. When dawn came they began to talk to one another, and the Frenchman gave his water-bottle to the German. The German sipped a little, and then kissed the hand of the man who had been his enemy.

“There will be no war in Heaven,” he said.

Boys, as we know, have played a splendid part in the war. One of the bravest French lads, whose name I am sorry I cannot tell you, saved the town in which he lived from total destruction, and from French shells.

It was at Montmirail, where the German Headquarters Staff was for a few brief hours installed in the château of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld. When the first French shell burst, the Germans did not wait for a second; they quickly cleared out. But of this retreat the French could not know anything, so they went on firing. It was then that a brave lad, in order to save the castle, took his bicycle and rode out with the shells shrieking above his head to inform the battery that the enemy had fled.

Surprise was felt in our country when it was heard that quite young German boys were in the firing line, but in the great American Civil War there were lads as young as thirteen and fourteen, fighting. One of them, called John Rhea, performed an act of extraordinary bravery during the retreat from Fishing Creek. He recognised in a prostrate figure on the ground an old school friend, named Sam Cox. Although he knew that he faced almost certain death by trying to help the wounded lad, he bent down, managed somehow to get him on his back, and carried him into safety.

Here let me break off to tell you that German boys have not been backward in helping their beloved country.

At the end of August, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, who is thirteen years old, placed himself at the head of a corps of schoolboys, who not only helped to get in the harvest, but did other useful work.

One of the most remarkable dogs in the world is a French dog. His name is Tom (a very favourite name for a dog in France), and he has been trained to help the wounded by carrying their caps to the Ambulance Corps. He never touches a dead man.

A certain French soldier was struck by a fragment of shell in the arm. With a bullet in his jaw as well, and a sabre cut over the head, the wounded man was lying terribly alone amid a little heap of his fallen comrades, when he felt a light touch on his forehead. It was Tom.

The soldier knew that the dog was trained to carry to the camp the cap of every wounded man he found, but alas! the soldier had lost his. “Run along, Tom. Go and find my comrades. Get along and find them!” Tom understood. He dashed away to the camp, ran about among the men, pulling at their capes and barking, and succeeded in drawing two ambulance men to the spot where the wounded man was lying.

I think the story of French pluck which has touched me most was that of Denise Cartier, the little girl who was so terribly injured in one of the German bomb attacks on Paris. The first words which Denise said to the policeman who lifted her up after the explosion were, “Surtout ne dites pas à maman que c’est grave.” (“Above all, don’t tell mother that it’s serious.”)

But alas! her mother had soon to know the worst, for brave little Denise had to have her leg cut off. When she awoke after the operation, she found by her bedside a pile of most beautiful presents sent her by kindly Parisians who had heard of her misfortune. Among them was a gold medal, and what do you think was engraved on it? Her own brave words to the policeman, “Surtout ne dites pas à maman que c’est grave.”

III

Before going back to the fighting line, and especially before taking leave of our ally, France, I want to tell you of what was, perhaps, the bitterest blow suffered by her in the early weeks of the war.

That blow was the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral.

Round Rheims are the most famous vineyards in France. All the little hills are covered with grape-laden vines, and when the writer was in that lovely, peaceful province of the Marne two years ago, all the happy peasant people, men, women, and little children, were gathering in the fruit, singing and laughing as they went along the narrow, fragrant pathways cut through the vines.

Rheims is a beautiful city, as old as France herself. Once more, as in 1870, fierce fighting was taking place there at the time of the grape harvest, recalling the fine lines of Bret Harte:

“Let me of my heart take counsel; War is not of life the sum; Who shall stay and reap the harvest When the autumn days shall come? But the drum Echoed, ‘Come! Death shall reap the braver harvest,’ said the solemn-sounding drum.”

And death did reap a brave harvest amid the vineyards of France. Not a human harvest alone, but one composed of cherished memories—memories composed of all the French nation holds dear in its glorious, shadowy past. Memories of every figure in the magnificent procession of France’s kings and queens, of her saints, her statesmen, her warriors—especially of Joan of Arc, the beloved warrior-maid. The Cathedral of Rheims was not only the most perfect building of its kind in Europe—it was the Westminster Abbey of France, respected by her enemies for a thousand years.

Rheims has been sung by many poets, but perhaps the most beautiful lines on the cathedral were written by James Russell Lowell:

“I stood before the triple northern port, Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings, Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch, Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say, _Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realised as this._”

It was with a feeling of amazement as well as of horror that one September day the world learnt of the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral.

The interior of the great church had been filled with wounded, most of them, be it noted, German, and a large Red Cross had been hung out from one of the towers. When the bombardment began, an effort was made to move these poor soldiers out, but they were lying on straw, the straw caught fire, and several of the people in the cathedral were killed by the German shells, including four Sisters of Mercy. Much of the floor became thickly littered with the stained glass, which fell in showers out of the great windows, six hundred years old, which were, perhaps, the chief glory of the Cathedral. To add to the horror of the scene the wounded, terrified by the sight of flames and smoke, began trying painfully to drag themselves out of danger.

As the unhappy German wounded appeared at the great doors, which someone had already flung open, there rose from the townspeople assembled outside a hoarse, insistent cry of “Kill them! Kill them!” For some of those in the crowd unjustly suspected these men of having set the cathedral on fire.

For a while it looked as if the German prisoners would be massacred, but at the critical moment the Abbé Andrieux, a gentle, quiet little priest, sprang forward, placing himself with outstretched arms before the great doors. Behind him pressed forward the terrified wounded, standing, crouching, and crawling—their one thought to escape the fire, smoke, and falling glass and masonry inside.

“Stand back! Don’t fire!” shouted the Abbé “If you kill them you will be far more guilty than they!”

Ashamed, the crowd shrank back. But they went on hissing and hooting while their enemies were carried to shelter close by.

The present writer is almost as grieved at the injury which was also done to the ancient Church of Saint Rémy, at Rheims, which is a hundred years older than the cathedral. It had already been built some time when Joan of Arc was born at Domrémy, the little village on the Upper Meuse, which was, in a sense, the creation of the Abbé and monks of St. Rémy of Rheims. The Abbé had a very kindly feeling for Domrémy, and he generously gave Joan’s father, Jacques d’Arc, a patent exempting the village from all taxes and tribute. This exemption was maintained until the French Revolution. In the registers kept by the tax-gatherers the blank space opposite the name of this parish was quaintly inscribed year after year, and century after century, “On Account of The Maid.”

During the bombardment, the people of Rheims kept up their courage, and that even when they had to live for many days in their cellars. An Englishman had a talk with one old French gentleman in a cellar dwelling.

“The one thing that keeps us going,” he said, “is my wag of a son, my seventh, for every time a shell falls, or bursts over the house-tops, he makes some fresh joke, the young beggar.”

“And where are your other six sons?” his English acquaintance inquired.

“They are all at the front, and I’ve heard from them too. They are as happy as happy can be, for, you see, Monsieur, we are daily gaining ground.”

This little anecdote will make you understand the great outstanding fact about France. It is that every one of her sons is, will be, or has been, a soldier! During the course of a great war, it is a splendid, inspiring thought that the whole manhood of a nation is in arms to defend her. No need of recruiting there—no need to remind the young men that their country needs them. The French soldier is the French Everyman.

In old days I often felt pained to hear English people, just returned from a holiday in France, smile—even jeer—at the rough, often unsmart, look of the French soldier. These same people do not smile and jeer now when they watch a rough, unsmart detachment of young Englishmen marching to their drilling ground. They are touched and thrilled—or if they are not, they ought to be. You cannot have smart uniforms when every man over eighteen and under fifty is a soldier—or if you do, you sacrifice the rest of the nation, as we now know Germany has done, to the awful, sinister War god, the evil genius who lies in wait for happy, peaceful, busy countries, which only arm, as France had done, not for attack, but for defence.