Had they been peaceful and content with the mental powers they had acquired, had they possessed the sense of liberty and at their head had a man of intelligence, we should have had once more the infinitely rare spectacle of a new age of Pericles, of Leo X. Unfortunately, not alone for Germany, but for the whole world, the sense of liberty has not yet been bom in Germany ; and by an equal misfortune the Empire constituted in had as its only chiefs excellent soldiers and a wonderful but coarse organ- iser, an architect of State who was at the same time both mason and navvy, an unscrupulous contractor of public works, capable of building a fortress for the protection of life, but having never conceived life 40 THE BOOK OF FRANCE except as a part of fortification.
For thirty years no one knew whether the Emperor William, after his brutal overthrow of Bismarck, would not be the long-awaited " Prince of Peace. Many causes probably tended to prevent this, of which two formed part of his inheritance: Lastly, there was an absence of those men of genius without whom a reign cannot be great, who alone count for more than a great reign ; and his has been certainly barren of such. Who are the men who have shone during the last forty-four years around the Imperial Crown?
Apart from that untamed, isolated, and disturbing poet Nietzsche, we seek them in vain. Not one great writer, not one great musician, not one painter, makes his mark on the world — not even on the world of Germany. In that country the talk was only of chancellors, of war- budgets, of imperial uniforms, and of a flourishing industrialism. One would have thought that the Kaiser, like a pretty coquette, did not wish men's attention to be diverted from him, from him alone, from his vulgar jewels, his liveries. Their works are at the present day known ; their chief formulae have been pub- lished in the newspapers of every country: Germany, then, since the war of , has not been a gathering of free individuals demanding analysis ; it would be vain to look for its representative summits.
It possesses but one summit: Now this word of command is not of a higher kind ; it is a word of command that, through some unhappy fate, comes, not from a born leader, but from a non-commissioned officer who knows his military theory, but who is above all intoxicated by his stripes, playing the gentleman, and the gentleman in his Sunday best, but at bottom still a corporal.
Many of our politicians, sprung from the lowest ranks of the democracy, have given proof, when once in power, of finer feelings than the heir of the Hohen- zollerns. The superior man gathers superior men around him ; at any rate there exists in the man who 42 THE BOOK OF FRANCE is called to the supreme command a superiority that consists in guessing where genius lurks hidden, in appreciating the capital importance of genius, and in knowing that the source of genius lies in its own freedom.
It would seem that the whole mind of Germany became assimilated in temper to the German word of command. As we have seen, there has been neither brilliancy of letters in Germany nor originality in the arts. Its politics were always ponderous, its diplomacy somewhat coarse, and this has been made plain by recent examples.
The sciences and their many applications are more within the scope of a brain lacking in subtlety, and it was long thought that the science of Germany had attained to an un- challenged supremacy. Though I am not com- petent to give my opinion on this matter, I do not think that I am mistaken in saying that the verdict on this famous German science has been upset, and without claiming to deprive it of its honourable share in the achievements of the last forty years, recent memoirs written by non-partisan and com- petent authorities do not to-day attribute to it the first place.
German houses, German ships, German railways were multiplied over the surface of the globe ; and a marvellous organisation, an unequalled activity, an admirable combined effort of the nation as a whole, contributed to the exten- sion of all German manufactured goods and to the reputation of industrial and commercial Germany. War and industry are the two great significant facts of German activity since the treaty of Frankfort. Germany is a nation of soldiers and business men, with a manufacturer in military uniform at their head.
I do not mean this as a contemptuous expression of opinion, but it is an opinion which means that to us — an ancient and refined race, in whom contact with the former Germany of thinkers awakened our admiration — that to us, Germany as she is, with all her claims, seems somewhat like one of those crass parvenus who have attained to fortune in business and whose minds are lacking in classical culture. There must always exist between a certain class in France — a class, moreover, entirely devoid of pride or prejudice — and a world composed of Germans and their like, some feeling of discomfort and in- completeness of understanding.
The characteristic of the fortunate man of busi- ness, who has suddenly become rich and irremediably deprived of that humane culture which constitutes the ornament of life and almost the reason for living, is ostentation. In all that pertains to eatables and drinkables his credulity is touching, a striking sign of his physical health. He despises the man who is pale and nervous, who is concentrated, taciturn, or solitary, him on whom we have too often bestowed the now doubtful title of intellectual. A Pascal, a Vauve- nargues, a Watteau would obviously meet with his condemnation. Yet intelligence and the arts are honoured in his country just as the multi-millionaire indulges secretly in the luxury of a professor of philosophy and has recourse for the adornment of his house to some picture-dealer.
He is lacking in true knowledge and taste ; he lacks completely two qualities which nothing else can replace. Hence the artistic soon gives way before what is big, costly, and profuse ; unable to attain to the beautiful, he launches forth in the colossal. In literature, in the arts, remembering, despite all, his commercial origin, the German will esteem rather the man of letters, the painter, or the musician who praises his house than the man who is an innovator in his art or who raises it to a higher level.
Thus he rapidly attains to what is false, and uses every means hence- forth to exalt what is untrue ; his business is not to make what is good or fine or satisfying, but only to make what strikes men's ready and facile imagina- tion ; or, worse still, that which conquers in the least possible time the greatest possible number of imaginations.
He adopts, or rather creates, what is known as hluff. Bluff is a very poor psychological method. It does give results, but in the same way as quackery in medicine: It is only the matter of a moment to dupe a man, but he spends his whole life remembering that he has been duped. Nothing is more directly opposed than bluff to our old French instincts of modest probity, that inspired us with the horror of advertisement, the wholesome fear of noisiness, and the perfect satis- faction of good work even though performed in secret.
The esteem for work of good quality is popular among all our artisan class ; the disgust inspired by shoddy goods, and cheap advertisement, this you will find throughout the entirety of our working classes. They talk to us of German science, and we cannot deny its existence ; but what is the value of a science of which the primary object is to advertise the superiority of the national discoveries? We are no longer suspected, I believe, of a lack of patriotism ; but what French man of science is not prepared, as was Claude Bernard in , to subordinate his deepest feelings to the majesty of that which his method declares to him to be the truth?
This high conscientiousness is the finest sort of courage, and it is this that in the last resort attracts the respect and the consideration of humanity. Bluff is not only the outcome of a very mediocre psychology, but it contains something humiliating to the person on whom it is tried. The bluffer has of course a supreme contempt for those whom he intends to take in ; he treats them like a flock of nincompoops. Now, whatever may be the weak- nesses and even the poverty of the human mind, it is altogether false, nay, it is the height of folly, to think it stupid.
There exist in all countries a sad number of incapables ; but every nation, taken as a whole, has a fund of acute common-sense, even of deep shrewdness, which almost remind one of that miraculous sense of life, of development, and of self-preservation possessed by the totality of cells in each of our bodies. To resume, man is no fool ; sooner or later he sees through what is false, tears off disguises, and denounces mere cunning ; he deserves to be treated with straightforwardness, as a grown-up person and not as a ninny.
That is what the German fails to understand. He does not understand this because of his aristocratic conception of the world, the expression " aristocratic " being used here in its most concrete sense. I, for my part, believe in the necessity of the government of human masses by an aristocracy ; but if this aristocracy refuses to understand the infinite possibilities of superiority which are almost everywhere latent in these masses, then I take from it this fine name of aristocracy, and I brand it with the name of an exploiting company for traffic in men.
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The slave-dealer is ignorant that his goods contain both the heart and the redoubtable brain of man — of all explosives the most dangerous. He is satisfied with this facile ignorance ; he becomes accustomed only to consider his own interest, his will, his whims, his own ideas: The explosion of human substance that is harmed or voluntarily ignored is bound to take place before long. Now it produces a terrible revolution ; now it gives rise to some stupendous national upheaval. One cannot despise men with impunity, one cannot lead one's life long or far without the knowledge or respect of one's fellow -men ; some day they surely will block the way for the potentate of selfish intelligence.
By dint of becoming all-powerful, the potentate inevitably becomes stupid. It may happen that we shall one day see in Germany the potentate and the human masses in conflict ; we have not yet reached that stage: But we can very well combine for the moment the slave-dealer and his slaves, and conceive them as a single potentate, imbued with the same pride, the same blindness, and the same ignorance in regard to the mass of humanity represented by all who are not Germans.
The Germans as a people, emperor and serfs, are convinced that the non-German world is to be taxed and burdened at will. This folly is monstrous, the fruit of a pride incessantly nourished and super- heated. He sees, always and only, himself: In daily life, men who proceed according to this system are first of all hateful, often taken in by the first-comer, and they sometimes end their lives in a padded cell. One has some indulgence for transcendental idealists whom no reality has ever hampered in the unlimited freedom of their con- ceptions.
But the serious thing in the present state of the German is that his faculties are no longer applied to ideal concepts, that he is, at home, a very remarkable realist, that he has as a practical man and as a man of science a very exact notion of the resistance of physical objects. And he does not see that there exist other men besides himself, and that his power, which we do not blame for being am- bitious, may and will inevitably come into conflict with powers that he ought seriously to analyze before exposing himself to the collision.
Experience seems to show that the German had not sufficiently analyzed these adverse powers. The German proved himself crassly ignorant of Belgium: In him we always find boldness and strength, but never the man of genius. He undervalued Serbia, unless it was that he was laughing in his sleeve at Austria, his " brilliant second " ; and events will show once more not only that his judgments were wrong, but that it is unwise to laugh at any one, even at one's friends. As for France, universally ill-understood, one is tempted to forgive Germany for having treated her as a quasi-negligible quantity until she discovered, to quote one of the chief German newspapers, " that France equalled Germany on the battlefield.
He buried the roots of his clever espionage in the very depths of our soil, but he was duped by everything that is with us appear- ances. We are a people of extreme civilisation and we show only what is superficial. It was necessary to be a psychologist and to reach the core of France.
The Germans needed a Schopenhauer ; the Bemhardis they have will not replace him. No distinguished man of the first rank has revealed himself on her side. The aristocratic conception of the world which has led them to a ridiculous contempt for the human race has led astray their scientific conceptions, and has spread psychological ignorance among so-called cultivated minds, just as the spirit of absolute militarism has spread servility in other places. We are agreed, I think, in England as in France, in believing that the existence of a community depends not only on the direction but on the quality of individuals.
Germany, by the suppression of individual tendency, hoped that she would strengthen the whole community. It is true that she has thus created a formidable and imposing mass ; but I refuse to admit, and I hope to be justified by the event, that true force resides therein. Great was my joy to find in the writings of a man of such genius the very opinion I had expressed, thinking that the virility of a nation resides in an intellectual force that is disseminated throughout, in a spontaneous judgment of individuals to be found on every rung of the social ladder from the lowest to the highest.
We know too well those famous German methods against which our youth of France have rebelled during these last years, for they had invaded our schools. There was an absolute sub- mission, a total lack of interpretation. A magnificent surface order of the social machine must result from such methods of teaching ; but underneath a signal poverty is hidden. It is a splendid military parade that extorts admiration from the tourist stranger passing by, but of which not a single unit would be capable of improvising an ingenious defence.
Every- thing, from the intellectual to the military, is con- ceived on the same plan. If it were permissible to employ a pejorative expression to describe social qualities so greatly to be respected when they are properly conceived, we would say that this is in truth organisation gone mad, order gone crazy. Let us only reproach the Germans with having pushed these qualities beyond the limits within which they are worthy of the deepest respect. In our opinion, a public order irreconcilable with individual liberty, organisation no matter how imposing, that cannot co-ordinate without violating the spontaneous and infinitely diverse tendencies of a race, are nothing but an order and an organisation for display.
True public order is that which rules over a free people. England, from this point of view, has been for many centuries and remains our model. Ren6 Boylesve, Translated by W. Wells Ils se realisent les reves prophetiques de H. Wells, ils prennent une monstrueuse forme vivante et passent en horreur Dite, Malebolge et tout ce que le poete vit dans Tempire des douleurs. Ce ne sont point des Martiens, mais des professeurs allemands qui accomplirent cette chose.
Les Allemands ont imprime a cette guerre des formes successives qui toutes temoignent de leur horrible genie: Un medecin philosophe de mes amis qui, pres de moi, lit ce que j'ecris, m'interrompt: II faudra creer dans chaque pays allie un ministere des serums. Et je songe a ce mot de notre bon Rabelais: La guerre avait ses lois, sa mesure ; des classiques comme Napoleon y pouvaient exercer leur genie. Les Allemands ont ote a Tart des armes tout ce qui lui restait encore d'humain. Debout pour la derniere guerre! The prophetic nightmares of our scientific fantastics are being lamentably realised ; they come about us monstrously alive, surpassing the horror of Dis, Malebolge and all that the poet beheld in the kingdom of misery.
But it is not Martians but German professors who accomplish these things. They have given this war a succession of forms that testify continually to their genius for grotesque evil, first the likeness of the waterspout and typhoon that brought them to the Mame and defeat irreparable, then the sullen warfare of the caverns, then the conflict of metals and chemicals. A philosophi- cal doctor who sits beside me and reads as I write, interrupts.
We shall have to create in every country a ministry of anti-Teutonic serums. I recall the mot of our good Rabelais: War had still its laws and measures, within which such classics as Napoleon found scope for all their genius. The Germans have robbed the profession of arms of every vestige of humanity. They murdered peace, now they are murdering war. They have made out of it a monstrosity too evil to survive.
And so for the last war, the supreme task.
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O Britain, queen of the seas and lover of justice ; Russia, giant of the subtle and tender heart ; beautiful Italy, whom my heart adores ; Belgium, heroic martyr ; proud Serbia ; and France, dear Fatherland, and all you nations who still arm to aid us, throttle and end for ever this hydra, and to-morrow you will smile and clasp hands across Europe delivered. Anatole France, Translated by H. Sans doute, c'est ce qui n'est pas encore arrive, mais pour ceux qui, apres les premiers evenements, s'attendaient au pire, il est evident que la situation s'est grandement amelioree.
Mais le serait-elle jusqu'a mon voeu premier, I'ennemi aurait- il ete refoule jusqu'aux departements frontieres, en soufFririons-nous beaucoup moins dans notre senti- ment? Le danger ecarte pour Paris, il resterait que I'ennemi s'est installe sur un sol qui nous appartient et, n'en occupat-il plus qu'une petite partie, que nous eprouverions encore je ne sais quelle impression de souillure.
Mais, au moment ou j'ecris, I'impression de souillure n'est pas la seule, quoiqu'elle soit fondamentale, celle de ravage, de devastation, impression qui ne repond que trop a des faits trop precis, nous etreint. Qu'ont-ils fait de ces villes belles ou charmantes? Quant aux habitants, je ne me les represente plus que comme des errants, comme des betes traquees qui se faufilent entre les arbres, se cachent dans les mines. Pensez, si vous n'avez pas de souvenirs de ce cote- la, aux maisons que vous avez aimees, aux petites villes de province oil vous avez laisse, sous les ormes d'un pare ou les tilleuls de la place publique, une emotion que vous imaginez toujours vivante et qui vous attend.
Vous y faites souvent un lent peleri- nage, dont vous revenez un peu melancolique, mais heureux tout de meme. Et dire que le printemps mettra un air de fausse fete sur ces mines pleurantes! Et si par hasard ces hideuses gens n'ont pas detruit la maison de vos souvenirs, ils y auront laisse leur odeur.
Ce sera peut-etre plus triste encore. II faut avoir bien pitie de ceux dont la petite patrie a ete infectee. C'est pour eux que j'ai ecrit ces quatre mots, pauvres coeurs! That has certainly not yet happened. Nevertheless for those who, after the earliest events, expected the worst, the situation has vastly improved. But supposing my first wish had been realised, and the enemy had been driven back to the frontier depart- ments, would our heart's wound have been less deep?
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Even with danger staved off Paris, the enemy would still have been encamped on a soil which is ours ; and however limited the extent of his occupa- tion, we should still have suffered the anguish of defilement. But at the present time we suffer something more than this, although the sense of defilement is the prevailing impression: How have our fair towns been treated, those country scenes over which our minds loved to wander, and that beautiful demesne which has ceased to appear to us a demesne and over which we are lords no longer!
O the sorrow of it! Think, if you have no more personal recollections, of the homes you loved, of the little provincial towns, where beneath the park elms or the limes on the public square you imagined you had left an emotion which time would never dull, that would always await you there. To that spot you would wend in slow pilgrimage, returning melancholy perhaps, but yet happy.
Now you must cease to think of it. Such thought has become impossible. They are there, and every memory they have put to flight. Where could memory linger?
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And though over this weeping desolation Spring may cast some sem- blance of joy, though these frightful folk may per- chance have left standing the house you remember, they will have polluted it in some way, rendering it more piteous perhaps than if it had been destroyed. How sorrowful the lot of those whose birthplaces and firesides have been thus infected. For them I write these lines. Remy de Gourmont, Translated by Thomas Hardy. Le matin d 'octobre etait brumeux et froid. Les coteaux de la Champagne, ce jour-la deserts, avec leurs vignobles aux feuilles d'un brun noir, humides de pluie, semblaient tout revetus d'une sorte de basane luisante.
Nous avions aussi traverse une foret, en tenant I'oeil au guet et les armes pretes, en cas de uhlans en maraude. Et enfin nous avions aper9u, tres loin dans le brouillard, se dressant de toute sa grande taille au-dessus d'un semis de carres rouge atres qui devaient etre des toits de maisons, une forme immense d'eglise: L 'entree de Reims: Pour passer, I'uniforme et I'appareil militaire ne suffisent pas ; il faut parlementer, donner le mot de ralliement.
Beaucoup de sol- dats, des regiments en marche, des files de voitures d 'ambulances ; mais aussi beaucoup de passants quelconques, pas plus anxieux que si de rien n'etait ; meme beaucoup de femmes en toilette, un livre de messe a la main, car c'est dimanche. A un carrefour, un rassemblement devant une maison aux murailles egratignees de frais ; c'est qu'un obus est tombe la tout a Theure, sans utilite du reste comme sans excuse. Simple petite farce de brutes, pour dire: Maintenant le quartier se fait desert ; des maisons fermees, du silence comme pour un deuil.
Et, au bout d'une rue, les grandes portes grises apparaissent, les hautes ogives merveilleusement ciselees et les hautes tours. Pas un bruit et pas une ame vivante, sur la place ou trone encore la basilique-fantome, et un vent glace y souffle, sous un ciel opaque. Le sol est jonche de ses debris precieux. On Ta entouree en hate d'une solide barriere de bois blanc, en dedans de laquelle sa sainte poussiere a forme des monceaux: Du haut en bas de la tour de gauche, la pierre calcinee a pris une etrange couleur de chair cuite, et les saints personnages, toujours debout en rang sur les cor- niches, ont ete comme decortiques par le feu ; ils n'ont plus ni visages ni doigts, et, avec leur forme humaine qui cependant persiste, ils ressemblent a des morts, alignes a la file, dont les contours ne s'indiqueraient plus que mollement sous des especes de suaires rouge atres.
Quant au vieux palais attenant a la basilique, le palais episcopal ou venaient se reposer les rois de France le jour du sacre, il n'est plus qu'une mine sans fenetres ni toiture, partout lechee et noircie par la flamme. Quel joyau sans pareil elle etait, cette eglise, plus belle encore que Notre-Dame de Paris, plus ajouree et plus legere, plus elancee aussi avec ses colonnes comme de longs roseaux, etonnantes d'etre si freles et de pouvoir tenir ; merveille de notre art religieux de France, chef-d'oeuvre que la foi de nos ancetres avait fait eclore la dans sa purete mystique, avant que nous fussent venues d'ltalie, pour tout materia- liser et tout gater, les lourdeurs sensuelles de ce que Ton est convenu d'appeler la Renaissance.
Cette grande maison fermee, la sur la place, doit etre I'archeveche. Je tente de sonner au portail, pour demander la faveur d'entrer dans la cathedrale. Si je veux attendre. Mais nous ne pouvons meme pas tenter eel a pour les preserver un peu, car les Allemands ne nous quittent pas des yeux ; au bout de leurs lorgnettes, c'est la cathedrale, toujours la cathedrale, et des qu'un homme seulement parait sur un clocheton, dans une tour, la pluie d'obus aussitot recommence.
Non, il n'y a rien a faire. A la grace de Dieu. II y fait froid, et il y fait lugubre a pleurer. Ce froid inattendu, ce froid bien plus apre que celui de I'exterieur, est peut-etre ce qui des I'abord vous saisit et vous deroute ; au lieu de cette senteur un peu lourde qui d 'ordinaire traine dans les vieilles basiliques — fumees de tant d'encens qu'on y a brule, emanations de tant de cercueils qu'on y a benis, de tant de generations humaines qui s'y sont pressees pour Tangoisse et la priere — au lieu de cela, un vent humide et glace, qui entre en bruissant par toutes les lezardes des murailles, par toutes les brisures des vitraux et les trous des voutes.
Ces voutes, la-haut, de place en place crevees par la mitraille, les yeux tout de suite se levent d 'instinct pour les regarder, les yeux sont comme entraines vers elles par le jaillissement de toutes ces colonnes, aussi minces que des joncs, qui s'elancent en gerbes pour les soutenir ; elles ont des courbes fuy antes, ces voutes, des courbes d'une grace exquise qui sem- blent avoir ete imaginees pour ne pas rompre la montee des prieres, pour ne pas faire retomber les regards en quete de ciel.
On ne se lasse plus de pencher le front en arriere pour les voir, les voutes sacrees qui vont s'aneantir ; et puis il y a la-haut aussi, tout la-haut, les longues series d 'ogives presque aeriennes sur quoi elles s'appuient, des ogives in- definiment pareilles d'un bout a 1 'autre de la nef, et qui, malgre leurs decoupures compliquees, sont reposantes a suivre, dans leur fuite en perspective, tant elles ont d 'harmonic.
Du reste, mieux vaut s'avancer la-dessous tete ievee et ne pas trop controler sur quoi I'on marche, car ce pavage, un peu tristement sonore, vient d'etre souille et noirci par des carbonisations de chair humaine. On sait que, le jour de I'incendie, I'eglise etait pleine de blesses allemands, etendus sur des couches de paille qui prirent feu, et cela devint une scene d'horreur digne d'un reve du Dante ; tous ces etres, dont les plaies vives cuisaient a la flamme, se trainaient en hurlant, sur des moignons rouges, pour essay er de gagner les portes trop etroites.
On sait aussi rhero'isme de ces brancardiers, pretres et religieuses, risquant leur vie au milieu des bombes pour essayer de sauver ces malheureuses brutes que leurs propres freres allemands n'avaient meme pas songe a epargner ; ils ne parvinrent cependant pas a les sauver tous, il en resta, qui acheverent de bruler dans la nef, laissant d'immondes caillots sur les saintes dalles ou jadis des corteges de rois et de reines avaient traine lentement leurs manteaux d'hermine, au son des grandes orgues et du plain-chant.
Et puis, venez voir le miracle. Les chefs-d'oeuvre, que personne ne repro- duira plus, ont seme sur les dalles leurs debris, a jamais impossibles a demeler, les ors, les rouges et les bleus dont on a perdu le secret. Finies, les trans- parences d'arc-en-ciel ; finies, les jolies attitudes naives de tous ces personnages et leurs pales petites figures extasiees ; les mille cassons precieux de ces verreries, qui au cours des siecles s'etaient irisees peu a peu a la fa9on des opales, gisent a terre, ou du reste ils brillent encore comme des gemmes.
Silence aujourd'hui dans cette basilique, comme sur la place deserte alentour ; silence de mort entre ces murs qui avaient si longtemps vibre de la voix des orgues et des vieux chants rituels de France. Le vent froid est seul a y faire un semblant de musique, ce matin de dimanche, et, lorsque par instants il souffle plus fort, on entend aussi comme la chute de pedes tres legeres: La Grande Barbaric a passe par la, la barbarie moderne d'outre-Rhin, mille fois pire que Tancienne, parce qu'elle est betement et outrageuse- ment satisfaite d'elle-meme, et par consequent fon- cierc, incurable, definitive, — destinee, si on ne Tecrase, a jeter sur le monde une sinistre nuit d 'eclipse.
Vraiment cette Jeanne d'Arc, dans le chceur, est etrange d'etre restee debout, si calme, intacte, im- maculee au milieu du desarroi, n'ayant meme pas sur sa robe la moindre egratignure. The October morning was foggy and cold. The leaves in the vineyards were black -brown with autumn and wet with rain, so that the hill slopes of Champagne, deserted that day, seemed all clothed in a sort of coat of glistening tan.
Our road had taken us also through a forest, where we had to keep our eyes open and weapons ready in case of meeting marauding parties of Uhlans. And at last we had discerned, far off in the mist, the huge form of a church towering with all its height above a patch of reddish squares which could only be roofs of houses: The entrance to Rheims. Defences of every kind, stone barricades, trenches, spiked railings, sentries with fixed bayonets. The town being very large and to me unknown, I inquire the way to the Cathedral, for it is no longer in sight: And so the car makes its way into streets full of people.
Numbers of soldiers, regi- ments on the march, files of ambulance carriages ; but also plenty of ordinary passers-by, seeming no more anxious than if nothing at all was happening ; even plenty of women dressed in their best and walking prayer-book in hand, for the day is Sunday. At a corner where four streets meet there we find a group gathered outside a house with the marks of fresh scratches on its walls.
A shell had fallen there a little while before, fired without object or excuse. Merely a brutal little jest on the part of the enemy, as much as to say, " We're there, you know ": But indeed the town seems to have got thoroughly used to living under the scrutiny of ferocious field-glasses and the fire of savages ambushed on the slopes of the neighbouring hills.
This time it was some women and little girls whom the enemy's pretty jest had laid out in pools of their own blood. So people tell us and then seem to think no more about it, as though in times like these it were a matter of no account at all. By this time the quarter is getting deserted ; the houses are shut and a funereal silence prevails ; and there, at the end of a street, appear the great grey doors, the lofty pointed arches, with their marvellous carvings, and above them the lofty towers.
Not a sound, not a living soul on the public square where the ghost of the great church still towers enthroned: Yes, the Cathedral of Rheims still holds its place, but almost, it would seem, by miracle, and so riddled and rent that you feel it ready to collapse at the slightest shock: The ground is heaped with precious fragments of what it once was. The ruin has been hastily fenced in with a solid barrier of white wood, within which its sacred dust is piled in mounds: From top to bottom of the left-hand tower the calcined stone has taken on a strange colour of roasted flesh, and the images of saints, still stationed in rows above the cornices, THE GHOST OF A CATHEDRAL 75 have been as it were flayed by the fire ; they have lost their faces and fingers, but with their human shapes, which they still keep, seem like rows of corpses wrapped in a kind of reddish cere-cloths through which their outlines show vague and blunted.
As to the ancient episcopal palace adjoining it, where the kings of France were wont to come for rest on coronation day, it is now nothing more than a ruin, windowless, roofless, and everywhere licked and blackened by the tongue of fire. What an incomparable jewel it was, this church of Rheims, more beautiful even than Notre Dame of Paris, airier and more lace-like, more soaring with its columns as slender as reeds, so slender and frail that it is amazing how they could hold firm: Oh to think of the gross and dastardly and brainless brutality of hurling those canisters of scrap- iron in volleys against the fretwork, delicate as lace, which for centuries had reared itself proudly and con- fidently in air, and which so many battles, invasions, and whirlwinds had never dared to touch!
I venture to ring at the gate to beg the favour of admission to the Cathedral. His Eminence, I am told, is at mass, but will soon be back, and if I like to wait. While I wait, the priest who receives me tells me how the episcopal palace was burnt.
In spite of their idiotically absurd pretexts, and for all their shameless denials, it was the very heart of ancient France that they were bent on here destroying. It was some superstitious idea which drove them to it, not merely their natural instinct as savages ; and they worked fiercely at this particular piece of destruction while in the rest of the town nothing or next to nothing suffered.
But we cannot even make the smallest attempt to protect them as you suggest. No, there is nothing to be done. Under God's providence we must take our chance. It is cold in there, and depressing to tears. What strikes and disconcerts you at first is perhaps that unex- pected chill, a chill much more bitter than that of the outer air. Instead of the rather heavy odour which generally hangs about the interior of an ancient church — an odour compounded of so much incense burned there, of emanations from so many coffins blessed and so many human generations congregated there with their sufferings and their prayers — instead of that, a damp and icy wind comes rustling in through all the crevices of the walls, through all the breaches in the windows and holes in the vaulted arches.
Those vaults high aloft, broken here and there by the passage of shells — you lift your eyes at once instinctively to gaze at them, you feel your sight inevitably drawn towards them by the upward spring of all those columns, slender as reeds, which soar in sheaves and clusters to sustain them. You never tire of keeping your head thrown back to gaze at them, those sacred vaultings doomed presently to fall in ruin ; and then, besides, you see up there, far up and away, the long, almost aerial series of pointed arches from above which the vault- ings spring, arches repeating each other indefinitely from one end to the other of the nave and restful to follow in their long receding perspective, — such, in spite of their complicated cutting up of the wall surface, is their general effect of harmony.
These huge ceilings of stone, in appearance so light and moreover hanging so high aloft, neither shut in nor oppress the spirit: For the rest, it is just as well, in walking under them, to keep your head raised and not notice too carefully what you are walking on. For this pave- ment, yielding a dreary echo to your tread, has been lately blackened and defiled by contact with the charred flesh of human beings. It is matter of common knowledge how on the day when the church was set in flames it was full of German wounded laid on couches of straw ; how the straw took fire and the scene became one of horror such as Dante might have dreamed ; how all these creatures, their raw wounds scorching in the flames, dragged them- THE GHOST OF A CATHEDRAL 79 selves shrieking on their bleeding stumps to try and reach the doors, which were too narrow for the crush.
Of common knowledge it is also how the stretcher- bearers, both priests and nuns, heroically risked their lives amid the falling shells in the attempt to save these unhappy brutes, whom it had never occurred to their own German brothers to try and spare.
Nevertheless they could not succeed in saving all, and there remained some who were consumed by fire in the nave, leaving loathsome blotches on the sacred pavement where processions of kings and queens had once trained solemnly their ermine cloaks to the sound of the grand organ and of plain-song. And now come and see the miracle. The most irreparable disaster is that of those great stained windows composed by the mysterious artists of the thirteenth century in their devout dreams and meditations, and depicting men and women saints assembled by the hundred with their translucent draperies and luminous aureoles.
There again the great bundles of German scrap-iron came stupidly volleying and crashing. Those innumerable precious cuttings of painted glass, which in the course of ages had acquired an iridescence like that of opals, lie strewn on the ground, and shattered as they are still gleam there like gems. Within the Cathedral there is silence to-day, as in the deserted public place outside: The chill moaning of the wind is the only semblance of music heard there on this Sunday morning, and when from time to time it rises higher you hear also something like a dropping of the lightest pearls: A whole magnificent cycle of our history had in this sanctuary seemed still to live, with a life immaterial indeed yet almost terrestrial and real.
By this sacrilege it has been suddenly plunged into the deepest gulf of things which have passed away and of which even the memory will perish before long. The great barbarism has passed over the place, the modern barbarism from beyond the Rhine, a thousand times worse than any that was of old, inasmuch as it is stolidly and outrageously self- THE GHOST OF A CATHEDRAL 8i satisfied, and consequently radical, incurable, final, — and destined, if it is not crushed, to darken the world with the night of a sinister eclipse.
That Joan of Arc in the choir — strange it is, truly, that amid all the disarray she should still be standing there, serene, intact, immaculate, without so much as a single scratch upon her robe. Sur une carte hypsometrique on voit ses faibles sommets surgir, comme une ile, des vallees alentour. Aucun pays n'est plus abondant ; ce mot de Brie veut dire, en vieille langue celtique, " terre meuble," et le seul nom evoque, pour toute oreille fran9aise, une vision d'immenses moissons, de grandes fermes claires et gaies enfermees comme des forteresses dans leurs blanches murailles, de charmantes villes aux beaux clochers, toutes celebres dans nos fastes agricoles qui exaltent les roses de Provins comme les laines de Coulommiers, la farine de Corbeil, les volailles de Meaux, les fruits de Melun et de Fontainebleau.
Entre les champs de ble, des routes, qui sont des avenues royales, franchissent le plateau en tous les sens: II devient alors un admirable terrain de manoeuvres ; environ tous les deux ans, pour I'enseignement de nos jeunes soldats, on y refait la Campagne de France, en corrigeant les erreurs de Napoleon. J'etais en Brie en septembre 1 9 14 au moment ou nos soldats refaisaient cette bataille pour de bon. II Nous etions en Brie des les premiers jours de juillet, mais la ou le plateau s'abaisse pres de Paris, surplombant en simple balcon la grande vallee ou la Marne bouge et glisse entre les arbres et les maisons.
On monte la longue pente qui mene de la gare au village, et la, presque tout de suite, les moissons, les vergers, les bois, vous mettent sous les yeux un veritable paysage briard. Quelques-uns de nos plus intimes amis habitent depuis longtemps ce calme pays, si different des ordinaires environs de Paris.
Ces bruits-la, je les entendis pour la premiere fois: Au village on affichait deja I'ordre de la mobilisa- tion.
Des femmes affairees, aux yeux rouges, aux levres serrees, s'agitaient en silence ; leurs hommes, surexcites, avec une sorte de gaiete volontaire, se rassemblaient, causant entre eux. On n'avait qu'une demi-confiance dans la resistance premiere de nos armes. Certes, on voulait vendre sa vie bien cher, mais on disait tout bas: Et puis on avait aussi le desir d'en finir, une bonne fois et fut-ce dans des conditions me- diocres avec la querelle toujours renaissante d'un mauvais voisin.
Je vois encore un grand gaillard d'ouvrier, debout sur le seuil du marchand de vin: La circulation des gens etait presqu'aussi entravee que celle des especes, car le chemin de fer etait immobilise par le transport des troupes: Les chevaux du village, les autos des chateaux, etaient requisi- tionnes pour Tarmee. Les plus simples mouve- ments de la vie ordinaire etaient comme disloques ; tout devenait difficile et complique. Pourtant, il fallait bien demarrer. La maison de nos amis se trouve construite dans la zone militaire ; elle confine au fort ; on allait, sans doute, la detruire, si elle genait le tir.
Le lendemain dimanche 2 aout nous etions assez heureuses pour trouver au village une mechante charrette avec une vieille haridelle refusee a I'armee ; notre amie, ay ant ob- tenu un sursis de requisition, nous preta son auto. Dans ces deux voitures, nous nous entassions — six personnes, dont une octogenaire, avec leurs bagages — et nous nous mimes en route pour Melun, oil deja nous avions arrete une petite maison, a t ravers les plaines de la Brie, toutes couvertes de la plus merveilleuse moisson.
Ill La ville de Melun, qui avoue treize ou quatorze mille habitants, ne s'etale point aux regards. On voit au premier plan la vieille place de la Prefecture avec ses quinconces, d'ou s'eleve un vieil et svelte clocher, se profilant gracieusement contre quelque chose de vague, de bleu, de vaste, d'ou emergent une fleche d'eglise et plusieurs toits pointus. Et puis, bien plus loin, on distingue des champs et les premiers halliers de la foret. La ville de Melun est comme escamotee — elle et sa riviere — dans I'intervalle de cette invisible vallee. La voie abrupte qui devale la cote du clocher vers la Seine s'appelle la rue Saint Barthelemy.
C'est la que le soir, vers sept heures, on vend les journaux de Paris avec les dernieres depeches. Le couchant rosit derriere le clocher. C'est I'heure tranquille oil les dragons vont boire — ou plutot diner en ville, — les dragons en permission de sortie. Les voila qui descendent de la caserne, assez nom- breux, se pressant a la rencontre des jeunes cyclistes qui montent de la gare avec leurs paquets d' " In- transigeant " et de " Liberte. Comme il n'y a pas assez de journaux pour tout le monde, on se les partage fraternellement. Ce qu'on y lit n'est guere rassurant: Entre les reticences des communiques et les ratures de la Censure nous entrevoyons de bien tristes choses.
Evidemment nous n'avons pu soutenir le choc! Que deviendra la France? Le malaise public devient assez vite un sentiment de vague effroi. Qu'est-ce done que ces AUemands invincibles, inhumains et surhumains, qui brulent, saccagent, pillent tout ce qui se trouve sur leur chemin? IV Quel spectacle alors que les routes et les rues de la vieille ville endormie! La Belle aux Bles dormant se reveilla dans un sursaut de terreur. Le dimanche, 9 aout, les premiers reservistes partaient. Le lendemain, a notre etonnement, ce ne sont plus les troupiers qui s'en vont.
On rassemble les hommes du pays trop jeunes encore ou trop ages pour se battre. On les emmene a la gare — hommes grisonnants, adolescents de quinze a dix-sept ans — et on les embarque pour Albi, le depot de notre regiment. Je m'etonnais de voir partir ces hommes, evidemment les ouvriers agricoles des villages de la region, laissant sur la plaine, eparpillees, les moissons, car je ne savais pas encore la coutume prussienne d'emmener en captivite les habitants du pays, jeunes et vieux, sains et malades, qu'ils raflent dans leurs champs et conduisent de ville en ville, comme des troupeaux.
J'allais aussitot les voir. C'etait des maraichers des environs de Valenciennes qui se dirigeaient vers I'Ouest. C'etait a ne pas comprendre comment ils pouvaient tous s'entasser dans ces humbles voitures, deja encombrees de paquets de linge et de rouleaux de couvertures. Je suppose qu'ils allaient tour a tour en voiture ou a pied. Le temps heureusement se maintenait splendide ; ils ne souffraient que de la chaleur. Que faisaient-ils plus tard sous la pluie battante? Je les ai toujours presents a Tesprit, si tranquilles, si ranges, et comme epoussetes, dans leur miserables chariots, me contant avec leur accent trainant la maniere dont le tonnerre du canon les avait surpris dans leurs champs.
Ce bruit etait bientot suivi d'un autre, plus proche et presque plus terrible encore, qui etait 1 'explosion du pont. Les Anglais faisaient sauter ponts, passerelles, et routes — tout ce qui pouvait servir a Tennemi. Puis un officier " ben poli " les invita a s 'eloigner, vers I'inconnu: Ce meme soir je me trouvais dans le cabinet du Prefet. L'ai- mable Conseiller qui me recevait etait appele a chaque instant au telephone: Ou s'il fallait partir en emmenant les troupeaux?
Ce jour-la meme mais je ne le savais pas encore on avait evacue les villages de rOurcq et la terreur gagnait le Grand-Morin. Peut-etre savait-on cela a Corbeil, a Brie-Comte- Robert. Le telephone de la Prefecture avait beau conseiller le calme, le courage ; les fermiers partaient, emmenant leurs betes, et les longs troupeaux meu- glants encombraient les routes, dans une poussiere epaisse qu'aggravait encore le mouvement des fuyards de Paris, bourgeois effares entasses dans leurs taxi- autos fuyant vers Montereau, vers Montargis, vers Orleans, vers le Midi.
Les Melunois ne se montraient guere plus braves. Le Prefet lui-meme jugea que son devoir Tappelait aupres du gouvernement a Bordeaux. La Croix-Rouge fila sur Orleans. Les trois Banques rivales, avec un en- semble touchant, montraient visage de bois. La plupart des magasins se fermaient et je me rappelle tel apres-midi oil la blanchisseuse, apres la laitiere, vint nous dire qu'elle aussi, elle s'absentait. Je ne sais laquelle etait la plus triste: Mais I'armee etait la, et le peuple bon et vaillant ; notre petite maison, enclose de murs et calme, avec, en face, les deux enormes sophoras tout en fleurs, semblait encore un abri, un oasis de paix.
En m'eveillant, le mercredi 2 septembre, j'appris que les Anglais, avec leur Quartier-general, etaient arrives dans la nuit. Leur seule vue etaient un tonique: Mais voila les femmes qui rentrent en courant dans leurs maisons, avec je ne sais quel air epouvante! Elles marmottent toutes effarees: Ce sont maintenant les Allemands! Alors je vois avancer, tournant le coin de I'eglise, une troupe d'aspect, en eifet, redoutable: La vie reflua dans tout mon etre et a mon indicible etonnement je m'ecoutais chanter le fier chant ecossais: Je vous souhaite une tombe ensanglantee ou bien la victoire!
Mais le plus etonnant c'etait le train des equipages. Qui n'a point vu le service de transports d'une armee moderne — et surtout d'une armee anglaise — ne pent rien concevoir de pareil. L'artil- lerie de la Force Expeditionnaire n'est pas venue jusqu'a chez nous ; j'ai aper9u devant mes fenetres a Paris, sur la paisible Place Saint Fran9ois-Xavier, a quelque enterrement de general, bien plus de canons et de caissons qu'il n'y en avait a Melun pendant la bataille de la Marne.
Cependant TAvia- tion y etait au complet. Nous voyions de nos fe- netres les enormes voitures qui renfermaient, em- paquetee, cette artillerie des airs. Mais que pou- vaient bien contenir ces vastes autos-camions, gigan- tesques " paniers a salade " — qui s'en allaient, sales, aveugles, hideux, dans un fracas de ferraille et un tourbillon de poussiere?
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