With the French in France and Salonika Part 11

According to which front you are on, the trench is of mud, clay, chalk, sand-bags, or cement; it is ambushed in gardens and orchards, it winds through flooded mud flats, is hidden behind the ruins of wrecked villages, and is paved and reinforced with the stones and bricks from the smashed houses.

Of all the trenches the most curious were those of the Vosges. They were the most curious because, to use the last word one a.s.sociates with trenches, they are the most beautiful.

We started for the trenches of the Vosges from a certain place close to the German border. It was so close that in the inn a rifle-bullet from across the border had bored a hole in the cafe mirror.

The car climbed steadily. The swollen rivers flowed far below us, and then disappeared, and the slopes that fell away on one side of the road and rose on the other became smothered under giant pines. Above us they reached to the clouds, below us swept grandly across great valleys. There was no sign of human habitation, not even the hut of a charcoal-burner. Except for the road we might have been the first explorers of a primeval forest. We seemed as far removed from the France of cities, cultivated acres, stone bridges, and chateaux as Rip Van Winkle lost in the Catskills. The silence was the silence of the ocean.

We halted at what might have been a lumberman's camp. There were cabins of huge green logs with the moss still fresh and clinging, and smoke poured from mud chimneys. In the air was an enchanting odor of balsam and boiling coffee. It needed only a man in a Mackinaw coat with an axe to persuade us we had motored from a French village ten hundred years old into a perfectly new trading-post on the Saskatchewan.

But from the lumber camp the colonel appeared, and with him in the lead we started up a hill as sheer as a church roof. The freshly cut path reached upward in short, zigzag lengths. Its outer edge was sh.o.r.ed with the trunks of the trees cut down to make way for it. They were fastened with stakes, and against rain and snow helped to hold it in place. The soil, as the path showed, was of a pink stone. It cuts easily, and is the stone from which cathedrals have been built. That suggests that to an ambitious young sapling it offers little nutriment, but the pines, at least, seem to thrive on it. For centuries they have thrived on it. They towered over us to the height of eight stories. The ground beneath was hidden by the most exquisite moss, and moss climbed far up the tree trunks and covered the branches. They looked, as though to guard them from the cold, they had been swathed in green velvet. Except for the pink path we were in a world of green--green moss, green ferns, green tree trunks, green shadows. The little light that reached from above was like that which filters through the gla.s.s sides of an aquarium.

It was very beautiful, but was it war? We might have been in the Adirondacks in the private camp of one of our men of millions. You expected to see the fire-warden's red poster warning you to stamp out the ashes, and to be careful where you threw your matches. Then the path dived into a trench with pink walls, and, overhead, arches of green branches rising higher and higher until they interlocked and shut out the sky. The trench led to a barrier of logs as round as a flour-barrel, the openings plugged with moss, and the whole hidden in fresh pine boughs. It reminded you of those open barricades used in boar hunting, and behind which the German Emperor awaits the onslaught of thoroughly terrified pigs.

Like a bird's nest it clung to the side of the hill, and, across a valley, looked at a sister hill a quarter of a mile away.

"On that hill," said the colonel, "on a level with us, are the Germans."

Had he told me that among the pine-trees across the valley Santa Claus manufactured his toys and stabled his reindeer I would have believed him. Had humpbacked dwarfs with beards peeped from behind the velvet tree trunks and doffed red nightcaps, had we discovered fairies dancing on the moss carpet, the surprised ones would have been the fairies.

In this enchanted forest to talk of Germans and war was ridiculous. We were speaking in ordinary tones, but in the stillness of the woods our voices carried, and from just below us a dog barked.

"Do you allow the men to bring dogs into the trenches?" I asked. "Don't they give away your position?"

"That is not one of our dogs," said the colonel. "That is a German sentry dog. He has heard us talking."

"But that dog is not across that valley," I objected. "He's on this hill. He's not two hundred yards below us."

"But, yes, certainly," said the colonel. Of the man on duty behind the log barrier he asked:

"How near are they?"

"Two hundred yards," said the soldier. He grinned and, leaning over the top log, pointed directly beneath us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: War in the forest.

A cemetery for soldiers killed in the Vosges.]

It was as though we were on the roof of a house looking over the edge at some one on the front steps. I stared down through the giant pine-trees towering like masts, mysterious, motionless, silent with the silence of centuries. Through the interlacing boughs I saw only s.h.i.+fting shadows or, where a shaft of sunlight fell upon the moss, a flash of vivid green. Unable to believe, I shook my head. Even the _boche_ watchdog, now thoroughly annoyed, did not convince me. As though reading my doubts, an officer beckoned, and we stepped outside the breastworks and into an intricate cat's-cradle of barbed-wire. It was lashed to heavy stakes and wound around the tree trunks, and, had the officer not led the way, it would have been impossible for me to get either in or out.

At intervals, like clothes on a line, on the wires were strung empty tin cans, pans and pots, and gla.s.s bottles. To attempt to cross the entanglement would have made a noise like a peddler's cart b.u.mping over cobbles.

We came to the edge of the barb-wire, and what looked like part of a tree trunk turned into a man-sized bird's nest. The sentry in the nest had his back to us, and was peering intently down through the branches of the tree tops. He remained so long motionless that I thought he was not aware of our approach. But he had heard us. Only it was no part of his orders to make abrupt movements. With infinite caution, with the most considerate slowness, he turned, scowled, and waved us back. It was the care with which he made even so slight a gesture that persuaded me the Germans were as close as the colonel had said. My curiosity concerning them was satisfied. The sentry did not need to wave me back.

I was already on my way.

At the post of observation I saw a dog-kennel.

"There are watchdogs on our side, also?" I said.

"Yes," the officer a.s.sented doubtfully.

"The idea is that their hearing is better than that of the men, and in case of night attacks they will warn us. But during the day they get so excited barking at the _boche_ dogs that when darkness comes, and we need them, they are worn-out and fall asleep."

We continued through the forest, and wherever we went found men at work repairing the path and pus.h.i.+ng the barb-wire and trenches nearer the enemy. In some places they worked with great caution as, hidden by the ferns, they dragged behind them the coils of wire; sometimes they were able to work openly, and the forest resounded with the blows of axes and the crash of a falling tree. But an axe in a forest does not suggest war, and the scene was still one of peace and beauty.

For miles the men had lined the path with borders of moss six inches wide, and with strips of bark had decorated the huts and shelters.

Across the tiny ravines they had thrown what in seed catalogues are called "rustic" bridges. As we walked in single file between these carefully laid borders of moss and past the shelters that suggested only a gamekeeper's lodge, we might have been on a walking tour in the Alps.

You expected at every turn to come upon a chalet like a Swiss clock, and a patient cow and a young woman in a velvet bodice who would offer you warm milk.

Instead, from overhead, there burst suddenly the barking of shrapnel, and through an opening in the tree-tops we saw a French biplane pursued by German sh.e.l.ls. It was late in the afternoon, but the sun was still s.h.i.+ning and, entirely out of her turn, the moon also was s.h.i.+ning. In the blue sky she hung like a silver s.h.i.+eld, and toward her, it seemed almost to her level, rose the biplane.

She also was all silver. She shone and glistened. Like a great bird, she flung out tilting wings. The sun kissed them and turned them into flas.h.i.+ng mirrors. Behind her the German sh.e.l.ls burst in white puffs of smoke, feathery, delicate, as innocent-looking as the tips of ostrich-plumes. The biplane ran before them and seemed to play with them as children race up the beach laughing at the pursuing waves.

The biplane darted left, darted right, climbed unseen aerial trails, tobogganed down vast imaginary mountains, or, as a gull skims the crests of the waves, dived into a cloud and appeared again, her wings dripping, glistening and radiant. As she turned and winged her way back to France you felt no fear for her. She seemed beyond the power of man to harm, something supreme, super-human--a sister to the sun and moon, the princess royal of the air.

After you have been in the trenches it seems so selfish to be feasting and drinking that you have no appet.i.te for dinner.

But after a visit to the defenders of the forests of the Vosges you cannot feel selfish. Visits to their trenches do not take away the appet.i.te. They increase it. The air they breathe tastes like brut champagne, and gases cannot reach them. They sleep on pillows of pine boughs. They look out only on what in nature is most beautiful. And their surgeon told me there was not a single man on the sick-list. That does not mean there are no killed or wounded. For even in the enchanted forest there is no enchantment strong enough to ward off the death that approaches crawling on the velvet moss, or hurtling through the tree-tops.

War has no knowledge of sectors. It is just as hateful in the Vosges as in Flanders, only in the Vosges it masks its hideousness with what is beautiful. In Flanders death hides in a trench of mud like an open grave. In the forest of the Vosges it lurks in a nest of moss, fern, and clean, sweet-smelling pine.

CHAPTER XI

HINTS FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO HELP

PARIS, January, 1916.

At home people who read of some splendid act of courage or self-sacrifice on the part of the Allies, are often moved to exclaim: "I wish I could help! I wish I could _do_ something!"

This is to tell them how easily, at what bargain prices, at what little cost to themselves that wish can be gratified.

In the United States, owing to the war, many have grown suddenly rich; those already wealthy are increasing their fortunes. Here in France the war has robbed every one; the rich are less rich, the poor more dest.i.tute. Every franc any one can spare is given to the government, to the Bank of France, to fight the enemy and to preserve the country.

The calls made upon the purses of the people never cease, and each appeal is so worthy that it cannot be denied. In consequence, for the war charities there is not so much money as there was. People are not less willing, but have less to give. So, in order to obtain money, those who ask must appeal to the imagination, must show why the cause for which they plead is the most pressing. They advertise just which men will benefit, and in what way, whether in blankets, gloves, tobacco, masks, or leaves of absence.

Those in charge of the relief organizations have learned that those who have money to give like to pick and choose. A tale of suffering that appeals to one, leaves another cold. One gives less for the wounded because he thinks those injured in battle are wards of the state. But for the children orphaned by the war he will give largely. So the pet.i.tioners dress their shop-windows.

To the charitably disposed, and over here that means every Frenchman, they offer bargains. They have "white sales," "fire sales." As, at our expositions, we have special days named after the different States, they have special days for the Belgians, Poles, and Serbians.

For these days they prepare long in advance. Their approach is heralded, advertised; all Paris, or it may be the whole of France, knows they are coming.

Christmas Day and the day after were devoted exclusively to the man in the trenches, to obtain money to bring him home on leave. Those days were _les journees du poilu_.

The services of the best black-and-white artists in France were commandeered. For advertising purposes they designed the most appealing posters. Unlike those issued by our suffragettes, calling attention to the importance of November 2, they gave some idea of what was wanted.

They did not show Burne-Jones young women blowing trumpets. They were not symbolical, or allegorical; they were homely, pathetic, humorous, human. They were aimed straight at the heart and pocketbook.

They showed the _poilu_ returning home on leave, and on surprising his wife or his sweetheart with her hands helpless in the washtub, kissing her on the back of the neck. In the corner the dog danced on his hind legs, barking joyfully.