The Challenge of the Dead Part 9

The Army did not know when it began its advance that the familiar ruins of old villages were being left behind for good, that Berles au Bois with its growing graveyard and ruined church was placed finally behind, Monchy, Blairville, Hamelincourt, St. Leger, Bullecourt, Ecoust, behind for ever, that Albert, Maricourt, Bapaume, re-conquered Peronne, were all permanently held and soon to be left far in obscurity in the rear.

It is strange to come back over this track again and see the site of hideous and monstrous latrines now overgrown with rankest weeds, to see the ruined barns all re-roofed, to see the dank acre into which, wrapped in the flag, your comrades were lowered down, to see what was left of the village church of Berles now brought flat because as it stood it was a menace, to see the place where but for the grace of G.o.d you might yourself be lying with a cross above your head, to see Monchy lifting itself with great difficulty from its sunken blocks of stone, to listen to the stillness and deadness of old lifeless ruins, to cross the stubble fields to Adinfer and hear the petrol plough methodically scouring the old lines, to approach once more the dreadfulness of Ayette.

The villagers have come back to the craters of death. There is an estaminet where was nothing before; there are salvage-made huts with "baby-elephant" roofs built o'er spots where for days lay the dead in a torture of wire. A family is in the estaminet, it was divided into five parts by the war--five members of the family each in a different place and none of them in touch with any other, each believing the other four dead, two in different parts of Germany, one in Paris, one in Belgium, one in the Pyrenees. They are poor people, touched by their suffering to tenderness and generosity, and when there comes to them one who served as a soldier in the war they spread their best before him and do not want to take money for it--wonderful for France. But the people who have suffered are the best people there as elsewhere.

At Ablainzville the new brick cabins grow into being amid the high seared masts of her dead trees. At sunset the hard-working peasants are still in the fields. They have heaped old iron and wire on to the roads, and filled up the sh.e.l.l-holes and burned the weeds and broken the intractable hard moorland with tractor-drawn ploughs. They have riven the st.u.r.dy roots of the docks and the reeds, they have driven St. John's wort and rocket and willow-herb from the grain-field, turning up the tramped-down battered earth in huge slabs and chunks. The league of death which goes over the brow of the hill, that old no-man's land which the machine-guns swept is now a great black upturned drive of ploughing in which alight thousands of crows, all extruding from the earth and discussing what they find, talking and grabbing, fluttering and flying.

Sodden green equipment has been ploughed into the earth and still lies half exposed, and helmets like little coal-buckets disturb here and there the even surface of the land. It is heavy going, and your boots want to lift tons of mother earth, but you struggle on with eyes furtively engaged in "spotting" here a sh.e.l.l and there a bomb. Next year the corn will cover up all our sins.

The peasants complain that the Government gives them nothing. The Germans replaced some of the cattle they stole, but how about the French who commandeered their horses at the beginning of the war and in exchange gave them a merely nominal sum. In the stricken areas how few are the horses now! The conservative peasant who does not like changing his agricultural habits has been forced to the use of the petrol engine.

His chief motive force is the old lorry engine. But of course he does more with that than he did with the horse, and when one has walked right across the zone of desolation and come to the little-touched farms on the other side one cannot but feel that the peasants working their horses there are not getting on so quickly as the deprived ones with their motors.

Many of the refugees when they came back started at an absolute zero.

Their plight would have driven a less stubborn people to despair, but they set-to and worked, and can already show a dumbfounding progress.

Theirs is a hard life without luxury and with little food, but with the capital of their toiling hands they are making wealth for themselves and France once more. The people of the war-lands will recover quicker than their Governments, and whilst with every year the plight of the national exchequer gets worse the plight of the domestic exchequer will improve.

There are too many parasites feeding on the Governments, and the latter have too many obligations in the matter of paying interest on loan. All France is placarded with appeals to French people to take up State-loans--the object of such loans being to get money to pay the interest on past loans. French people cannot be persuaded to pay onerous taxes. The Germans, without great commercial activity, cannot make the French deficit good, and we see the State sliding slowly but steadily downward like a loosened avalanche toward a precipice. But in the light of the French peasants' steady unremitting toil one need have little fear for the nation itself. It will get rid of this type of Government and the mountains of debt when the time comes. Long after sunset, in the after-murk of night, sound the droning of the petrol-ploughs on the old battlefields, and the clatter of hammer and plane in the stricken villages.--Vive la France!

It is twenty miles to Cambrai by the seemingly Druidical remains of Lagnicourt and the life-cl.u.s.ters of Queant, p.r.o.nville, Moeuvres, Fontaine. Cambrai is resurgent. No one is in mourning except those widows whom black suits. The merry-go-rounds and the razzle-dazzle with all manner of toy-booths and gipsy-shows occupy the market-place on which grandiose buildings with broken windows stare. In the town gardens is a statue without a head, and on its base is engraved--"_Son invention fut un bienfait pour son pays_."

He probably made some improvement in the manufacture of silk, but an ironical British soldier has written in English beneath--_He invented the gun stock_.

On the way out from Cambrai the towns of Boussieres and St. Hilaire look as if no war had been, and the trains are all running on the road to Solesmes. Where men stalked their foes along the railway embankment, where men won military medals and D.C.M.s and one the V.C. all is perfect prose. Where so many died and risked their lives a life-insurance office has reopened. All slumbers on the road to Le Quesnoy and Bavai. You have pa.s.sed through the war area and come to the unscarred green of innocent fields and the undesolated symmetry of unscathed woods. Peasants lead the horses in the plough, and cows in plenty graze in sun-steeped pastures.

It is November 10th and the same strong highway on which two years ago the army marched to the end of the war. At the end of a fair fine afternoon the sun is sinking slowly but must be in eclipse ere it set.

Peasants are sitting on heaps of stones at La Longueville looking westward. In the smoky capitals of Europe nothing will be seen, but something is due to happen if the sky keeps clear and will be visible at the last outposts of the war.

From the grandeur of the setting sun pale shadows are cast of posts and cows and houses and railings and heaps of stones. Unexpectedly they faint away as something steals upon the splendour of the radiant disc and stops the brightness of the rays. Myriads of wisps of cloud, like tiny hands, a.s.sist at the eclipse, laying the sun to rest in a dreadful b.l.o.o.d.y bath, agonising and bleeding and growing less and going down, with evil triumphing over good. Out, brief candle! Yes, it is out--it is night. The last day of the war is done--tomorrow Armistice. The reaper has put up his scythe--the angel of death has gone by. A bitter wind pa.s.ses swiftly along the high-road, just touching you, just making you aware that something invisible and unkind has pa.s.sed you, having a going and a coming which is not yours.

So in a mood which has changed you walk the last miles of the war--to the fortress of Maubeuge. Here is gloomy smoky Douzies, and there, yes at that very spot, is the place where the Brigade messenger was accosted and you read his message--_Hostilities will cease as from eleven o'clock_. Yonder the factory sheds where you heard the first lecture on demobilisation, where you sang "Take me back to dear old Blighty!" with such a will, and a free issue of rum punch was made to all. There the erstwhile deserted steel works which men said would be years before they worked again. The great stacks smoke, belying the prophecy, and on the night wind comes the clangour of tireless machinery working for France, working for Peace. On the railway all the twisted rails are gone, the lines gleam with the brightness of train-wheels and go straight to Maubeuge. Upon the roadway lie the disjecta membra of an armoured train marked Lot 1 and Lot 2 and likely to remain till time itself remove them.

You descend into the trough where the moat goes round the fortress, and by a wooden bridge enter Maubeuge, the city of the end of the war, one of the cities where the war ended. At Maubeuge then let us be silent with those who are silent whilst at Westminster the Unknown is buried and the Cenotaph unveiled and at Paris the Arc de Triomphe receives its guest.

November the eleventh in the morning--there is Ma.s.s in the Cathedral for the _poilu inconnu_, the anonymous soldier of France, and about an empty coffin swathed with the tricolour are ten high candles. The sacrifice is sanctified with holy water and incense. The divine elements are raised from the Altar. The throngs of the pious all cross themselves. Comes the alarm crash of the Sanctus thrice repeated, the mumbo-jumbo of fast-gabbled Latin, the exultant organ. You stand wedged in by a pillar, the only Englishman there now, and as your eye ranges o'er the scene it reads on the Cathedral wall the inscription which is nearest. _N'oublie pas pecheur endurci que c'est pour la troisieme fois que Jesus est tombe!_ "Forget not, hardened sinner, that it is now for the third time that Jesus has fallen," suggestive and unforgettable monition given in the half-light of the Cathedral.

A Te Deum which does not rend the sky nor the Cathedral roof pa.s.ses sweetly o'er our heads, and the congregation with its wreaths and flags files out to march with bands to the cemeteries of Maubeuge. It is still not eleven by the clock. But it will be eleven in the Place des Casernes where the Guards were drawn up on parade that November morning. The barrack square then!

Behold it dirty and drab. A squad in sabots is being detailed by a corporal for fatigue duty. They answer their names, their old tunics are all undone, they shuffle across the square. But it is eleven. Silence then. Let us be silent with all who are silent.

_EPILOGUE_

The afternoon train speeds from Maubeuge to Paris. "Am I right for Paris?" you ask, and a Frenchman replies facetiously "Nach Paris, nach Paris." In a few hours you roll up the whole Western front. You traverse infinite graveyards and scenes of desolation like an arrow of thought, and alight where the German soldiers wished to be. The train has come from Berlin: it has pa.s.sed through Cologne and the zone held by the occupying army. It roars forward to St. Quentin, Noyon, Compiegne, like the symbol of the March offensive. But in all the little shattered towns and villages joy-flags are flying and the bands are playing. It is to-day a fete of French victory and French peace. Besides being Armistice Day it is the Cinquantenaire of the Republic, the day of the celebration of the first fifty years of the present Republic of France, and Paris will be alight from end to end to-night with fairy lights.

Paris and France will render homage to the Republic which brought victory. In 1870 under the fatal Government of Napoleon the Third the hated German conquered France. Then the Napoleons fell and Gambetta made possible "la revanche du Droit." It could hardly have been predicted that within fifty years the stricken unstable France of 1870 would lay the Prussian low. The victory over the Germans has been an enormous confirmation of the success of the "Third Republic" and has shed a glory on the line of Presidents from Thiers to Millerand which is perhaps not entirely appreciated in other countries. The Republic celebrating its fiftieth birthday on November 11th sunned itself in as much glory as the Army or the Nation. It is true that "un soldat sans nom, representant la foule heroique des poilus, repose dans l'Arc de Triomphe"--a nameless soldier representing the heroic crowd who fought is buried now in the Arc de Triomphe--but it is also true that the heart of Gambetta carried in a chariot accompanied the hea.r.s.e of the unknown soldier, and whilst the soldier was buried in the first storey of the triumphal arch the heart of Gambetta was placed in the Pantheon itself. All must redound to the greatness of France and of the Republic.

As you step from the train at Paris you realise that everyone is out for gaiety even before the gaiety has commenced. The Parisians are holding on to one another, humming and singing baby-song, making believe to stumble as they walk. Gone are the care and solemnity of the weekday Paris crowd. A heaviness has been shed, everyone feels light as if there was quicksilver in his heels. Evening is just turning to night and all houses are giving forth their people, and they stream to the centre in ever increasing crowds--all gay, all light-hearted, all without a thought of ever coming home. The city is cleverly decorated with ma.s.sed flags, arcades of flags, but without those strings of bunting which so often look like coloured was.h.i.+ng hanging out to dry. The illuminations are to be most elaborate. Hundreds of thousands of francs are being spent in coloured light effects. There will be a torchlight procession, ma.s.sed bands, and street dancing till morning. Long lines of men and women holding on to one another plunge through the crowds, and scream, and break, and join again. Everyone is wearing a little flag of the Republic. Men and women are to be seen carrying little red paper lanterns on bamboo sticks. Every restaurant and cafe is crammed and jammed with people with flushed faces. The waiters, having lost control, bring you dishes you have not ordered, but you graciously accept them faute de mieux. Hawkers keep bellowing the last editions of the papers, especially of _L'intransigeant_, which says that the meaning of the festivity is that the Allies are agreed to force Germany to fulfil the treaty to the letter. Night meanwhile has become night with no stars above and all the stars below.

The crowds have become immense. If you are at the Place de la Concorde where part of the torchlight procession is forming up and men are playing on the crowd with ghastly searchlights, then you are likely to remain at the Place de la Concorde. It will take you two hours to struggle to the Place de l'Opera. On the Underground railway some stations are blocked, and no one can get either in or out--notably Hotel de Ville. Out at the Arc de Triomphe there is a cavalry guard with drawn sabres. The Arc very fittingly has no illumination, but its dark ma.s.s catches the light beams from the buildings around. No one knows what is going to happen here, all the little folk stand on tip-toe and strain their eyes and yet see nought. Lots of girls are mounted on men's shoulders with legs round men's necks and their ankles grasped in male hands, and they certainly see the nothing which is to be seen. All are laughing, all are ready to sing and to roll in gaiety. Presently some statesmen in carriages pa.s.s out between lines of cavalrymen; big Bertha, the great gun, follows them and then an empty Roman chariot and the hea.r.s.e on which the _poilu inconnu_ was carried. But even when these pa.s.s the crowd remains riveted to the place where the unknown soldier reposes--constantly expecting some marvel of the night to start from there.

Similar crowds hold the Place Vendome where Napoleon stands on his column of stone, the St. Simon of Paris. This statue also commemorates a national victory over Germany, though it elevates one soldier so high.

The design of the frieze at the foot of the column is one of accoutrements and weapons and adornments and uniforms and guns, but without a limb or a face anywhere, the meaning being that one man wore all the glory. Here is exhibited not much joy in the Republic but a whole series of advertis.e.m.e.nt for French State loans. On the whole, the Cinquantenaire of the Republic may be a good advertis.e.m.e.nt for Government Stock. All manner of provincials have come to Paris for this day, and there is no doubt they are dazzled by the grandeur of France.

At the Palais Royal there is one of the most radiant designs in coloured lights. The whole front of the place is covered with a picture of light which reminds one of the advertis.e.m.e.nts of the great white way between 40th and 50th Street, New York. Crimson and emerald and gold tell the glory of the fifty years of the Republic, the numbers 1870 and 1920 being festooned with dazzling light, and the names of all the Presidents in one great row--Thiers, MacMahon ... to Deschanel and Millerand--given the prominence of a dynasty. On all the sidewalks down below are trees of naked flames, gas-pipes with branches coming up out of the pavement and instead of leaves little jets of twinkling flame at which the crowd lights its cigarettes. The entrances to the grand avenues are surmounted by fantastic arches of most gorgeous illuminated colouring. In front of all this stand men and women thoroughly epate, hypnotised by it, with mouths open and eyes dilated.

"Oh but it's wonderful!" "I cannot take my eyes off it, can you?" "Look, neighbour, just look at that, eh!" "Ah but look!" "What splendour!"

"What an effect!" And there is audible all the while a continuous collective low murmur of approbation and satisfaction.

You walk slowly along the Avenue de l'Opera. There are uninterrupted rows of footlights along the bases of first and second storeys throwing a lurid glamour on solemn and stately tricolours. So it is all the way to the Opera House, and happy crowds, fluttering and chattering, now breaking into an infection of expectancy when all push forward to see some imagined interest somewhere, and then lurching back in gay disillusion and laughter. The lofty buildings like monuments to the G.o.ddess of Trade look down on diminutive people with bright faces and round heads, and the stone itself of Paris seems indulgent.

Away however in those strange fields covered with darkness at this midnight hour, unilluminated, lie the silent ones, crosses without end--the signs of life laid down. France will not forget them and we shall not forget.

So let us leave this gaiety behind and take the midnight train for Calais, for Dover, for London, for the Cenotaph, the Abbey, for new life. It is a full train and pulls out soberly from the gay city, and bears onward, onward to the little channel and the waiting boat which ere the dawn shall face the wonderful white cliffs of Albion and home.

The most enduring moment of Armistice Day will be the silence at eleven, the moment of communion. In America in many cities work ceased at eleven but every one was instructed to make the utmost noise possible. Thus a year ago at New Orleans the writer of these lines listened to an infernal din of train whistles, factory syrens, steam horns and hooters, clas.h.i.+ng church-bells, roaring Klaxon-horns, hammering of anvils, squeaking of trumpets, and shouts of people. And the thought inevitably came--the West does not understand. It did not suffer as we did and came into a share in it all too late. Only the end of a small war can express itself in noise; the end of such an one as this in Europe was silence.

And a fitting monument of silence is the Cenotaph, the empty tomb.

England is very happy in the Cenotaph, much more happy than in the Edith Cavell statue, which leaves out the last words of the kind nurse, does not say "_Patriotism is not enough_," but writes "Brussels Dawn"

instead, making her a kindler of anger against a foe rather than a salver of wounds. The impersonal cenotaph, without any Cross or weeping Christ, or rampant lions, without even the p.r.o.noun "our" which some wished to see upon it--"Our glorious dead," instead of "The glorious dead," can stand for all who laid down their lives baptised or unbaptised, white or coloured, friend or foe. For even Germans had to die that Europe might be free.

So in leaving the fields of the dead and the beginning and the end of the war and Paris itself, you come naturally to the Cenotaph, the stone which gathers to itself all the experience and all that was sacred in the war--the altar at the summit of a thousand weary steps. It stands in the midst of England's great street of Government, 'twixt Nelson and the Abbey, and says to all who pa.s.s--"Go and do thou likewise." To all the selfish, "_We were not selfish_;" to the clamorous, "_We are silent, yet we speak_;" to the strident and ambitious, to the self-seekers and the cynical, to those who live as though there had been no sacrifice, to those who sneer at the ideal, "_We suffered and died that you might have your life, that all might have more life; we suffered and died for the good of the whole!_"

When Millerand was elected President of France his supporters insisted always that they had found a man whose public life would be worthy of France _and of her dead_. France's ideal is that through the sacrifice of her sons France should become "greater yet." Our men did not die that England might become greater, but that Europe might be saved from tyranny and greed, and it is for us and our public men to see that their sacrifice shall never seem to grow barren.

It will grow barren unless we who now live are ready to continue the sacrifice. No good comes into the world but after struggle and pain. No new life comes but through death, no common weal is gained without giving and serving. Our common life must have a foundation of human hearts, ready to give, ready to live, for England and for us all.

It hath been said: "He liveth best who is always ready to die."

It can be put in a new way: "He liveth best who is always ready to put all upon the Altar."

Humanity is well served when nations are ready to sacrifice themselves for her good.

She is worst served by the nations who still preserve the tribal instinct to fight and destroy their neighbours.

She is worst served by the nations who are enslaving other nations.

And that nation is most alive which has most people ready to sacrifice themselves and their estate.

That nation liveth worst which contains the most selfish.

Of Christ it was written: He saved others; Himself he could not save. But the selfish man saves himself first and then thinks of others.

The selfish man is quarrelsome and runs easily to law; he exacts guarantees; he counts his costs; he heavily insures; he holds what he does not want and is afraid of another getting it.

That nation liveth best whose men and women are freest for an adventure.

But worst whose men and women are most cautious.