The Soul of the War Part 24

The lamps on the landing-stage, flickering in the high wind, cast their white light upon half a dozen men walking down the gangway in Indian file. At least I had to take them on trust as men, but they looked more like spectres who had risen from the tomb, or obscene creatures from some dreadful underworld. When the German sh.e.l.l had burst on their boat, its fragments had scattered upwards, and each man had been wounded in the face, some of them being blinded and others scarred beyond human recognition. Shrouded in s.h.i.+p's blankets, with their heads swathed in bandages, their faces were quite hidden behind masks of cotton-wool coming out to a point like beaks and b.l.o.o.d.y at the tip. I shuddered at the sight of them, and walked away, cursing the war and all its horrors.

After my return to Dunkirk, I did not stay very long there. There was a hunt for correspondents, and my name was on the black list as a man who had seen too much. I found it wise to trek southwards, turning my back on Belgium, where I had had such strange adventures in the war-zone. The war had settled down into its winter campaign, utterly dreary and almost without episodes in the country round Furnes. But I had seen the heroism of the Belgian soldiers in their last stand against the enemy who had ravaged their little kingdom, and as long as life lasts the memory of these things will remain to me like a tragic song. I had been sprinkled with the blood of Belgian soldiers, and had helped to carry them, wounded and dead. I am proud of that, and my soul salutes the spirit of those gallant men-- the remnants of an army--who, without much help from French or English, stood doggedly in their last ditches, refusing to surrender, and with unconquerable courage until few were left, holding back the enemy from their last patch of soil. It was worth the risk of death to see those things.

Chapter VIII The Soul Of Paris

1

In the beginning of the war it seemed as though the soul had gone out of Paris and that it had lost all its life.

I have already described those days of mobilization when an enormous number of young men were suddenly called to the colours out of all their ways of civil life, and answered that summons without enthusiasm for war, hating the dreadful prospect of it and cursing the nation which had forced this fate upon them. That first mobilization lasted for twenty-one days, and every day one seemed to notice the difference in the streets, the gradual thinning of the crowds, the absence of young manhood, the larger proportion of women and old fogeys among those who remained. The life of Paris was being drained of its best blood by this vampire, war. In the Latin Quarter most of the students went without any preliminary demonstrations in the cafe d'Harcourt, or speeches from the table-tops in the cheaper restaurants along the Boul' Miche, where in times of peace any political crisis or intellectual drama produces a flood of fantastic oratory from young gentlemen with black hair, burning eyes, and dirty finger-nails. They had gone away silently, with hasty kisses to little mistresses, who sobbed their hearts out for a night before searching for any lovers who might be left.

In all the streets of Paris there was a shutting up of shops. Every day put a new row of iron curtains between the window panes, until at the end of the twelfth day the city seemed as dismal as London on a Sunday, or as though all the shops were closed for a public funeral.

Sc.r.a.ps of paper were pasted on the barred-up fronts.

"Le magasin est ferme a cause de la mobilisation."

"M. Jean Cochin et quatre fils sont au front des armees."

"Tout le personel de cet etabliss.e.m.e.nt est mobilise."

A personal incident brought the significance of the general mobilization sharply to my mind. I had not realized till then how completely the business of Paris would be brought to a standstill, and how utterly things would be changed. Before leaving Paris for Nancy and the eastern frontier, I left a portmanteau and a rug in a hotel where I had become friendly with the manager and the a.s.sistant manager, with the hall porter, the liftman, and the valet de chambre. I had discussed the war with each of these men and from each of them had heard the same expressions of horror and dismay. The hall porter was a good-humoured soul, who confided to me that he had a pretty wife and a new-born babe, who reconciled him to the disagreeable side of a life as the servant of any stranger who might come to the hotel with a bad temper and a light purse...

On coming back from Nancy I went to reclaim my bag and rug. But when I entered the hotel something seemed different. At first I could not quite understand this difference. It seemed to me for a moment that I had come to the wrong place. I did not see the hotel porter nor the manager and a.s.sistant manager. There was only a sharp- featured lady sitting at the desk in loneliness, and she looked at me, as I stared round the hall, with obvious suspicion. Very politely I asked for my bag and rug, but the lady's air became more frigid when I explained that I had lost the cloak-room ticket and could not remember the number of the room I had occupied a few days before.

"Perhaps there is some means by which you could prove that you stayed here?" said the lady.

"Certainly. I remember the hall porter. His name is Pierre, and he comes from the Midi."

She shook her head.

"There is no hall porter, Monsieur. He has gone."

"And then the valet de chambre. His name is Francois. He has curly hair and a short brown moustache."

The lady shook her head in a most decided negative.

"The present valet de chambre is a bald-headed man, and clean- shaven, monsieur. It must have been another hotel where you stayed."

I began to think that this must undoubtedly be the case, and yet I remembered the geography of the hall, and the pattern of the carpet, and the picture of Mirabeau in the National a.s.sembly.

Then it dawned on both of us.

"Ah! Monsieur was here before August 1. Since then everyone is mobilized. I am the manager's wife, Monsieur, and my husband is at the front, and we have hardly any staff here now. You will describe the shape of your bag..."

2

The French Government was afraid of the soul of Paris. Memories of the Commune haunted the minds of men who did not understand that the character of the Parisian has altered somewhat since 1870.

Ministers of France who had read a little history, were terribly afraid that out of the soul of Paris would come turbulence and mob-pa.s.sion, crises de nerfs, rioting, political strife, and panics. Paris must be handled firmly, sobered down by every possible means, kept from the knowledge of painful facts, spoon-fed with cheerful communiques whatever the truth might be, guarded by strong but hidden force, ready at a moment's notice to smash up a procession, to arrest agitators, to quell a rebellion, and to maintain the strictest order.

Quietly, but effectively, General Galieni, the military governor of "the entrenched camp of Paris," as it was called, proceeded to place the city under martial law in order to strangle any rebellious spirit which might be lurking in its hiding places. Orders and regulations were issued in a rapid volley fire which left Paris without any of its old life or liberty. The terra.s.ses were withdrawn from the cafes. No longer could the philosophic Parisian sip his pet.i.t verre and watch the drama of the boulevards from the shady side of a marble-topped table. He must sit indoors like an Englishman, in the darkness of his public-house, as though ashamed of drinking in the open. Absinthe was banned by a thunder-stroke from the Invalides, where the Military Governor had established his headquarters, and Parisians who had acquired the absinthe habit trembled in every limb at this judgment which would reduce them to physical and moral wrecks, as creatures of the drug habit suddenly robbed of their nerve-controlling tabloids. It was an edict welcomed by all men of self-control who knew that France had been poisoned by this filthy liquid, but they too became a little pale when all the cafes of Paris were closed at eight o'clock.

"Sapristi! Qu'est qu'on peut faire les soirs? On ne peut pas dormir tout le temps! Et la guerre durera peut-etre trois mois!"

To close the cafes at eight o'clock seemed a tragic infliction to the true Parisian, for whom life only begins after that hour, when the stupidity of the day's toil is finished and the mind is awakened to the intellectual interests of the world, in friendly conversation, in philosophical discussions, in heated arguments, in wit and satire.

How then could they follow the war and understand its progress if the cafes were closed at eight o'clock? But the edict was given and Paris obeyed, loyally and with resignation.

Other edicts followed, or arrived simultaneously like a broadside fired into the life of the city. Public processions "with whatever patriotic motive" were sternly prohibited. "Purveyors of false news, or of news likely to depress the public spirit" would be dealt with by courts-martial and punished with the utmost severity. No musical instruments were to be played after ten o'clock at night, and orchestras were prohibited in all restaurants. Oh, Paris, was even your laughter to be abolished, if you had any heart for laughter while your sons were dying on the fields of battle?

The newspaper censors had put a strangle grip upon the press, not only upon news of war but also upon expressions of opinion. Gustave Herve signed his name three days a week to blank columns of extraordinary eloquence. Georges Clemenceau had a series of striking head-lines which had been robbed of all their text. The intellectuals of Paris might not express an opinion save by permission of the military censors, most of whom, strangely enough, had German names.

The civil police under direction of the Military Governor were very busy in Paris during the early days of the war. Throughout the twenty- four hours, and especially in the darkness of night, the streets were patrolled by blue-capped men on bicycles, who rode, four by four, as silently as shadows, through every quarter of the city. They had a startling habit of surrounding any lonely man who might be walking in the late hours and interrogating him as to his nationality, age and business.

Several times I was arrested in this way and never escaped the little frousse which came to me when these dark figures closed upon me, as they leapt from their bicycles and said with grim suspicion:

"Vos papiers, s'il vous plait!"

My pockets were bulging with papers, which I thrust hurriedly into the lantern-light for a close-eyed scrutiny.

They were very quick to follow the trail of a stranger, and there was no sanctuary in Paris in which he might evade them. Five minutes after calling upon a friend in the fifth floor flat of an old mansion at the end of a courtyard in the Rue de Rivoli, there was a sharp tap at his door, and two men in civil clothes came into the room, with that sleuth-hound look which belongs to stage, and French, detectives. They forgot to remove their bowler hats, which seemed to me to be a lamentable violation of French courtesy.

"Vos papiers, s'il vous plait!"

Again I produced bundles of papers--permis de sejour in Paris, Amiens, Rouen, Orleans, Le Mans; laisser-pa.s.ser to Boulogne, Dieppe, Havre, Dunkirk, Aire-sur-Lys, Bethune and Hazebrouck; British pa.s.sports and papiers vises by French consuls, French police, French generals, French mayors, and French stationmasters. But they were hardly satisfied. One man with an ugly bulge in his side- pocket--you have seen at Drury Lane how quickly the revolver comes out?--suggested that the whole collection was not worth an old railway ticket because I had failed to comply with the latest regulation regarding a photograph on the permis de sejour... We parted, however, with mutual confidence and an expression of satisfaction in the Entente Cordiale.

3

One scene is clear cut in my memory, as it was revealed in a narrow street of Paris where a corner lantern flung its rays down upon the white faces of two men and two women. It was midnight, and I was waiting outside the door of a newspaper office, where my a.s.sistant was inquiring for the latest bulletins of war. For some minutes I watched this little group with an intuition that tragedy was likely to leap out upon them. They belonged to the apache cla.s.s, as it was easy to see by the cut of the men's trousers tucked into their boots, with a sash round the waist, and by the velvet bonnets pulled down sideways over their thin-featured faces and sharp jaws. The women had shawls over their heads and high-heeled shoes under their skirts.

At the Alhambra in London the audience would have known what dance to expect when such a group had slouched into the glamour of the footlights. They were doing a kind of slow dance now, though without any music except that of women's sobs and a man's sibilant curses. The younger of the two men was horribly drunk, and it was clear that the others were trying to drag him home before trouble came. They swayed with him up and down, picked him up when he fell, swiped him in the face when he tried to embrace one of the women, and lurched with him deeper into the throat of the alley. Then suddenly the trouble came. Four of those shadows on bicycles rode out of the darkness and closed in.

As sharp and distinct as pistol shots two words came to my ears out of the sudden silence and stillness which had arrested the four people:

"Vos papiers!"

There was no "s'il vous plait" this time.

It was clear that one at least of the men--I guessed it was the drunkard--had no papers explaining his presence in Paris, and that he was one of the embusques for whom the Military Governor was searching in the poorer quarters of the city (in the richer quarters there was not such a sharp search for certain young gentlemen of good family who had failed to answer the call to the colours), and for whom there was a very rapid method of punishment on the sunny side of a white wall. Out of the silence of that night came shriek after shriek. The two women abandoned themselves to a wild and terror- stricken grief. One of them flung herself on to her knees, clutching at an agent de police, clasping him with piteous and pleading hands, until he jerked her away from him. Then she picked herself up and leant against a wall, moaning and wailing like a wounded animal. The drunkard was sobered enough to stand upright in the grasp of two policemen while the third searched him. By the light of the street lamp I saw his blanched face and sunken eyes. Two minutes later the police led both men away, leaving the women behind, very quiet now, sobbing in their shawls.

It was the general belief in Paris that many apaches were shot pour encourager les autres. I cannot say that is true--the police of Paris keep their own secrets--but I believe a front place was found for some of them in the fighting lines. Paris lost many of its rebels, who will never reappear in the Place Pigalle and the Avenue de Clichy on moonless nights. Poor devils of misery! They did but make war on the well-to-do, and with less deadly methods, as a rule, than those encouraged in greater wars when, for trade interests also, men kill each other with explosive bombs and wrap each other's bowels round their bayonets and blow up whole companies of men in trenches which have been sapped so skilfully that at the word "Fire!"

no pair of arms or legs remains to a single body and G.o.d Himself would not know His handiwork.