New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, No. 1 Part 25

_Referring to the article printed below, which appeared in The London Times Literary Supplement of Oct. 1, and which the French Government ordered to be read in all Parisian schools, M. Rene Bazin writes in l'Echo de Paris:_

Is not this language admirable? What full and flowing phrases. They are like a s.h.i.+p filled with grain sailing into port with her sails full.

Preserve them, these fugitive lines written by a neighbor, and read them to your children. They will teach them the greatness of France and the greatness of England.

The whole world recognizes two qualities in the Englishman: his bravery and his common sense. We know that the Englishman is true to his given word, and that even in the antipodes he never changes his habits. As I write, the postman brings me a letter from the front, dated Oct. 17. The cavalryman who sends it tells of our Allies. "We are fighting the enemy's cavalry," he writes, "and for two days my brigade was in action with the British. They know how to fight and they astonish us by their marvelous powers of organization and their coolness."

Yes, we know that of old. We also know that England never closes her doors to liberty. We have a confused memory of the hospitality given to our priests in the times of the Revolution. Now England provides us with fresh proof of her kindness of heart. You have heard the news--the professors and students of the Catholic University of Louvain invited to Cambridge. The destroyed Belgian university reconst.i.tuted in the home of the celebrated English university. What a magnificent idea!

I do not know whether the author who has spoken so well of France in the great English newspaper has ever visited this country. But he has surely meditated on our history and has divined the reason of the very existence of France; why she merits love beyond her frontiers, and why she should be defended "like a treasure." England is not made up of traders, soldiers, sailors, politicians, but also--and that is what the French people will learn better every day--of poets, subtle philosophers, and of thoughtful and religious spirits.

In truth, the day which Joan of Arc foresaw has arrived. She did not hate the English. It was only their intolerable rule of the kingdom which was hateful to her. The good maid of Lorraine said that after having driven the English out of France she would reconcile them with the French and lead them together in a crusade. This has become true.

Her dream is accomplished. The crusade is not against the Saracens, but it is a crusade all the same.

*France*

*From The London Times Literary Supplement*

Among all the sorrows of this war there is one joy for us in it: that it has made us brothers with the French as no other two nations have ever been brothers before. There has come to us, after ages of conflict, a kind of millennium of friends.h.i.+p; and in that we feel there is a hope for the world that outweighs all our fears, even at the height of the worldwide calamity. There were days and days, during the swift German advance, when we feared that the French armies were no match for the German, that Germany would be conquered on the seas and from her eastern frontier, that after the war France would remain a power only through the support of her Allies. For that fear we must now ask forgiveness; but at least we can plead in excuse that it was unselfish and free from all national vanity. If, in spite of ultimate victory, France had lost her high place among the nations, we should have felt that the victory itself was an irreparable loss for the world. And now we may speak frankly of that fear because, however unfounded it was, it reveals the nature of the friends.h.i.+p between France and England.

That is also revealed in the praise which the French have given to our army. There is no people that can praise as they can: for they enjoy praising others as much as some nations enjoy praising themselves, and they lose all the reserve of egotism in the pleasure of praising well.

But in this case they have praised so generously because there was a great kindliness behind their praise, because they, like us, feel that this war means a new brotherhood stronger than all the hatreds it may provoke, a brotherhood not only of war but of the peace that is to come after it. That welcome of English soldiers in the villages of France, with food and wine and flowers, is only a foretaste of what is to be in both countries in a happier time. It is what we have desired in the past of silly wrangles and misunderstandings, and now we know that our desire is fulfilled.

*"That Sweet Enemy."*

For behind all those misunderstandings, and in spite of the difference of character between us, there was always an understanding which showed itself in the courtesies of Fontenoy and a hundred other battles. When Sir Philip Sidney spoke of France as that sweet enemy, he made a phrase for the English feeling of centuries past and centuries to be. We quarrelled bitterly and long; but it was like a man and woman who know that some day their love will be confessed and are angry with each other for the quarrels that delay the confession. We called each other ridiculous, and knew that we were talking nonsense; indeed, as in all quarrels without real hatred, we made charges against each other that were the opposite of the truth. We said that the French were frivolous; and they said that we were gloomy. Now they see the gayety of our soldiers and we see the deep seriousness of all France at this crisis of her fate. She, of all the nations at war, is fighting with the least help from illusion, with the least sense of glory and romance. To her the German invasion is like a pestilence; to defeat it is merely a necessity of her existence; and in defeating it she is showing the courage of doctors and nurses, that courage which is furthest removed from animal instinct and most secure from panic reaction. There is no sign in France now of the pa.s.sionate hopes of the revolutionary wars; 1870 is between them and her; she has learned, like no other nation in Europe, the great lesson of defeat, which is not to mix material dreams with spiritual; she has pa.s.sed beyond illusions, yet her spirit is as high as if it were drunk with all the illusions of Germany.

And that is why we admire her as we have never admired a nation before.

We ourselves are an old and experienced people, who have, we hope, outlived gaudy and dangerous dreams; but we have not been tested like the French, and we do not know whether we or any other nation could endure the test they have endured. It is not merely that they have survived and kept their strength. It is that they have a kind of strength new to nations, such as we see in beautiful women who have endured great sorrows and outlived all the triumphs and pa.s.sions of their youth, who smile where once they laughed; and yet they are more beautiful than ever, and seem to live with a purpose that is not only their own, but belongs to the whole of life. So now we feel that France is fighting not merely for her own honor and her own beautiful country, still less for a triumph over an arrogant rival, but for what she means to all the world; and that now she means far more than ever in the past.

*Furia Francese.*

This quarrel, as even the Germans confess, was not made by her. She saw it gathering, and she was as quiet as if she hoped to escape war by submission. The chance of revenge was offered as it had never been offered in forty years; yet she did not stir to grasp it. Her enemy gave every provocation, yet she stayed as still as if she were spiritless; and all the while she was the proudest nation on the earth, so proud that she did not need to threaten or boast. Then came the first failure, and she took it as if she had expected nothing better. She had to make war in a manner wholly contrary to her nature and genius, and she made it as if patience, not fire, were the main strength of her soul. Yet behind the new patience the old fire persisted; and the _Furia Francese_ is only waiting for its chance. The Germans believe they have determined all the conditions of modern war, and, indeed of all modern compet.i.tion between the nations to suit their own national character. It is their age, they think, an age in which the qualities of the old peoples, England and France, are obsolete. They make war, after their own pattern, and we have only to suffer it as long as we can. But France has learned what she needs from Germany so that she may fight the German idea as well as the German armies; and when the German armies were checked before Paris there was an equal check to the German idea. Then the world, which was holding its breath, knew that the old nations, the old faith and mind and conscience of Europe, were still standing fast and that science had not utterly betrayed them all to the new barbarism.

Twice before, at Tours and in the Catalaunian fields, there had been such a fight upon the soil of France, and now for the third time it is the heavy fate and the glory of France to be the guardian nation. That is not an accident, for France is still the chief treasury of all that these conscious barbarians would destroy. They knew that while she stands unbroken there is a spirit in her that will make their Kultur seem unlovely to all the world. They know that in her, as in Athens long ago, thought remains pa.s.sionate and disinterested and free. Their thought is German and exercised for German ends, like their army; but hers can forget France in the universe, and for that reason her armies and ours will fight for it as if the universe were at stake. Many forms has that thought taken, pa.s.sing through disguises and errors, mocking at itself, mocking at the holiest things; and yet there has always been the holiness of freedom in it. The French blasphemer has never blasphemed against the idea of truth even when he mistook falsehood for it. In the Terror he said there was no G.o.d, because he believed there was none, but he never said that France was G.o.d so that he might encourage her to conquer the world. Voltaire was an imp of destruction perhaps, but with what a divine lightning of laughter would he have struck the Teutonic Antichrist, and how the everlasting soul of France would have risen in him if he could have seen her most sacred church, the visible sign of her faith and her genius, ruined by the German guns. Was there ever a stupidity so worthy of his scorn as this attempt to bombard the spirit?

For, though the temple is ruined, the faith remains; and whatever war the Germans may make upon the glory of the past, it is the glory of the future that France fights for. Whatever wounds she suffers now she is suffering for all mankind; and now, more than ever before in her history, are those words become true which one poet who loved her gave to her in the Litany of Nations crying to the earth:

I am she that was thy sign and standard bearer, Thy voice and cry; She that washed thee with her blood and left thee fairer, The same am I.

Are not these the hands that raised thee fallen, and fed thee, These hands defiled?

Am not I thy tongue that spake, thine eye that led thee, Not I thy child?

*The Soldier of 1914*

*By Rene Doumic.*

_In spite of the great European war, which struck France with the full force of its horrors, the Inst.i.tute of France, which includes the world-famous French Academy, held its regular session on Oct.

26 last. The feature of this session, widely heralded beforehand, was the address of the celebrated critic, M. Rene Doumic of the Academy, on "The Soldier of 1914." "Every sentence, every word of it, was punctuated with acclamations from the audience," says Le Figaro in its report. Below is a translation of M. Doumic's address:_

The soldier of 1914. We think only of him. We live only for him, just as we live only through him. I have not chosen this subject; it has forced itself upon me. My only regret is that I come here in academician's costume, with its useless sword, to speak to you about those whose uniforms are torn by bullets, whose rifles are black with powder.

And I am ashamed, above all, of placing so feeble a voice at the service of so great a cause. But what do words matter, when the most brilliant of them would pale before acts of which each day makes us the witnesses?

For these acts we have only words, but let us hope that these, coming from the heart, may bring to those who are fighting for their country somewhere near the frontier the spirit of our grat.i.tude and the fervor of our admiration.

Our history is nothing but the history of French valor, so ingenious in adopting new forms and adapting itself each time to the changing conditions of warfare. Soldiers of the King or of the republic, old "grognards" of Napoleon, who always growled yet followed just the same, youngsters who bit their cartridges with childish lips, veterans of fights in Africa, cuira.s.sieurs of Reichshofen, gardes-mobiles of the Loire, all, at the moment of duty and sacrifice, did everything that France expected of her sons.

So, too, for this war, the soldier needed has arisen. After so many heroes he has invented a new form of heroism.

I say the soldier, for the soldier is what one must say. Here begins what is clearly expressed in one phrase only--the French miracle. This national union in which all opinions have become fused is merely a reflection of the unity which has been suddenly created in our army.

*When War Broke Out.*

When war broke out it found military France ready and armed; mere troopers, officers none of whom ever thought that he would one day lead his men under fire, and that admirable General Staff which, never allowing itself to be deflected from its purpose, did its work silent and aloof.

But there was beside this France another France, the France of civilians, accustomed by long years of peace to disbelieve in war; which, in conjuring up a picture of Europe delivered over to fire and blood, could not conceive that any human being in the world would a.s.sume the responsibility for such an act before history. War surprised the employe at his desk, the workman in his workshop, the peasant in his field. It s.n.a.t.c.hed them from the intimacy of their hearths, from the amenities of family life which in France is sweeter than elsewhere.

These men were obliged to leave behind beings whom they loved tenderly.

For the last time they clasped in their arms the beloved partners of their lives, so deeply moved yet so proud, and their children, the eldest of whom have understood and will never forget. And all of them, artist and artisan, priest and teacher, those who dreamed of revenge and those who dreamed of the fraternity of nations, those of every mind, every profession, every age, as they stepped into their places, were endowed with the soul of the soldier of France, every one of them, and became thus the same soldier.

The war which lay in wait for these men, many of whom did not seem made for war, was a war of which n.o.body had ever seen the like. We have heard tell of wars of giants, of battles of nations, but n.o.body had ever seen a war extending from the Marne to the Vistula, nor battles with a front of hundreds of kilometers, lasting weeks without respite day or night, fought by millions of men. Never in its worst nightmares had hallucinated imagination conjured up the progress made in the art of mowing down human lives. The German Army, to which the German Nation has never refused anything, either moral support or money, the nerve of war, has been able to profit by all this progress, to reduce to a formula the violence which drives forward the attack, to prepare the spy system which watches over the unarmed foe, to organize even incendiarism, and to become thus, forged by forty-four years of hatred, the most formidable tool of destruction that has ever sown ruin and death.

*German Meets Belgian.*

The Germans arrived, with the irresistible impetus of their ma.s.ses, with the fury of a tempest, with the roar of thunder, enraged at having been confronted on their road by that little Belgian Nation which has just inscribed its name among the first on the roster of heroism. Already the German chiefs imagined themselves lords of Paris, which they threatened to reduce to ashes--and which did not tremble.

It was to meet this colossus of war that our little soldier marched forth. And he made it fall back.

To this new war he brings his old qualities, the qualities of all time.

Courage--let us not speak of that. Can one speak of courage? Just read the short sentences in the army orders.

Corporal Voituret of the Second Dragoons, mortally wounded on a reconnoissance, cries: "Vive la France! I die for her! I die happy!"

Private Chabannes of the Eighteenth Cha.s.seurs, unhorsed and wounded, replies to the Major who asks him why he had not surrendered: "We Frenchmen never surrender!" And remember those who, mortally wounded, stick to their posts so as to fight to the end with their men, and those wounded men who have but one desire--every one of us can vouch for this--to return to the firing line! And that one who, hopelessly mutilated, said to me: "It is not being crippled that hurts me; it is that I shall not be able to see the best part of the thing!" These, and the others, the thousands of others, shall we speak of their courage?

--what would it mean to speak of their courage?

And the dash of them!--the only criticism to which they lay themselves open is that they are too fiery, that they do not wait the right moment for the charge, in order to drive back the enemy at the point of the bayonet. What spirit! What gayety! All the letters from our soldiers are overflowing with cheerfulness. Where, for instance, does that nickname come from applied by them to the enemy--the "Boches"? It comes from where so many more have come; its author is n.o.body and everybody; it is the spontaneous product of that Gallic humor which jokes at danger, takes liberities with it.

What pride! What sense of honor! Whereas the German officer, posted behind his men, drives them forward like a flock of sheep, revolver in his hand and insults on his lips, we, on our side, hear nothing but those beautiful, those radiant words: "Forward! For your country!"--the call of the French officer to his children, whom he impels forward by giving them the example, by plunging under fire first, before all of them, at their head.

*The Pa.s.sword: "Smile!"*