France at War

They are like our Cavalry in that their horses are in high condition, and they talk hopefully of getting past the barbed wire one of these days and coming into their own. Meantime, they are employed on "various work as requisite," and they all sympathize with our rough–rider of Dragoons who flatly refused to take off his spurs in the trenches. If he had to die as a damned infantryman, he wasn't going to be buried as such. A troop–horse of a flanking squadron decided that he had had enough of war, and jibbed like Lot's wife. His rider (we all watched him) ranged about till he found a stick, which he used, but without effect. Then he got off and led the horse, which was evidently what the brute wanted, for when the man remounted the jibbing began again. The last we saw of him was one immensely lonely figure leading one bad but happy horse across an absolutely empty world. Think of his reception—the sole man of 40,000 who had fallen out!

THE BOCHE AS MR. SMITH

The Commander of that Army Corps came up to salute. The cars went away with the Generals and the Minister for War; the Army passed out of sight over the ridges to the north; the peasant women stooped again to their work in the fields, and wet mist shut down on all the plain; but one tingled with the electricity that had passed. Now one knows what the solidarity of civilization means. Later on the civilized nations will know more, and will wonder and laugh together at their old blindness. When Lord Kitchener went down the line, before the march past, they say that he stopped to speak to a General who had been Marchand's Chief of Staff at the time of Fashoda. And Fashoda was one of several cases when civilization was very nearly maneuvered into fighting with itself "for the King of Prussia," as the saying goes. The all–embracing vileness of the Boche is best realized from French soil, where they have had large experience of it. "And yet," as some one observed, "we ought to have known that a race who have brought anonymous letter–writing to its highest pitch in their own dirty Court affairs would certainly use the same methods in their foreign politics. Why didn't we realize?"

"For the same reason," another responded, "that society did not realize that the late Mr. Smith, of your England, who married three wives, bought baths in advance for each of them, and, when they had left him all their money, drowned them one by one."

"And were the baths by any chance called Denmark, Austria, and France in 1870?" a third asked.

"No, they were respectable British tubs. But until Mr. Smith had drowned his third wife people didn't get suspicious. They argued that 'men don't do such things.' That sentiment is the criminal's best protection."

IV The Spirit of the People

We passed into the zone of another army and a hillier country, where the border villages lay more sheltered. Here and there a town and the fields round it gave us a glimpse of the furious industry with which France makes and handles material and troops. With her, as with us, the wounded officer of experience goes back to the drill–ground to train the new levies. But it was always the little crowded, defiant villages, and the civil population waiting unweariedly and cheerfully on the unwearied, cheerful army, that went closest to the heart. Take these pictures, caught almost anywhere during a journey: A knot of little children in difficulties with the village water–tap or high–handled pump. A soldier, bearded and fatherly, or young and slim and therefore rather shy of the big girls' chaff, comes forward and lifts the pail or swings the handle. His reward, from the smallest babe swung high in air, or, if he is an older man, pressed against his knees, is a kiss. Then nobody laughs.

Or a fat old lady making oration against some wicked young soldiers who, she says, know what has happened to a certain bottle of wine. "And I meant it for all—yes, for all of you —this evening, instead of the thieves who stole it. Yes, I tell you—stole it!" The whole street hears her; so does the officer, who pretends not to, and the amused half–battalion up the road. The young men express penitence; she growls like a thunderstorm, but, softening at last, cuffs and drives them affectionately before her. They are all one family.

Or a girl at work with horses in a ploughed field that is dotted with graves. The machine must avoid each sacred plot. So, hands on the plough–stilts, her hair flying forward, she shouts and wrenches till her little brother runs up and swings the team out of the furrow. Every aspect and detail of life in France seems overlaid with a smooth patina of long–continued war—everything except the spirit of the people, and that is as fresh and glorious as the sight of their own land in sunshine.

A CITY AND WOMAN