horror of scientific method. In the crumbled
walls, taken and retaken turn by turn, are raging
the battles that must continue over a great stretch
of our territory for an unknown length of time.
The enemy has not yet managed to reach the
Somme, and although he has approached it at
several points we have forced him back from it
170 FRANCE FACING GERMANY
at others. We have even heard occasionally that
his offensive was losing force, although his troops
continue to fight fiercely. I admit that this seems
doubtful to me. Unfortunately the territories he
has occupied are very rich in wheat. He will
therefore have no trouble in provisioning himself.
Nevertheless, his soldiers have had to endure
great fatigue since their entry into Belgium, and
the further they advance the more possible be-
comes a diminution of their vigor. But this has
not been observed in the recent battles.
Let us indulge no delusion. The Germans still
have a great superiority of numbers (we have
never been told why) and in the automatic func-
tioning of every officer and every soldier, with
an astonishing sureness in the employment and
maneuvering of armament. Let us not therefore
abandon ourselves to hopes that might be pre-
mature. It does not by any means appear that
the German offensive has weakened. It will con-
tinue in its stupendous force, but in each event
of the war, of whatever kind, it must encounter,
everywhere and incessantly, an unconquerable
defensive that is ready to turn into an offensive
at the proper moment. We have inexhaustible
resources, and in our hearts there can be no
weakening.
The role of Paris at this juncture is perhaps
rather difficult to determine. Everything seems
to indicate that the intrenched camp cannot be
invested, and the intelligent employment of avi-
ators on such a long perimeter will give us de-
cided advantage for defensive operations. More-
over, like Antwerp, from which we shall probably
FRANCE FACING GERMANY 171
have early news, Paris possesses a highly mobile
army, which can choose the moment to strike its
blow according to the movements of the enemy.
I think there is no reason, at the moment, for
carrying to greater lengths predictions that would
be principally based on supposition.
It is clear that, reasoning from the results of
the first engagements, we have easily built up
hopes that were too beautiful. Our soldiers were
then attacking troops less redoubtable than those
which had been reserved for the gigantic effort
of the great drive on Paris. At that time we
thought that it would be necessary for them to
shatter our line of defense in order to enter the
country. We were given to understand that in-
vasion from the direction of Lille was not very
dangerous. Opinion has probably changed on
this point. The enormous tide has overflowed us
from a direction where it was not expected and
as a result has more easily ravaged the country.
It has spread further and more rapidly than we
should have thought possible in so short a time.
Every day is marked by combats in which we
sometimes give ground, to renew incessantly the
effort that may give us the advantage on the
morrow. This much, beyond dispute, is gained
already, that the difficulties of the march across
Belgium are now complicated by the uninter-
rupted battle that must be fought up to Paris,
and when they are here, if that must be, it will
be the turn of the armies of the provinces and of
Paris to combine their efforts in the aim to strike
the enemy on a line so long that he cannot suc-
cessfully resist.
172 PRANCE FACING GERMANY
It has not come to that, but we must have the
courage to consider every possibility, especially
when final success depends on a power of endur-
ance that ought to be unlimited. We are aiding
our Russian allies at this moment by drawing on
ourselves all the desperate force of the blows of
an enemy who will have to turn back against our
allies at the very moment when our resistance
will have exhausted the best of his strength. Our
British friends have come to our aid with the
comfort of an immovable stoicism in this most
cruel part of our common task. They have en-
dured the fire without flinching and as fast as
they fall we see them replaced. Those reverses
which they have made glorious, in company with
us, are so many acts of aid to Russia, who is
advancing with the stride of a giant — making her
way while Germany finds herself, from moment
to moment, held in check on her march to Paris.
Though the task that rests upon us is so mani-
fest, so difficult, so long, so incomparably agoniz-
ing, who will dare to say that we must not accept
it? And it is not enough to accept the infliction;
we invoke it, we run to meet it, we offer ourselves
to its blows, we pray that they may be redoubled,
in order that the day may be hastened when
fortune, weary of scourging us, will come to know
that there is a soul in us that cannot be destroyed,
that nothing can force to yield. If there were
no Russia, if there were no England, as long as
there remained a Frenchman he would have no
right to surrender. But there is a Russia and
an England who have sworn, as we have, never
to surrender, never to accept the law of the
FRANCE FACING GERMANY 173
Kaiser. They have said it and they will keep
their word, knowing well that our resolution
is no less unwavering than theirs. What! A
German Empire from the Pyrenees to the Ural
Mountains? That surpasses the very bounds of
madness. What will happen, then? It will hap-
pen, if the worst must come, that our country
will endure trials even worse than she has known
in the evil hours of our history, but that thus
we shall make way, through our endurance, for
the day when Europe will be fully delivered, by
us and by our friends and allies, from a power
of murderous tyranny that cannot coexist with
independence or with honor in civilized society.
August 31, 1914.
All Our Efforts
... I know that the greatest sacrifices are
made easily in words, and in the best of faith,
and that very brave men cannot escape a moment
of trembling when the hour comes to pay the
inexorable debt. But the needs of France are
such that even the most timid cannot hesitate.
The government of the National Defense, in 1870,
had said, "Not an inch of our territory, not a
stone of our fortresses." We know but too well
what followed. This is no longer the time to
pronounce heroic words the purpose of which
weakens under the terrible affliction of the suf-
ferings from invasion. We are at the point where
we must act, where we must live our heroism
without even needing to put it into words, and
174 FRANCE FACING GERMANY
from this point of view there is not a Frenchman,
whether old man, woman, or child, who is not a
soldier. It is for each one to search himself and
to promise himself in silence to lend all his sup-
port. What need we of external manifestations
which are only vain expenditures of energy? Let
us subordinate everything to the salvation of
France. The rest can count no longer.
France is a history, a life, an idea which has
taken its place in the world, and the bit of soil
whence this history, this life, this idea has radi-
ated cannot be sacrificed without sealing the tomb
over ourselves and our children and the genera-
tions that shall be born of them. And since no
man of France could accept this ghastly end of
so great a destiny, it remains for the men to
fight to the last, and for the others to accept their
trials and to offer all that they have, in order
to sustain and aid and hearten each one of our
soldiers facing the enemy. To what should we
be first attached, of all that our ancestors have
bequeathed to us, if not to the land itself which
their valor and their labor made to blossom?
What interest could we put above the very soil
out of which what we call France has sprung?
And if this is so, why encumber ourselves with
concerns, from now on secondary, which, unre-
lated to the salvation of France, had held our
interest ?
Such are the thoughts that haunt me at the
hour when it is announced that the German
hordes may soon be approaching the intrenched
camp of Paris. Paris is the capital of France,
as well as one of the capitals of humanity. It is
FRANCE FACING GERMANY 175
a noble meeting-place for the powers of the human
mind. But it is a camp of war at the same time.
Its role in war is of high importance, but its
role in the present war is by no means what it
was in 1870. In the first place, this is true be-
cause, as I said a moment since, our armies are
operating freely on our territory; and second, be-
cause we have a great reserve of men who have
not yet been employed, and because it is only
necessary to send them into the battle in order
that, with the aid of our allies, final victory may
crown our efforts.
September 2, 1914.
Into the Provinces for Victoey
• . . With the government at Bordeaux, we
begin a new phase of the war as it follows its
course— a renewal of the war in the Provinces,
as in the time of Gambetta and Freycinet. The
same struggle against the same German invasion,
with the capital of France reduced to a simple
war-camp, with France herself — the Provinces, as
we say — taking defense into her own hands, con-
trary to the traditional method of political and
administrative concentration under which she has
lived.
How changed the men and the times! Then
we were defending our honor, because the tradi-
tion of the race necessitated it. We were fighting
to save the integrity of our territory, since our
complete defeat forced us to abandon two French
provinces which the peace to come must give back
176 FRANCE FACING GERMANY
to us at the price of whatever suffering and sacri-
fice and blood fate may demand.
And here after forty-four years I am at Bor-
deaux again, in front of the same theater that
I had not seen since 1871, looking for the men
to whom was reserved the sorrow of surviving,
and not finding them. Who remembers that Jules
Simon had in his pocket, on his arrival, an order
for the arrest of Gambetta? In the provinces as
at Paris, foreign war and civil war raged together.
I call up these sad memories of past dissensions
only that I may contrast them with the magnifi-
cent comfort that animates our hearts at sight
of the truly fraternal union of all Frenchmen
of to-day. Gambetta maintained the war against
the invasion under the most grievous blows from
an opposition without mercy. Contrast the pres-
ent attitude of all the parties in the presence of
a government of which no one demands anything
except that it exhaust all means for the defense
and show itself capable of the most efficacious
employment of them.
... If the National Assembly of 1871 was
forced to submit to the peace of Frankfort, it
was because the distressing diminution in our
territory left us still enough of the land for us
to find it possible, under the strain of terrible
misfortunes, to restore our France, to give her
life again, to see her flourish once more in the
grace and nobility and beauty which have given
her the charm she has as a great home of man-
kind.
Too often we ourselves, divided in the hasty
FRANCE FACING GERMANY 177
pursuit of an unselfish ideal, neglected in favor
of secondary considerations the higher interests
to which it was our first duty to devote ourselves.
Nevertheless, in spite of so many efforts that were
feeble, in spite of much noble blood that was
lost, France still remained, and we could leave to
generations to come the great task of the just
fulfilment of our hopes. It was in our thought
that France had been, that France was, and that
France must be. There was with us, whatever
terrible blows we may have passed through, a
hope confident enough to enable the men who
have given something of themselves to the en-
nobling work of perpetuating France to go to
their rest in the peaceful conviction of a for-
tunate part of their duty accomplished.
And this, it appears, is precisely what the Ger-
man race can tolerate no longer. We exist, and
it is an unpardonable crime. Day and night they
demand, for the expansion of their oppressive
thought, the fields of peoples neighboring and far
away in the desire of Germanizing them. What
is France doing there, when the Teuton might
there indulge his low pleasure of the flesh ? What !
The great blow of Bismarck did not make her
vanish? In 1875 the man of iron had a feeling
that he must put an end to us without longer
delay. Why did he not go on against the op-
position of Great Britain and Russia? He did not
dare. "I do dare," says Wilhelm II; by order of
the giant Germany it is forbidden to the pigmies
of Gaul to live and to think as they will.
The Kaiser has spoken, under the inspiration
of his "ancient God," as he dares to say in tragi-
178 FRANCE FACING GERMANY
comic phrase — for lie is still in the service of
the dark divinities who thirst for human blood —
and without the need of even a mendacious pre-
text, the Hegelian philosophers, Wagnerian poets,
erudite professors, thinkers of every depth and
every breadth, Marxian socialists, workers of all
ranks and of every kind of sentimentality, de-
generate sons of Goethe and Schiller, who curse
them from their tombs, have come obediently to
line up with their rifles and cannon and machine-
guns, under the swords of their exalted Junkers,
to go over the Vosges and kill the hope of living
in justice and liberty.
Victory! They have already razed cities like
Louvain, burned villages, tortured and murdered
old men and women and children, and this with
no hatred in their hearts, they say, in virtue of
the scientific method of von der Goltz which
commands the infliction of misery in order that
the struggle may be abbreviated in the interest
of humanity. Down on your knees, peoples of
the earth, it is the great breath of pan-Germanism
which passes over you.
So, whatever may come, we can no longer say
that we shall have the choice between peace, more
or less burdensome, and the continuation of the
war, since it is between the life and death of
France that we have to choose, that we shall have
to choose until the end. One single question: can
we sanction the end of our race on the soil its
history has made sacred?
In Germany there have been forty years of
frenzied preparation. As for us, have we always
lent an ear to the many warnings that were given
FRANCE FACING GERMANY 179
us? This is not the time to open the question,
although the past is sounding in our ears at this
moment. Always heedless, always confident in
sudden appeals to the springs of our energy, we
have talked a great deal and sometimes done too
little. Vacillation, negligence, delay over ways
and means, adjournment of decisions, easy ac-
ceptance of approximate solutions, disdain of
rigorous methods, love of improvisation — there
have sometimes been, perhaps, too many short-
comings in us, while an implacable enemy was
sharpening his steel against us.
Very brilliant in the first encounters, but often
very imprudent, also, from excess of valor, our
decimated soldiers, though not ceasing to impose
heavy losses on the enemy, have had to give
ground on the left wing, without ever ceasing to
fight, under the stupendous drive of numbers
automatically disciplined. In this retreat foot by
foot, where partial successes were mingled with
reverses, the ground was fiercely disputed, so
much so that at the first contact with the en-
trenched camp of Paris the German advance-
guards had to turn to face an adversary beaten
back but not vanquished.
Here ends, one might say, the first part of the
campaign, in which the Germans may claim the
advantage over us of ground gained, at the price
of incalculable losses, but without dealing us such
a blow as might have seriously hampered us in
our military resources. Our armies of the front
line have not at any time been broken, but have
refilled their ranks according to their needs, while
the armies of the second line are moving to aid
180 FRANCE FACING GERMANY
tliem. The army assembled at Paris having al-
ready announced its presence by offensive tactics
and General Joffre having succeeded in disen-
gaging himself from a threatening situation, the
enemy, who was pushing on by forced marches to
direct his efforts against our capital, has seen
lined up before him a mighty battle-front which
he had to attack at any cost. For four days the
battle has been in progress, and important suc-
cesses announce that the admirable tenacity of
our troops has almost broken the driving force
of the invader. We must not exaggerate, but the
mere fact of a considerable retreat of the Germans
on the sector of Paris is an event of which the
military and moral importance is manifest.
Nowhere are we in retreat. The "French
fury," aided by the marvelous resistance of the
British soldier, has everywhere reappeared. Let
us accept these successes, which are still only
signs of ultimate victory, with calm and confi-
dence, as we have accepted the reverses. Victory
is on its way. We are not at the end of our trials,
since fate has willed it that once more Europe
should take the soil of France for her battle-
ground. But the Allies have promised one another
never to make a separate peace. It is the certain
earnest of success.
September 11, 1914.
TOWAKDS THE END OF THE SCOTJKGE
The retreat of the invading armies, under the
pressure of Anglo-French troops, is certainly be-
ing effected with the precipitation of a rout.
FKANCE FACING GERMANY 181
Everywhere the enemy is retiring in disorder,
leaving behind everything that impedes his flight,
though we cannot determine precisely the full
causes of his disarray.
The seven-day battle is a great Anglo-French
victory, the consequences of which cannot yet be
fully judged.
. . . Let us be careful, nevertheless, not to think
that we can count on an interrupted series of suc-
cesses leading straight to the final crushing of
the aggressor. The curtain is falling on the
horrible scenes of foreign invasion in Belgium and
in France. A mortal blow has been dealt to the
prestige of the "invincible" Kaiser who had
never fought a battle. We have made him recoil,
dislodged his army all along the line, and our
indefatigable soldiers, in hot pursuit, are forcing
him back at the point of the bayonet. But it
would be madness to imagine that we have fin-
ished with an adversary who is going to find new
forces, and even powerful ones, on his uninvaded
territory. A great part of his military stores are
still intact. Automatic discipline will soon regain
its power. The struggle will still be long and full
of unforeseen fluctuations. The stake is too great
for the German Emperor suddenly to make up his
mind to abandon the game. I do him the honor
to believe that he will offer a desperate resistance,
but destiny holds him by the throat. He is in
the hands of the inevitable.
The German is not so quick as the Frenchman
to recover under a blow of misfortune, but he has
military discipline in his blood and a natural
182 FRANCE FACING GERMANY
spirit of submission to his leaders. He can be
made, in tragic hours, into a redoubtable machine.
The forces of the Empire, still intact, offer enor-
mous resources for resistance and even, it may
be, for the offensive. Let us make ready for the
great efforts which are still to be demanded of
us. Serious mistakes have been made on our side.
We might have paid dearly for them; but fortune,
who owed us a revenge, has allowed us to repair
them in an astonishing fashion. Let us try to
leave nothing more to the unforeseen. Our mili-
tary leaders have just undergone the most severe
trials victoriously. It is for us to give them
confidence by granting them the benefit of the
patience and fortitude of which they will have
inevitable need.
September 15, 1914.
V
THE FIRST WINTER CAMPAIGN
THE YSER— THE WAR IN THE TRENCHES
The Winter Campaign
"To my last horse," said Willielm II. "Until
the end/' we have gravely announced. And Mr.
Winston Churchill said yesterday: "We are re-
solved to win if it should cost the last pound
sterling and the last man." These words are
pledges, especially when they are pronounced in
full knowledge of the cause.
. . . Let us prepare to maintain, in patience and
fortitude, the desperate struggle which the arro-
gance of the Kaiser imposes on the people who
intend to save on the fields of battle, the right
of all Europe to independence with honor. He
announces, as do we, that nothing will make him
give up. But the conditions of the struggle con-
demn him to the exhaustion of his forces within
a period which I am not capable of calculating,
while our advantages, thanks to the increasing
aid of our allies, can only be augmented. He will
persist as long as it is possible for him, his only
chance being to weary and dishearten us. It is
for us to show him that we are of too hard a metal
for him to nurse the hope of wearing us down.
183
184 FRANCE FACING GERMANY
I wish lie could come and go about incognito
among us; could visit the cities, the little towns,
and the fields; could interrogate all sorts of
people and look into their minds; and compare
our feelings with those of his subjects. We have
been disappointed in our first hopes, which, before
the great battles, were for a relatively easy vic-
tory. From the north there came upon us an
avalanche of steel which pulverized everything
in its way to Paris. An important part of the
French territory is still under the feet of the
raging hordes who go about scattering fire and
death. From the invaded districts there arrive
among us every day bands of pitiable refugees
still stupefied with horror. We listen to stories
from them such as freeze the blood in our veins,
and, fraternal duty accomplished, all of them,
men and women, lift up their heads and calmly
speak the word of the day: ' ' Forward. ' ' Their
sons, their brothers, and their husbands are back
there in the field in the tornado of steel. The
refugees think only of them. They call them to
memory. They see them. If their soldiers come
back they will be mad with joy. If they do not
come back, they will be firm, without a word, and
they will hold always, always, until there does
not remain a soldier.
To this great calmness of resolute minds, to this
quiet perseverance in strength in which all the
energies of our being are combined, what does the
enemy oppose? Scenes of mad savagery, mur-
ders, punishments that spare not even infancy,
summary executions of civilians, a furnace from
which emerge the towers of the cathedral of
FRANCE FACING GERMANY 185
Rheims — such are the manifestations of German
chivalry among us. We are forced to look on,
with tortured hearts, but we have in our breasts
a flame of hope that will not be extinguished.
We cannot be vanquished since we shall never
accept our defeat, for in this battle for the very
life of France we have made up our minds to
save at least her honor. Our endurance must
therefore outlast the German terror, until Russia
and England, who are still very far from having
furnished all the forces that they will be able to
raise, shall enable us in common to complete the
work of defeating savagery. We must recognize
and prepare ourselves for whatever this work
may require in sufferings patiently and nobly
borne. The long and hard winter campaign will
bring us only too many trials. From this moment
let us lift up our hearts and let us act in all things
so that we may deserve the victory before we
conquer it.
September 28, 1914.
In the Militaky Dispatches
A fine school-book could be made by merely
representing episodes from this war as they ap-
pear in the citations in military dispatches.
It is there, in reality, that we see the heroic soul
of our French soldier appear in its splendor.
To make a hero, transport to the field of battle
any unknown Frenchman, one of those whom you
elbow day by day without pausing to let your
glance rest on them. You do not know him; he
does not know himself. He may be an average
186 FEANCE FACING GERMANY
man in his virtues and faults. He! will pass
through life, unknown to the public, with only the
value of a figure for the statistician, and none
of those who have elbowed him will suspect that
in certain tragic circumstances something will be
aroused in this modest soul that will lift him into
the highest rank. How many such are there
among us 1 ? I do not know. No one can know.