pass in advance through the hearts of our
enemies.

This reservoir of unconquerable heroes is the
treasure vault of our military Bank of France, to
which the most generous blood is offered lavishly.
We guard it not less jealously than the other treas-
ure. Gold and the most valuable paper are but
means to an end. Those heroes constitute, for at
certain times they actually are, a torrent which
carries everything before it. That is understood.
We have given all our men. Their blood flows day
by day, and we cannot grudge it. Take them, O
native land, if thou hast need of them. Plunge
them, thrilling with the courage of youth, into the
ghastly furnace if they must die in order that thou
mayest live. We bleed with them, and with thee,
but no cowardly trembling shall betray our wound,
and our weeping mothers will accept the destiny
that is theirs.

But you, men who stand forth as the expression
of the great and sacred idol, do not forget that
we have need of this generous blood until the
end — until the very end. You say this easily in
your exuberant perorations. That is not enough.
You must put the words into action— that is to
say, you must know how to lavish and to save at
once. Since we shall have need of every sacrifice



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 361

that is useful, yon would be criminal if you asked
a sacrifice that was vain. Germany is already
finding it necessary to husband her effectives,
which are ill-proportioned to the length of the
front which her madness has imposed on her.
The day is not very far off, perhaps, when we shall
perform such marvels as shall lead to a decision.

A puny little poilu, who nevertheless has eyes
of fire and a soul of steel, will not be less precious
in our last cohorts than the heaviest cannon of
our heaviest artillery. Guard the soldiers, pre-
serve them, like the magic jewels of the ornaments
of France, since it is in beauty that our country
must be reborn. France will need them in her
victory, and in her peace will be no less ardent
to acclaim them, since it is the peace of the France
of to-morrow that we are making by giving our
lives in the war of to-day. Yes, we shall have
before our eyes a population of wounded men,
some with half their bodies gone, others with
twisted limbs, and contracted muscles, and move-
ments half-made but suddenly arrested, but our
women will love them thus, for the most noble
halo of grandeur will be about their pale counte-
nances, and if their bodies have shrunk, their
souls will be enlarged — shame being reserved for
those who will not be able to answer when some-
one asks them: "Where were you!"

The women who will have nursed them, and
dressed their wounds, and consoled them in their
bloody bandages will still desire to serve as a
crutch for them in life, after having saved them
from the jaws of death. And we shall be a greater
people, because we shall have come out of the



362 FEANCE FACING GERMANY

formidable trial with a higher training. And the
least one among us will be proud to have served
some purpose in one of humanity's most noble
works.

November 30, 1915.

The Women

The Figaro ridicules the idea which is making
progress at Berlin and at Vienna of an actual
mobilization of women, whether to augment the
forces of industrial labor or to replace men in the
work in which they can be replaced. Alas, my
good co-worker, we have something else to think
of than a satire on ' ' The Follies of 1915. ' ' There
is a time for laughing. There is another for
measuring one's forces unflinchingly against the
realities of a merciless struggle. If one will but
reflect fully on the deep meaning of the term
"universal military service," which is to say, the
employment with reservation of all the national
energies in the service of the country, one will
very quickly understand that our cause, thus
conceived, is thus ennobled with a higher dignity
in its aim and in its means.

I should hold myself a madman if I thought
that the present war would be the last that men
should see. The extent of the battlefield, the
ever-increasing value of the stakes, no longer
solely for conquering chiefs, but more especially
for the ethnic groups of the civilized world, would
seem to bear witness rather to a redoubtable
evolution of engines of might than to a relaxa-
tion in the desire to take the offensive or in



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 363

exertions for defense at any price. Let ns not
lose ourselves in prophecies, always easy to make,
and let us hold, as necessity invites us to do in
a fashion pressing enough, to the bloody realities
of the present.

The reality of the present is that the four great-
est peoples of the ancient continent of civilization
are at swords y points in a mortal struggle for
the conquest or the defense of principles which
they esteem highly enough to sacrifice everything
for them. Germany wants mastery — Beutschland
fiber Alles — and is totally lacking in scruples as
to the means for achieving it. The Latin, the
Englishman, and the Russian (and their history
has been also one of more or less fortunate at-
tempts at mastery) have promised themselves to
perish sooner than to stretch out dishonored hands
in servitude to a barbarism in which the develop-
ment of the human spirit no longer appears ex-
cept as an organized power of decivilization.

It is the most splendid and most noble battle
of man, to which the wars of the French Revolu-
tion and of the Empire appear to-day as no more
than an agitated prelude. Armed for the con-
quest of the right, the Revolution was engulfed
in other enterprises of conquest on which nothing
stable could be founded. It is our good fortune
to-day that never were the questions so clearly
put — the subjection of all under the saber of a
master, or independence of nation and of man.

There are some neutrals, near and far away,
whose destiny (and I do not envy it) is to look
on. Perhaps they will soon come to discover that
they are no less interested than the combatants



364 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

themselves in saving human honor from the
shameless brutalities of savagery. Liberated by
us, or subjected (without a combat) by Wilhelm,
they will have been, indeed they are now, among
the stakes of the tragic game to which we are
giving our lives and our goods, for ourselves and
for all. We have counted too much upon some
of them. Let each one guard the part of honor
as he has seen fit to choose it. We have no longer
any time for recrimination or for dispute as to
the measure of our effort for liberation when the
noblest destiny demands our all.

Ah, yes! All the effort of all men, that is the
full contribution of blood and of gold which is
required of us by the high fortune to which the
long- continued sacrifices of our fathers have edu-
cated us. All— that means that no person must
be lacking. Is it enough, then, for women and
children and aged men to perish from privations
or fall under the sufferings of cold and hunger,
like those who are strewn along the roads of
Serbia? No. If destiny wills it that they must
perish, they owe it to their native land to refuse
no effort — none whatever — that is within their
power. This they owe to that native land which
unites us all and offers us a cause that calls for
undivided duty.

I was not afraid to say it long ago — the old
men and the children will have their turn. The
blood of our men is flowing in a great river — a
river of hope which will fructify our future. Our
smiling wounded soldiers ask nothing of us but
to restore to them their strength for the combat.
At their bedsides mothers, wives, sisters, and



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 365

daughters, are at work, claiming their part in the
common duty. Is it enough? I say no, since
France wants no less than the total sacrifice of
every person.

The philosophers have painfully come, after
passing through the entanglements of meta-
physical discussion, to the point of believing and
even of saying that the dignity of woman is
possibly not inferior to that of man. Without
waiting for this laborious demonstration, some
modest creatures have begun by taking, of their
own motion, the place to which they have proved
their right by filling it.

Because she was of a soul at once tender and
valorous, full of idealism and of force, Joan of
Arc deserved the reward of high achievement.
Yesterdav Miss Edith Cavell, whom we shall not
allow the Germans to forget, gained for herself,
without a spoken word, a page of immortality.
And think of those heroic nurses of the New
Zealand steamer Marquette or of the transport
Amalia in the Channel, who, seeing their ship
torpedoed, refused to take their places in the life-
boats, saying to the men who wanted to save
them, "No, men first! England needs soldiers/'
And think of the men, magnificently accepting
life, and the women, in the highest expression of
human nobility, watching them depart, thanking
them for their sacrifice of manly honor, at the
moment of sinking.

After such an example, an example that can
never be surpassed, who will dispute the right
and the duty of the "weaker sex" to develop,
for the salvation of a land that is theirs as fully



366 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

as it is ours, the full moral and physical strength
that is given to them? In a war to the last ex-
tremity, in which all the powers of the human
creature are required to expend themselves be-
yond measure, we must lavish all the gifts we
have, regretting only that we can never do
enough.

Proudly we watch our beardless little soldiers
departing, erect under their packs, intoxicated
with their lofty mission of going forth to great
deeds which they have hardly begun to imagine.
The pride of their grandmother, their mother,
their sister, is of some availing influence upon the
nobility of their valor. The highest of human
emotions transports them beyond the common
cares of human creatures, because they are going
to give themselves for the most magnificent ideal
of unselfish love. They feel that their day has
come. High purpose tempts their happy youth,
and their brisk step, which makes the earth re-
sound as if under the stroke of an inflexible will,
proclaims to us that they will go, joyously, to the
summits of glory. Go on, children of ours, the
honor of the blood of your race, the high glory of
your native land, go on to rejoin your fathers and
brothers who signal to tell you that there are
places of heroism by their sides.

The class of 1916 is going to take the path to
the front, the class of 1917 will soon be called.
And you of 1918, does it not seem to you that the
delay is very long? To gain patience I notice that
many of you are preparing yourselves through
military exercises. Keep it up, my friends, you
will be stronger and better men for it. Let it not



FEANCE FACING GERMANY 367

be said that you were less worthy than your
elders. Would you agree to be placed in the sec-
ond rank because of inferior physical develop-
ment? The fire in your eyes tells me that you
are wondering whether it is enough, for you, to
be in the first. Take your rightful rank, therefore.
By you, as by all the others, France will be saved,
and the greatest of your ancestors will smile to
see themselves equaled by their children.

And who will dispute the right and the duty of
the women to take their own true place in the army
of the workers for France, that she may be saved
from death? All the vast domain of the services
of the rear is open to their zeal and to their in-
cessant devotion. As yet they have occupied but
a slight part of it. It is very well to care for the
wounded, to knit woolen garments, to economize
upon necessities in order that something may be
saved for the little packet for the soldier. But
more must be done. What would be the use of
expending force in silent suffering? France has
need of all Frenchmen, of all Frenchwomen. Who
would hold back when France has called?

In the valleys of Normandy one may see women,
children, and aged men bent over their labors in
the field. Through their efforts the crops have
been raised, by their work our people have been
able to live to-day and will be able to live to-
morrow. They have thus instinctively shown the
path to duty. Is it known that in their need of
effectives, which presages the beginning of their
end, the Germans have already 20,000 women
miners, at work underground, in the basin of the



368 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

Buhr? It seems as if our destiny is to be always
behindhand. But we have shown that we know
how to make up for lost time. Let us get to work,
everywhere. The program is simple indeed. Let
not a man of the rear occupy a place — not one,
I say — in which a woman, in the employment of
her full strength, could replace him.

. . . Let those of the rear not w^ait until they
are pushed, by a scornful feminine hand, to posts
nearer the front. There are places that may be
filled even in public and private administrative
ranks. The good workers in the factories are at
their post of combat. I am one of those who
called them thither. Having nothing in common
with the slacker, they themselves proclaim that
in every position where strength and technical
skill are not required a reliable woman can replace
a man whom his age calls to the colors.

I know that nothing is urgent in all this as
yet. None the less, it is time to be thinking. (The
moment will soon be here for considering the
details of the matter.) The fine ladies themselves,
who are the ornament, but not the vital substance
of the French nation, may make themselves use-
ful washing and dressing the children of working
women who are at their tasks. Everybody to
arms ! France must not be less proud of its women
than of their sons.

December 21, 1915.



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 369

The Account

The commission appointed to investigate the
principal acts of German barbarism has just
presented a new report, which, in company with
the preceding ones, makes a most formidable in-
dictment of the ways of Bochery.

... As to the mere fact of the German atroci-
ties there is not much left to say. The opinion
of all the peoples of the earth is already settled.
The immortal phrase in which the men of so-
called high culture defended their compatriots by
saying that they had committed no other acts
than those of disciplined cruelty will remain in
the annals of history as the innocently cynical
avowal of the most abominable crimes against
civilization and humanity.

If it were necessary to enlighten men's minds
as to the future result of that universal conquest
by Germany which would set loose upon us a
ghastly tempest of steel and fire, the mere recital
of these first deeds, in the districts where it was
possible for the Germans to exert their power,
would suffice to bring against that project of
conquest the unanimous verdict of human con-
science. The stories of infamies which can only
be repeated in vague terms is no longer necessary,
since the means for the brute's nourishment have
been found limited. When one has outraged
women with the inventions of drunken perversion,
massacred aged men, dispatched the wounded,
killed little children, pillaged, stolen, and burned,
it becomes obligatory on the human beast, gorged



370 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

with wine and blood, to come to a halt, since he
has exhausted his gifts for sinking to the lowest
abysses of shame.

. . . All that is undeniably established. There
is no need of reverting to it. The criminals who
have found a w^ay to reach a lower level in the
scale of human degradation began at first by im-
pudently denying the fact, like all bandits caught
in the act, and then they alleged that it was the
fault of the victims, whom they blamed for re-
sisting. And now, having receded further and
further in their position, they no longer contest
the incidents, but are reduced to inculcating the
worst infamies of brute force as the quickest
means for imposing their civilization on people.

I have even heard from the invaded districts
that, trying to make people forget the unfor-
getable, the soldiers of the Boche Landsturm are
trying to show themselves good fellows, playing
with the little children and affecting a chivalrous
and humanitarian deference toward those who
survived the earlier shameless bestiality. One of
our men was given this message at his repatria-
tion: "Please tell the French that we are not
such bad fellows." A little unclean beast would
be offering to defile us with his friendship. Down
with your feet! The irreparable has been com-
mitted.

Between all the peoples of the earth there is
some bad humor left over from wars, but a civili-
zation in which Christianity and philosophy were
contending for the place of first importance had
brought us to the point of believing that man



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 371

was beginning to rise out of the condition of
barbarism in which a Creator who had the power
to give him all good things had preferred to
leave him. And we were very proud of the fact.
The ideal world which we were beginning to con-
struct was very beautiful in books, and we took
our place before the peoples full of foolish con-
fidence in the fine words which we pompously
proclaimed as great realities. What the spirit of
the purest religions had not been able to do —
because they left the human being unchanged
under a new set of formulas — the "culture of
civilization" had promised to accomplish, and the
external appearance of life having been modified
we were ready to decree that the inner man was
in a way to transcend his humanity.

... In 1870 Germany had dismembered and
robbed us, but many Frenchmen who stand re-
vealed to-day as unimpeachable patriots were
doing their best to forget it. Neutral peoples said
to themselves that after all it was only France
that had suffered, and some persons even re-
proached us for our regrets. And anyhow, the
universal reconciliation of men was coming in a
"scientific" organization of human activities,
bringing happiness with mathematical infalli-
bility.

And then the war exploded. It burst upon us
like a thunderbolt. It is a war of emperors,
doubtless, with the age-long ambition to advance
the boundaries of their empire and enlarge the
number of their subjects. But it is a war of
peoples also, for all Germany is behind its Kaiser



372 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

— arrogant Junkers, clinging to the trappings of
medievalism, greater and lesser Bourgeois, half-
paralyzed in their ancestral servitude, and the
laboring population of Bochedom, incapable of
understanding liberty as anything but a form of
obedience. Yes, the Social Democracy which was
getting ready to revolutionize the universe
through a just redistribution of economic re-
sources enlists in an enterprise of military domina-
tion. And all this people in arms suddenly start
hurrying their cannon in our direction, very
proud of having scientifically prepared for this
day, down to the smallest details.

And with what exploits does the murderous
rabble begin its work! With the violation of
their sworn faith — with the most cynical assault
on international law, the foundation of all the
treaties without which there would be nothing
but brute force to reign among the tribes of suf-
fering mankind. All the rest followed from that.
Crime en masse, or crimes by individuals, it is all
one system. The hideous beast of prey was run-
ning wild. The Kaiser had renounced the ele-
mentary laws of the human conscience. His
subjects could do nothing except imitate him.
Let us do them the justice to say that they have
done their best to surpass him. How they must
suffer at not being able to do more than the
ancient barbarian invaders! Better armed than
Attila, Wilhelm II can in a shorter space of time
inflict more sufferings on mankind. But when
he has murdered, violated, mutilated, and burned,
he can do no more.

Nevertheless we inscribe in our registers the



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 373

true account of his atrocities, and since a sudden
explosion of the savage fury of ancient days has
come to light in the forests of Germany, the ques-
tion is now resolved into these terms: Which
will prevail among the men of the earth, the
ancestral ferocity of the brute or our late but
mitigating civilization?

... A beast running wild, did I say? Let the
hunters come with us. Let the men worthy of
the name join us against the last mad struggles
of human bestiality. After his capture, his claws
and teeth will be filed. This is the lesson of the
moral account presented by our commission ap-
pointed to draw up a partial memorandum of
the German atrocities. It is an affair of debit
and credit. The final settlement is the business
of our soldiers.

December 23, 1915.



IX
VEBDUN

The Cannon of Veedtjn

. . . Foe ourselves, and in the name of our
land and of its history, we are defending those
famons rights of man the mere proclamation of
which bronght Europe into upheaval, in spite of
Brunswick and its manifesto of German servitude.
For this reason our principles are those of all the
peoples worthy of the name in history, and we
ourselves are the representatives of the civilized
world. This is what the men of the English par-
liament said so eloquently the other day, when,
rendering to "the heroine of ancient France" the
homage that marks a definitive reconciliation, they
called her to witness that the two great peoples
were at last united "for the common defense of
the freedom of the world. ' ' How many explosions
of mines, how much asphyxiating gas, and how
much heavy artillery will be required to develop
a force equivalent to that aroused in the massed
peoples of humanity?

England and France, so obstinately hostile
through long centuries of bloodshed, have now
come to a reconciliation that is final, to a public
agreement of high principles, no longer over ques-

374



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 375

tions of territory, but "for the common defense
of the freedom of the world." Whoever can re-
main deaf to the appeal of such a purpose proves
merely that he is a stranger to the high ideals of
the community of mankind. The neutral peoples,
whom I may be permitted to pity, would not
officially accept this judgment ; of that I am quite
sure. But the best of their citizens, those who
are the honor of their states, will understand what
my words mean, and will ask themselves and their
fellow-citizens what monstrous disaster to civili-
zation would ensue if it should be possible that
with the aid of their inertia humanity could be
turned backward in its path of progress. No more
than the stars of heaven can the organizations of
the earth change their courses. Our purpose is
very simple : we wish that mankind shall continue
its advance, while Germany is exhausting her
strength in the maddest of efforts for a reaction
contrary to the laws of human nature.

To establish this fact will not, of course, supply
us with the munitions of war. Nevertheless it as-
sures to us, from all the continents of the globe,
the ever-increasing assistance offered by the con-
science and the will-power of our friends. And
out of conscience and power of will the history of
man, more and more fully, will be created. It is
for these reasons that there will arise in us all
the powers of endurance that we need to repair
great mistakes of the past and to wrest victory
from the enemy in spite of weaknesses in govern-
mental direction for which our people are not
themselves responsible. We can hold out, and
we shall hold out, because we represent not only



376 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

the visible coalition of the greatest and most
powerful peoples of the earth, but also the higher
concert of the most noble principles of humanity.
With such resources of strength, what could fail
us? Our successes will bring their natural fruits.
Our reverses, if we must undergo them, will only
arouse for us, on every side, new accessions of aid.

We control the sea, we have money, and we shall
have, in greater and greater numbers, all the men
that are needed — whose decisive blow will only be
possible when we shall have adopted the idea, too
simple for certain intellects among us, that we
must concentrate our men for effective action on
a front that is too extensive — on which the Kaiser,
at least, knows how to maneuver. Too many of
our men will yet fall. But France, Great Britain,
Eussia, and Italy, with the goodly support of vast
colonies, are at hand to furnish men to take their
places — more and more men, without stint. If we