had been better prepared we might have saved
many human lives — I know not how many. We
shall count them later, for our lesson in the future.
Our sons have come forth with smiles on their
lips to make the payment. And we too shall pay,
we the civilians, of both sexes and of all ages. We
shall pay our tribute in sufferings and with im-
movable courage, thanks to which our sons and
brothers will not have fallen in vain.

That is why, confident of ourselves, and sure of
controlling our destiny, we are listening with the
calmness of fixed resolution to the cannon of
Verdun.

February 27, 1916.



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 377

Verdun !

Verdun ! Verdun ! At this moment we can think
of nothing else. Every mind and every heart goes
out toward those fields of tragedy on which, day
and night, and with an inexhaustible display of
French heroism, is raging a battle never inter-
rupted except to renew its fury.

Awe-struck by the bravery of our defense, the
official reporters of the enemy cannot help telling
of their wonder at our unshakable resistance to
the mad destruction of their heavy artillery. At
certain points their monstrous shells have so com-
pletely churned the ground to atoms that the eye
can discover nothing in its range but a return
to primeval chaos. Then suddenly there is silence,
and serried columns appear — of men marching
shoulder to shoulder, with the officers in the rear,
revolver in hand to shoot down those who flee.
Thus the black battalions of the Kaiser advance,
in their massed formations, to complete the con-
quest of a soil on which nothing could apparently
have survived. They advance, and for the moment
the illusion of a deserted terrain may comfort
them. But though the eye can discover nothing,
they have lessons in plenty to teach them that, in
this mortal silence following upon the most
ghastly uproar of all the engines of destruction
they have turned loose, there remain mute and
resolute men to give an answer to them that is
unexampled.

"Forward! Forward!" cry their officers, from
the rear. And every man knows that death would
answer any faltering in their feverishly brisk step.



378 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

So they come on, the men who are to conquer the
world in behalf of the ruling sword of Germany.
They come on, marching with an automatic spring,
because they can do no other thing than march
on. They come on in thick files, into the jaws
of the tornado which will rage in a moment from
the cannon's mouth. They come on in masses
so dense, so molded into one, that, according to
an expressive legend of our own men, a whole
troop of them, shot at one moment as they ad-
vance in unrelaxing rigidity and are caught in a
hail of steel, will all die at one blow, and will so
prop one another up that they cannot fall. They
come on to the hecatomb in human blocks to meet
the inevitable blow awaiting them, and this in the
distant hope that some survivors may possibly
penetrate to the "hereditary enemy" who dares
to defend his soil against the master for whose
supremacy the earth was created by a god of fury.
To live and die for such an end is not a very
high manifestation of principle. These human
machines do not even imagine that another em-
ployment might have been offered to their efforts.
Machines of murder, it is impossible for their
vision to rise above the level of the murderous.
As for the atrocities which have forever dishon-
ored the name of these murderers before the
world, it is possible that at this moment of terror
the memory of such things is foreign to them. It
is not theirs to feel or to reason. They go on in
their implacable offensive with forced passivity,
trusting in the providential power of violence,
without that flame of nobility in their breasts, or
that illumination of unconquerable hope, or that



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 379

strong will to do more than die, which give to our
soldiers a principle of life superior to death itself
because there is transmitted from man to man an
inspiration to which the rudest tempest, at the
very point of extinguishing it, can only lend
flame.

And now behold our soldiers appearing, for
their little cannon are at last starting suddenly
to sweep the field. In our turn we let loose a
dreadful tempest of devastating shell. Horror
answers horror, and the slow masses of the enemy
fall in the storm of steel that mows to the ground
anything that tries to face it. Great black holes,
in which convulsive things are tossing, mark the
place where the formidable human catapult was
mechanically advancing. Hardly have they been
reduced to scattered remnants when another mass
appears, and still others and others, and always
others. What is the life of men, of their men,
for the leaders of butchery who represent nothing
in life but an organization for wholesale mas-
sacre for the profit of a Moloch commissioned to
derive, out of a prodigious mountain of corpses
a supreme formula for "civilized" barbarism!
With a sad eye their men look on as their dark
files are falling, and they fall when their turn
comes, in the arrogance of their stupidity. And
the torrents of the offensive keep following each
other until parties of their troops, escaping the
prodigious harvest of death, penetrate, by good
luck, to our lines.

By good luck! But it does not long seem so to
them. For if the men of Germany are now face to
face with the men of France, the fate of the Ger-



380 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

man is sealed. After twenty months of a war in
which the Boches have really had the time to come
to know our poilus, young and old, they have met
them before Verdun only to find themselves con-
strained to avow that they had not yet learned
to know them well. That is why they have been
proclaiming in their newspapers, since the com-
bats of this unprecedented battle began, that this
time they have hurled themselves against an
unexpected power of resistance.

Thus they have come to be unanimous in their
frightened eulogies of these Frenchmen at whose
expense, for half a century, their heavy Teutonic
mockery has been so fully exerted. Yes, it is in
the newspapers of pan- Germany that we are find-
ing our irresistible valor celebrated to-day, that
irresistible valor of our soldiers which the Ger-
mans had only too well tested, but which they
avoided acknowledging in order to spare them-
selves the avowal that the Kaiser had presumed
too far upon the might of savagery. Now, they
are under the necessity of getting their advantage
from it, because it is the only excuse they can
find to explain the exhaustion of their organized
hordes, and also because, when the survivors of
their decimated columns see the blue helmets
rising out of the shell-holes that have been their
shelter, they can do nothing but bow the head,
overcome by the presentiment of a destiny that
is about to be fulfilled.

I am endeavoring to make clear the psychology
of the combat, since I lack ability to speak freely
of a general situation of which the moderate



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 381

estimate that I might allow myself would only
illuminate, with brighter colors, the incomparable
valor of our sublime French soldiers. Some days
ago I was present at a friendly conversation
between a captain and a sergeant, both wounded,
whose regiment had cruelly suffered in the
battle. The sergeant, wounded some time ago,
was questioning the officer, recently brought back,
on the fate of his friends and comrades left in
the thick of the battle, in which he was certain
that they were happy to do more than their duty.
The captain had no end of letters. In a half-
whisper, with straining throat, not without
trembling, he was telling of the fate of one man
or the happy adventure of another. Paul? They
had given him up for dead. And what do you
think! He had plunged into a trench and with
his good rifle had done for no less than twenty
or thirty Boches in one day's work. After which,
he had reappeared to complain because nobody
had sent him his dinner. And Louis 1 Fallen on
the heap of men that he had beaten down. And
the others! What heroic stories sprang, in sad
pride, from those lips!

We have not the time, alas, to pause over these
acts of incomparable valor. The battle holds our
minds in thrall. It is on the great combat, the
end of which is not yet in sight, that we must
fix our eyes. The Bois des Corbeaux has been
taken and retaken time after time, submerged
under human waves that break over it in clashes
of flesh and steel, under the formidable roar from
the cannon's mouth. Every hillock, every valley



382 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

adds to the bellowing of earth and heaven the
cry or the act of a hero. If heroism were all that
is needed in these epic straggles. . . .

Fifty Days Later

After a series of desperate offensives, which
have lasted all font two months and a half, the
attack on Verdnn is expiring in cannonades,
sometimes still very lively, which are now
directed against our lines solely for the sake of
honor. It is a military feat the value of which
cannot be estimated until the facilities for defense
possessed by our fortress, at the beginning of the
offensive, are known to the public. If the estimate
is not yet possible, even from the German side,
on which great pains have been taken not to
explain how the first advantages were gained,
the great public of the world is sufficiently in-
formed to be in a situation to give a judgment
on the results.

What is quite certain is that the operation,
proclaimed as "the most grandiose" of the war,
was theoretically confided to the Crown Prince,
in order that the prestige of the discounted suc-
cess might redound to the dynasty, and that the
imperial minus Ihdbens, to whom had been given
as tutor the general considered as the most ex-
perienced of the whole German army, was only
able to play a deplorable role in the enormous
drama in which there was no exertion of what
only the courtiers still call his great qualities.

He had been placed there like a historical
figurehead, to pronounce words that might im-



FBANCE FACING GERMANY 383

passion the world, to assume heroic attitudes in
places of safety, — while the aged von Haeseler
did the work, — and, finally, to make a solemn
entrance, for the embellishment of chromolitho-
graphs the world over, amid the piles of stones
which would have marked, for archaeologists, the
site of Verdun. Such was the Teutonically regu-
lated plan of the ceremony which was to be, but
which has not come to pass owing to lack of
consent on the part of those incomparable French
poilus, those dictators of a grand veto before
which all Bochery thirsting for blood had to
recoil.

This is the brutal fact, and before the evidence
of it even the eminent Teutonic custom of falsify-
ing had to surrender, having no other refuge
than the truth. The young booby who some day
will be — or won't be — crowned, has had to store
away in his chests of finery the pompous apparel
of the triumph, for the joy of which he hurled
his soldiers to death in monstrous holocausts.
The lurid paintings, made in advance, which were
to represent his magnificent entrance will remain
sorrowfully turned to the wall until the day, pos-
sibly far enough distant still, when certain
modifications in details will give them another
destination, in the unforeseen event of some in-
conceivable victory yet to come. Hope is denied
to no one, especially when one is reduced to that
alone.

While waiting for victories of which there is
little likelihood, the old von Haeseler, in cruel
disappointment, has had to desert the imperial
manikin from whom he had not been able to



384 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

elicit, even approximately, deeds such as would
give so much as an illusion of success. Indeed,
before being relegated to the company of the un-
essential, he was not able to restrain upon his
lips the bitter words which disclaimed his per-
sonal responsibility and transferred the whole
blame for the vexatious adventure to the General
Staff, to whom had been committed this imperial
order: The Crown Prince will take possession
of Verdun, "the strongest fortress in the world."

Alas, no! Verdun was not "the strongest
fortress in the world. ' ? To make up for that there
was to come into action a force of men urgently
brought thither, such as, up to that day, had
probably never been known. It was men, nothing
but men, those whom you passed by in the street,
yesterday, going about their affairs, now suddenly
transformed into invincible heroes, because they
had silently resolved that the thing which they
were told was to be should not come to pass.

Without protection at times, scattered over the
field, far from the eyes of their great leaders,
often beyond the reach of food, clinging to little
hummocks in the ground from which nothing
could dislodge them, they kept themselves snug
under the tempests of a heavy artillery whose
shells fell around them in hundreds and made the
earth itself groan and pant. Nothing had ever
been seen similar either to the attack or to the
defense. At no other time had it been possible
to accumulate such masses of instruments for
destruction. In no country could one foresee that
beardless little fellows, sustained by older poilus
grown gray, would stand forth, with laughing



PRANCE FACING GERMANY 385

eyes and souls transcending human nature, to
breast such a demoniacal avalanche of steel.

But this is what was done, and when the
formidable thrust of the Crown Prince finally
brought within the reach of the French arms the
deep masses of those brutes who have been able
to triumph only over victims who had no de-
fense, the little fellows in blue helmets somehow
sprang out of the earth, as did formerly the sol-
diers born of the dragon's teeth, and before the
barrier that knew no yielding the monstrous
might of the "irresistible" drive was stopped.

It was no longer the famous "French fury" of
other days. No; nothing but the imposing im-
passiveness, as if sculptured, of an immovable
human wall against which the most furious as-
sault could only break itself in madness. They
were there, the truly great men of our France,
clinging to the furrow to which they had com-
mitted themselves, ready for the decisive leap in
expectation of which the aggressors stood in awe.
They were there, living, wounded, or dead, re-
vealing in the convulsions of their desperate
might such energy that neither the strategy nor
the sacrifices of the aggressor could prevail
against them. Nothing was spared by the enemy
in resources such as, till then, had never been
known, and on our side the stoicism of the re-
sistance was so little theatrical, so fully free from
all empty display, that the simplicity of the
noblest spectacle in our annals of war prevents
us as yet from beholding its grandeur.

Later on, eloquent historians of the war will
laboriously descant upon these things, after hav-



386 FEANCE FACING GERMANY

ing done all they can to darken their clarity.
They will offer ns massive volumes to demon-
strate by quotations without number that what
happened really happened. And men who will
still be young, with their eye-lids half-closed as
they recall the memory, will lift their heads up
and, with smiles impeded by their glorious scars,
will make our hearts bound with the grand if
simple words, "I was there!"

All honor to the dead and to the survivors, to
all those, great and small, who have found in
their unconquerable hearts the strength to in-
scribe, in the history of France, a page of nobility
so perfect that, in a world which already seemed
to bend under the weight of Germany, a tre-
mendous shout of admiration, restrained by re-
spect, is rising to our children as a splendid
testimonial in which is voiced the eternal thanks-
giving of mankind. To our great ancestors in
every epoch, from whom are sprung our men of
to-day, the just measure of this glory may well
remain. France has done much, she is doing and
will do much, not contented with what is merely
possible. Her purpose is not conquest; it is not
to dominate or to enslave. France is fighting for
her right to live, to live according to her prin-
ciples, and hand in hand with all the peoples
worthy to follow the right, worthy to live in
freedom, she is giving all her blood in the con-
fident surety of an infinite power always to
renew it.

When all the conditions of the struggle can be
determined, Verdun will probably be the most
illustrious event in her history, because the great



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 387

inspiration of her revival has come less from
leaders of any kind than from the unconscious
depths of a race splendidly moved by instinctive
energies which incited it to new efforts for the
glory of its own name and for the welfare of a
nobler humanity.

My friends, let us not pause at this point. We
are in the midst of our work. On the Marne, on
the Yser, and at Verdun, we have, by exertions
of will that are unsurpassable, recovered chances
which unbelievable combinations of defection
seemed to have turned implacably against us. All
the might of ancient guilt has been amassed in
one encounter, unforeseen by the theorists, for a
monstrous blow of tremendous energy organized
for the final defeat of the noblest ideal of human-
ity. Without the aid of military genius, in the
lack even of the capable administrators to whom
our people had a right, but by the mere virtue
of the most generous blood, by the unconquerable
strength of unanimous minds, young and old, we
have stopped and held the great flood of barbar-
ism. It remains for us to drive it back. Salamis
was a great event. It was still only the prepara-
tion for Plataea. At Thermopylae there was the
protection of a pass. It is on their plains that
the Marne, the Yser and Verdun saw us put a
stop to organized savagery. There remains to
us who yet live the heavy, the overwhelming duty
of showing ourselves worthy of our dead. Not
for an hour, not for a minute, have we the right
to forget it.

... To the work, then, all of us, for the repa-



388 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

ration of our mistakes, of all our mistakes, in
order that our great dead may be initiators, and
not the heroic witnesses of the end of a great
tragedy. Verdun is the greatest act of the great-
est drama of resistance. This would not be
enough if we could not pass to the offensive —
by no means to those kinds of offensive the for-
tunes of which need official interpretation, but to
offensives that need no comment, those which do
not consist solely in throwing ourselves headlong
on the enemy. Preparation is necessary for this.
Science, system, strategy are necessary. Eemem-
ber these words well, for nothing would be worse
than to forget them. Our allies are making
marvelous exertions. Manufactures and men will
all be ready at the hour desired, not too soon, and
not too late. There is needed a power capable of
putting the enormous machine to work, to effica-
cious action. This is the gravest problem of the
day, for with what price should we have to pay,
in our turn, for a stroke that miscarried?

Too many warnings have been given us that
we have not understood. It is time for getting
possession of ourselves definitively, for measur-
ing our forces, and for making up our minds, not
to send better soldiers to the field of battle, for
that cannot be, but for a more perfect utilization
of our means; and the urgency of this increases
in proportion as all the forces in the struggle ad-
vance toward the final decision. The neutrals
themselves — who have taken so much trouble to
convince themselves that the thing that interests
them in the highest degree must and could be
of no importance to them — the neutrals are awak-



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 389

ening to the fact that a decisive hour is soon to
strike. There are signs that Switzerland, Hol-
land, and Scandinavia are beginning to consider
questions that they had resolved to ignore.

Every people worthy of a future is preparing
for a new kind of life. We have taken no little
lead, in having been able to gain an increase of
glory in spite of mistakes which might pos-
sibly have proved irreparable if our cause had
not lifted us to an effort of higher understanding
for an exertion of will which may permit us mag-
nificently to achieve our highest work, toward
which the French Eevolution itself was only the
first, halting step. That is our duty, the last,
perhaps the easiest, coming as it does after so
many marvelous achievements of our glorious
children on the battlefield. The hour is on us
when we can no longer be content to keep say-
ing, "That will be for to-morrow." Our sons
and brothers were not, they are not, heroes of
some to-morrow. In whatever form it may be,
when the clock shall strike the prophetic strokes,
shame to the man who has refused to open his
eyes to the real necessities for final victory. For
on that day, to the call of civic service as well
as military duty the true patriot must be able
to say: "I am here."

March 13 and May 1, 1916,

We Must

I have just been visiting the front, from the
Pas-de-Calais to the Swiss frontier, and for the
first time, after twenty- two months of war, I have



390 FRANCE FACING GERMANY

been able to see everything, to come to conclusions
about everything, to interrogate officers and men
freely about matters of all sorts, and to receive
answers given in full liberty of expression.

. . . There are many kinds of visits to the
army. No kind of ceremony interrupted the ex-
treme simplicity of mine. I was able to go about
everywhere, accompanied by men who were able
to give me technical information and enlighten-
ment. / ivanted to see, and I saw. For to-day I
must content myself with a summary opinion,
for which I shall give the reasons now or at
another time, as may be most fitting.

The first thought that occurs to my interlocu-
tors, naturally, is to ask me for my conclusions
after an investigation which carried me over
more than two thousand kilometers in an auto-
mobile, with rests of three or four hours a day
spent walking in the mud of the trenches — all
this concomitant with conversations which were
the more instructive in that they led, on every
point, to unanimous conclusions.

The opinion which I am able to present to the
public to-day is not such as to disquiet them.
Far from that, it is one of absolute confidence
in the final victory of our arms, provided that
certain requirements in organization be not only
discussed, but effectively brought about. Whether
I was interrogating the heroic soldiers who were
returning, with smiling faces, from the Inferno
of Verdun, whether at Verdun itself I was
watching them at work, under a cannonade such
as had never been heard before, whether I was



FRANCE FACING GERMANY 391

following to their very last haunts of mud and
stones and wreckage the detachments lost in the
inextricable upheaval of the soil churned and
pulverized by the formidable shells of the German
artillery, I have seen no men who were not im-
movably steadfast in their moral strength and
heroism.

I cannot resist the temptation to offer certain
foreshortened views of them, because the facts
will always be more eloquent than phrases, and
because the conciseness of words that issue from
the mouths of heroes who do not know their
heroism adds to the most noble -actions a magnifi-
cent supplement of grandeur. Perhaps I have
penetrated deeper, this time, into the soul of the
soldier than I had before, because he was given
full freedom of speech, whether in the presence
of his officers or in private conversations. The
truth is that I have not heard one word that
could not have been repeated in the presence of
the regimental officers or of the general himself,
when I invited confidences of every sort in words
like these: "What have you to complain of?
What do you need? Tell me what you desire. "

Oh, the answers were not long. One might say
that they were all the same. They mentioned the
work in the trenches, not less arduous than
battle. They mentioned wives and children, and
talked of anticipations of returning home — but
never thought of it as possible until after their
great work was accomplished. Some men as old
as forty-four complained of certain marches,
carrying packs, the necessity of which was not
entirely clear to them, since they came back,



392 FEANCE FACING GERMANY

after several days, to their point of departure.
There was talk of temporary fatigue of the body
- — but never of fatigue of purpose. And concern-