arches, the flaming fragments of old glass,
when we saw the figure of an old priest come
slowly down the aisle, his arms folded. Pie
looked at us rather dreamily and passed.
Our guide. Monsieur P., followed and spoke
to him. " Monsieur, you are the Abbe
Dourlent ? "

" I am, sir. What can I do for you 1 "
Something was said about EngHsh ladies,
and the Cure courteously turned back. " Will
the ladies come into the Presbytere ? '' We
followed him across the small cathedral square
to the old house in which he lived, and were
shown into a bare dining-room, with a table,
some chairs, and a few old rehgious engrav-
ings on the walls. He of!ered us chairs and
sat down himself.

" You would like to hear the story of the
German occupation ? " He thought a Httle
before beginning, and I was struck with his
strong, tired face, the powerful mouth and
jaw, and above them, eyes which seemed to
have lost the power of smiUng, though I
guessed them to be naturally full of a pleasant



No. 7] AUGUST 30th, 1914 137

slirewdness, of what the French call malice,
which is not the Enghsh " mahce/' He was
rather difficult to follow here and there, but
from his spoken words and from a written
account he placed in my hands, I put together
the following story :

" It was August 30th, 1914, when the
British General Staf! arrived in Senhs. That
same evening, they left it for Dammartin.
All day, and the next two days, French and
Enghsh troops passed through the town.
What was happening 1 Would there be no
fighting in defence of Paris — only thirty miles
away ? Wednesday, September 2nd — that
was the day the guns began, our guns and
theirs, to the north of Senhs. But, in the
course of that day, we knew finally there
would be no battle between us and Paris.
The French troops were going — the Enghsh
were going. They left us — marching east-
ward. Our hearts were very sore as we
saw them go.

" Two o'clock on Wednesday — the first
shell struck the cathedral. I had just been
to the top of the belfry to see, if I could, from
what direction the enemy was coming. The
bombardment lasted an hour and a haK. At



138 GERMANS IN SENLIS [No. 7

four o'clock they entered. If you had seen
them ! "

The old Cure raised himself on his seat,
trying to imitate the insolent bearing of the
German cavalry as they led the way through
the old town which they imagined would be
the last stage on their way to Paris.

" They came in, shouting * Paris — Nach
Pans ! ' maddened with excitement. They
were all singing — they were like men beside
themselves/'

" What did they sing, Monsieur le Cure ? —
' Deutschland iiber alles ' ? "

" Oh, no, madame, not at all. They sang
hymns. It was an extraordinary sight.
They seemed possessed. They were certain
that in a few hours they would be in Paris.
They passed through the town, and then, just
south of the town, they stopped. Our people
show the place. It was the nearest they ever
got to Paris.

" Presently, an officer, with an escort, a
general apparently, rode through the town,
puUed up at the Hotel de Ville, and asked for
the Maire — angrily, like a man in a passion.
But the Maire — M. Odent — was there,
waiting, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville.



No. 7] GERMANS IN SENLIS 139

" Monsieur Odent was my friend — lie gave
me Ms confidence. He had resisted his nomi-
nation as Mayor as long as he could, and
accepted it only as an imperative duty. He
was an employer, whom his workmen loved.
One of them used to say — * When one gets
into M. Odent 's employ, one lives and dies
there.* Just before the invasion, he took his
family away. Then he came back, with the
presentiment of disaster. He said to me — ' I
persuaded my wife to go. It was hard. We
are much attached to each other — but now I
am free, ready for all that may come."

"Well, the German general said to him
roughly :

" ' Is your town quiet ? Can we circulate
safely ? '

" M. Odent said, * Yes. There is no quieter
town in France than Senlis.'

" ' Are there still any soldiers here ? '

" M. Odent had seen the French troops
defihng through the town all the morning.
The bombardment had made it impossible to
go about the streets. As far as he knew there
were none left. He answered, *No.'

" He was taken ofi, practically under arrest,
to the Hotel, and told to order a dinner for



140 GERMAN BRUTALITY [No. 7

thirty, with ice and champagne. Then his
secretary joined him and proposed that the
adjoints, or Mayor's assistants, should be sent
for.

" ' No/ said M. Odent, * one victim is
enough.' You see he foresaw everything.
We all knew what had happened in Belgium
and the Ardennes.

" The German officer questioned him again.

" ' Why have your people gone ? — why are
these houses, these shops, shut "? There must
be lights everywhere — all through the night ! '

" Suddenly— shots ! — in the Rue de la
Repubhque. In a few seconds there was a
furious fusillade, accompanied by the rattle of
machine guns. The officer sprang up.

" ' So this is your quiet town, Monsieur le
Maire ! I arrest you, and you shall answer
with your Hfe for the lives of my soldiers.'

" Two men with revolvers were set to guard
him. The officer himself presently took him
outside the town, and left him under guard,
at the Httle village of Poteau, at the edge of
a wood.''

• • • • •

What had happened ? Unluckily for SerJis
aad M. Odent, some of the French rear-guard



No. 7] A SAVAGE REVENGE 141

— infantry stragglers, and a small party of
Senegalese troops — were still in the southern
quarter of the town when the Germans
entered. They opened fire from a barrack
near the Paris entrance and a sharp engage-
ment followed which lasted several hours,
with casualties on both sides. The Germans
got the better, and were then free to wreak
their fury on the town.

They broke into the houses, plundered the
wine shops, first of all, and took fifty hostages,
of whom twenty-six perished. And at half-
past five, while the fighting was still going on,
the punitive burning of the town began, by a
cychst section told off for the work and fur-
nished with every means for doing it effec-
tively. These men, according to an eye-
witness, did their work with wild shouts —
" Cfris sauvages/'

A hundred and seventeen houses were
soon burning fiercely. On that hot Septem-
ber evening, the air was Hke a furnace. Before
long the streets were full of blazing debris.
Two persons who had hidden themselves in
their cellars died of suffocation ; yet to appear
in the streets was to risk death at the hands
of some drunk or maddened soldier.



142 A BURNING CITY [No. 7

At the opening of the French attack, a
German officer rushed to the hospital, which
was full of wounded, in search of francs-tireurs.
Arrived there, he saw an old man, a chronic
patient of the hospital and half idiotic,
standing on the steps of the building. He
blew the old man^s brains out. He then
forced his way into the hospital, pointing his
revolver at the French wounded, who thought
their last hour had come. He himself was
wounded, and at last appeared to yield to the
remonstrances of the Sister in charge, and
allowed his wound to be dressed. But in the
middle of the dressing, he broke away with-
out his tunic, and helmetless, in a state of
mad excitement, and presently reappeared
with a file of soldiers. Placing them in the
street opposite the rooms occupied by the
French wounded, he ordered them to fire a
volley. No one was hurt, though several beds
were struck. Then the women^s wards were
searched. Two sick men, eclopes without
visible wounds, were dragged out of their
beds and would have been bayoneted then
and there but for the entreaties of the nurses,
who ultimately released them.

An awful night followed in the still burning



No. 7] MURDER OF THE MAYOR 143

or smouldering town. Meanwhile, at nine
o'clock in the evening a party of German
officers betook themselves to the hamlet of
Poteau — a village north of Senlis — where
M. Odent had been kept under guard since
the afternoon. Six other hostages were pro-
duced, and they were all marched off to a
field near Chamant at the edge of a wood.
Here the Maire was called up and interro-
gated. His companion, eight or nine metres
away, too far to hear what was said, watched
the scene. As I think of it, I seem to see in
the southern sky the glare of burning Senhs ;
above it, and spread over the stubble fields in
which the party stood, a peaceful moonlight.
In his written account, the Cure specially
mentions the brightness of the harvest moon.
Presently the Maire came back to the six,
and said to one, Benoit Decreys, " Adieu, my
poor Benoit, we shall not see each other again
— they are going to shoot me."' He took his
crucifix, his purse containing a sum of money,
and some papers, out of his pocket, and asked
that they should be given to his family. Then
pressing the hands held out to him, he said
good-bye to them all, and went back with a firm
step to the group of officers. Two soldiers



144 THE CURE IN THE CATHEDRAL [No. 7

were called up, and the Maire was placed at
ten paces' distance. The soldiers fired, and
M. Odent fell without a sound. He was
hastily buried under barely a foot of earth,
and his six companions were left on the spot
through the night expecting the same fate,
till the morning, when they were released.
Five other hostages, " gathered haphazard in
the streets,'' were shot the same night in the
neighbourhood of Chamant.

Meanwhile the Cure, knowing nothing of
what was happening to the Maire, had been
thinking for his parishioners and his church.
WTien the bombardment began he gathered
together about a hundred and twenty of them,
who had apparently no cellars to take refuge
in, and after sheltering them in the Presb5rtere
for a time, he sent them with one of his
vicaires out of the town. Then — to continue
his narrative :

" I went to the southern portal of the cathe-
dral, and stood there trembling at every burst
of shrapnel that struck the belfrey and the
roof, and running out into the open, at each
pause, to be sure that the church was still
there. When the firing ceased, I went back
to the Presbytere.



No. 7] THE ABBE'S NARRATIVE 145

" Presently, furious sounds of blows from
the flace. I went out. I saw some enemy
cyclists, armed with fragments of stone,
breaking in one of the cathedral doors, another,
with a hatchet, attacking the belfrey door.
At the sight of me, they rushed at me with
their revolvers, demanding that I should take
them to the top of the belfry. ' You have a
machine gun there ! ' * Nothing of the
sort, monsieur. See for yourselves.' I un-
locked the door, and just as I put my foot on
the first step, the fusillade in the town began.
The soldiers started. ' You are our prisoner ! '
cried their chief, turning to me, as though to
seize me.

" ' I know it. You have me in your
hands.' I went up before them, as quickly
as my age allowed. They searched every-
where, and, of course, found nothing. They
ran down and disappeared.''

But that was not the end of the Abbe's
trouble. He was presently sent for to the
German Headquarters, at the Hotel du Grand
Cerf, where the table spread for thirty people,
by the order of M. Odent, was still waiting for
its guests. The conversation here between
the Cure and the officer of high rank who
11



146 FALSE CHARGES [No. 7

spoke to him is worth repeating. From the
tenor of it, the presumption is that the officer
was a CathoHc — probably a Bavarian.

" I asked leave to go back to the Presbytere.

" ' Better stay here, Monsieur le Cure.
You will be safer. The burning is going on.
To-morrow, your town will be only a heap of
ruins.'

" ' What is our crime ? '

" ' Listen to that fusillade. Your inhabi-
tants are attacking us, as they did at Lou-
vain. Louvain has ceased to exist ! We will
make of Senlis another Louvain, so that Paris
and France may know how we treat those
who may imitate you. We have found small
shot {chevrotines) in the body of one of our
officers.'

" 'Already ? ' — I thought. How had there
been any time for the post-mortem ? But
I was too crushed to speak.

" ' And also from your belfry we have been
fired on ! '

" At that I recovered myself.

" ' Sir — what may have passed in the
streets, I cannot say. But as to the cathedral
I formally deny your charge. Since war broke
out, I have always had the keys of the belfry.



No. 7] WANTON DESTRUCTION 147

I did not even give them to your soldiers,
who made me take them there. Do you wish
me to swear it ? '

" The officer looked at me.

No need. You are a Catholic priest. I
see you are sincere.'

" I bowed."

A scene that throws much light ! A false
charge — an excited reference to Louvain —
a monstrous threat — the temper, that is, of
panic, which is the mother of cruelty. At that
very moment, the German troops in the Rue
de la Republique were driving parties of French
civilians in front of them, as a protection from
the Senegalese troops who were still firing
from houses near the Paris exit from the town.
Four or five of these poor people were killed
by French bullets ; a child of five forced along,
with her mother, was shot in the thigh.
Altogether some twenty or thirty civilians
seem to have been killed.

Next day more houses were burnt. Then,
for a time, the quiet of desolation. All the
normal population were gone, or in the
cellars. But twenty miles away to the south-
east, great things were preparing. The Ger-
man occupation of Senhs began, as we have



148 A SUDDEN CHANGE [No. 7

seen, on a Wednesday, September 2nd. On
Saturday the 5th, as we all know, the first
shots were fired in that Battle of the Ourcq
which was the western section of the Battle
of the Marne. By that Saturday, already,
writes the Abbe Dourlent :

" There was something changed in the
attitude of the enemy. What had become of
the brutal arrogance, the insolent cruelty of
the first days? For three days and nights,
the German troops, an army of 300,000 men,
defiled through our streets. It was not the
road to Paris, now, that they asked for— it
was the way to Nanteuil, Ermenonville, the
direction of the Marne. On the faces of the
ofiicers, one seemed to read disappointment
and anxiety. Close to us, on the east, the
guns were speaking, every day more fiercely.
What was happening ? "

All that the Cure knows is that in a house
belonging to persons of his acquaintance,
where some ofiicers of the rear-guard left
behind in Senlis are billeted, two of the young
officers have been in tears— it is supposed,
because of bad news. Another day, an
armoured car rushes into SenHs from Paris ;
the men in it exchange some shots with the



No. 7] RETURN OF THE FRENCH 149

German soldiers in the principal flace, and
make off again, calling out, "Courage!
Deliverance is coming ! "

Then, on the 9th, just a week from the Ger-
man entry, there is another fusillade in the
streets. *' It is the Zouaves, knocking at the
doors, dragging out the conquerors of yester-
day, now a humbled remnant, with their hands
in the air."

And the Cure goes on to compare Senlis to
the sand which the Creator showed to the sea.
" Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther."
*' The grain of sand is Senlis, still red with
the flames which have devoured her, and with
the blood of her victims. To these barbarians
she cries — ' You want Paris ? — you want
France ? Halt ! No road through here ! ' "

« • • • •

This combination of the Cure's written and
spoken account is as close to the facts as I can
make it. His narrative as he gave it to me,
of what he had seen and felt, was essentially
simple, and, to judge from the French official
reports, with which I have compared it, essen-
tially true. There are some discrepancies
in detail, but nothing that matters. The
murder of M. Odent, of the other hostages, of



150 ERMENONVILLE [No. 7

the civilians placed in front of the German
troops, and of four or five other victims ; the
burning out by torch and explosive of half a
flourishing town, because of a discreditable
mistake, the fruit of panic and passion, —
these crimes are indelibly marked on the
record of Germany. She has done worse else-
where. All the same, this too she will
never efface. Let us imagine such things
happening at Guildford, or Hatfield, or St.
Albans !

We parted with M. le Cure just in time to
meet a pleasant party of war correspondents
at the very inn, the Hotel du Cerf , which had
been the German Headquarters during the
occupation. The correspondents were on their
way between the French Headquarters and
the nearest points of the French line,Soissons or
Compiegne, from whose neighbourhood every
day the Germans were slowly falling back,
and where the great attacks of the month of
April were in active preparation. Then, after
luncheon, we saUied out into the darkening
afternoon, through the Forest of Ermenon-
ville, and up to the great plateau, stretch-
ing north towards Soissons, southwards
towards Meaux, and eastwards towards the



No. 7] SCENES OF BATTLE 151

Ourcq, where Maunoury's Sixth Army, striking
from Paris and the west, and the EngHsh
Army, striking from the south — aided by all
the gallant French line from Chateau Thierry
to the Grand Couronne — dealt that staggering
blow against the German right which flung
back the German host, and, weary as the way
has been since, weary as it may still be, in
truth, decided the war.

But the clouds hang lower as we emerge on
the high bare plain. A few flakes — then, in a
twinkhng, a whirhng snow-storm through
which we can hardly see our way. But we
fight through it, and along the roads every
one of which is famous in the history of the
battle. At our northernmost point we are
about thirty miles from Soissons and the Hne.
Columns of French infantry on the march,
guns, ammunition, stores, field kitchens, pass
us perpetually ; the motor moves at a foot's
pace, and we catch the young faces of the
soldiers through the white thickened air.
And our most animated and animating com-
panion, Monsieur P , with his wonderful

knowledge of the battle, hails every land-
mark, identifies every farm and wood, even
in what has become, in less than an hour, a



152 VAREDDES [No. 7

white wilderness. But it is of one village
only, of these many whose names are hence-
forth known to history, that I wish to speak
— the village of Vareddes. In my next letter
I propose to tell the ghastly story of the
hostages of Vareddes.



No. 8

May nth, 1917.

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, — Shall I ever forget
that broad wintry plateau of the Ourcq, as
it lay, at the opening of March, under its
bed of snow, with its ruined villages, its graves
scattered over the fields, its utter loneliness,
save for the columns of marching soldiers in
the roads, and the howHng wind that rushed
over the fields, the graves, the cemeteries, and
whistled through the gaping walls of the poor
churches and farms ? This high spreading
plain, which before the war was one scene of
rural plenty and industrious peace, with its
farm lands and orchards dropping gently from
the forest country of Chantilly, Compiegne,
and Ermenonville, down to the Ourcq and the
Marne, will be a place of pilgrimage for genera-
tions to come. Most of the Battle of the Marne
was fought on so vast a scale, over so wide a
stretch of country — about 200 miles long, by
50 broad — that for the civilian spectator of

153



154 BATTLE OF THE OURCQ [No. 8

the future it will never be possible to realise
it as a whole, and very difficult even to reahse
any section of it, topographically, owing to the
complication of the actions involved. But in
the Battle of the Ourcq, the distances are com-
paratively small, the actions comparatively
simple and intelhgible, while all the circum-
stances of the particular struggle are so dra-
matic, and the stakes at issue so vast, that
every incident is, as it were, writ large, and the
memory absorbs them more easily.

An Englishwoman, too, may be glad it was
in this conspicuous section of the battle-field,
which will perhaps affect the imagination of
posterity more easily than any other, that it
fell to the British Army to play its part. To
General Joffre the glory of the main strategic
conception of the great retreat ; to General
Gallieni the undying honour of the rapid
perception, the quick decision, which flung
General Maunoury, with the 6th Army, on
Von Kluck's flank and rear, at the first hint
of the German generaFs swerve to the south-
east ; to General Maunoury himself, and his
splendid troops, the credit of the battle
proper, across the broad harvest fields of the
Ourcq plateau. But the advance of the



No. 8] KLUCK'S MISTAKE 155

British troops from the south of the Marne, on
the heels of Von Kluck, was in truth all-im-
portant to the success of Maunoury on the
Ourcq. It was the British Expeditionary
Force w^hich made the hinge of the battle-hne,
and if that hinge had not been strong and
supple — in all respects equal to its work — the
sudden attack of the 6th Army, on the extreme
left of the battle-line, and the victory of
General Foch in the centre, might not have
availed. In other words, had Von Kluck found
the weak spot he believed in and struck for,
all would have been different. But the weak
spot existed only in the German imagination.
The British troops whom Von Kluck supposed
to be exhausted and demoralised, were in
truth nothing of the sort. Rested and in ex-
cellent condition, they turned rejoicing upon
the enemy, and, in concert with the French
6th Army, decided the German withdrawal.
Every one of the six Armies ahgned across
France, from Paris to the Grand Couronne, had
its own glorious task in the defeat of theGerman
plans. But we were then so small a propor-
tion of the whole, with our hundred and twenty
thousand men, and we have become since so
accustomed to count in miDions, that perhaps



156 ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE [No. 8

our part in the " miracle of the Marne '' is
sometimes in danger of becoming a Httle
blurred in the popular EngUsh— and American
—conception of the battle. Is not the truth
rather that we had a twofold share in it ? It
was Von Kluck's miscalculation as to the
EngHsh strength that tempted him to his east-
ward march ; it was the quality of the British
force and leadership, when Sir John French's
opportunity came, that made the mistake a
fatal one.

How different the aspect of the Ourcq
plateau at the opening of the battle in 1914,
from the snowy desolation under which we
saw it ! Perfect summer weather — the har-
vest stacks in the fields— a blazing sun by day,
and a clear moon by night. For the first en-
counters of the five days' fighting, till the rain
came down, Nature could not have set a fairer
scene. And on the two anniversaries which
have since passed, summer has again decked
the battle-field. Thousands have gone out to
it from Paris, from Meaux, and the whole
country-side. The innumerable graves, single
or grouped, among the harvest fields and the
pastures, have been covered with flowers, and
bright, mile after mile, with the twinkUng



No. 8] WRECKAGE OF WAR 157

tricolour, as far as the eye could see. At
Barcy and Etrepilly, the centres of the fight,
priests have blessed the graves, and prayed
for the dead.

There has been neither labour nor money
indeed as yet wherewith to rebuild the ruined
villages and farms, beyond the most neces-
sary repairs. They stand for the most part
as the battle left them. And the fields are
still ahve with innumerable red flags — distinct
from the tricolour of the graves — which mark
where the plough must avoid an unexploded
shell. In a journal of September 1914, a
citizen of SenHs describes passing in a motor
through the scene of the fight, irmnediately
after the departure of the Germans, when the
scavenging and burying parties were stiU busy.

" How can I describe it ? Where to begin ?
Abandoned farms, on hills of death ! The
grain-giving earth, empty of human beings.
No labourers — no household smoke. The fire
of the burning villages has smouldered out,
and round the houses, and in the courtyards,
lie the debris of their normal hfe, trampled,
dirty and piecemeal, under foot. Poor farms
of the Ile-de-France ! — dweUings of old time,
into whose barns the rich harvests of the



158 A BURYING PARTY [No. 8

fields had been joyously gathered year by year
— old tiled roofs, clothed with ancestral moss