— plain hospitable rooms where masters and
servants met famiharly together : — you are no
more than calcined and blackened stones !
Not a Uving animal in the ruined stalls, not
an ox, not a horse, not a sheep. One flies from
the houses, only to find a scene more horrible
in the fields. Corpses everywhere, of men and
horses. And everywhere in the fields un-
exploded shells, which it would be death to
touch, which have already made many un-
suspecting victims.
" Sometimes, as the motor draws near, a man
or a woman emerges from a building, having
still on their faces the terror of the hours they
have hved through. They scarcely look at us.
They are absorbed in their losses, in the
struggle to rescue something from the wreck.
As soon as they are sure it is not the Germans
come back, they turn away, with slow steps,
bewildered by what they have suffered."
The small party in the motor includes a
priest, and as it passes near Betz, at the
northern end of the battle-field, they see a
burying-party of French Territorials at work.
The officer in charge beckons to the priest,
and the priest goes to speak to him.
No. 8] A FUNERAL 159
" Monsieur I'Abbe, we have just buried here
twenty-two French soldiers." He points to a
trench freshly dug, into which the earth has
just been shovelled.
'' They are Breton soldiers," the officer-
explains, " and the men of my burying com-
pany are Bretons too. They have just dis-
covered that these dead men we have gathered
from the fields were soldiers from a regiment
recruited in their own district. And seven of
them have recognised amongthese twenty-two
dead, one a son, one a son-in-law, one a
brother. Will you come. Monsieur FAbbe, and
say a few words to these poor fellows ? "
So the Abbe goes to the new-made grave,
reads the De Profundis, says a prayer, gives
the benediction, and then speaks. Tears are
on the strong, rugged faces of the bare-headed
Bretons, as they gather round him. A group,
some httle distance off, which is writing the
names of the dead on a white cross, pauses,
catches what is going on, and kneels too, with
bent heads. . . .
It is good to Hnger on that little scene of
human sympathy and religious faith. It does
something to protect the mind from the horror
of much that has happened here.
160 A FIVE DAYS' BATTLE [No. 8
In spite of the storm, our indefatigable guide
carried us through all the principal points
of the battle-Hne — St. Soupplets — Marcilly —
Barcy — Etrepilly — Acy-en-Multien ; villages
from which one by one, by keen, hard fighting,
the French attack, coming eastwards from
Dammartin to Paris, dislodged the troops of
Von Kluck ; while to our right lay Trocy, and
Vareddes, a village on the Ourcq, between
which points ran the strongest artillery posi-
tions of the enemy. At Barcy, we stopped a
few minutes, to go and look at the ruined
church, with its fallen bell, and its grave-yard
packed with wreaths and crosses, bound with
the tricolour. At Etrepilly, with the snow
beating in our faces, and the wind howhng
round us, we read the inscription on the
national monument raised to those fallen in
the battle, and looking eastwards to the spot
where Trocy lay under thick curtains of storm,
we tried to imagine the magnificent charge of
the Zouaves, of the 62nd Reserve Division,
under Commandant Henri D'Urbal, who,
with many a comrade, lies buried in the ceme-
tery of Barcy.
Five days the battle swayed backwards and
forwards across this scene, especially following
No. 8] LIFE-AND-DEATH FIGHTING 161
the lines of the little streams flowing eastwards
to the Ourcq, the Therouanne, the Gergogne,
th e Grivette. " From village to village," says
Colonel Buchan, " amid the smoke of burning
haystacks and farmsteads, the French bayonet
attack was pressed home/'
"Terrible days of life-and-death fighting !
[writes a Meaux resident, Madame Roussel-
Lepine] battles of Chambry, Barcy, Puisieux,
Acy-en-Multien, the 6th, 7th, and 8th of
September — fierce days to which the graves
among the crops bear witness. Four hundred
volunteers sent to attack a farm, from which
only seven come back ! Ambuscades, baiTi-
cades in the streets, loopholes cut in the ceme-
tery walls, trenches hastily dug and filled with
dead, night fighting, often hand to hand, sur-
prises, the sudden flash of bayonets, a rain of
iron, a rain of fire, mills and houses burning
like torches — fields red with the dead and
with the flaming corn — fruit of the fields, and
flower of the race !— the sacrifice consunnnated,
the cup drunk to the lees."
Moving and eloquent words ! They gain
for me a double significance as I look back from
them to the Httle scene we saw at Barcy under
the snow — a halt of some French infantry, in
12
162 "SALUT AU DRAPEAU" [No. 8
front of the ruined church. The " salut au
drapeau " was going on, that simple, daily rite
which, like a secular mass, is the outward and
visible sign to the French soldier of his country
and what he owes her. This passion of French
patriotism — what a marvellous force, what a
regenerating force it has shown itself in this
war ! It springs, too, from the heart of a race
which has the Latin gift of expression. Listen
to this last entry in the journal of Captain
Kobert Dubarle, the evening before his death
in action :
" This attack to-morrow, besides the inevit-
able emotion it rouses in one's thoughts, stirs
in me a kind of joyous impatience, and the
pride of doing my duty— which is to fight
gladly, and die victorious. To the last breath
of our lives, to the last child of our mothers,
to the last stone of our dwelhngs, all is thine,
my country ! Make no hurry. Choose thine
own time for striking. If thou needest months,
we will fight for months ; if thou needest
years, we will fight for years— the children of
to-day shall be the soldiers of to-morrow.
" Akeady, perhaps, my last hour is hastening
towards me. Accept the gift I make thee of
my strength, my hopes, my joys and my
sorrows, of all my being, filled with the passion
No. 8] MEAUX 163
of thee. Pardon thy children their errors of
past days. Cover them with thy glory — put
them to sleep in thy flag. Rise, victorious and
renewed, upon their graves. Let our holo-
caust save thee — Patrie, Patrie ! "
An utterance which for tragic sincerity and
passion may well compare with the letter of
an Enghsh officer I printed at the end of
Efigland's Effort.
On they go, into the snow and the mist, the
small sturdy soldiers, bound northwards for
those great and victorious attacks on the
Craonne plateau, and the Chemin des Dames,
which were to follow so close on our own
British victory on the Vimy ridge. They pass
the two ladies in the motor car, looking at us
with friendly, laughing eyes, and disappear
into the storm.
Then we move on to the northern edge of
the battle-field, and at Rosoy we turn south
towards Meaux, pas,sing Vareddes to our left.
The weather clears a little, and from the high
ground we are able to see Meaux to the west,
lying beside its great river, than which our
children's children will greet no more famous
name. The Marne winds, steely grey, through
the white landscape, and we run down to it
164 VAREDDES [No. 8
quickly. Soon we are making our way on
foot tlirough tlie dripping streets of Meaux to
the old bridge, which the British broke down
— one of three — on their retreat — so soon to
end ! Then, a few minutes in the lovely
cathedral — its beauty was a great surprise to
me ! — a greeting to the tomb of Bossuet —
ah ! what a Discours he would have written on
the Battle of the Marne ! — and a rapid journey
of some twenty-five miles back to Paris.
But there is still a story left to tell — the
story of Vareddes.
" Vareddes " — says a local historian of the
battle — " is now a very quiet place. There
is no movement in the streets and little life
in the houses, where some of the injuries of
war have been repaired." But there is no spot
in the wide battle-field where there burns a
more passionate hatred of a barbarous enemy.
" Push open this window, enter this house,
talk with any person whatever whom you may
happen to meet, and they will tell you of the
torture of old men, carried off as hostages and
murdered in cold blood, or of the agonies of
fear deliberately inflicted on old and frail
women, through a whole night."
The story of Vareddes is indeed nearly in-
No. 8] VAREDDES 165
credible. That English, or French, or Itahan
troops could have been guilty of this particular
crime is beyond imagination. Individual
deeds of passion and lust are possible, indeed,
in all armies, though the degree to which they
have prevailed in the German army is, by
the judgment of the civilised world outside
Germany, unprecedented in modern history.
But the instances of long-drawn-out, cold-
blooded, unrelenting cruelty, of which the
German conduct of the war is full, fill one after
a while with a shuddering sense of something
wholly vile, and wholly unsuspected, which
Europe has been sheltering, unawares, in its
midst. The horror has now thrown off the
trappings and disguise of modern civilisation,
and we see it and recoil. We feel that we are
terribly right in speaking of the Germans as
barbarians ; that, for all their science and
their organisation, they have nothing really
in common with the Graeco-Latin and Chris-
tian civilisation on which this old Europe is
based. We have thought of them, in former
days, — how strange to look back upon it ! —
as brothers and co-workers in the human cause.
But the men who have made and are sustain-
ing this war, together with the men, civil and
166 VAREDDES [No. 8
military, who have breathed its present spirit
into the German Army, are really moral
outlaws, acknowledging no authority but their
own arrogant and cruel wuUs, impervious to
the moral ideals and restraints that govern
other nations, and betraying again and again,
under the test of circumstance, the traits of
the savage and the brute.
And as one says these things, one could
almost laugh at them ! — so strong is still the
memory of what one used to feel towards the
poetic, the thinking, the artistic Germany of
the past. But that Germany was a mere
blind, hiding the real Germany.
Listen, at least, to what this old village of
the Ile-de-France knows of Germany.
With the early days of September 1914,
there was a lamentable exodus from all this
district. Long Hues of fugitives making for
safety and the south, carts filled with house-
hold stuff and carrying the women and chil-
dren, herds of cattle and sheep, crowded the
roads. The Germans were coming, and the
terror of Belgium and 'the Ardennes had
spread to these French peasants of the centre.
On September 1st, the post-mistress of
Vareddes received orders to leave the village,
No. 8] MURDERS AT VAREDDES 167
after destroying the telephone and telegraphic
connections. The news came late, but panic
spread like wildfire. All the night, Vareddes
was packing and going. Of 800 inhabitants only
a hundred remained, thirty of them old men.
One of the emigrants did not get far from
home. He was a man of seventy, Louis Denet
by name. He left Vareddes with his wife, in
a farm-cart, driving a cow with them. They
went a day's journey, and put up for a few
days at the farm of a friend named Roger. On
Sunday the 6th, in the morning, four Germans
arrived at the farm. They went away and
came back again in the afternoon. They called
all the inmates of the farm out into the yard.
Denet and Roger appeared. " You were three
men this morning, now you are only two ! " said
one of the Germans. And inamediately they
took the two old men a little distance away,
and shot them both, within half a mile of the
farm. The body of Roger was found by his
wife the day after ; that of Denet was not dis-
covered for some time. Nobody has any idea
to this day why those men were shot. It is
worth while to try and reaHse the scene — the
terror-stricken old men dragged away by their
murderers— the wives left behind, no doubt
168 VON KLUCK'S APPROACH [No. 8
under a guard — the sound of the distant
shots — the broken hearts of the widow and
the orphan.
But that was a mere prelude.
On Friday, September 4th, a large detach-
ment of Von Kluck's army invaded Vareddes,
coming from Barcy, which lies to the west.
It was no doubt moving towards the Marne
on that flank march which was Von Kluck's
undoing. The troops left the village on Satur-
day the 5th, but only to make a hurried
return that same evening. Von Kluck was
already aware of his danger, and was rapidly
recalhng troops to meet the advance of
Maunoury. Meanwhile the French Sixth
Army was pressing on from the west, and from
the 6th to the 9th there was fierce fighting in
and round Vareddes. There were German
batteries behind the Presbytere, and the
church had become a hospital. The old Cure,
the Abbe Fossin, at the age of seventy-eight,
spent himself in devoted service to the
wounded Germans who filled it. There were
other dressing stations near by. The Mairie,
and the school, were full of wounded, of whom
there were probably some hundreds in the
village. Only 135 dead were buried in the
No. 8] THE TURN OF THE TIDE 169
neighbourhood ; the Germans carried ofi the
others in great lorries filled with corpses.
By Monday the 7th, although they were
still to hold the village till the 9th, the Ger-
mans knew they were beaten. The rage of
the great defeat, of the incredible disappoint-
ment, was on them. Only a week before, they
had passed through the same country-side
crying " Nach Paris ! " and pohshing up
buttons, belts, rifles, accoutrements generally,
so as to enter the French capital in grande
tenue. For whatever might have been the
real plans of the German General Staff, the
rank and file, as they came south from Creil
and Nanteuil, beheved themselves only a few
hours from the Boulevards, from the city of
pleasure and spoil.
What had happened ? The common cry
of men so sharply foiled went up. " Nous
sommes trahis ! '* The German troops in
Vareddes, foreseeing immediate withdrawal,
and surrounded by their own dead and dying,
must somehow avenge themselves, on some
one. " Hostages ! The village has played us
false ! The Cure has been signalhng from the
church. We are in a nest of spies ! "
So on the evening of the 7th, the old Cure,
170 THE OLD CURE [No. 8
who had spent his day in the church, doing
what he could for the wounded, and was worn
out, had just gone to bed when there was loud
knocking at his door. He was dragged out
of bed, and told that he was charged with
making signals to the French Army from his
church tower, and so causing the defeat of the
Germans.
He pointed out that he was physically
incapable of climbing the tower, that any
wounded German of whom the church was full
could have seen him doing it, had the absurd
charge been true. He reminded them that he
had spent his whole time in nursing their men.
No use ! He is struck, hustled, spat upon,
and dragged ofi to the Mairie. There he
passed the night sitting on a hamper, and in
the morning some one remembers to have seen
him there, his rosary in his hand.
In one of the local accounts there is a touch-
ing photograph, taken, of course, before the
war, of the Cure among the boys of the
village. A mild reserved face, with something
of the child in it ; the face of a man who had
had a gentle experience of life, and might
surely hope for a gentle death.
Altogether some fourteen hostages, all but
No. 8] GERMAN BRUTALITIES 171
two over sixty years of age, and several over
seventy, were taken during the evening and
night. They ask why. The answer is, " The
Germans have been betrayed ! '' One man is
arrested because he had said to a German
who was boasting that the German Army
would be in Paris in two days — " All right ! —
but you're not there yet ! " Another, because
he had been seen going backwards and for-
wards to a wood, in which it appeared he had
hidden two horses whom he had been trying
to feed. One old man of seventy-nine could
only walk to the yard in which the others
were gathered by the help of his wife's arm.
When they arrived there a soldier separated
them so roughly that the wife fell.
Imagine the horror of the September night !
— the terror of the women who, in the general
exodus of the young and strong, had stayed
behind with their husbands, the old men
who could not be persuaded to leave the farms
and fields in which they had spent their lives.
" What harm can they do to us — old people ? "
No doubt that had been the instinctive feehng
among those who had remained to face the
invasion.
But the Germans were not content without
172 TORTURERS [No. 8
wreaking the instinct — which is the savage
instinct — to break and crush and ill-treat
something which has thwarted you, on the
women of Vareddes also. They gathered
them out of the farmyard to which they had
come, in the hopes of being allowed to stay
with the men, and shut them up in a room of
the farm. And there, with fixed bayonets, the
soldiers amused themselves with terrifjang
these trembling creatures during a great part
of the night. They made them all kneel down,
facing a file of soldiers, and the women
thought their last hour had come. One was
seventy-seven years old, three sixty-seven,
the two others just under sixty. The eldest,
Madame Barthelemy, said to the others — " We
are going to die. Make your ' contrition ' if
you can.'' (The Town Librarianof Meaux, from
whose account I take these facts, heard these
details from the lips of poor Madame Barthe-
lemy herself.) The cruel scene shapes itself as
we think of it — the half-lit room — the row of
kneeling and weeping women, the grinning
soldiers, bayonet in hand, and the old men
waiting in the yard outside.
But with the morning, the French mit-
railleuses are heard. The soldiers disappear.
No. 8] THE CURE'S SUFFERINGS 173
The poor old women are free ; they are able
to leave tlieir prison.
But tlieir husbands are gone — carried oi!
as hostages by the Germans. There were
nineteen hostages in all. Three of them were
taken off in a north-westerly direction, and
found some German officers quartered in a
chateau, who, after a short interrogation,
released them. Of the other sixteen, fifteen
were old men, and the sixteenth a child. The
Cure is with them, and finds great difficulty,
owing to his age, the exhaustion of the night,
and lack of food, in keeping up with the
column. It was now Thursday the 10th, the
day following that on which, as is generally
believed, the Kaiser signed the order for the
general retreat of the German armies in France.
But the hostages are told that the French
Army has been repulsed, and the Germans
will be in Paris directly.
At last the poor Cure could wallv no farther.
He gave his watch to a companion. " Give
it to my family when you can. I am sure
they mean to shoot me.'' Then he dropped
exhausted. The Germans hailed a passing
vehicle, and made him and another old man,
who had fallen out, follow in it. Presently
174 " HE IS A SPY " [No. 8
they arrive at Lizy-sur-Ourcq, through which
thousands of German troops are now passing,
bound not for Paris, but for Soissons and the
Aisne, and in the blackest of tempers. Here,
after twenty-four more hours of suffering and
starvation, the Cure is brought before a court-
martial of German officers sitting in a barn.
He is once more charged with signalling from
the church to the French Army. He again
denies the charge, and reminds his judges of
what he had done for the German wounded,
to whose gratitude he appeals. Then four
German soldiers give some sort of evidence,
founded either on malice or mistake. There
are no witnesses for the defence, no further
inquiry. The president of the court-martial
says, in bad French, to the other hostages
who stand by : " The Cure has Hed — he is a
spy — il sera juge."
What did he mean — and what happened
afterwards ? The French witnesses of the
scene who survived understood the officer's
words to mean that the Cure would be shot.
With tears, they bade him farewell, as he
sat crouched in a corner of the barn guarded
by two German soldiers. He was never seen
again by French eyes ; and the probability is
No. 8] A WEARY MARCH 175
that he was shot immediately after the scene
in the barn.
Then the miserable march of the other old
men began again. They are dragged along in
the wake of the retreating Germans. The day
is very hot, the roads are crowded with troops
and lorries. They are hustled and hurried,
and their feeble strength is rapidly exhausted.
The older ones beg that they may be left to
die ; the younger help them as much as they
can. When anyone falls out, he is kicked and
beaten till he gets up again. And all the time
the passing troops mock and insult them.
At last, near Coulombs, after a march of two
hours and a half, a man of seventy-three,
called Jourdaine, falls. His guards rush upon
him, with blows and kicks. In vain. He has
no strength to rise, and his murderers finish
him with a ball in the head and one in the
side, and bury him hastily in a field a few
metres off.
The weary march goes on all day. W^hen it
ends, another old man — seventy-nine years
old—" le pere MilUardet "—can do no more.
The next morning he staggered to his feet at
the order to move, but fell almost immediately.
Then a soldier with the utmost coolness sent
176 OUTRAGES [No. 8
his bayonet through the heart of the help-
less creature. Another falls on the road a
httle farther north — then another — and
another. All are killed, as they he.
The poor Maire, Lievin, struggles on as long
as he can. Two other prisoners support him
on either side. But he has a weak heart —
his face is purple — he can hardly breathe.
Again and again he falls, only to be brutally
pulled up, the Germans shouting with laughter
at the old man's misery. (This comes from the
testimony of the survivors.) Then he, too,
falls for the last time. Two soldiers take him
into the cemetery of Chouy. Lievin under-
stands, and patiently takes out his handker-
chief and bandages his own eyes. It takes
three balls to kill him.
Another hostage, a little farther on, who
had also fallen was beaten to death before the
eyes of the others.
The following day, after having suffered
every kind of insult and privation, the
wretched remnant of the civihan prisoners
reached Soissons, and were dispatched to Ger-
many, bound for the concentration camp at
Erfurt.
Eight of them, poor souls ! reached Ger-
No. 8] VICTIMS 177
many, where two of them died. At last, in
January 1915, four of them were returned to
France through Switzerland. They reached
Schaffhausen with a number of other mpa-
tries, in early February, to find there the
boundless pity with which the Swiss know so
well how to surround the frail and tortured
sufiierers of this war. In a few weeks more,
they were again at home, among the old farms
and woods of the Ile-de-France. " They are
now in peace," says the Meaux Librarian —
" among those who love them, and whose
affection tries, day by day, to soften for them
the cruel memory of their calvary and their
exile.''
A monument to the memory of the murdered
hostages is to be erected in the village market-
place, and a plaque has been let into the wall
of the farm where the old men and the women
passed their first night of agony.
• • • • •
What is the moral of this stoiy 1 I have
chosen it to illustrate again the historic words
which should be, I think — and we know that
what is in our hearts is in your hearts also ! —
the special watchword of the Alhes and of
America, in these present days, when the Ger-
13
178 REPARATION [No. 8
man strength may collapse at any moment,
and the problems of peace negotiations may be
upon us before we know.
Befa ration — Restitution — Guarantees !
The story of Vareddes, like that of Senlis,
is not among the vilest — by a long, long way
— of those which have steeped the name of
Germany in eternal infamy during this war.
The tale of Gerbeviller — which I shall take for
my third instance — as I heard it from the lips
of eye-witnesses, plunges us in deeper depths
of horror ; and the pages of the Bryce report
are full of incidents beside which that of
Vareddes looks almost colourless.
All the same, let us insist again that no
Army of the AlHes, or of America, or of any