all testify to this spirit of united serv-
ice and camaraderie among the sol-
diers of the republic. Discipline of the
highest order existed in the French
army, but it was a discipline main-
tained by the thought of the common
end, and endowed with esteem and
mutual affection. A great army filled
with the spirit of democracy was at
one with itself because of its extra-
ordinary comradeship. This feeling
due to "the democratic training re-
ceived during the years of service is
well expressed in the words of two
poilus in the trenches one Christmas
night. "A year ago I was supping at
the Cafe de Paris." "I know I was
the runner who fetched your car, old
man."
Between officers and men there is
no division like that created by Prus-
sian military caste. The French officer
at his best is both leader and comrade.
His men are "mes enfants." Barr6s
tells the story of a correspondent whose
cold slumbers in an empty compart-
ment were interrupted at an eastern
station by the entry of a stumbling fig-
ure. It was dark and only by the
palish glimmer of the white dressings
and sling did his sleep-logged senses '
tell him that here was a seriously
wounded man, who, however, brusquely
refused all offers of help. Dawn re-
vealed a middle-aged officer whose
bruised and fevered face, bootless feet,
and many dressings betokened serious
injuries. By degrees the soldier's
brusqueness softened a little, and as
the train worked its slow way north
he told his story. "This" had hap-
pened five days ago five charges of
grape-shot as he was leading his chil-
dren. Unconscious, he had been put in
an ambulance and taken to Rheims,
and from thence without knowing why
to Rennes. Four days and four nights
of wounds and fever had not con-
quered him. As soon as he could get
upon his feet, one thought took posses-
sion of him. Where were his children?
All this while under fire... and then
there was a bugler who had sounded
506
the charge at a critical moment. . .you
should have seen the effect. He must
get back to them. What were they
doing without him? And so he had
escaped from the hospital bootless
and in his stockinged feet. The train
slackened and drew up some miles from
X , and an agonizing delay
set in. After two hours of it the lieuten-
ant asked the correspondent to get out
and walk with him to X , and
the latter consented. The motion
shook the wounded man's shattered
shoulder and augmented his fever but
he at last gained X . There
was no train for Y ! Well, he
had his wounds dressed and set off to
find an automobile, and succeeded in
finding a seat in one that was going
part way. He would arrange the
rest
TNCIDENTS OF DEVOTION AND FORTITUDE.
And there are countless stories of
the other side. Instance after instance
of touching devotion from man to offi-
cer. There is the story of the trooper
shot through both legs and lying in an
open space who saw his officer fall
before machine-gun fire but a few
yards nearer the enemy's line. When
he could speak he called out to the offi-
cer and told him the nature of his
wound, and the officer, himself in
agony, believing him faint-hearted,
counseled fortitude. Much distressed,
the wounded poilu explained that he
only spoke of his wounds so that his
officer might understand how it was
that he left him lying there!
If France fought united, she fought
also with the exaltation of one who
glories in the moral beauty of the cause
she champions. Read the letters from
the trenches, from boys of twenty, from
men of forty-five, they count all lost
that is not France. "Si vous ouvrez
cette lettre, c'est que je ne serai plus
et que je serai mort de la plus belle
mort. Ne me pleurez pas trop: ma
fin est enviable entre toutes . . Pensez
de moi par moments comme d'un de
ceux qui ont donne leur sang que la
France vive, et qui sont morts joy-
eusement." And again "All our sacri-
fice will be of sweet savor if it leads to>
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
a really glorious victory and brings
more light to human souls." The
same spirit is reflected in the women,
the wives and mothers and sisters.
Before a hospital bed on which lay her
son's dead body a father was weeping,
the mother, a peasant woman, took
his hand. " We must have courage, my
man. You can see how much our boy
had." And a mother writing to an
officer to thank him for his letter says,
"The anniversary of my boy's death is
both cruel and sweet; cruel because it
recalls a day when I loved him without
a thought of the trial that his valor
would bring me; sweet because I can-
not think of the quick ending of this
pure young life without supreme joy.
Thank you for all that you tell me of
my little soldier; that his glorious
death may contribute to the victory
of our France is my constant prayer."
T)ASSIONATE DEVOTION TO THE VERY
1 SOIL OF FRANCE.
France fought with undying and
passionate devotion to the soil of
France: nowhere is this feeling more
apparent than in the glow which blazed
in the hearts of the young intellectual
officers at the beginning of the war.
Jean Allard-Meeus was only twenty-
one and a half when he was killed at
Pierrepont. He had shared in the oath
of the fete du Triomphe at St. Cyr, and
war had transformed a brilliant scholar
into the sternest of soldiers. His poem
" Demain" which begins, "Soldats de
notre illustre race," expresses the patri-
otic passion of France, and his "Plus
haul toujours" is the vivid portrayal
of the flight, ecstasy, and death of a
young airman. Paul Lintier was
another of these young officers. Struck
by a shell on the Lorraine frontier in
his twenty-third year, he was a prose
writer of the first class whose wonder-
ful book "Ma Piece" was written
night after night upon his knee in
seven feverish weeks. On March 26,
1917, the Societe des Gens de Lettres
met in solemn assembly to commem-
orate the authors who had died during
the war, and as name followed name the
single phrase "Mort au champs d'hon-
neur" fell upon the pause.
Let us recall one more proof that the
spirit of Roland and Joan lives still
in modern France. The Germans had
invaded a trench and overcome all re-
sistance; the French soldiers all had
fallen. Suddenly from out the heap
of wounded and dead one man arose
and seized a sack of grenades that lay
beside him. "Let the dead arise," he
cried. Then the other men awoke
from their death trance and fought the
foe and drove him from his capture.
Is not the word "Verdun" honored
currency in the country of the brave
and chivalrous?
'-pHE WOMEN OF FRANCE IN THE WAR.
"Jusqu'au bout" was the motto of
the women of France, as of the men.
No nation can fight a long and success-
ful war without the support of its
women, and Frenchmen in their long
record as a military race have had full-
est proof of this. In 1870 as in 1429,
in 1793 as in 1914 French heroism and
endurance was as much the rule among
the women as among the men. But the
last great war has taken place in an
age where woman has proved by care-
ful training of body and of mind that
all paths are open to her. In 1870
French women, willing as they were,
could not. even had the need been as
great, have taken the places of the
men called to the colors. Their train-
ing did not admit of it, public opinion
would have prevented it. In the Great
War the so-called feminist movement
has won a fresh and glorious charter of
liberty.
One can divide their service into
four distinct categories, although in
several instances a woman has served
in double and triple capacity. There
are those women, whose destiny set
them in the zone of war and exposed
them to an enemy whose ferocity re-
cognized no distinction of age or sex.
In some cases these women by their
bravery and quick wit have cost the
enemy important delay as in the case
of Marcelle Semer who opened the
draw-bridge across the Somme in the
face of the Germans and flung the key
of the bridge into the canal, thereby
causing them twenty-four hours' delay.
Some have aided their countrymen to
507
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
escape, or under bombardment have
fearlessly continued their work as tele-
phone-operator, instructress or nurse.
Others in time of need have assumed
civic and intermediary duties and have
represented a populace whose maire
or magistrate was missing. Others
again in this war-scourged region have
succored the wounded and the dying
bardment and during occupation, on
the fields of France, the cliffs of the
Dardanelles, at Saloniki, in Mudros
and in Corfu.
By the opening months of 1917 these
three societies had raised their number
of hospitals to over 1500, their beds to
115,000 and their trained nurses to
43,100. Besides the Red Cross Hos-
CIVILIANS OF ST. QUENTIN TRANSPORTED
In France and in Belgium the German system of forced labor and deportations was attended with callousness,
brutality and horror. At first only the male population was carried off, then young women and girls over fourteen
years of age were taken to Germany. Only the briefest time was allowed for preparations for departure.
of their own and of the enemy also
comforted little children and protected
the homeless ones.
^HE WORK OF THE VARIOUS SOCIETIES.
Then there is the class, and it is per-
haps the largest, of those women who
have cared for the blinded, mutilated,
convalescent, tubercular, civil refugee,
prisoner, orphaned and widowed of the
war; who have taken as their ap-
pointed function in the struggle the
amelioration, healing, and closing of
the awful scars which war inflicts. The
French Red Cross composed of three
societies, "la Societe de Secours aux
Blesses Militaires," " I' Union des Fem-
mes de France" and " I' Association des
Dames Francises, " worked at the front
and in the rear, in hospital stations,
canteens, and workshops, under bom-
50& .
pitals, many others of public and pri-
vate enterprise have been sanctioned
by the government so that France had
perhaps 8,000 such institutions of her
own. Nevertheless, the beds in these
were reserved for men suffering from
severe wounds and illnesses. For the
eclope, or man who was not wounded
or seriously ill but run down and in
dire need of a brief rest, no suitable
place was provided. Men whose health
gave way temporarily were thus in the
early months of the war miserably
quartered behind the lines or on the
outskirts of Paris, in barns, or disused
factories, thousands indeed without
shelter of any kind. Here on the poor-
est beds, and with scanty and coarse
food how could they .regain their physi-
cal fitness and tone?' Some of them
fell prey to the incipient maladies from
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
which they were suffering, many of
them never returned to the trenches
again. In this miserable state of af-
fairs a French priest intervened, sent
stores, sent visitors. Within two years
a hundred and fifty Eclope Depots
grew up in France, all of them well-
built shelters, comfortably furnished,
been so active in France and of which
the celebrated Ecole de Joffre at Lyons
is at once the pioneer and model.
Among the blessed company of
women who have sought to heal the
ravages of war, are those who have
exerted themselves to organize work
and means of support for those who had
THE INVADERS SOMETIMES MOVED TO PITY
In strange contrast to German harshness, as practised against women and children on the march towards Paris,
is the incident shown above where enemy soldiers are distributing portions of their rations to keep French children
from starving. The German troops were generally well-fed, and could easily spare a part of their allowance.
Picture, H. Ruschin
sanitarily arranged, offering good food,
some means of recreation, and condi-
tions for convalescence. This was
largely the work of a young French
woman, Mile. Javal, who by dint of
hard work and perseverance succeeded
in inaugurating in November, 1914, the
great organization of "L Assistance
aux Depots d'clopes, Petits Blesses et
Petits Malades, et aux Cantonments de
Repos"
THE REHABILITATION OF THE CRIPPLED
SOLDIERS.
In direct connection with the hos-
pitals and of enormous value to the
future, must be mentioned the Schools
for Re-education of Crippled Soldiers,
which from quite early in 1914 have
been left stranded, either by the tide
of invasion or by the paralysis of in-
dustrial conditions. In Paris, as in
other cities of the province in the early
months of the war, thousands of little
shops were closed and it seemed im-
possible to prevent their employees
from starving. Into this gap came the
" ouvroir" or workshop organized by
patriotic women where necessary arti-
cles for the men in the trenches were
made, and which served the double
purpose of employing the needy and
arming the fighting man. In a later
day, as need arose, these ouvroirs were
much amplified and women were taught
all manner of trades and professions
from cooking to market gardening.
509
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
Societies of mushroom growth and
heaven-born pity for caring for the
fatherless and widowed, the aged and
the impotent, sprang up on all sides.
Nor let us forget those organizations
whose magnificent effort robbed
trenches and billets of many horrors by
the loving thought and substantial re-
freshment of their "comfort parcels"
or wayside canteens. A ministering
band of women trod the highway of
war, like the Samaritan of old, binding
up the wayfarers' wounds and pouring
in oil and wine.
THE WOMEN WHO TOOK THE PLACES OF
MEN.
There is a third class in this band of
heroines: those who have taken men's
places in forge and foundry, factory
and munition plant, field and vineyard,
ship-building yard and office. Did
Paris starve when after the second
week in August all men between the
ages of 17 and 48 were called to the
colors? Had you been in the suburbs
the following morning and every morn-
ing after mobilization, you could have
seen the same big trucks and horses go
by carrying in to the city the same
abundant field and garden produce.
True, the drivers' seats were occupied
by women in coifs and handkerchiefs,
the wives and sisters and sweethearts
of the men of yesterday, who had or-
ganized as automatically as their men-
folk. In the provinces, among the
vineyards in Champagne or in the
South, who is it who gathered the har-
vest and sowed the seed for this and
every war-year? Who baked the
bread and fed the cattle and reaped
the corn that France might eat and not
die? Who built the furnace and filled
the forge, and turned out artillery and
munitions that the army might fight
and win in this crusade against aggres-
sion and tyranny?
Lastly, there are those who served in
silence, suffered separation and loneli-
ness, uncertainty and crushing bereave-
ment, exile and poverty with a simple
courage that yet was fine enough to
have a smile for the wounded, a tear
for another's woe, a heart uplifted with
ardor for France, and an unconquer-
able will that would not accept defeat.
Said a peasant woman of Poitou whose
two sons and son-in-law were in the
trenches, "There are some women in
our village who are praying that their
sons may be spared, but I cannot do
that for it would seem to me in so doing
that I should be praying for others to
be killed!" Near Verdun gendarmes
surprised an old woman crouching on a
fresh grave and questioned her. "I
have come from Rochelle, " she said
"five of my sons have already died in
this war and I have come here where
the sixth and last is buried to weep for
him." Overcome by the tragic gran-
deur of the spectacle the gendarmes
saluted. The old woman arose, trem-
bling and sobbing, and uttered a cry
"Vive la France quand meme. . ."
MURIEL BRAY
A Working Party Going Forward
CHAPTER XXXII
The Battle of the Somme I
THE FIRST STAGES OF THE GREAT BRITISH AND FRENCH
ASSAULT
HTHROUGH Picardy in northern
France flows the river Somme
with its little tributary, the Ancre,
coming from the northeast to join it
near Amiens. The furrow of the Ancre,
"which is a swift, clear chalk stream,
sometimes too deep and swift to
ford," is flanked by undulating ground,
broken by dry ravines a kind of ter-
rain which extends to and a little be-
yond the Somme. Ridges revealing
chalky soil separate the valleys; and on
the narrow plateaus topping the gently-
sloping ridges villages long have had
pleasant setting among orchards or
groves of large trees, with extensive
patches of woodland dotting the coun-
tryside around." The Somme meanders
with frequent curves and loops through
its broad valley, widening now and
then into swamps and rush-grown
stretches; bordered here and there by
peat-mosses; and accompanied, wher-
ever its own stream is not navigable, by
a canal. The country further south is
called the Santerre. Beyond Assevil-
lers and Estrees, seated in the broadest
loop of the river, it flattens out into a
plain.
FAIR PICARDY THROUGH WHICH THE
SOMME FLOWS.
The shining acres of Picardy, by
nature fertile and radiant, fair with
grain-fields and beet-root-fields, gay
with poppies and cornflowers and mus-
tard blossoms, seem designed for peace
and quiet rural beauty. "It is a sweet
and pleasant country," wrote Philip
Gibbs on the first of July, 1916, at the
outbreak of one of the most terrible
and devastating battles of the world's
history, one in which "the flower of
the manhood of three nations was
locked in a death grapple."
Already in that pleasant, smiling
land, the tale of battle was an old
familiar one, in whose chapters Prank-
ish warriors, Norse rovers, determined
Burgundian soldiers, sturdy English
bowmen, and steel-clad French knights
on armored horses, fought and fell or
marched under victorious banners
across those hills and valleys. Out of
the heart of Picardy had arisen broader
conflicts, involving the far parts of
the earth; for Amiens had been the
home of Peter the Hermit, and Noyon,
the birthplace of John Calvin. Many
a lad had grown to manhood near the
trout-pools of the Ancre brook and
much water had run under the bridges
of the Somme, before, in the nineteenth
century, war had again rolled across
the fields of northern France. This,
too, had passed and the earth had
bloomed again.
'T'HE GREAT TRENCHES THROUGH THE
1 CHALKY SOIL.
But the scars of the warfare that
began its ravages in 1914 were deeper
5M.
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
and more disfiguring than Europe had
ever suffered before. The long jagged
slash falling across the West from the
North Sea to Switzerland cut through
Picardy, crossing both the Ancre and
the Somme. There, after the first
breathless struggle of the rival armies
in their sweep toward the sea, they had
dug themselves in securely, transform-
ing towns and wooded plantations
into formidable fortifications. Farther
north, around Ypres, and farther
south, near Soissons and Verdun,
battles had raged with fearful intensity,
but this part of the front had been
comparatively quiet.
THE GERMANS BELIEVE THEIR POSITIONS
IMPREGNABLE.
For more than a year and a half the
time had been spent in extensive
preparation for a possible future test
of the endurance and fighting strength
of two great forces. On the one side,
the German lines were established with
intricate and elaborate detail until
they were deemed impregnable. Be-
hind the imposing first position, con-
structed with systems of trenches for
firing, support, and reserve troops, and
deep dugouts for protecting the men
and machine-guns against bombard-
ment, there was a second position of
almost equal strength. Behind this,
again, third and fourth positions lay,
including various villages and clumps
of woodland. Trenches and dugouts
were driven far down below the sur-
face, in a soil that "cut like cheese and
hardened like brick in dry weather."
They were connected by tunnels, pro-
vided with manholes, lined with tim-
ber, approached by well-built wooden
stairways; and in some of the dug-
outs, thirty feet or more below ground,
the luxuries of electric lighting, wall-
paper, cretonnes, and pictures were
not wanting. Deep cellars in village
houses became strongholds and shelters
for resistance in later combats. In the
woods, matted underbrush was inter-
twined with thick barbed wire, until
the tangle appeared utterly impenetra-
ble around the network of trenches it
protected. Without exaggeration one
could say, "The great German salient
which curves around from Gomme-
512
court to Fricourt is like a chain of
mediaeval fortresses connected by
earthworks and tunnels." The arteries
that furnished supplies and material of
all sorts to the complicated structure
were the railways passing through
St. Quentin, Cambrai, La Fere and
Laon.
THE BRITISH PREPARE TO BLAST THEIR
WAY THROUGH.
While the German Command were
thus building what they considered an
immovable wall to stand in defiance
against all assault, the Allied leaders
were bending their thoughts and en-
ergies toward the destruction of the
wall. To make the effort adequate
required months of labor, planning,
and training. In the spring of 1916
the British area had been extended to
include the whole front between Ypres
and the Somme, but the New Army
was not yet ready to undertake a great
military project. It was still in a state
of preparation, drilling and pulling into
form for a supreme effort. The mate-
rial was of the best England's choice
young manhood, intelligent, ready,
eager to give themselves to the work
and discipline of army life, or to the
ultimate sacrifice in battle, for the
great end in view. For them, in the
months of waiting, the front was a
training-camp. Meanwhile, the manu-
facture of war material in England was
being pushed to the utmost. Guns of
all sizes, trench-mortars, grenades were
produced in a profusion unheard-of
before. At the bases vast reserve stores
of munitions were piled up and then
sent forward; for the supply required
must be more than ten times as great
as in any former campaign. With the
increase in the calibre of the weapons
and the weight of ammunition, the
demands made upon lines of com-
munication were broadened and in-
tensified. Railways, tramways, sidings
and platforms were built behind the
lines. It was necessary, too, to lay as
many as one hundred and twenty miles
of water mains and install wells
and pumping stations. As experence
brought greater understanding of the
needs, trenches were multiplied and
improved, and dugttuts were prepared
HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR
to serve as storehouses, dressing sta-
tions and shelters. Gun emplacements
were made ready and posts for observa-
tion carefully screened and disguised.
THE BRITISH AND FRENCH IN ENTIRE
ACCORD.
As the battle of Verdun progressed,
during the spring and summer, French
and British leaders were working in
accord. It was with the approval of
General Joffre that the British lines
which went on along the whole front,
our men showed always the greatest
pluck; but it was horrible warfare, a
warfare of gas attacks and midnight
raids and mining all dreadful forms
of fighting."
THE SITUATION AT VERDUN DEMANDS
AN OFFENSIVE.
Sir Douglas Haig felt it to be the
part of wisdom to postpone an im-
portant attack until his forces were
THE GERMANS EMPLOYED IN DIGGING A WELL
The imperative need for water, wherever an army might be, furnished one of the great problems of the war. Wells
were dug behind the lines, and new ones constructed when the lines shifted. Here is one in process of building,
the shaft partly sunk and crossbeams prepared for a roof. When leaving a position, the Germans were likely to
poison the water in their wells to impede the enemy's advance.
remained undemonstrative, except for
artillery activities, patrol raids in
quest of information, and minor en-
gagements in the way of trench and
crater fighting, which held the atten-
tion of parts of the enemy forces. But,
in adding the region around Arras to
their own front, the British had been
able to release the French Tenth Army,
which had been stationed there.
"It would be idle to pretend that
the events of the spring and early
summer of 1916 were on the whole ex-
hilarating," writes Mr. H. Perry Robin-
son. "In the spluttering activities
well prepared to make it effectual.
However, the long, severe strain of
Verdun at last called for a strong stroke
to divert the enemy from his con-
centration there. The Somme area
had already been determined upon as
the scene of the next great effort. It