Front matter (continued 2)

Joffre occupied himself with his accustomed method to the work of preparing the Government victory. Some one has recalled a conversation which he had with Joffre at this time. The General sits in an armchair looking steadily into space. His visitor insists on the impossibility of increasing the annual contingents to the French Army. But, he says persuasively, you can supplement the number by enrolling the black man. "The black man," repeats Joffre, and his mind goes back, no doubt, to his colonial days. He is again building the railway from Kayes to Bafoulabé, he is again on the Niger at Goundam, where they brought him news of Bonnier's massacre with his eleven officers and sixty-four tirailleurs. And he asks suddenly: "But what sacred fire will animate them? Will they ever equal our own soldiers defending, field by field, their own soil?" Joffre, indeed, had realised the impotency of numbers unless animated by the spirit of a great cause. He would not hear of reinforcing the French regiments by those newly acquired citizens of France in Central Africa. "No, no," he said; "the Three-Years Law is a vital question; do not give the enemies of the measure the pretext they seek."

The Generalissimo went to the Chamber, to act, with General Pau, as Government Commissioner during the progress of the great debate. I imagine that the experience was more painful to him than first facing fire in a Paris fort in 1870. For the Socialist opponents of the Bill heckled the Commissioners, challenging not merely their arguments but also their figures. The temptation was strong upon Joffre at times to retort angrily upon the obstructionists, but he kept his temper and a cold, even tone of courtesy. In his rare interventions he spoke briefly and directly to the point, figures in hand. He maintained throughout an impassive attitude, and looked a formidable figure as he stood resolutely to his guns dominating the wilderness of talk. Even in the lobbies of the Chamber, in the entr'actes of the debate, he did not unbend from his attitude of reserve, which, though it angered the obstructionists, impressed them in spite of themselves. Here was the man who could keep his head—the tête froide demanded by Napoleon as the first essential of a battle-chief. Pau, on the other hand, was much less calm and was visibly vexed at the shameless opposition. The fingers of his whole arm (for he had lost the other in the War of '70) clinched and unclinched as if anxious to meet the foe at close quarters.

Heartily glad to be allowed to return to his labours, Joffre gave himself more thoroughly than ever to the task of preparation. He occupied himself more particularly with the question of transports, and the perfection of the system that he worked out was revealed at the outbreak of the war, when the Commissariat proved an instant success. The trenches were well furnished with food. But alas! the medical service, which depended not upon the General Staff but upon the Ministry of War, proved in those early days a lamentable failure, for the war had caught it in a state of transition. The mobilisation, itself, impressed every observer by its order and regularity; Joffre revealed himself a master organiser. He was as prepared as man could be with the time and "material" to his hand. He had trained his body as well as his mind by a just balance between work and rest and physical exercise. He had the true soldier's horror of growing soft. As a captain he was out riding one day when he fell, owing to his horse stumbling, and was carried to bed with injuries to his head. He spent a few weeks of his convalescence at Rivesaltes. Fearing that his mental powers were affected by his accident, he set himself a hard problem in mathematics to test his brain. At the end of three days' silent work, he cried suddenly in broad Catalan from his bed to his brother, who was sharing the room with him, Soun geuri ("I am cured"). The anecdote shows his strenuous character and detestation of self-indulgence, and also that he is not quite as reserved by nature as his proud title of Le Taciturne would imply. Joffre's taciturnity, in fact, is self-imposed—part of his vigorous system of preparation. It comes, also, from the fact that he is not, naturally, an orator and knows it. Serious and meditative, his temper is not as severe as some suppose; his sternness in all questions of discipline has been forced upon him by duty. On the contrary, it pains him considerably to punish any one, and he suffers as much as his victims when he has to pass judgment upon serious faults and incapacity.

His daily habits made him physically hard, just as his studies equipped him for continuous intellectual labour. The morning gallop in the Bois on a strong horse, such as would have carried Du Guesclin in his wars against the English in the moving Middle Ages, and his walk to the Invalides or the Ministry of War from his distant home in Auteuil gave him the training he needed. On campaign, the motor-car replaced the healthier exercise, but even then he managed to take long solitary walks which reposed his mind and recreated his body. Even the most pressing matters are not allowed to interfere with his regular rest. To bed at nine and up at six is a rule maintained even in the heat of battle. He feels it to be necessary for the equipoise of his constitution. Joffre has the great Corsican's faculty of suspending his intellectual powers by a mere effort of the will and thus obtains complete repose of the cerebral system. His slumbers were childlike even after Charleroi; on his motor journeys, to points along the Front, he slept profoundly. This recuperative power is inestimable in a commander upon whom is cast a vast responsibility. He was often to be seen in his car behind the lines sunk in restorative sleep, his head inclined to an angle like some tired Atlas, worn with supporting the world upon his broad shoulders.

This man, eminently French in heart and mind, has consistently trained for his great position. Nothing has been too great a sacrifice to secure the victory. To railwaymen, who came to thank him for his praise of them in the mobilisation, he said: "I work for the salvation of France and then I shall disappear." Just as he knows the character of the men under him, he knows the value of his own services to France and throws both into the balance at moments when every gramme of weight is of consequence. He seems able to communicate his own confidence and calm to others—he, so uncommunicative with his low voice, his gentle and pensive manner. Evidently, in this preparation of the soul for combat he must shut out the distressing sights and sounds of battle. He must not think of devastated homesteads and ruined villages, he must not think of widowed women and weeping children, nor, as he goes along the line of yesterday's battle, must he think of what lies there, of the ghostly army that is still presenting arms to him. All these things he must banish from his mind, in the hardening processes of a great decision—this man who has never given a contrary order. And yet Joffre l'humain is as just a title as any which honour him, for it expresses his natural kindness and desire to save life. And a Socialist professor wrote, in an organ of his political faith, that if, after the war, a monument was erected to the great General, no mother need turn her head away from it. Joffre was touched when he read the phrase, for he is as proud of his humanity as of those purely military virtues, which have gone to his preparation.

CHAPTER VI

JOFFRE IN ACTION

Fléchier's panegyric of Turenne might have been written for Joffre, for it expresses his traits with a curious exactitude. Said the eloquent Bishop of Nîmes of the Marshal: "He was accustomed to fight without anger, to conquer without ambition, to triumph without vanity.... Bolder to act than speak, resolute and determined within when apparently embarrassed, there was never a man wiser or more prudent, who conducted war with greater order and judgment, who had more precautions and more resources, who was more active and more reserved, who better managed things for his ends and who showed more patience in allowing his enterprises to mature. He took measures that were almost infallible, divining not only what the enemy had done, but what he planned to do; he could be unsuccessful but he was never surprised. And, finally, this system was the source of many successful gains. It kept alive that union of the soldiers with their chief which renders an army invincible; and it spread amongst the troops a spirit of energy, of courage and confidence, which enables them to suffer everything."

There is no feature of this admirable portrait which does not fit the man. Joffre belongs to the same noble line and recommences, it has been said, the same victory on the same theatre with new forms. The history of Alsace will enshrine the two names, for both captains fought there with skill and courage. Turenne's defence of the province occurred almost two hundred years before its cession to Germany as part of the spoils of the victors. If, like other men, Joffre has faults he has also the qualities of greatness. He possesses strength of soul and knowledge formed by study and reflection, and is yet without pedantry. He does not allow himself to be guided by sudden flashes of inspiration, nor does he invent new methods; he prefers a solid system, founded on poise of mind and body and reinforced by calm and consistent attention. Thus he brings to his task a clear and even temperament and a profound and searching judgment. Possessing, perhaps, more character than personality, he has less imagination than clairvoyance and mental vigour, and the fact is an assurance to those he commands. He has the temper to succeed, and is a constant traveller by that road. Slowly his career has unfolded itself, and, at each stage, his nature has deepened and his love of country assumed a warmer tone.

Not a gay and debonair officer, born with title and fortune, he is the son of a working man, who has planned his own career and risen by merit to the top. I do not propose to catalogue Joffre's virtues, or to offer an estimate of his strategy—that must be left to other pens, equipped with the knowledge that staff histories bring, but his career possesses contours that, in their flowing curves, express the beauty and harmony of his life. A "masterpiece of will power and equilibrium," he has known how to inspire the devotion of his soldiers, and this is not the least of his claims. His ability to extract to the utmost the allegiance of those who serve and to make appeal to their secret sympathies is one of his most precious talents. His character, laborious and unobtrusive, free from ambition, solicitous for the common welfare, has given him an irresistible hold upon hearts, so that men's hands stretch out at the moment of action and he is surrounded and enveloped by an atmosphere of good-will incalculably precious for concerted action. And the women, who Joffre says, are sublime, give him stoically their husbands and sons, rivalling in courage those who lay down their lives. And Joffre, by a mysterious predestination, became the instrument of that sacrifice, limitless during the war. And he never called in vain, for, at his first demand, up rose valiant youth ready and joyous to die for the sweet sake of France. He seems to have the art of communicating that secret vibration of the soul, which moves crowds, without so much as opening his lips. It is a southern gift, belonging to the sunny lands where life runs richly and deeply. And for this reason, perhaps, the south has become the region of great generals. By their inventions and manoeuvres they express that species of brimming talent which turns some into poets and plastic workers, others into men of action, statesmen, or charmers of the public ear upon stage and platform. His even temper that takes no umbrage at rival reputations, that seeks in everything only the good of the cause and its strict utility, is the right armour for the martial figure. His silence, like his calm, has its positive and its negative side. It does not spring from lack of thought, but from seriousness and contemplation, just as the other is a proof not of insensibility, but of a considered system of control. Nor is his unshakable determination the sign of obstinacy or a purblind view, but a bright weapon forged in the recesses of the heart as a defence against adversity and as the ready instrument of achievement. Rarely has a man by such simple means, with no eloquence or artifice, with no advertisement, pose, or pretension, reached such a pinnacle of authority at once subtle and conceded and giving confidence to every one.

When President Poincaré presented the Generalissimo with the highest military reward—the Military Medal—he drew a living portrait of the man: "You have shown in the conduct of your armies qualities which were not for an instant belied, a spirit of organisation and order and method, of which the beneficent effects were extended from strategy to tactics; a cold and prudent wisdom, which knows how to guard against the unexpected; strength of mind that nothing can shake; a serenity of which the salutary example spreads abroad confidence and hope."

His popularity is as great a factor in his success as his science and military skill. It is born of acts of consideration which, in the opening phases of the war, came to the common knowledge and gave him an immense hold over his men. This or that journal recorded incidents which showed his kindness and humanity. He stayed awhile on his way to the Front to talk to a wounded "poilu," to ask him about his services, his health, and his family; and a poor woman, who had written to him begging that her son might be placed in a less exposed position, for she had lost three since the war began and this one was her sole support, received from Joffre the reply that she had done enough for the country and could have back the lad. A dozen instances of the sort, repeated here and there, created such an atmosphere of good-will that allegiance was created in advance, and Joffre swayed his army by sheer affection.

The soldier, in the light of Joffre's humanity, understood delay; he became reconciled to the monotony of trench life, for a forward move, he knew, would cost limitless lives. No, it was better for the war to drag on at this slow game of "nibbling" the enemy than to allow a generation of young lives to be offered to the insatiable god. France could not afford to be lavish with the blood of her children, since the future of the race was as paramount as the fortune of the war.

There were some who said that Joffre's cautiousness was overdone; that the war would have been quickened had he shown greater initiative and greater energy in seizing more sharply the occasions for an offensive. The elements for such a judgment are wanting to us all, but at least this parsimony of life earned him the sublime confidence and esteem of his troops, as completely as his fearlessness in disciplining those who failed in the higher command. The fact that he was impartial, that he was ready, if need be, to chastise his friends, produced a feeling of security invaluable in such a case. The whole country felt that here was a man for whom France had been looking, imbued with a sense of justice, who stood fast to principles, and feared not to apply them. And in valour, as Emerson has said, is always safety. When the army heard that a hundred and fifty Generals had been placed en disponibilité, because of failure in the field, then it realised that Joffre would brook no obstacle to his success.

In a famous interview which he gave to the editor of a provincial newspaper—a lifelong friend—Joffre declared that Charleroi was lost largely owing to the failure of the Generals engaged in it. It was not so much a question of effectives, he insisted, as inferiority in the higher command. "Long before the war, I saw that a great number of our Generals were fatigued; certain seemed unfitted for their duty and below its requirements. I had the intention to rejuvenate the higher command, but the war came too soon. And there were others in whom I had confidence who justified it, but imperfectly." Energy must go with knowledge and experience, he insisted. "Some were my best friends; but if I am fond of my friends, I am still fonder of France." The words have become linked with Joffre, and so closely represent him that they deserve to be graven on the monument that must one day be his when he has laid aside his sword.

It was this implacable search for efficiency that gave Joffre such pre-eminence in the army. Yet he is scarcely the type to appeal to the romantic side of popularity. He is rarely represented on horseback, he waves no sword, in figure he looks like a comfortable farmer rather than the traditional soldier; he spends long hours at an office table, and is suspected of moving armies through a telephone. But his appearance—sound, robust, suggestive of common sense—accords with his manner and his methods on campaign. His life in the midst of the terror and tumult of war is as simple as his routine at the Ministry in times of peace. There was no fuss or parade about Headquarters, even in the most acute phases of the conflict. Everything passed as calmly as if a simple game were being played with counters engaged, instead of thousands of human lives. Joffre directed the huge machine from a bare room furnished with a common deal table, a map or two, a black board, and three cane-bottomed chairs. The privileged visitor who saw him for a few moments found himself faced by a man with the dark undress uniform of the Engineers, with no decorations upon the jacket save the three stars on the sleeve which marked his rank. His conversation, unless the moment warranted expansion, was scarcely more than monosyllabic. A simple "yes," or "no," sufficed; why waste time, when moments were precious? And you went from the room conscious of having met a great personage, impressive by silence, masterful by the flash of keen but kindly blue eyes, from beneath protruding eyebrows. In a neighbouring room was a low murmur of voices on the telephone—officers talking to the Front or receiving news therefrom—and above their heads a mast carrying wires stretched into space tingling perpetually with live whispers of battles, and armies in movement.

This was the nerve centre of the army: a plain building, commodious, simple, effective, strictly utilitarian. Here a large force of officers and assistants did the bidding of the chief; here every morning, and again in the late afternoon, conferences were held between the Generalissimo and his staff. The inner council consisted of three brilliant specialists in strategy, gunnery, and transport. With these he concerted the common measures of the day, the preparation to deliver or parry attacks. When large and general problems were afoot others of the Etat-Major were called in; or, it may be that a meeting of representatives of the Allies, over which he presided with great authority, called for his wisdom and perspicacity. But each day passed with great regularity. Joffre lived in an unpretentious villa near his Headquarters, which changed according to the exigencies of his work. After his breakfast, over which he wasted no time, he went afoot to his office, saluted on the way by soldiers and civilians. To the former he would say: "Bon jour, mon brave!" to the latter, he would vary the address to: "Bon jour, mon ami!" Children are attracted by him, and raise their caps or curtsey to gain a smile. Sometimes a little boy preceded him shouting, to Joffre's infinite amusement: "Vive notre Général!" Thus greeted as a symbol of united France, as the redeemer of the country, Joffre passed into his Headquarters and was soon plunged in the problem that absorbed him every hour. Whilst he slept that calm sleep of his, wires had flashed with news of victory or defeat or with the common incidents of the Front. "If it is good news, it will keep until the morning," said Joffre when recommending his officers to respect his rest; "if the news is bad, you know what to do; everything has been prepared." In this way he gained a full night's repose, whatever the happenings between the parallel lines of combatants, or in the savage thrust of midnight raids and assaults. And he slept on calmly keeping fresh his energies for the morrow.

And now, when he enters his office, his first duty is to call for the reports of the night. These he studies closely, and they are then classified according to the armies to which they belong, in cardboard covers of different colours. Thereupon takes place the conference to which I have alluded; and then Joffre, having finished his morning's work at a time when most men are beginning it, goes out upon a long and solitary tramp through the countryside. He gives himself freely to his meditations, knowing that none of the inhabitants, whom he crosses on his path, will dare to disturb him. Either he thinks of a knotty question presented by some new move of the enemy, or his mind fashions one of those electrifying Orders of the Day which have become world-famous. "The time for looking back has ceased ... die rather than yield ground." That order, given on the eve of the battle of the Marne, has become as celebrated as Nelson's signal. Like most men who keep their thoughts rigidly to themselves, his occasional utterances are full of a strange force. And Joffre's Orders of the Day have reached a high order of eloquence and exalted passion.

The events of the day may call Joffre to the Front, whither he goes in a fast motor-car. On the way he will lunch at a village auberge and scandalises the proprietor, who has prepared, perhaps, a royal feast—if he knew in advance the honour to be done him—by the plainness of his fare. A simple omelette, a little fruit and cheese for a Generalissimo! Boniface is bouleversé! It is incredible! With pious industry a journalist compiled Joffre's menus during the battle of the Marne. They were the simple meals of any bourgeois; a plate of roast meat, preceded by soup or hors d'oeuvre and followed by vegetables and fruit, constituted the repast. Notwithstanding this sobriety, the General does not disdain the pleasures of the table; like every good Southerner, he is something of a gourmet, but on campaign he exercises a rigid self-restraint.

The same disregard for personal discomfort pervades all his arrangements. When the battle of the Marne raged, the proprietor of a château at Bar-le-Duc, whence Joffre directed operations, placed his house at the Commander-in-Chief's disposal. Joffre gave the finest rooms of the house, overlooking a calm and beautiful garden, to the officers of his suite; he himself, took a front room facing the Boulevard, and subject, of course, to the street noises; he thinks nothing of these things. His dinner at eight o'clock, after the day's work—for he resumes touch with the details of Headquarters towards the end of the afternoon—is just as simple as the lunch, and Joffre never varies from this strict régime. Thanks to its regularity, he is able to sustain, without physical change or faltering, the heavy burden of his rôle.

Joffre belongs to the African school of soldier, against whom is reproached an impetuous bravery without science or system, and only possible against an enemy untrained, ill-equipped, and ignorant of tactics. It was thought that men were unfitted to fight against a civilised enemy after their contact with the rude warriors of the desert and jungle; but by a curious coincidence, Joffre, Galliéni, Marchand, Gouraud, and Bailloud (Sarrail's lieutenant in his retreat through Macedonia), all learned their business of soldiering in the waste places of the earth, in overcoming the obstacles of rebellious Nature or the treachery of tribes. But Joffre has shown, as others have shown, that this contact with difficulties brings out the man and educates, strengthens, and vitalises him. Often the faults of others have been placed on the broad back of the Generalissimo. He has been accused of ignoring the German intentions to invade France through Belgium. What was his Intelligence Department doing that they did not know? But Joffre and his staff were well aware of the plan, and they knew also the different stages of the march. But what they had not reckoned upon was the rapid fall of the forts of Liège and Namur before the heavy guns of the invaders. That the Germans possessed siege artillery was a matter of common knowledge in France; but alas! to meet it was involved a large expenditure which Parliament would not sanction. That is the reason of it. "Cherchez la politique" is the answer to the shortage in heavy ordnance and in armoured aeroplanes.

It would take too long to tabulate the various attempts to extort money from Deputies for the national defence. But though the attenuated credits cannot be laid to the charge of the General Staff, it is true that experts were divided on the use that could be made of the heavy siege-pieces which the Germans thrust into battle. Such cumbersome weapons would prove white elephants said some in authority, and protested that they could not "hold" the infantry. However that may be, Joffre was faced with the difficulty that the Germans, instead of entering France by the eastern gate, where forts and "cover" combined to make the task supremely difficult, chose the easier road by Belgium and through the Luxembourg. Yet it was obviously impossible to tell by which route the enemy would enter. Joffre was forced to watch them all, to secure contact at each point, to feel the enemy, and then retreat towards his reserves. This, indeed, was the plan more or less successfully carried out. But the fact that Belgium was the main path of the invasion caused a rapid transposition of forces at the last moment, for the bulk of the army had to swing from the east to the north, and the process took time. Here, again, the Germans were at an advantage, for they had systematically built railways to the edge of the Luxembourg and in Alsace-Lorraine, so that their mobilisation was startlingly rapid.

Joffre was certainly unprepared for the speed with which the enemy brought into play his reserves. This was due to the cunning use which he made of his strategic railways, but also to a perfidious advance in the date of mobilisation. The army was already on a war footing when France had begun her work of assembling troops. And so Joffre was handicapped by many things, by lack of rapid railway transit, of heavy cannon and of the minute preparation and prevision which extended to the years preceding his appointment. Germany had prepared for war whilst France was thinking of peace and dreaming of progress in art and letters and general culture, anticipating a universal brotherhood, pathetically chimerical in the face of the armaments across the Rhine. Politics were greatly responsible for the inferiority of France in the opening weeks of the war. The troops assembled on the Franco-Belgian frontier had not at once the value of the invading force. They were wanting in numbers, in the perfection of their equipment and in the intensity of their training. Though Joffre had justly condemned incompetence in high places, it is also true that France was overweighted by the masses of a highly trained enemy which placed all its reliance upon the strength and rapidity of the first blow.

The Socialist doctrine would have substituted popular élan and the fierce revolutionary spirit for what it held to be the sterile stupidity of a long and intensive military preparation. And again, the Socialist movement in Germany proved a snare and delusion to many of the faith in France. Was it possible that war could come when millions of the masses in each nation were vowed to peace? The nation was deceived—perhaps it wanted to be deceived. In any case, it was much more interesting to concentrate upon human progress, to let the mind dwell upon the delightful prospect of the millennium, when there will be no more war, and when an era of peace and tranquillity and of mutual co-operation will have been ushered in, than to linger upon a picture of militarism bound up with cannon and its human food.

The French General Staff apparently thought that the German attack would come from the two frontiers and would seek to envelop the French Army in its tentacles, and thus conclude with one swift, tremendous blow a campaign more disastrous than that of 1870. It seems clear, also, that M. Barthou's success in carrying the Three-Years Law was an important factor in the resolution of Germany to invade France by Belgium rather than by the East. The new legislation had given great strength to the "cover," and thus there was little chance of passing that way. Probably had Germany attacked France by the East, England would never have been brought in and her rôle would have been confined to protecting the French coasts by her fleet. Thus, M. Barthou might properly contend that the mere fact that the Three-Years Law was voted determined the action of Germany and enlisted the support of England.

We have shown that Joffre by his system of making war and his qualities of heart and head is the ideal democratic chief. Obviously, there is little of the Napoleonic temper in his strategy, which is made up of prudent vigour and discernment rather than of brilliancy or spontaneity. Some urge that Joffre should have made his stand upon the Aisne rather than upon the Marne, since the latter line was better defended by Nature, but his reserves were not sufficiently accessible. In any case, conditions have altered since Napoleon's day, and even the Corsican's great faculty of improvisation scarcely would have found scope in twentieth-century conditions. None the less, Joffre's dispositions at the battle of the Marne, when he drew the enemy to his own battle-ground and supported his line at each end with the forts of Paris and of the East were strictly in the style of the Master. And by his very victory he proved the martial qualities of the French, since with the aid of the English they administered a sharp repulse to an enemy flushed with success and organised and equipped in a manner superior to the Home forces. Until the story is disproved, I shall continue to think that the battle of the Marne would have been definitive and the enemy driven from the soil of France had Joffre possessed an adequate supply of munitions.

We have taken the Generalissimo to the edge of the great battle: let us now give a few particulars of his chief collaborator.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECOND IN COMMAND

If ever Nancy is minded to raise a statue in its beautiful Place Stanislas to a battle-hero it will be surely to Noel-Marie Edouard Curières de Castelnau, for to him is due the existence of the city. During three tremendous weeks its fate hung in the balance—weeks in which Joffre was developing the final phases of his retreat and then delivering battle on the Marne. With flank and rear defended from the immense army that de Castelnau and Dubail prevented from passing the gap of Nancy, the master strategist was enabled to win. Nancy lies in the plain; it can be never defended, people said, and, therefore, it was to be left an open town. Did not the Treaty of Frankfort forbid the placing of cannon which would command German soil? Be that as it may, the doubters had forgotten le Grand Couronné, a series of wooded heights and steep plateaux, which marked the junction of Meurthe with Moselle and interposed a rugged barrier between the old Lorraine capital and the frontier. Here, with a forethought unusual in a country where so little had been prepared, trenches had been dug; and when de Castelnau was forced to retreat from the annexed province before an impassable barrier of artillery, he raised earthworks, installed barbed wire entanglements and brought heavy guns from Toul. It was the turn of the Germans to be surprised. With three attenuated army corps and four or five divisions of reserve, de Castelnau kept at bay an immense force of the enemy which battered savagely at the gates.

How gaily the army marched out to the reconquest of annexed Lorraine and to occupy the Germans whilst the English landed in Belgium. It was a force thoroughly representative of France, for it was recruited from all parts. There were reservists from Bordeaux, from Marseilles, from Montpellier and from the West, but the heart of the crusade was the famous 20th Army Corps from Nancy—Lorrainers to a man—who had inherited the memory of the année terrible. With a gesture that expressed eloquently their spirit, they knocked over the frontier posts as they sang the Marseillaise with the strenuous accent of the soldier engaging in a holy war. Great was their first enthusiasm, but great, also, their disappointment, for none met them in the streets; no hand flung flowers to them; no voice cried in gladness: "Vive l'Armée! Vive la France!" The silence was sinister, scarcely broken by the dull reverberation of distant cannon bombarding Pont-à-Mousson. It took them a little time to realise that the masters of the soil, fearing a demonstration, had threatened the inhabitants with its consequences. The silence and the gloom were fully explained.

For two days the army marched into the old land of France without meeting serious opposition. Then the presence of strong outposts betokened the enemy. Dubail's army operating to the south strove to enter more deeply into German territory through Sarreburg; de Castelnau took the northern route through Delme and Morhange. Both were met by a tremendous opposition. The battle line stretched in rough crescent form through the three places I have named, Dubail's left wing being in contact with de Castelnau's right. The Germans had secretly organised a vast system of defence in which gun positions were established and distances marked. The trenches existed for miles and had been furnished with innumerable machine-guns and heavy mortars, the possession of which was now revealed for the first time. The battle was joined, therefore, in disadvantageous conditions for the French. Every ruse known in warfare was employed by the foe. It decked the trenches with dummies and led on the assailants to their doom, for mitrailleuses were posted behind the lay figures. Regiments lost more than half their effectives. An early victim was Lieutenant Xavier de Castelnau, one of the General's sons, who fell whilst leading his men of the 4th Battalion of Chasseurs to a counter-attack. He was mentioned for gallantry in the Orders of the Day.

The French soon discovered that the forces opposing them were no mere "cover" troops, but the Bavarian Army under its Crown Prince, an army under Von Heeringen and a strong detachment from Von Deimling's command. Forced to retreat, de Castelnau fell back ten miles to the Grand Couronné, which he fortified in the way I have described. Dubail, who had begun well with successes in the Vosges, was unable to maintain his position on the Sarre and fell back, also. His troops, especially the 21st Corps, behaved with great gallantry and only left Sarreburg under express orders, and then with colours flying and the band playing the Marche Lorraine. Though he delivered many attacks upon the enemy, he was forced to reform behind the Meurthe, and finally took up a position at Lunéville and in the fork between the stream just mentioned and the Mortaigne.

The attack on the Grand Couronné was particularly severe. Wave after wave of the enemy threw itself against the works held by de Castelnau's troops, who, though exhausted by a week's continuous marching and fighting, showed an unbreakable spirit. And there were brought to the attack, besides the armies I have mentioned, four new Corps composed of seventeen brigades of Ersatz, so that the hostile forces numbered nearly half-a-million men. The assailants were encouraged not merely by their numerical superiority—Dubail's army was about 150,000—but by their success in Lorraine, which had been hailed by their countrymen as a great victory. Furthermore, they were under the eye of the Emperor and a brilliant staff, who were watching them from the hill of Eply, to the north of the Couronné. The Kaiser's dramatic sense had been awakened by the thought of a triumphal entry into Nancy, the ancient capital of Lorraine. He realised what it would mean in the Fatherland, and that, from a military point, it would signify that a breach had been made in the defences of France. Alas, for human hopes! The walls of Jericho refused to fall to the trumpet's brazen call; and the Kaiser, after waiting in vain for a victory, departed sombre and silent for other fields.

The Germans tried every imaginable means to break through, and bloody were the struggles on hill-tops and in the woods of the region. A regiment, suddenly debouching from a forest, was mown down within a few yards of the French trenches, and a division, marching to the attack with drums and fifes playing, met with a similar fate. The Forest of Vitremont, near Lunéville, was filled with the bodies of Germans, computed to number 4500. Vigorous counter-attacks by de Castelnau from north to south, and by Dubail from west to east, finally held the enemy in check, and this uneasy equilibrium lasted for a fortnight—the tremendous fortnight in which Joffre saved Paris and sent the Germans flying to the north. At that moment, the eastern frontier from Nancy to the Vosges was free of the enemy; but at what a cost! Thousands had been lost on either side and villages had been burned and civilians assassinated by the Germans in pursuance of their studied policy of terrorisation.

De Castelnau's brilliant tactics brought him renown and the direction of the 2nd Army on the Compiègne-Arras line. Along this Front rising rectangularly from the Aisne to the north, occurred those terrific battles, which marked the historic "race to the sea." Smarting from their defeat on the Marne, the Germans sought to turn the Allies' left; Joffre had a similar idea in wishing to envelop the enemy's right. The resultant contest was the course à la mer. But the forces given to de Castelnau were inadequate for the purpose, and de Maud'huy's army was added to the line now creeping forward like a gigantic snake to the sea. But before the Germans tried to pierce at Lens and Arras, they assailed the lower line held by de Castelnau, and the angle formed by Aisne and Oise proved a particularly warm corner. In that late September and early October, de Castelnau lost as many men as in Lorraine, and the battles, if less renowned, were as fiercely fought as those to the north of Arras on the Yser and at Ypres.

The Germans in extending their lines realised that if they could reach Dunkirk and Calais they would not only cut England's communications, but point a pistol at her heart. And so they brought up army after army until the line stretched in a solid trunk of trenches with branches towards the sea, and 800,000 Germans (eighteen Army Corps and four Cavalry Corps) made persistent efforts to break through the Allies or envelop them. To defeat this plan, Joffre formed three new armies, of which de Castelnau's was one, and brought up the English from the Aisne, and the Belgians from Antwerp. The situation was often critical, for de Castelnau, like the other commanders, lacked ammunition. But his gift of prevision and his infinite resource saved the day. Eventually, the chief fighting was transferred to the northern part of the line, but de Castelnau's early resistance had rendered the greatest service. And so Joffre thought, for de Castelnau was given dominion over four armies from Soissons to Verdun, the longest front in the possession of a single commander, though Foch and Dubail were also given groups of armies. His tenure of the line was distinguished for the great offensive in Champagne, whereby 23,000 prisoners and 120 guns were captured by the French, and 3,000 prisoners and 25 guns by the English in Artois. That latter feat will be ever remembered for the house-to-house fighting in Loos and for the brilliant capture of Hill 70.

The General's vigour of body is as remarkable as his vigour of mind. He seems never to tire. In the Great War he took no particular care of his health, going to bed late and rising early with apparent impunity. Nor did he follow any system of diet, eating heartily with a Southerner's appreciation of a good table. An excellent horseman, the Great War left him little time for equestrian exercise. When commanding on the Somme he had horses at headquarters at Amiens, but he rode only once in seven or eight months. Like his chief he walked a good deal, not merely for exercise, but to get into direct touch with the troops. He believes in the closest relations between the leader and the led. He likes to recall the names and records of his officers and to ascertain the thoughts and sentiments of the men. His inspections behind the lines were no perfunctory affairs, but real examinations into moral and matériel. No detail of the kits escaped him, and he questioned soldiers as if searching consciences. Officers in his command have told me that his parades lasted a couple of hours or more. He never lost an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the elements of his armies. As he journeyed to the Front he would spring from his car to compliment a colonel on the appearance of his regiment, or turn aside to visit a hospital and comfort the inmates with cheery words. He is a believer in moral suasion and the uplift of words. Men going into battle look to him for encouragement, and never in vain. Officers in charge of them interrogate his personal staff: "What does the General say? Does he think we can win?" And upon the answer, which is certain to be positive and stimulating, depends their demeanour in the fight. There is something in the look of this soldier of the old school, courteous and chivalrous, with character, resolution, and intelligence, written in the high-coloured features, framed by the white hair that bespeak courage, health and confidence, and instil in others the bravery and sacrifice that are dominant in himself. This influence is heightened by the knowledge that he has himself suffered in his intimate affections. When the death of Gerald, his second son, occurred on the Marne—he was buried at Vitry-le-François—de Castelnau was engaged in a Council of War on the Eastern Front. The news was brought to him as he deliberated with his commanders on the plan of battle. After a painful moment he said with stoic calm, "Gentlemen, let us continue." And he bore with equal fortitude the news that another son had been wounded and taken prisoner at Arras.

Such calmness and composure spring from the deep conviction that all is for the best. Doubtless, there was something of predestination in the fact that he was baptized Noel-Marie, in allusion to the date of his birth, Christmas Eve. To his Catholic parents it was a sign and a symbol. His early training at a Jesuit College, before he entered St. Cyr, confirmed him in his principles, and he is of those who have practised always their faith. He attends Mass everyday, and when going to the Front at night he arouses a priest to take the Sacrament. He was the first to insist upon the attendance of chaplains with the forces. To his credit he has never concealed his faith, though there were times in the history of the Third Republic when it might have been politic to do so. Perhaps this sturdiness in his profession accounts for the slowness of his promotion. It began, however, with a rush—Captain at nineteen, in charge of a company in the Loire Army under General Davout, a grandson of Napoleon's famous Marshal; but he stayed long years working steadily but inconspicuously on the staff. The tide turned rapidly when he again commanded troops, and his quality was seen at once. For six years he was Colonel of the 37th Regiment of Infantry at Nancy (Turenne's old command), and here he obtained that deep knowledge of the country which stood him in such stead ten years later. He did not get his General's stars until 1906, and then commanded troops at Soissons, Sédan, and Chambrun. He distinguished himself in grand manoeuvres in the Bourbonnais, under the eye of General Tremeau, president of the War Council and the designated Commander-in-Chief under the old system. The new system, inaugurated by Joffre, brought him into close contact with the Generalissimo, whose Chief-of-Staff he became and collaborator in framing the Three-Years Law, then being passed by the Legislature. The same year he went to England to attend the Manoeuvres and afterwards conferred with the military chiefs; and a mission took him to Russia, where he discussed the lines of eventual co-operation.

Of an old Southern family, the General was born (in 1851) at St. Affrique in the Aveyron, the old Rouergue which came to the French Crown under Henri IV. He likes to speak the patois with soldiers from the district, but he is not democratic in the French sense of the word, though familiar in his dealings with the ranks and solicitous for their welfare. But he is exacting where discipline is concerned, and not only gives orders but sees that they are executed. His staff as well as his regimental officers respect his strenuous temper. His family is noted for intellectual distinction. Some of his brothers, as well as his sons, were at the Polytechnique, the famous mathematical school. He, himself, is both classical and mathematical. If he has little English and less German, and his pronunciation of English place-names amuses his Anglo-Saxon friends, he is a brilliant classic, and jokes in Latin, when the mood takes, with his staff. Nevertheless he is thoroughly modern in his appreciation of science and gives a chance to any likely inventor. Manufacturers are numbered amongst his family, and the largest coal-mine in the south belongs to it. His father, however, was a jurist and a friend of the economist, Le Play.

The General's vigour comes from the natural energy of his mind. In his boyhood there were few sports in France, but he likes to tell his intimates that he played a sort of football, with an inflated ball, in his lycée in the mountains. His youngest son is a well-known champion of the Rugby game. Of his six sons, each went to the war. Three were already in the Army, one was at school, another in the Navy, and a third an engineer. The record is a tribute to the patriotism—no uncommon trait—of provincial France. And there are those who, ignorant of the austerity of her Catholic families, declared that France was decadent! Of the General's six daughters—for Providence has blessed him with a full quiver—one has had her arm amputated, having been infected with gangrene whilst nursing in a hospital. Such courage and devotion are well exemplified in the mother, who heard of her son's death whilst attending the little church where it is her habit to go daily. "Which one?" she asked, almost inaudibly of the curé, as she saw by his look of tenderness, that he had bad news to communicate. She thought of her husband, and of her sons at the Front, and when the name was pronounced, with a soft sigh of resignation she bowed her silvery head a little lower over the breviary, and proceeded with outward tranquillity, though with a torn heart, to receive the consolation of her religion.

The man whom I have summarily sketched was invested by Joffre with the dignity of his Chief-of-Staff and the title of Major-General. The life-long friend became the chief aid in his deliberations, and the virtual leader on the Western Front, leaving to the highest in command the larger issues of a world-wide campaign. Even in Republican France there is thus place for the croyant and the aristocrat, as the names of Delangle de Gary, de Maud'huy, and D'Urbal show.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ORGANISATION OF MUNITIONS

One of the many surprises of the war was the vast place given to munitions. Not even the most careful calculator had foreseen the enormous consumption of war matériel that would result from a long continuance of trench warfare. The Germans had reckoned on an expenditure of 35,000 shells a day, and the French on about half that; the actual consumption was often 100,000 shells on each side.

Both French and German had based their figures on a rapid war, and, had the invaders' plans been realised, Paris would have been occupied and the French opposition paralysed in a fortnight. But this was reckoning without Joffre, without England, and without "General Chance," one of the most important factors in any war. Ammunition, by reason of its vast rôle, became as engrossing and as vitally important as the actual fighting. For it soon became apparent that in this war of matériel he would win who could most quickly assemble the largest quantity of guns and shot and shell. The Germans began with an immense advantage, for they had accumulated secretly a mass of machine-guns estimated at 50,000, leaving the Allies hopelessly in the rear in this respect. But even their perverse intelligence did not fully grasp the logical outcome of their own preparations, or foresee that, their first plan having failed, they would be caught inevitably in their own toils.

To the eternal credit of the French, they realised with great rapidity the character of the war, and set themselves with methodical speed to adapt themselves to its unexpected features. Factories sprang up all over the country, some created out of boards and bricks; others existing, but "controlled" in the English sense, with Army officers assisting the civilian directors; and a vast business of production was ordered and marshalled as if the French had never done anything else in their lives. At one bound, they developed into a manufacturing nation, though the term would have been refused them, in the long yesterday of the war, by England, the United States, and Germany. Their faculty for seeing clearly and acting quickly, so apparent in their history, again came to their aid. It was their distinguishing mark during the Great Revolution. Having seized the essentials of the problem, they acted upon their insight with startling rapidity and resolution. Of course they committed excesses of a dreadful kind, but their excuse was the gigantic character of the evil which they sought to remedy. Much the same spirit of swift determination, happily without its fearful manifestations, came upon the French people, and with all the old Republican ardour they set themselves, with a sort of grim alacrity, to face the crisis. The old stern common sense, which has always lain at the bottom of apparent volatility, again came to their rescue; and in no way did the French show a greater grasp of the situation than in their handling of munitions.

It had been supposed that they were wanting in order and method, and that their dramatic achievements were due to the impulse of the moment. But, even if this were ever wholly true, it was certainly not true of the second great struggle with Germany. The magnificent effort of France was the outcome, not of improvisation, but of the will to conquer and to adopt the proper means to secure that end. Nor was a Press campaign necessary, as in England, to bring home to the people the peculiar importance of war-work in the factories. It is true that M. Albert Thomas, who took charge of Munitions in the circumstances which I shall describe, made speeches to factory workers in his visits of inspection, but it was never necessary to wrestle with labour and cause it to abrogate its proud pretensions, months after the war had broken out. Conscription would have settled that question even if a vivid sense of realities had not rendered unnecessary any exhortation from Ministerial lips. The vital character of the war had penetrated to every intelligence; it had not stopped half-way through the social strata, as appeared to be the case in England. And the disposition of the working man in England towards conscription was only intelligible on the assumption that he did not understand. In France, the war was too deadly real, too close at hand for any to affect an attitude of light-hearted detachment.

The fact that men in the factories like those on the railways, were mobilised, simplified matters a great deal. A man could not desist from his labour on the pretext of claiming higher pay without running the risk of being treated as a deserter—a thing unthinkable in time of war. His duty, then was the soldier's—to remain where he was until relieved by order. "We have had no strike since the war began." How well I recall the pride with which those words were uttered by a functionary at the Ministry of Munitions. If it spoke well for the patriotism of the working-class, it spoke equally well for conscription as a scientific basis for waging war. For it had cast its net over the whole nation, and by its means the munitions worker took his place in the factory as did the combatant in the trench. But there were certain complications which arose, none the less, in practice. If there was no disturbance of the labour market to exercise the conciliatory powers of the Minister, production did not yet reach its maximum until long after the war had broken out. This was due to the unexampled demand made on munitions and to the logical completeness of conscription. It required many months to adjust a plan whereby the skilled worker was placed in his rightful position in the factory, whilst those who had wrongly usurped his name and functions were sent to the trenches. The most unlikely people had described themselves as mechanics; and one found lawyers, sculptors, school-teachers, painters, writers and a host of semi-professional people masquerading as munition-workers. On the other hand, numbers of highly trained specialists, some distinguished chemists and engineers, had to be extricated from the trenches to take up their natural positions in the factories, in the interests of national defence. This chassé-croissé, inevitable in such a country as France, where Government must be based upon equality, took some time to effect. Indeed, the chief duty of the publicist during the second year of the war seemed to be to urge an equitable and intelligent application of the Dalbiez law, which was aimed expressly at the shirker.

Nor did private patronage and political "pull" wholly disappear, even in the stringent atmosphere of a national crisis. This was, perhaps, to expect too much of human nature. And so the Minister of Munitions constantly received recommendations for factory employment from persons whose intervention it was hard to resist. On the one hand, the Minister was asked by important deputies to bring back this or that worker from the Front; on the other, he was warned by groups of Republican zealots of the danger to democracy of showing partiality and conniving at the existence of the shirker. In a laudable effort to strike the happy medium, M. Thomas decided to receive no more nominations to the factory, and decreed that only the indispensable man was to be kept in the rear. Even the good workman, if of military age, must become a combatant; his place in the factory would be taken by an older man. But there remained, naturally, a certain rivalry between the trench and the workshop, not unconnected with the fact that assiduous munition-workers also received their Croix de Guerre—a decoration that, assuredly, should have been reserved for deeds of gallantry on the battle-field. But these various difficulties, which M. Thomas settled with habitual celerity and savoir faire, were, after all, only questions of detail, and in no way affected the broad principle of conscription or the working of the new Act against the embusqués. There was no quarrel with compulsion, for each worker recognised the right of the nation to ask him to suspend his individual rights at such a moment. "We are at war; the vital interests of the country are at stake." This was a sufficient argument. And so all energies were directed to increasing the output. In connection with the establishment of factories, the "white coal" or water-falls of the mountains were harnessed to the work, and engineer shops were set up under the falls themselves to employ the power directly. Inventors were given carte blanche to work out their ideas and valuable improvements resulted in the opportunity given to scientific brains to simplify processes, and thus effect economies in manufacture. For the first time France had begun to explore and develop her own scientific estate, which she had left, hitherto, largely to the Germans. For, if the latter were foremost in chemistry, they had learned not a little from the researches of Berthelot and Pasteur. The great bacteriologist's study of ferments contributed sensibly to the growth of the German brewing industry. Under the direction of scientific soldiers and officials, production rose to immense heights, and it soon reached more than 100,000 shells a day, at a time when, according to Mr. Lloyd George, the English output was scarcely more than 15,000 a day. M. Charles Humbert, Senator for the Meuse and editor of the Journal, preached in his columns the need of more guns and shells, and his gospel was enforced by other writers; but the root argument laid in the comprehension of the people themselves and in their instinctive realisation of what there was to be done and how to do it. Latin brains and Latin culture triumphed in an absolutely new field.

The genius of Munitions was M. Albert Thomas, who sprang into prominence from the unlikely beginnings of a schoolmaster and parliamentarian with Socialistic leanings. His assets were youth and vigour and a large stock of learning. He had graduated from the "Higher Normal School," the training ground for secondary teachers, with an agrégation in history—equivalent to a Fellowship Examination in England—and then became tutor to a grandson of Victor Hugo. In the family were steelworks situated in the Loire, and the tutor's active mind became interested in the fascinating processes which turned the unwrought metal into shining implements of labour. This knowledge, strengthened by many visits, stood him in good stead when he became a deputy, and thereafter Reporter to the State Railways Committee. His constituency was Sceaux, on the outskirts of the capital, and therein was his native commune, Champigny, where he was born of humble shopkeepers and continued to reside. In the Chamber his connection with the railways brought him into contact with M. Claveille, then coming into fame as administrator of the Ouest-Etat line. M. Thomas must be impressed by the catenation of events, for, on arriving at the Ministry of Munitions, he bethought him of the railway manager and installed him first as his master of contracts and, then, at the head of manufacture. So that the guns began to arrive at their appointed place with the same punctuality with which the trains on the State Railway, under the reforming zeal of M. Claveille, began to steam into the Gare St. Lazare.

At the outbreak of the war, M. Thomas, torn from peaceful Socialistic propaganda in L'Humanité, where he supported M. Jean Jaurès in his opposition to Three-Years, went to the Front as a lieutenant of reserve. After a few weeks in the trenches, he joined his General's Staff and then was summoned to Bordeaux, whither the Government had retired from threatened Paris. "Will you organise Munitions?" he was asked. The battle of the Marne had revealed not only their primordial necessity, but the grievous shortage of France, and it was said that had she been better provided, the Germans would have had no chance of re-establishing themselves on the line of the Aisne. So M. Thomas, faced with the crude need of the hour, undertook the post and flung himself into it with his accustomed energy. His acquaintance with steel, both in the works he had studied and the railway he had controlled, fortified his resolution to undertake the responsibility. Day and night he passed rapidly, from point to point, in his motor-car, organising munition work and exhorting and advising the engineers of the country engaged in it, until, gradually, the production was screwed up to a point where, with the shells made in England, it equalled the output of the German factories. Here was a strange destiny for a man whose reading and reflection had induced him to believe that the tide of humanity was set towards universal brotherhood. Looking as little like a professor of war as could be possibly imagined—a little plethoric, a little heavy in face and figure, and glancing out upon the world through kindly spectacles—this new embodiment of Mars accepted his position with a frank and systematised zeal that led directly to success. In a short time, the tree brought forth prodigious fruit. He worked ceaselessly, turning Sundays into days of labour; his only relaxation from exhausting office was to undertake further journeys of inspection.

There was advantage in the fact that he was a man of wide general views and not an expert. Had he been a gunner, he would have thought exclusively of the pointing of his piece; as an engineer he would have reflected on the life-history of the gun from its early inception to its appearance as a finished article of destruction. But being the intelligent amateur, he was able, like an airman, to soar over intercepted space, and think of the problem in its wider aspects: how to obtain the ore and transport it from the other ends of the earth; how to procure the quickest output from the arsenals; how to adjust factory labour to the new law against the shirker; how to provide a sufficiency of food for the monsters he was evolving; how to cultivate the scientific terrain of the war; and finally, how he could deliver his deadly wares into the hands of those who would use them against the enemy. There were a hundred different problems arising out of the great military post which the war had given him, and he managed them all with the ease and optimism that belong to rapid assimilation combined with poise, with sang-froid, and decision of character. All these virtues contributed to the success of M. Thomas. He was rewarded by official appointment to the post of Under Secretary of State for Munitions, specially created for him by M. Millerand, the then Minister of War. The honour was unique in the history of the Third Republic, which does not always advantage those who serve it best.

All the departments connected with guns had to be concentrated at the Ministry of Munitions in the Champs Elysées. At the outbreak of war the building was a cosmopolitan hotel on the verge of opening; the Government, needing quarters for its new department of State, acquired it, and there amidst Louis XVI chairs and Empire cabinets were installed M. Thomas and his coadjutors. The Socialist pacifist had become the Grand Armourer of France, the licensed provider of artillery, in a house of luxury built for the wealthy classes.... In his chain of duties, however, was a broken link. He was not given charge of the powder, though it was essential to his full usefulness; and officials in that department corresponded directly with the Minister of War. But Galliéni, when he came to the Rue St. Dominique, saw the faults of the system and immediately invested his titular subordinate with the necessary powers. It was at this moment, when work was piling high upon his willing shoulders, that M. Thomas gave M. Claveille authority over the construction of the guns. And the railway manager's experience proved invaluable in his new post.

France had every reason to be proud of her organisation of Munitions, and for the spirit which the crisis prompted amongst her functionaries and workers. As a University man of distinction, M. Thomas placed his faith in higher education and was surrounded by men who had achieved distinction in science and letters. A Sorbonne professor of Romance languages, M. Roques, acted as his chief secretary; and a scholar of European reputation occupied unremunerated leisure in conducting the correspondence of the Department. Thus the Ministry provided another example of public spirit in France and of Gallic accessibility to new ideas.

Quite apart from the attitude of labour, admirably attuned to the circumstances, there arose the material difficulty of finding men. The Loi Dalbiez was rigorous in its application, and there was a dearth of young and vigorous men, both skilled and unskilled, in the factories. I have spoken of some of the methods adopted by M. Thomas to meet the case: now he went to the colonies and employed Arabs and Kabyles, Annamites, and other friendly nationals from France overseas. This exotic labour worked harmoniously with the dominant race. Wages were on a far less generous scale than in England, and no worker, however skilled, obtained £8 a week or even half that amount. Such prices were unthought of. The common wage for unskilled labour was five francs for a ten-hour day for men and women. Where the operations were perfectly simple and required only adroitness, the wages for female labour were sometimes only 3 frs. a day. Even the trained mechanic earned no more than 15 frs., the highest price being generally 13 frs. 50. Thus, you see, there was a vast difference between the English and the French positions, and it is clear that the cost to the country of shell production was infinitely less in France, even at a moment when the output was infinitely greater. There were no lady workers in the factories—"heureusement non"—said the official, with an expressive shrug, when I asked the question, and the whole scheme of production was worked on carefully considered, economical, and patriotic lines. Certainly, the worker made very little profit out of his labour, and the intensity of it in France, as in England, put a considerable strain upon his health.

A veritable scientific mobilisation was necessary in the Champs Elysées. Highly trained brains were needed for the delicate calculations essential to the manufacture of explosives and to the creation of new types of guns. It meant the installation of eminent specialists at the Ministry and the carrying out of elaborate experiments in laboratories and open-air trial grounds. The syndicates, I repeat, made no difficulty for the Minister by adherence to rules framed for peace; but, of course, the power of these bodies in France over their fellow-workers is less pronounced than across the Straits. But, though it has its stringent rules, it raised no finger of protest against the speeding-up of production, the continuous shifts, the employment of women and children and of coloured labour. The difficulty that existed was entirely due to the fear of creating any suspicion of favouritism amongst those who were fighting the country's battles by any arbitrary selection of men for employment in the factories. None the less, the munitions worker had to be recruited on a large scale, for the consumption of shot and shell exceeded all belief and emphasised the fantastic character of the conflict.

No doubt the physical existence of the Channel was answerable for the difference in attitude of French and English labour. It was difficult for our workers to visualise the situation in France with its invaded departments, its devastated villages, its ruined industries, its strangulated commerce and those other disabilities which weigh upon a nation that has suffered defilement from the foe. But the French soon came to see that the loyalty of the British working man was not in question because of his reluctance to accept a system which, however, both Abraham Lincoln and Cromwell found necessary in the raising of armed forces for the carrying out of national purposes. And yet neither could be accused of being indifferent to the claims of democracy.

CHAPTER IX

FRENCH DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP

A certain number of political students had come to the discouraging conclusion that discipline could not exist side by side with a pure democracy. The two things, they said, were incompatible. Trade Union leaders in England were for a long time apparently under the same illusion. Joffre, whom I have tried to show as the perfect democrat, will not accept any such view. In a frank and engaging mood of communicability, he explained to an American writer, Mr. Owen Johnson, who visited him at Headquarters, that democracy was by no means the uneasy bedfellow of discipline; the two could exist in the most perfect harmony. "Where a nation is truly Republican, I do not think there is any danger to the spirit of democracy in military preparation," said Joffre, in reply to the suggestions that the existence of a large army was a constant incitement to war, and opposed, therefore, to those pacific principles upon which a modern republic must be founded. Military discipline does not undermine democracy: that is his argument. "In a republic where the need of individual liberty is always strong, military service gives the citizen a quality of self-discipline which he needs, perhaps, to respect the rights of others, as well as to act in organised bodies." And then he added that if America—and the remark applies, of course, to England—dreaded military service, it was because the citizen had his eyes fixed on the German ideal rather than on the French. The distinction between the French Army and the German was a difference in the conception of the rôle of the soldier. The German system made a man into a machine. It was based on fear, and robbed him of his initiative. It explained the attack in close formation, the stupendous throwing away of life, and an officer class, a veritable Brahmin caste, that did not transmit orders directly, but through sergeants and corporals. The French spirit, on the other hand, implied fraternity. The officer was interested in the welfare of his men and regarded them as his children. Nothing was indifferent to him which affected them morally or materially. The German system was the revolver at the head, the French the word of encouragement, the smile, the bonne camaraderie.

General Joffre's distinction happily expresses the fundamental character of the two systems; it goes to the root of army psychology. The French method requires a knowledge of the temperament of the men; for, though you may drive the dull and high-spirited in much the same way, provided you are brutal enough, to lead successfully requires knowledge of mental characteristics and a certain power of appeal which elicits the best efforts in your men. French officers, therefore, have to be psychologists, understanding the character of those they lead and the subtle differences that divide the townsman from the peasant. They must vary indefinably the address when they talk to one or the other. These two broad classes are moved by different springs of action, and the commander has to find out the best way of firing the lethargic and attracting the fiery nature.

A French friend, who commanded a battalion of engineers, gave me some explanation of the methods he employed in dealing with a difficult class, the town-bred mechanic. His battalion was composed of men from provincial centres, with a sprinkling of skilled workmen from Paris. He played off one against the other. When the Parisian was inclined to show slackness or insubordination he remonstrated with him in a tone of raillery and mock commiseration. It was certainly regrettable that he could not attain to the same level of conduct or efficiency as those excellent fellows from the provinces, who, after all, had not enjoyed the same advantages. Rarely had he to speak twice to the same delinquent; the man's amour propre was aroused; from that moment, he commenced to mend his ways. To the provincial he said that he was surprised that a man of his energy and parts should allow himself to take second place to the Parisian. Then it was true that the countryman could not hold his own with workers from the capital? This, again, proved admirably adapted to the particular mentality of his hearer; his pride was piqued; he gave no more trouble. Thus, to command under the French system requires considerable adroitness and intelligence.

The secret, my friend said, of keeping order and discipline in a regiment without getting oneself disliked was to refrain from exerting more authority than was strictly necessary. One must not be always on the look-out for faults. Officers made a mistake in seeing everything at all times; there are moments when, as Nelson found, the blind eye was convenient. A Frenchman is not naturally inclined towards discipline; the quicker his intelligence, the more likely he is to feel resentment at clumsy authority. The peasant, slower to think and to take offence, is more amenable. He gives up his will and individuality with greater readiness to the leader, and even courts direction. But in the veins of every Frenchman is some trace of the frondeur and revolutionary. His mind is impatient of restraint and leaps readily to conclusions and, sometimes, to tragic resolutions. Mere authority, as authority, chafes him; he dislikes it in the abstract. To render it acceptable, there must be an idea behind it. If you want to lead him, you must be prepared to undertake gladly the same risks as he, to go out and meet them with a gay insouciance. You must show him that you do not count your life more valuable than his, or shelter yourself behind your position. You must lead him by going in front, not by driving him from behind. It is an age of miracles; astounding things may happen; notwithstanding his nonchalance and objection to play the hero, at the moment of action he becomes transformed. You have only to know how to draw him out, to find the formula which unlocks his heart, to discover the hidden springs of his emotion. For an idea, it has been said, he is ever ready to shoulder a rifle behind a barricade. And when that idea is the country, with patriotism leaping high, his frondeur spirit is capable of all. Centuries have not dimmed its ardent inflammability, and each successive phase in history renews his high susceptibility, until one feels that the Great War, instead of exhausting the fruitful soil of France, has enriched it with new virtues and a new potentiality. Rifles have spoken again from the barricades, but this time the nation is ranged on one side of it and the invader on the other. Patriotism and ideality flow perennially from the mountains of Latin youth, ready to be diverted to any holy cause.

The spirit is manifest even in the midst of the battle. At the critical moment, when officers have fallen in the hurricane of iron, a man emerges from the ranks to lead on his comrades to the attack. From his knapsack, the legendary baton has slipped into his strong, tenacious hand. He has shown qualities of leadership in the supreme hour. General Sir Robert Baden-Powell recognised this genius of the race for instant adaptation when he visited the French Front and heard stories of improvisation; the native initiative of the soldier comes ever to his aid in the tightest corners, where German mechanism inevitably fails. Years ago, De Vigny, in a celebrated phrase, proclaimed the inherent power of a Frenchman to become a man of war. Time and again he has proved his martial qualities—a sheer instance of atavism. A sergeant leads a battalion into the jaws of death with such fire and courage that each man is electrified, loses his constitutional timidity and becomes a lion in the fight. Under this magic influence he is irresistible, like Cromwell's Ironsides, whom, strange to say, he physically resembles. The low steel bonnet crowns the same sort of ruddy visage and brown beard which marked the East Anglian in the seventeenth century. There is something of the Englishman in him, something of the Berserker employing his "irresistible fury" in a national cause. His spirit of adventure has been translated into terms of patriotic achievement.

And the officers themselves know how to acquire rapidly the science of the trench. Many in the regular army fell in the early days of the war; the professional leader trained and set apart for the career scarcely existed any more. Then up sprang the officer of reserve, until then engaged in civilian pursuits; nine-tenths were in that condition. But, taught in the hard school of war, they developed into the most accomplished chiefs.

Though the French pioupiou is readily accessible to daring, and glories in a passionate achievement, he is not hypnotised by names, but demands a real aristocracy. It is an error to suppose that he resents superiority. On the contrary, he is constantly looking for it and is eager to recognise it when found. He is equally impressed by it, whether he finds it in the plain, plebeian features of Dupont or in the aristocratic mien of a De Rochefoucauld. The name matters nothing; the qualities are everything. But if he disregards family, he is insistent on a real distinction. Dupont must not shelter his mediocrity under democracy, or can the patrician hope to win devotion by a mere show of elegance. The accent is not of much account in the trenches; there, as elsewhere, must be a real superiority. If it is wanting, if the officer is mediocre and vulgar in his taste and habits, shows the same deficiencies and the same lack of control as the lower ranks, then his supremacy will be short-lived, whatever his grade. And it does happen that old soldiers, promoted from the ranks, sometimes fail to inspire the respect that should be theirs, because they cling to the old habits, the old laisser-aller, and know not how to assume the new virtues that should go with the new position. For commissioned rank in the French as in the other armies of the world must mark a real ascendancy, moral, mental, and even physical, to be effective in the best sense. It is part of the panoply of power.

None the less, the adaptability of the nation is never better shown than in the speed with which the officer, newly risen from the ranks, for bravery and coolness on the field, puts on the whole armour of leadership. Yet his speech, probably, will remain homely, and he will adopt no airs which jar with his humble origin and native simplicity. Perhaps the least successful of these leaders are those who have longest served in some capacity, such as adjudant (a rank above sergeant), because they are rooted fast in their old associations and have not those natural qualities of authority which should be inseparable from commissioned rank. The essential is that a man shall show the temper of a chief, and for this reason the sportsman often proves more successful in handling his men than the more intellectual type of soldier, who is better able, no doubt, to perceive the purpose of a movement. Yet the rank and file will certainly expect high attainments from their ultimate leaders, and are intelligent enough to know that no amount of practical experience is a real substitute for sound military culture. Obviously, a knowledge of military history and of the principles of strategy are not required of the subaltern who leads an attack on a village; but it is equally true that only to the student are accessible those solutions of the past which are of such importance in understanding the present. The sportsman, then, rather than the office soldier, inspires the affection of his men. The type is more often found, no doubt, amongst the aristocracy and the higher bourgeoisie than amongst the artisan class, for in France at least the last-named has rarely the chance of playing games and of acquiring dexterity in manly sports. Again, the men know that those who have risen from the ranks are harder to serve than the "gentleman" class, just as the works' foreman is a severer taskmaster than the employer; thus of all the officers the type that best succeeds in drawing out the qualities of his men is he who has had the broadest education and is the best example of finished manhood. The birth and social advantage are merely the make-weight, not the ground-work, for his command; the contrary is alien to the Republican instinct and would be resented. But if the men are touched with the feeling that Jack is as good as his master, they like that master to be a fine, upstanding fellow, recommending himself as much by his handsome physical appearance as by his urbanity and savoir-faire. If to this can be added a lively temperament, disdain of danger and an evident liking for bodily exercise, his dominion will be complete. But these things do not come from books, or are they handed down from generation to generation like a Roman nose or a Bourbon chin. And thus is exposed, no doubt, the weakness of the hereditary principle. Alas! man cannot transmit, like a letter in the post, his courage and adroitness to his descendants. Meeting cross currents by the way, the atavic message becomes hopelessly confused.

Yet the French system in its elasticity is admirably adapted to the genius of the race, for it gives free play to improvisation. No account is taken of social status, but I have shown that social rank, coupled with mental and moral attributes, do aid a man even in Republican France. Valour is no respecter of persons—the poor man may be as brave as the most favoured of the gods. Thus there is ever in the breast of the soldier the splendid hope that to-morrow he may begin his ascent to the temple of Fame. Cases of promotion are so numerous that they have ceased to be exceptional, and represented, at least during the Great War, half the number of commissioned officers. The garçon de bureau, earning his five francs a day at the Hôtel de Ville, is a lieutenant of reserve. In time of war he rejoins his regiment and becomes a captain. He is mentioned for bravery and is rewarded by the red ribbon of the Legion. No one finds it strange that this young man, son of a roadmaker in municipal employ, should be on the high road to honours whilst his father works on the low road of obscurity.

And the man—an amiable functionary of the Ville de Paris—from whom I had this instance of Republican grandeur and simplicity recalled his own military service and the adjudant studying to be an officer, who on wet days instructed young conscripts in the elementary lessons of the great battles. He remembers particularly his description of Fontenoy and his vivid presentation of the forces in contact and the different dispositions of the generals, which ended in our undoing and the victory of the French. The lecturer had kept the rugged speech of his class, but his obvious enthusiasm and knowledge of his subject found a quick road to the hearts and comprehension of his young hearers. That simple, rough fellow with a taste for study is a Brigadier-General to-day. The Great War gave him his chance to show his mettle. It is a common enough story in the French Army, particularly in the first eighteen months of the war, when the Great Retreat and several sharp offensives had inflicted immense loss on the corps of officers.

The material of the French Army, then, is pretty fine stuff, but it has to be treated with a delicate discrimination and with that peculiar French quality known as doigté. We have seen that town and country, side by side in the same unit, must be dealt with perspicaciously by the officer. Anything that looks like mere routine and a mere waste of time and energy is particularly obnoxious to the sharp fellow from the large centres of population. "A quoi bon tout ça?" he asks, with a scarcely concealed irritation. He is difficult to lead unless he comprehends the military utility of the order. Once his sympathetic intelligence has been gained, he puts his soul into the work. The peasant farmer, on the other hand, accepts everything with the stolid passivity of those who work upon the land. He does not suffer moral torture from the feeling that he is wasting his time. Is he not out in the open? And the food is good. His intelligence does not rebel against red tape, which is so distasteful to his lively contemporary from the town workshops. And so the commander has to show discretion in his manner of utilising the human material to his hand. The mechanic probably will prove an excellent scout and give a vivid account of the country through which he passes and the enemy whom he has sighted. His interest has been excited, and all his qualities of resourcefulness and ready adaptability come to the surface. He feels that he is being worthily employed, and is happy in the knowledge that he has been of service to his superior. But put him to guard a haystack and he is much less happy. That is a peasant's job, he feels. And the peasant, indeed, is perfectly at home in front of the hay; his nostrils dilate with pleasure at the sweet scent of it; it makes him think of his own bit of grass growing there in Brittany on one of those shining slopes where the gorse flames.

As a general rule, mechanical drill is irksome to the Latin mind; it fetters his individuality. The idea of turning perpetually in a barrack square to attain perfection in movements in mass is by no means to his liking. He has never been attracted to it, nor to the cult of buttons and straps and military tailoring. He cares little for such things. On the march, he considers only the question of covering the ground in the quickest manner with the least expenditure of force. He is largely indifferent to his appearance. Perhaps his artistic instinct tells him that sweat-covered, with the dust of the road upon him, he is vastly more picturesque, more like the real, traditional "poilu," than immaculate in a new uniform of celestial blue. He is proud of the general's praise of his fitness and stamina after his march of fifty kilometres with a heavy pack on his back; he would consider it intolerable if he were reproached for some slackness in his dress, for buttons that had been displaced, for a belt that had slipped. These things are of no consequence, he says, impatiently. He does not understand that attention to minutiæ which is the bee in the bonnet of the old-style disciplinarian. And yet tradition counts in this nation of soldiers in a manner surprising to those who associate indifference with an outward air of insouciance. It is as if each man were a Fregoli capable of a dozen rôles. Certainly, at the end of a long march he will pull himself together with a brave air if he has to pass before the eyes of foreign officers or through a village street with the inhabitants lined up to receive him. There is pride at the bottom of his character as readily aroused as those instinctive martial qualities which he inherits from the great-grandfather of the Napoleonic Wars.

CHAPTER X

GALLIÉNI AND HIS POPULARITY

General Galliéni[1] came to his task of defending Paris with a reputation gained in Madagascar. Nine years of successful government had transformed the island, torn with conflict, into a peaceful possession. Already credited with great organising powers, he was suspected of being a good strategist, and he was soon to prove it. His very appearance, energetic, thin, with large, osseous face looking like an eagle in spite of the pince-nez, gave Paris a wonderful impression of youth and energy. He was a man who would make things happen, conjectured the citizens—and, certainly, he looked like it. His stride was masterly, and his orderly officers grew thin in his service; there was a story of a plump private secretary who visibly dwindled in an effort to keep pace with the "patron's" energetic gait.

[1] General Galliéni died May 28, 1916, while this book was in the press.

Paris had never faltered in its attitude of pure valour even when news lacked and rumour stalked, gaunt-eyed, and unfettered by the least fact, along the Boulevards. Galliéni's appointment to the governorship of the city put fire into hesitating pulses and new courage into hearts. To see him crossing the street in his uniform of cerulean blue, that attractive colour of the French Army, was to receive a lesson in youth and virility. He had the look of the fighter grateful to Parisians, who, recalling their past, did not like the notion of being handed over tamely to the enemy as an "open" city. An open city, forsooth! What ignominy for the capital of all the talents! When the Governor was formally invested on August 26, 1914, the muscles of his administrés grew tense with resolution. Then there would be resistance, resistance to the point of street fighting. Inch by inch the town would be disputed. The Eiffel Tower would be blown up, so that the enemy could not use its apparatus and antennæ to transmit or receive messages; bridges would be destroyed and the Underground would be rendered useless. The two million inhabitants who remained faithful to the city would be evacuated to the communes south and west of the metropolitan area. This was the plan as revealed later, and was apparently authentic. That the Governor thought the measures would be necessary I do not believe; but it was well to be prepared.

In his military eye the enemy could not enter the city until the home army had been destroyed; that was an elementary principle of warfare. But how much did the Germans know, definitely, of the condition of the Allies? One had to be quite sure of that before one could forecast with accuracy their line of action. Did they consider the Allies were definitely crushed? It seems almost certain that they did. Such a state of mind is revealed in the despatches they sent from the front, each more affirmative than the other. They told of the utter rout of the French, of their inability to withstand the advance. Thus, as Colonel Feyler points out, the Germans were in much the frame of mind of Napoleon at Waterloo. History was repeating itself in new conditions. Napoleon disdained Wellington, whom he considered a mediocre general, and Blücher, a brave but blundering hussar, and so, without sufficient preparation, sent his legions against the British lines. If the German commanders had not the sublime arithmetic of Napoleon: "One hundred and twenty thousand men and I make two hundred thousand," that was the spirit of their calculations. They were impressed with their own invincibility. And there was some excuse for their belief that the English had been annihilated and the French demoralised. The British Army was only saved by bull-dog tenacity and a constitutional inability to accept defeat; the French showed a new quality of resistance because of the presence of their Three-Year soldiers—the three "Regular" classes with the colours—wherewith the reserves were stiffened into homogeneity. In any case, the Germans exaggerated the effect of their successes. The wish was father to the thought. The apparent direction of the retreat induced them to believe that the fruit was ripe and ready to fall into their expectant mouths. Surely, they argued, Joffre is going to repeat the mistake of Bazaine in 1870 and shut himself up in Paris as his predecessor did in Metz. He is anxious, certainly, they said, to seek the protection of the Paris forts, and yet he must know their shortcomings, for, forty years before, he had helped to build them.

But the cold fact remained that Joffre did not enter Paris, but flung down the gage of battle on the Marne, leaving Paris on his left as a protection to that flank and the eastern forts on his right to prevent his line from being turned in that direction. Galliéni was quick to realise the situation, to see its possibilities and its dangers and the necessity for swift decision. If Paris had to be fought, the best defence was a forward move outside the city, an offensive-defensive. But a bare week remained before the Germans approached within striking distance. In those feverish days, the Governor of the city mobilised thousands of labourers and set them to work digging trenches. It was obviously impossible to do more than erect a temporary barrier against the tide, but the Parisians were caught and fascinated by the energy of their chief, who instilled into them his own confidence and his own combativeness. Galliéni knew his public with the divination of a psychologist, and he built barriers at the narrow city entrances with felled trees and stones torn from the roads. Obviously such fortifications could not stand a moment against artillery, but their purpose was as much moral as military. If they prevented Uhlans from capturing the gates by a forward rush, they were equally operative in inspiring Parisians with the reality of war, which some were in danger of forgetting, and at the same time gave them the assurance that they were being protected. The temperament of la ville lumière has something of the child in it: a curiosity and interest in everything, a thoughtless courage, and the need of constant assurance that it is being cared for.

And when the hosts advanced, sweeping from the north of Paris to the east, it was Galliéni who saw the fault and determined to profit by it. Von Kluck had disregarded the Paris army either through ignorance or temerity, and he was to pay the price. The Governor collected an army from here, there and everywhere, placed it under a superb tactician, General Maunoury, and at the critical moment carried it to the field of battle. Our "intellectual general," as Gabriele d'Annunzio calls him, combined activity with perception. There was something Napoleonic and something Parisian, too, in his notion of utilising taximeters to carry soldiers to the German right wing, which, threatened, had reinforced itself with a corps d'armée and now seemed likely to envelop the French left. Up aloft Von Kluck's airmen decided that the Parisians were leaving their city by the thousand in taxicabs. It was Galliéni's army of Zouaves and Territorials hurrying out to strike a rapid and decisive blow at the invaders.