Antwerp to Gallipoli A Year of the War on Many Fronts-and Behind Them

aux: Journal of a Fli

g along the Yser, but, finding it impossible, decided to turn about and travel away from the front instead of toward it-down to se

ou would call a fog, because she could still see the porter at the stre

thing as sun--recalled vaguely a world in which it used to be- woods with the

es, more hysterical and shrill. One looked for fairness almost as for the sun, and, merely by blackguarding long enough men who could not answer

ion-Shakespeare, Dickens, Meredith, jolly old rumbling London, rides 'cross country, rows on the river-faded into this nightmare of hate and smoky lamplight. The psychology was very simple, but too much, it seems, for censors and

ndon as well as in some Paris café"? It would seem so, yet it cannot be done. The mere sight and sound-or lack of sound- of that warm, softly carpeted breakfast-room, moving like some gloomy, inevitable mechanism as it has moved for countless years, attacks the already weakened will like an opiate. At the fi

other '"Q?" -it was in some such state of mind as this that

tone,

reak of smoke from some patrolling destroyer or battleship. And all along this cliff walk, Belgians-strolling with their children, sitting on the benches,

they drift by, you ca

in the morning whe

hree metres from our door

ometres that night a

ters, caps rakishly tipped over one ear, slamming the cards down as if that were the only thing in the world. In the garden others taking the sunshine, some wit

it is the look of a "nice little people" who know that now they have a history. "Refugees," to be sure, yet one can fancy them looking back some day from their tight little villages, canals, and beet-fields, on afternoons like this, as on

s, Sa

ross supplies on board-cotton, chloroform, peroxide; Belgian soldiers patched up and going back to fight; and various volunteer nurses, including two handsome young Englishwomen of the very modern aviatrix type-coming over to drive motor-cycle ambulances-and so smartly gotten up

need address themselves to the arduous task of describing fighting they had not seen, and they talked, with a good humor one s

for them. Of course, in those model towns of theirs, you've got to brush your teeth at six minutes past ei

ss. An old gentleman fairly roared the instant he saw me. He was ready to explode at

nicht thun! Es

men over there," the man said. "Accident-insurance, old-age pensions, and all that-what do we want to fight the Kaiser for? We'd just about a

ne, Sa

bound, with a big, round loaf of bread and a military pass. He had a blue robe, bright-red, soft boots, a white tu

ialect, shook his head. "To-morrow morning!" he said. He laid his head on his hand to suggest a man sleeping, and held up three fingers.

an. The Algerian pressed his palms together six times, then held up two fingers. "He's sixty-two years old!" said the Frenchman, and the old warrior obligingly opened his j

along a rifle, then of brushing somethi

-me!" Evidently he was going

ish soldiers leaning from doors of their cattle-cars, hats pushed back, pipes in their faces, singing and joking. At the end of each train, in passenger-coaches, their o

fficient, light-hearted would be as different as Corneille

ondon club a few nights before of the "e

or la patrie. Now, Tommy Atkins isn't the least like that. He doesn't fight-and you know how he does fight-for patriotism or glory, at least not in the same conscious way. He'd fight just as well against another of his

put in another way by a British sailor at the tim

rned and smashed, in the thick of it the wet nose of the German submarine coming up for a look round, and then, out of that hideous welter, the voice of

e blighte

fference. At a Regent Street moving-picture show a few evenings ago two young Frenchwomen sat behind us, girls driven off the Paris boulevards by the same impartial

ing process, the hatching of the eggs, the life history of these anonymous little specks

st drole,

nd

with soldiers and bright with lights. It made one think of a college town at home on the eve of the great game, so keen and happy seemed

a retired English merchant-marine officer who had married a Frenchwoman. Paintings, such as sailor-artists make, of the ships he had served in were on the walls, a photograph of h

ers alongside gossiped and sipped their beer, and ran over the columns of La Boulonnaise. Here, too, war s

Twenty-seventh German Chasseurs, made prisoner at Lens. Henriede Falk, twenty-seven years, native of Landenheissen (Grand Duchy of Hesse)

l watch, two medals representing the town of Arras, and a cigar-holder; Falk, a woman's watch and chain i

d: Michels, to five years in prison and a fine of five h

e young infantryman I ran across on a street corner who had been in the fighting ever since Mons and was but down "for a rest" before jumping in again, nor the busy streets and buzzing cafes. But across them, for some reason, all evening, one

th Sea. The Germans began it, now the English must take it up; but as for him, speaking as one who had followed the sea, it was poor busi

for the woods are full these days of volunteers who, leading rather decorative lives in times of peace, have been shaken awake by the war into helping out overtaxed embassies, making beds in hospitals, doing whatever comes along with a childli

usand soldiers had been sent out as a burial party after the fighting alo

rman and Indian wounded were put in the same ward. In t

t of the town. It was pleasant up here in the frosty morning-old ho

rivers in black coats and black-and-silver cocked hats. People stopped as they passed, a woman crossed her

and as the ancient vehicles climbed over the brow of the hill the people kept looking, feeling, perhap

nd

trunks, dead leaves on the sidewalk, and

between tall, gray houses leaning backward, sidewise, each after its fashion-as some girl, pale, with shawl wrapped ab

the streets now: shops are opening, cabs tooting down the Avenue de l'Opera the greater part of the night; but most of the house-fronts are still shuttered and still. Tourists, pleasure-seekers, and the banalities they bring are gone-ever

porary

es

stick of cord-wood and almost as hard-remember the almost carnivorous joy with which a Frenchma

w is obeyed, whether amiable bakers think they have time or not. And people want light bread, curly rolls, "pain de fantaisie." All very well for Gen

make it, little ones would be without clients, and that this highly centralized, paternal g

rsd

back again-more significant than one might think who had not seen the France of a few months ago, when everything was

air of coquetry, in spite of bare branches and fallen leaves-past brown fields across which teams of oxen, one sedate old farm horse in the lead, are drawing the furrow for next spring's wheat

ark, across the Garonne and into Bordeaux, where the civil government obliging

aux,

German cannon, which even now are only fifty miles north of the boulevar

old casks hauled up again. You are close to the wine country and close to the sea-to oysters and crabs and ships-and to the hot sun and more exuberant spirits of the Midi. The pretty, black-eyed Bordelaise-there are pretty girls in Bordeaux-often seems closer to Madrid than to Paris; even the Bordelais accent has a touch of the Medit

l tremor, one feels in Paris. The Germans will never come here, one feels, no matter what happens, and as you read the communiqués in La Petite G

nd the big cepes of Bordeaux-yellow dates just up from Tunis. The fruiterers' shops not only make you hungry, but into some of them you may enter and find a quiet little room up-stairs, where the proprietor and his wife and

al young women from the boulevards, all dine together in a warm bustle of talk, smoke, the gurgle of claret, and tear off chunks of hard French bread, while madame the proprietress, a handso

hen the government came here before, and to-day when the young King of Spain motors over from Biarritz he dines there. Coming down on the train, I read in the Revue des Deux Mondes the recollections of a gentleman who was here in '70-'71 and is here again now. He was inclined to be sarcastic about the prese

o and out of the canvas rocks this enormous cat kept creeping, thrusting his round face and blazing eyes out of unexpected holes in the manner of the true carnivora, as if he had been trained by the management as an entertainer. The head waiter would have lured an anchorite into temporary abandon. Toward the end of the

for its future meeting-place and the Chamber of Deputies another. And from these places, sometimes the most incongruous-one hears, for instance, of M. Delcasse maintaining his dignity in a bedro

ntry behind. Neither of the chambers is in session, and except that the main streets are busy-one is told that one hundred thousand extra people are in town-you might almost never know that anything out of the ordin

r the auspices of one of the newspapers, a conference. I went to one of these, given by a French professor

, and the professor himself, a slender, dark gentleman with a fine, grave face, pointed black beard, and penetrating eyes-suggesting vaguely a prestidigitateur-tr

e English and those who fight, in the great winds of the North Sea, that combat rude and brave. We admired the f

n behind him, into the smooth mould of a conference-that mixture, so curiously French, of clear thinking and graceful expression, of sensitive definition and personal charm, all blended into a whole s

hemselves. But, at any rate, polite flutters of applause punctuated the talk, and at the end M. Cestre asked his audience to rise as he paid his final tribute to the people now fighting the common battle with France. They all stood up

ut with her lorgnette one of the words on the li

ssured apparently, "Keepling!" B

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ar, like that of 70, is said to be good, however, and, though the young men have gone, and the wine-making was not as gay as usual, there were enough old men and women left to do the work. I visited on

me, broiling their own fish over a huge fireplace and drawing wine from the common cask as they have done for generations; the stencils in the shipping-room-"Baltimore," "Bo

le about in his day-and was not unaware of what might interest them-that he was, in short, an advertiser of the most accomplished kind, y

ast; but of the red wine of Bordeaux, its lightness, bouquet, and general beneficence, and the delicate and affectionate care with which it wa

ooks, where records of all our experiments are kept, and there

'I've got two hours; what can you show me?' We said: 'We can show you our cellars.' 'Very well,' said he; 'go ahead.' When he came to the majorums he said: 'W

the King sent back a polite note, just as if he

venerable Georges Clemenceau, still continues his bombardment from close range. His paper was formerly L'Homme Libre-The Free Man-but on be

rly feared; and he was offered, it is said, a place in the present government, but would accept no post but the highest. He preferr

e premier, in an address at Reims, ventured to say that it was his duty to "organize, administer, and intensify the national defense." On this innocent phrase the eye of M. Clemenceau fell the other day, and he now flings off a characteristic three-and-a-half-column f

or two of the letters written to M. Clemenceau, to suggest a stay-at-home aspect

n the midst of their cries and tears, the family showed me the last letter, received that very morning, and dated

and the secretary charged with writing the letter I have received forgot a figure-instead

s dated September 27. If, then, the soldier wrote the 27th, he is not dead. We shall inform

the reply prepaid. No response. I wrote him a third letter, this time a trifle s

d soldier, in mourning, and beaming, and gave me a letter. 'It is my brother who

the family. 'Are you suf

ter giving me news of Regnier and explaining that there were several hosp

lar from the prefecture of Isere, asking me to advise the Regnier family that

I received the enclosed despatch, sent by I know not whom, informing

head,

humble mayor, officially designated by you to transmit to his people the striking results of your 'organization,' of your 'administration,' of your 'intensification' in the cruelly delicate matter of giving news to families. He supplies the picture, and you see in plain daylight your

rote pathetically asking if their parents and little sister were ill, or how they had offended. A wife enclosed a letter from her husband, telling how he was suf

and overcoat before a little grate fire, while a secretary ran through the big heap of letters piled

not repeat the exceedingly lively talk on all sorts of people and thin

d on, however, in the hope that it may be as interesting t

y after day, columns of lively, finished prose, and I asked

to his desk and brought back a sheet of paper, half of which was covered wit

re are certain ideas which I have worked with all my life. I worked a good many years without expressing them; they are all in my head, and when I want them I've only got to take them out. I am eighty-three years old

had known great men and held high place in his day, and now at eighty-three got up before daylight to pound out in longhand his columns of vivid prose, stirred every drop of what you might call one's intellectual sporting blood. Of his opinions I know little, of the justice of his attacks less, and, to be quite frank, I suspect he is

nd

ming old river in the summer, and in these days hearing a charming old French gentleman, vice-consul, tell how he fought against the Prussians in '70. Cognac is a real place, it appears-an old town of twenty thousand people or so, and it is really where cognac comes from, all other brandies being, of course, as one will learn here, mere upstart eaux-de-vie. We went through some of the

out as examples of the beneficent effect of the true cognac-these old boys who had inhaled the slightly pungent fragrance of the cellars and bottling-rooms all their lives. You get this

hools turned into hospitals, the little old provincial hotels sheltering families fled from Paris. There are several such at our hotel, n

ass is poured into moulds, the moulds closed-psst! a stream of compressed air turned in, the bottles blown, and there you are-a score or so of them turned out every minute. As we came out of the furnace-room into the chilly afternoon a regiment of reservists tramped in from a practise march in the country. Some were young fellows

acteristic of that rugged France which tourists who only see a few streets in Paris know little about-was plainly puzzled. There we were, two able-bodied men, and P---, saying nothing about being co

ging. They were boys of the 1915 class who had been called out and in a few days would be getting ready for war. In Paris you will see young fellows just like them, decorated with flags an

oir et blanc, Et f

and black, And s

of Berlin as now they were marching down the streets of Sa

ir-et blanc-Et fend