Fighting France

t of the German Embassy, which was situated on the Rue de Lille near the Boulevard St. Germain. Along the boulevard and across the Pont de la Concorde he walked in a manner calculated to at

s trying to be recognized and

aid any atte

e of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and said to t

an Ambassador to t

enues in Paris, hoping for some injury, some insult, some overt act which would have permitted him to say that Germany in his person had been provoked, insulted by France. But there had been

tory will record, was e

ch military aviators. Several of these have openly violated the neutrality of Belgium by flying over the territory of that country; one has attempted

presence of these acts of aggression the German Empire considers itself in

e German authorities will detain French mercantile vessels in German ports, but they w

to furnish me with my passports, and to take the steps you consider suitable to assure my return to Germany, with the

dent, to receive the assura

d) de

had flown over Belgium; no French aviator had come near Wesel; no French aviator had flown in the direction of Eifel; nor had hurled bombs on the railroad near Carlsru

ropped bombs on the railway at Nuremberg. The general of the third Bavarian army corps, which was sta

on the most frightful tragedy the universe has ever known. This announc

scorted by M. Philippe Berthelot, who was at the time directeur politique at the Quai d'Orsay. As he was going out of the door, de Sc

xclaimed, "what wi

the latter contented himself with a silent bow, as if he h

k in the evening. From that time on

ious evening. To be exact, it was o

roportion as Germany grew more aggressive, more brutal and more insulting! Personally I had often lo

report on the second day of mobilization to the railroad stat

n! What a mob of people, what an overturning of everything, what a lot of disorder there would be! Well, there had been ne

emen were walking in solitary state along the sidewalk, which was deserted. The station master, to whom I presented my

5. Your train

p. Were we really at war? My eyes were seeing nothing of it, but my memory kept recalling the fact. It recalled the unforgettable scenes of those last days-that scene especially, at four o'clock in the evening on the first of August, when the crowd along the boulevard had suddenly seen the mobilization orders po

aise"! Then a shor

! We want

e twinkling of an eye as if it were a fête day. Yes, all that had

d them and who stayed behind the gate to do their weeping. Everybody was mixed in together in the compartments without any distinctions of rank, station, class or anything else. At Argenta

t to go, we'

armer

ter our good. I shal

from these mouths. You felt the firm purpo

r o'clock in the afternoon. We saw mounds of grain that had been cut and was still scattered on the ground, with the scythe glistening nearby. We saw pitchforks resting alongside the hay they had just finished tossing. We saw sheaves lying on the groun

An enormous wave, the wave of the men who were mobilizing, rushed through the main street of the little town in the direction of the two barracks. I went with the curre

he day after tomorrow, at six o'clock in the morning, we entrain

legs and heads. You have to find five hundred pairs of shoes for two hundred and fifty pairs of feet. You have to arrange the men in rank according to their heights, form the sections and the squads. You have to have soup prepared and transport provisions. You have to go and get rifles and cartr

his own, to think on his own, to decide everything on his own. He had to do all by himself the work that yesterday twenty-five

The following day, at six o'clock, we entrained again; but no longer was it the confused and disorganized crowd that it had been the evening before. It was a company with arms an

len

he towns and the villages all the way to Paris without a sound except the puffing of the engine. In the evening, silent a

peaceful. During the first two weeks Paris seemed to be in a sweet, peaceful dream, in which the citizens listened eagerly for sounds of victory coming from the far distant horizon. On the twenty

onfidence in the army, in Joffre; and the Parisian reasoning was expressed in one phrase, "The army has retreated, but it is neither destroyed nor beaten; as long as

e thirtieth of Augu

rge, the other small. The large one was a proclamation of the Go

nch

ody battles. The bravery of our soldiers has gained them marked advantages at several

President of the Republic and the Government. To protect natio

d resource, will defend the capital and its people against the invader. B

the new Governor of Paris. It had, in its br

fend Paris. I shall obey t

nt fusillade greeted it. There was firing from the streets, windows, courts and roofs. I followed it through my field glass, and for a moment I thought it had been hit, for it paused in its flight. But this was an optical illusion.... The plane simply flew higher, having without doubt heard the sound of the fusillade and the bullets having perhaps whistled too close to the pilot's ears. When he was almost over my post, a light whit

the limitless sky. No one ran away; no one hid; no one sought refuge behind a door or in a cellar. It's a characteristic of airplane bombs

of four, crowds collected in the squares and avenues. The motive was to see the Taubes! Since one Taube had flown over the city, no one doubted that a second one would come the next day. A girl's boarding school ob

ere being put in for the guns, the openings they were making to serve as loopholes, the joists they were putting across the gates, and the paving stones with which the entrances were being barricaded. This crowd did not want to

I was guarding. There were only women, but there were thousands of them and ne

d them. "Look here now, be r

want to

you wan

a reception the Prussian

Paris until sunrise. As a result the capital found itself cut off from the suburbs, and lots of little working girls, who came in

they said, "here we a

ard one o

there isn't

heavy sound was heard coming from the dir

diers. It's t

ral Gallieni to carry munitions to the battle field of the Ourcq. They made an incomparable spectacle, that magnificent summer night, in the bright moonlight, the long column of Algerian cavalry,

we had minded you and gone hom

knew about the Battle of the Marne not only on account of the troops who marched through its str

e in it a miracle, others a strategic action engineered by a genius, others a chance stroke of destiny. The truth of the matter is more simple and appealing than any of these explanations and, although the whole t

ried out by Generals Gallieni and Maunoury-a stroke which consisted in forming a new army on the extreme right of the German

ines to be broken; if, farther on, de Langle de Cary and Sarrail had not held off the Princes of Bavaria and Prussia before Vitry; if, on the right, de Castelnau had not held until the end the Grand Couronné at Nancy. The first truth is that they were all-Joffre, Gallieni, Maunoury, Franchet d'Esperey, Foch, de Langle de Cary, Sarrail, Castelnau, Dubail, to mention them in the order of the battle line from left to right-absolutely in

for which they fought.... Enough can never be said of the elemental importance that lies in the morale of the fighting men on the battle field. It is lamentable to hear far distant strategists reduce the conflict of two peoples to a problem in tactics or a list of ordnance statistics. It i

oing or what we were doing, but we did know one thing-that we would beat them!" One writer, Pierre Laserre, described this retreat in the words, "Their bodies were retreating, but not their souls!" This is proven by the arrival on the fifth of September of Joffre's immortal order, "The hour has come to hold our positions at any cost, and to fight rather than re

ne. It was low because the German fighting men had been led to believe that they would have to fight no longer, that the great effort was ended, that there was no French Army to put a stop to their pillaging and burning. "Tomorrow we enter Paris, we are going to the Moulin Rouge," von Kluck's soldiers said in their jargon to the inhab

emeditated intention to destroy, defile and wipe out everything in their path. And Paris was doubtless the first city in France to comprehend the significance of this war, which

the Marne were not slow to comprehend who the enemy was w

of battle I have just written. No, it was not a field of battle but a field of carnage. I have forgotten the corpses I met in the roads or in the fields with their grinning faces and their distorted attitudes. But I shall never forget t

d passed. Since there were no inhabitants remaining-men whose throats could be cut, women who could be violated, or babies to shoot do

to the village, I wandered alone among the ruins. There had been a hundred houses there, and not a single one was untouched. Some had been hit by she

garden, and the soldiers have deposited their excrement in it. There are chairs that have been smashed by the kicks of heavy boots and wardrobes that have been disemboweled. Here is a fine old mahogany table that has been carried into the fields for five hundred meters and then broken in two. An old red damask armchair, with wings at the sides, one

came here, but they didn't

d, despoiled home where the curtains hung in tatters at the windows. She saw me pass by. She wanted to speak to

k! L

symbol of the whole

deeds are the men

amlet there used to be a large factory. Only the iron framework of this factory remained; the ashes had commenced to smoke, giving forth flames from time to time. Here also every

aced. They lay pell-mell, mixed in with unexploded shells. Panic had apparently swept the gunners away. They had not had time to carry off their shells, so they had left them behind. But they had had time to empty the bottles. Absinthe, brandy, rum, champagne, beer, and wi

egs corpses of men and horses, scaling the trenches, making a circuit around the craters made by shells. Suddenly what was my surprise at seeing two German soldiers, accomp

rom?" I asked. "What

rench soldier or officer. We don't know what to do. We want to go to the village down there," they pointed

" I said, "

red in four or five houses under the guard of a company of Zouaves who had just arrived a half hour previously. The German major, informed of my arrival, stood in front of the main building. He wore gold-ri

ur wounded,

ach wound. Some were suffering and groaning; others, seeing the un

man maj

or some other place, do you suppose I shall be al

ou can be sure of. My superiors will act in accordan

he village, ruined, reduced to dust. Everywhere were the dwellings o

d to him. "That is wh

rned very pale, then

d, but i

't war. It's pure barbar

r their prisoners; they gave them their last cigarettes. One of them had even taken, as if he were his brother, the head of a wounded German

-at least it's war

he made

a thousand; when you have questioned one German officer you have questioned fifty. The characteristic of the race is that they have abolished al

and distributed. These trains bring in prisoners and their officers. The commandant of the stat

ame? Yo

and rank, offering of neces

regi

such a r

army c

such an ar

e general

maton the of

cht." ("I can no

r matter to make the stone beneath you

wns slightly, glances over

to such and such an army corps, the general

nothing

would get a lot of fun out of reciting to the German passages from von Bissing's famous and ferocious proclamation o

we were to put such a p

imself with a shrug of the shoulders-the shrug of the

stars they had on their epaulette. If their rank were inferior to mine, they were exaggeratedly obsequious, holding their hands along the crease in the seam of their trousers with their fingers close together-at strict attention. If their rank were superior to m

ry well. We have been in your

Andenne, were the names that always returned to my lips. I hoped each time that I would get from those men who, in spite of everything, were men of science, members of humanity's most generous profession, if not

ermont, for the systematic laying-waste of Louvain, for the frightful company of old men, women and children who

rieg." ("I

passed through it; for Andenne, assassinated in cold blood with not one of its houses being granted mercy by the assassins; for Termonde, where Ge

it to th

sufficed to exp

fired on

ing, not one tortured city that does not fall under the scope of one or the ot

with a marvelous unity: they advance it in a certain tone of voice. It is firmly embedded

gebrauch in Landkriege" (Military Usage in Landwarfare) to be very much edified. Every German officer has had this manual in his hands since the days of peace. It compri

it ought to endeavor to destroy equally all the enemy's intellectual and material resources. Humanitarian considerations, that is, conside

farther on,

ated humanitarian concessions, will teach him that war can not take place withou

g in that bo

e methods.... Prisoners may be killed in case of necessity if there is no other means of guarding them properly.... The presence of women, children, old men, the sick and the wounded in a beseiged city can hasten the place's fall; in consequence it would be very foolish of the beseiger

s last page, is found t

demands, however great

ked an expression of great indignation from all the civilized world, were not perpetrated in

ple. This precept proves the case. It emanates not from a soldier but from a poet, who is not addressing the military class but the civilians, the women,

ions of enemies. Raise a monument of their s

bayonet the heart of every enemy. Take no prisoners! Strike t

h blows from your ax and the butt of your musket. These brigands are timid

She has transformed neighboring lands into deserts! She has slit throats, laid waste fields, shattered skulls, she has destroyed all th

ure of "frightfulness" only when they see that "frightfulness" does not pay; only when they see the uselessness of unchaining horror and of beginning

Paris were not long in accounting for the danger they had passed through on account of the German spy

it for years and years, but it was only in the first days of the war that they really

eginning of September, 1914, is

pointed helmets of the Germans disappeared, rapidly. German occupation meant the same thing it did everywhere else-exactions, brutalities, rape. Immediately after he had entered the Prefecture, the German governor levied a war contribution of one millio

rectly to all the places they should occupy. They did not hesitate an instant about the street to follow or the door at which to knock. The arrest of the fifteen hundred young hostages occurred with an unheard-o

ay they would have to keep their shades down and close all shutters because His Imperial Highness, Prince Eitel Friedrich, the Kaiser

city. However, behind some of them drawn faces peered forth in sorrow or in anger. In a house on the principal street was a lady whose husband was at the front. Her father, an aged general who had f

ssing by, he made a su

man on the hor

his saddle a little more than the others. And the two onlookers had no trouble in recognizing this aide-de-

wing rooms. He came to call on them, to pay his respects, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should be there in that costume. They all had to restrain the feeling of disgust and anger this spy aroused in their breasts. It was for

ined in Schopenhauer's famous phrase: "The German is remarkable for the abso

es is entirely lacking in the Teutonic race. And once more we find an

ry to know why the enemy, in certain places, has rushed in as if he came out of a trap door. It will be necessary to know why, in certain ravaged districts, some houses have been entirely dest

hey kept alive until they were at our gates. A tennis match seems a mere nothing-something very innocent in the way of pleasure, far from being war-like. And then, one fine day th

ng, most poetic. And one day the discovery is made that the clump concea

to fight today, to fight to the death. For these Germans will understand the inanity of their Machiavellian scheming and o

rced to fight; her territory was invaded, her cities burned to the ground; her fields ravaged; her citizens massacred. The second reason is because she does not want to have to figh

has been developed and made perfect in Germany, it is dear to all German hearts. They are proud of it and have faith in its power. The machine must not only be

hole world ought to fight to the end, to