XII
CHAMPAGNE AND CAMOUFLAGE
IT was on the Champagne front. We stood talking, a group of us, in the offices of a half-destroyed factory upon a hill. The Roche lines were a few kilometers away. We had just been looking down upon them. Thank God, we can look down upon them at most places now. We had been talking with the manager of the factory about his difficulties in keeping employees.
No wonder. Shells come there every day; he pointed out the spot where a man had been killed a few days before in the courtyard. He showed us the damage done on such a day and on such a day. Even rifle balls came whizzing through the court. A car drove into the yard while we talked and its hood was cut through in places by shrapnel.
Now, in the second story of the office building that evidently had once been so beautiful, but every room of which had received a shell, we were standing upon sandbags placed there to keep falling shells from dropping upon the heads of workmen beneath. I noticed that where the sacks had contained bits of earth and seed the green shoots of grass were springing up. Perhaps there will be a lawn there in that office some day.
While we were talking thus, there came the sound of firing from our battery down the hillside, and our French captain cried: "Come, they have an objective," and we hurried after him and ran down to the battery.
It was carefully hidden in the cliff side, in caves and dens, and we approached it through trenches. It does not do for men to be seen coming and going to batteries, as this would reveal the location of guns to enemy observers. For this reason the commanders and men of artillery units do not care to receive visitors.
The visitors may come and stay an hour and nothing happen; then as soon as they are gone the enemy may receive the report of an airman, may select the little square on the map indicated by him and may drop a few shells into it by way of search for the battery.
So the poor fellows at the guns may suffer for the curiosity or friendliness of their visitors. Furthermore, the gunners do not like to open up their guns without a definite objective, just to show them off; as fire draws fire.
The shells of our seventy-fives, however, were ripping across the road above our heads, sailing out of the wood and starting for some point on the plain three or four miles away; so we took the chance of being welcomed in the chambers where the dainty little guns live, and went ahead. We received a most cordial welcome, stood in the narrow little stall behind one of these thoroughbreds of ordnance, jammed our fingers into our ears and felt compressed air kick us in the face. Then I picked up one of the brass shells that fell automatically from the chamber and dropped it again quickly. When it had cooled I made its closer acquaintance, begged to adopt it and received a smiling assent. The empty shell will make a fine dinner gong.
We had scarcely departed, after leaving boxes of cigarettes for the poilus, when the inevitable happened; the enemy got to work upon that hill and we saw a great shell fall and throw up dust, smoke and earth from the factory where we had lately been. We hoped that none of our kind friends up there had paid for our visit. Then we remembered that the battery had had its objective anyhow and our consciences were at rest.
We were driving over screened roads all the time; that is, roads hung with matting, because they are easily discernible from the sausage balloons of the enemy and are registered upon his charts for fire. Practically all the roads we drove over those days along the front are of this character, except those which run behind natural screens, like hills or woods.
And yet, exposed as these highways are and shot to pieces as are the villages along them, the peasant population is living quietly ahead as if nothing out of the ordinary were occurring and no shells or bombs were likely any time to drop upon their heads. For example, I observed, in one such village, groups of French soldiers taking their evening mess in the streets, while side by side with them were a group of little girls playing keep house under a cart, with dolls and a tiny bed.
Of all the sad sights along the French frontier, there is nothing sadder than the once beautiful city of Rheims. Somehow Arras did not tug at my heartstrings as did Rheims. I don't know why, unless it be that a few people were still trying to live and do business in Arras, while almost none are in Rheims. From a city of 150,000 it has gone down to less than five thousand. Besides, in Arras the numbers of British Tommies give life to the place, while in Rheims there is scarcely a footfall in the grass-grown streets.
Yet, again, the Cathedral of Arras is a ruin out and out, while that of Rheims, where Joan saw the Dauphin crowned, has resisted the most pitiless onslaughts and still rears its proud walls and columns in perfect outline, although all its beauty of ornamentation has been stripped away. These old stones of the Twelfth Century are all dovetailed and mortised.
So that noble cathedral, refusing to bow its head before the storm, although all its windows, statuary, and painting had been withered from its walls as it were a beautiful woman whose draperies had been scorched by fire, pelted by hail and soaked by a deluge, seemed to me an image of fair France, whose beauty and richness had been despoiled by the barbarian, but whose spirit is unconquerable and proud. It was pitiful to see the piles of sandbags before the choice carvings of the lower facade, placed there in an attempt to preserve them.
Most pitiful of all was the great rose window to the west, with its incomparable colors in the evening light, gaping now in hollow caverns. It is all too sorrowful to think about; and there is absolutely no excuse for the Hun, since we ourselves had stood only half an hour before upon heights far greater than the towers of the cathedral; the French had observatories enough without using the twin spires of this precious church and so endangering it.
Anywhere in Rheims one can look down at his feet and see bits of shell and shrapnel bullets still remaining after all the masses of metal that passing soldiers have long ago picked up and carried away. We saw huge fragments, bases and fuses of shells piled up in the cathedral itself. Six hundred shells have fallen in the church and each of us carried away in his pocket some such souvenir of the unspeakable tragedy of Rheims.
There is nothing more beautiful on earth than this Champagne country, with its southern, sunny slopes covered with vines, with its women and children working feverishly to supply the places of the men in gathering the vintage. They say they will be able to get in all the grapes; and we saw wagon load after wagon load driven along the gently sloping roads by little boys, women, old men and an occasional soldier.
Crowning many of the crests of these hills, and clothing all the northern slopes of them, are deep forests, where the wild boar was hunted in the days of Cæsar and Charlemagne, and is hunted to-day, or would be, if men were not too busy hunting each other. The courtly captain of the staff, who conducted us on this tour of the Champagne and Verdun fronts, was, before the war, a gentleman of leisure and an ardent sportsman. When, years ago, he retired from active service in the army, he told me he hunted in various parts of the world for much of his time; and for the rest, "Ah, well," said he, "there was Paris—and art—and music!" And his face glowed.
Once I said to him: "This is a most beautiful country. It is worth fighting for!"
I never heard a man speak with deeper conviction and more vibrant enthusiasm when he made this reply:
"Ah, yes I France has everything heart can desire. It is washed by three seas. It has the cool north and the warm south, mountain and plain. It has color, light, soft rain; the best wines in the world. It knows how to live, to create literature, music, art; it loves the beautiful; its people are gentle, tender, kind, but brave. Yes, it is worth fighting for."
Then another time, when I expressed some astonishment and admiration over the fact that France had loaned of her strength to Italy in these days, after all these years of exhausting war, he answered:
"Do you remember that picture of Sir Edward Landseer's, in which the old hound that everybody thought was worn out clutches at the throat of the stag at bay? Do you remember the title of that picture: There's Life in the Old Dog Yet?"
Germany never made a greater mistake than when she thought France defenseless, unless it was when she thought Britain decadent and America negligible. These three mistakes form a necklace of millstones round the throat of the Prussian military autocracy; they will drown the beast deeper than the Lusitania.
But of all the inspiring exhibitions of this war there is none more chivalrous, more courageous, more hopeful for democracy on earth than that of France, invaded, shelled, bombed, burned—like the glorious cathedral of Jeanne d'Arc at Rheims—a people loving peace and seeking peace and pursuing peace, set upon by a ruthless savage war power, yet rising unshaken, invincible, wounded, but fair and strong. "On ne passe pas! (they shall not pass)"—the immortal motto of Verdun, are the words done in blood from the thorns upon her brow, that speak the spirit of France.