Part 8 (2/2)
I do not mean religious faith, although that too has been evoked, reaffirmed by the trials and griefs of the war, but I mean faith in themselves, in their cause, in life. The unshakable faith of the French is the one most exhilarating, abiding impression that the visitor takes from France these days. It is so universal, so pervasive, so contagious that he too becomes irresistibly convinced, no matter how dark the present may be, how many victories German arms may win, that the ultimate triumph of the cause is merely deferred.
There has never been the slightest panic in France, not during the mobilization when white-faced men and women realized that the dreaded hour had struck, not even in those days of suspense when the public began to realize that the first reports of French victories in Alsace were deceptive and that the enemy was almost at the gates of Paris.
A million or so people left the city with the Government in order to escape the expected siege, but there was no panic, not even among the wretched creatures driven from their homes in the provinces before the blast of the German cyclone.
Ever since the battle of the Marne the tide of confidence has been steadily rising, in spite of the tedious disappointments of trench warfare, the small gains of ground, the steady toll of lives, in spite of reverses in Galicia and Poland and the mistakes in the Dardanelles, in spite of English sluggishness and Russian weakness.
Each reverse has been courageously accepted, a.n.a.lyzed, and found not decisive, merely temporary. Victory must come to the ones who can endure to the end, and the French know now that they can endure.
”We can do it all alone, if we have to!” Again, ”The Germans know that they are beaten already: they know it in Berlin as well as we do.” This confidence is based on realities--first on the success with which France has learned the German lesson and completely reorganized her life for the business of war. ”We were not ready last August--but we are now.” Her machine is growing stronger in spite of the daily waste of life, while the German machine is weakening steadily.
The farther one gets into the military zone, the more fervent and evident is this confidence, until on the front it is an irresistible conviction that inspires men and officers alike. Even a novice like myself began to understand why the army is sure of ultimate victory, and the longer one stays at the front the more this faith of the French seems justified. In the first place, they have so well got that German lesson! The supply of sh.e.l.l and gun is so abundant, also of fresh troops in reserve thanks to ”Papa” Joffre's frugality with human lives; the first, second, third lines--on _ad infinitum_ to Paris--are so carefully fortified, so alertly held against any ”drive”!
And the troops are so fit! They have made themselves at home in their new camping life behind the lines of dugouts and caves; they have become gnomes, woodsmen, cavemen, taking on the earth colors of the primitive world to which they have been forced to return in order to free the soil of their country. Then one sees the steady creeping forward of the front itself, not much as it looks on a small-scale map, but as the officers point out the blasted woods, or the brow of a hill over which the trenches have been slowly pushed metre by metre throughout the interminable weeks of constant struggle, one sees that gradually the French have got the upper hand, the commanding positions in long stretches of the trench wall. They are on the hills, their artillery commands the level fields before them. It is like the struggle between two t.i.tanic wrestlers who have swayed back and forth over the same ground so long that the spectator can see no advance for either.
But one wrestler knows that the inches gained from his adversary count, that the body in his grasp is growing weaker, that the collapse will come soon--with a rush. He cannot tell fully why he feels this superiority, but he knows that his adversary is weakening.
Perhaps a colonel on the front will tell you with elation,--”We know that the Boches across the way are discouraged, because our prisoners say so,--we take prisoners more easily than we did,--and they are all mixed up in their formations. We know that they have to drive their men to the job, that the lines about here are stripped as bare as they dare keep them. There used to be a lot of reserve troops behind their lines, but our aviators say there aren't any in X----any more! And they aren't as free with their _obus_ as they used to be, and they are 'old nightingales,' not first quality.” Perhaps the staff officers will smile, knowing that the enemy is ma.s.sing his forces elsewhere on the long front, but this trick of rapid change is becoming harder to perform, and more exhausting. At any rate, the plain _poilus_ in the front trenches are instinctively sure: ”We'll have 'em now soon!” They have watched that grim gray wall opposite so long that, like animals, they can feel what is going on there on the other side.
At staff headquarters in a more contained, reserved way there is the same air of vital confidence. ”Have you seen the new pump?” the general asked me. ”We are pumping good water all over this sector into the front trenches, too.... Oh, we are _bien installe!_ ... It may be another year, two, perhaps more, but the end is certain. There is one man in the trenches, another just behind in reserve, still another resting somewhere in the woods for his week off, and more, all the men we want back in the _depots_!” And he turns the talk to the good health of his men, their fine spirit. For one of the human, lovable qualities of the officers whom I met is that they prefer to talk about the comfort, the _morale_, the _esprit_, of their men to discussing ”operations.”
Just here I see where the French have risen above the machine idea of the German lesson. There is a something plus, over and above ”preparation,” ”organization,” ”efficiency,” which the Latin has and on which his confidence in ultimate victory largely rests. That is his belief in the individual, his reliance on the strength of the individual's spirit. To the French officer this seems the all-important factor in the army: military force depends ultimately upon the _esprit_ of the individual which creates the _morale_ of the whole. Of course, the army must be equipped in the modern way and fought in the modern way with all the resources of science, with aeroplanes, bombs, motor transport, and heavy artillery. But without the full devotion of the individual, without the cooperation of his _esprit_, the army would be a dead machine, especially in this nerve-rending endurance contest of the trenches. Here is the Latin idea, which is absolutely opposed to the German machine theory of war.
The German staff has done marvels with its machine. It hurls armies over the map of Europe of initiative and devotion in the common soldier, who in the Latin conception of the word remains a human being with a soul. An officer remarked to me, ”We cannot have our men come from the trenches glum and downcast--a Frenchman must laugh and joke or something is wrong with him. So we started these vaudevilles behind the lines, and sports.” Instead of more drill they give their men ”shows,” so that they may laugh and forget the horrors of the trench. Good psychology!
The civilian s.h.i.+nes through every French soldier--the civilian who is a human being like you or me, with the same human needs. The officers chat and joke familiarly with their men. Comrades.h.i.+p is subst.i.tuted for tyranny. France, one comprehends, is a real democracy, and still takes the ideal of equality seriously. When I asked an officer at Rheims why he had not had a day's leave in ten months while English officers went home on leave, he said, with a shrug,--”France is a republic: our men must get their leaves first.”
The machine system gives startling results--in a short campaign. But when it comes to an endurance contest, to the long, long strains of trench warfare, something other than drill and organization is necessary, something that will rouse the human being to the last atom of effort that he has in him. When men must stand up to their waists in icy water, live in the inferno of constant bombardment, not for hours and days, but for weeks and months, something other than discipline is needed to keep them sufficiently alive to be of use. Doctors tell how willingly, unquestioningly, the wounded go back to the h.e.l.l they have escaped,--not once, but twice, three times. To evoke the capacity for heroism in the individual soldier has been the triumph of the Latin system.
The faith of the French rests justly on their heroic resolution, their ability to endure as individuals, more than on the lesson learned of preparation and organization.
Faith is a belief in the evidence of things unseen. French faith is of many kinds, not purely material, not military. They believe so profoundly in the perfect justice and high importance of their cause that it would seem as if they counted upon the cause alone to win the victory. No nation, they say, ever spent itself in a better cause. Victims of an unprovoked attack, unprepared, which is the best evidence of peaceable will, witnesses of the outrage of a neighbor people, bleeding from the wounds of their own country,--what better cause for war could men have? And the Latin intelligence of the French enables them from the humblest to the highest to perceive the universality of the principles for which they are called upon to die.
It is no selfish, not even a merely national, cause--it is the cause of nothing less than humanity in which they fight.
The philosopher Bergson expressed this sublime confidence in the cause thus (I give the substance of his words from memory): ”Not all wars can be avoided--perhaps nine out of ten can. But this one, no!
For it is a war of principles. It will be a long war because the enemy is strong and we were unprepared. But we can wait the end confident in the result. The Germans have created a false belief, a wrong idea, and have carried that idea into action with extraordinary thoroughness. But the belief rests upon error. When the day comes that they meet reverses, when their idol of force no longer works miracles for them, then they will collapse, from within. There will be a general breakdown of personality from realizing the falsity of their idea. There lies our victory.”
The philosopher's belief is based on the faith that the principles of justice, of law, of humanity are stronger, more enduring than any organization of force no matter how efficient, for this is a moral world. And the individual or nation who relies upon might to enforce wrong must in the end, perceiving the irrationality of his world, collapse. The grinding of the mill may be heart-breakingly slow, but the grist is as sure as life itself.
Similarly, the statesman Hanotaux has expressed ”The Moral Victory”: ”It is the n.o.blest, the highest of causes which has been submitted to the arbitrament of arms. Its grandeur justifies the terrible extent of the drama and the immense sacrifices it imposes. The material results of victory will be immense, the moral results will be even greater....
Moral forces are superior to physical forces, and in spite of all they will have the last word.... Our youth has gone to the front in the serene conviction that it was fighting not only for the _patrie_, but for humanity, that this war was a sort of crusade, that they could claim place beside St. Louis and Jeanne d'Arc.”
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